Israel is facing dramatic changes to its legal system, being forced through by the right-wing coalition in control: it would effectively do to Israel what has happened in Hungary and Poland, especially by destroying the independence and power of the judiciary. This website by Israeli law professors has much information, including a useful capsule summary of what is being proposed. (Thanks to David Enoch for the pointer.)
Philosopher David Heyd drafted an open letter to the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice of Israel, which has now been signed by 90% of the philosophers in Israel; I paste it below the fold:
Philosophers’ Open Letter to the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice of Israel
We, over one hundred Israeli philosophers teaching in all the universities and colleges in the country, wish to express our anxiety at the far-reaching legal reforms that are hastily advanced these days in the Knesset. The moral achievements of the modern liberal-democratic state are the fruit of centuries of political thought and of a persistent struggle to apply it in the state’s constitutional structure: human and civil rights, the separation of powers, the protection of the individual from the arbitrary exercise of governmental power, and the equality of every human being without discrimination on the basis of nationality, race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual inclination.
We warn against the political and cultural danger of the self-isolation of Israel within narrow ethnocentric bounds, ignoring universal values such as the dignity of human beings as human beings, openness to other cultures, and the freedom of scientific research and artistic creation.
Twentieth-century experience has demonstrated the intolerable ease with which democratic states backslide from the primary liberal principle – the limitation of government power, particularly by undermining the independence of the judiciary. Such regress begins with a regime that is democratic only in the formal sense of majority rule and ends in dictatorship.
Comments are open for more links and information.
