Haaretz: This is how Netanyahu’s government runs the country with lies not laws

Israeli Haaretz newspaper said that the Israeli government returned to its favorite lie that “the will of the people is being trampled on” after Yitzhak Amit was appointed as the head of the Supreme Court, but the truth is that the majority of the people reject the government’s positions on the important issues facing the country.

Haaretz mentioned – in an article by Journalist Dahlia Scheindlin – the saying of the Jewish scholar and politician Hannah Arendt that “no matter how thick its fabric is, a lie cannot cover up the enormity of the truth,” explaining that what the Netanyahu’s government says about the committee members trampling on the will of the people is nothing more than an attempt by Yariv Levin, the minister of the ruling Likud Party, to obstruct the appointment of the Supreme Court president in the hope of planting a loyalist in the position, just as Hezbollah obstructed the presidency of Lebanon for two years.

These lies exploded, when the Judicial Appointments Committee met last Sunday to approve the appointment of Yitzhak Amit as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after the position had been vacant for 15 months.

Haaretz explained that Minister Levin sought to re-engineer the selection committee in his program for the judicial attack in 2023, which sparked the massive pro-democracy protest movement in Israel, and when it failed, he postponed the meeting of the committee he chairs by law for several months, and stuck with the chief justice until this week.

Citizens petitioned the High Court of Justice, which ruled in September that the appointment should go ahead, and ruled again to that effect in December, angering Levin and his followers for trampling on the will of the people, which they assumed would oppose having a chief justice.

Levin threw an epic tantrum and declared, when Amit’s appointment was confirmed, that he wouldn’t recognize the authority of the chief justice, creating another unprecedented constitutional crisis, and then the sewage that had been building for months overflowed.

The far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, declared that the court continues to crush democracy and the rule of law, while we are fighting an existential war on seven fronts, and before him Levin raged, saying that “the Supreme Court justices trampled on the people’s choice, and threw the votes of millions of Israeli citizens in the trash”.

After the committee confirmed Amit’s appointment last Sunday, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi wrote that “it’s inconceivable that a right-wing government elected by a clear majority of the people will become a laughingstock among a group of bureaucrats and judges who mock the voters, and right-wing voters will no longer be second-class citizens… The struggle for real democracy has begun”.

Scheindlin continued her article, pointing out that there are many lies that must be demolished, the first of which is that this government represents the people even though it was elected legitimately, and confirmed that the people still steadfastly reject the alleged reform, no matter how much the government lies.

In this context, Scheindlin cited the results of a special poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in early January, which showed that 61% of the sample opposed proceeding with judicial reform, and a majority of 55% adopted the position that the reform would concentrate too much power in the hands of the government.

Scheindlin stressed that the truth is that the people of Israel have rejected the judicial assault launched by the Netanyahu government in every possible way, despite October 7, the shock, the hostages and the war, and the majority of them reject the government’s positions on the important issues facing the country today, as she put it.

Scheindlin pointed out that the majority of Israelis exerted continuous pressure for the immediate release of the detainees in Gaza and a ceasefire, and once the deal was announced, 62% supported it and nearly 60% supported moving to the second stage.

After the deal went into effect, a poll by the right-wing newspaper Israel Today found that 70% of Israelis wanted to reach the next stage of the deal.

The article concluded that this government seems capable of acting blatantly against the will of the people, as Netanyahu has ignored the massive public demonstrations since the social protests of 2011, and he and his government have shown brutal indifference to demands for a deal to return the detainees to the homeland.