Democracy Backsliding in Israel - Ohana and Bitan as an allegory

Dr. Chaim Weizmann

Two senior Knesset members, both from Likud, resemble the serious deterioration in the status of the Knesset. One willingly and enthusiastically, the other under coercion.

In the current Knesset session alone, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana has provided us with two highly embarrassing performances. The first, during US President Donald Trump's speech in the Knesset, while serving as the official host sitting on the Speaker's podium, Ohana behaved like a cheerleader at a high school basketball game in a remote American district, with Likud faction members echoing him with enthusiastic shouts and applause while standing on their feet. When Trump turned to President Herzog in what meant to be seemed as a "spontaneous" manner - wondering why he shouldn't grant Netanyahu a pardon - the enthusiasm reached its peak, and the response resembled a child's excitement upon receiving a Bugs Bunny doll as a gift. Knesset Member Ohana, the Knesset Speaker and acting President of the State, was not troubled by the fact that this was a blatant interference by a foreign president in the internal, legal, and political affairs of the State of Israel, which is supposed to be an independent state, nor that the Knesset, over which he presides, is supposed to be the clearest expression of Israeli sovereignty.

Then came the courthouse show, proving to all of us that reality exceeds all imagination and that the deterioration is still far from its end, from one spectacle to the next. Ohana dragged the President of Paraguay's Parliament to the courthouse where Netanyahu's trial is taking place. Netanyahu's interest is clear. It's important for him to demonstrate his control over the trial through this inferior display, to humiliate the judges and in the process also embarrass the Paraguayan Parliament President (whose government later disavowed his actions), and the eunuch Ohana fulfills the role assigned to him by his master. Once again Netanyahu proved he is willing to employ any stunt not written in any book to delay the continuation of his trial, which he claims he has been waiting eight years for just so he can finally have his say and prove his innocence because "there's nothing and there never was anything." But saying is one thing and doing is another. Netanyahu fears the trial's outcome and the prison sentence that could follow, and to avoid getting there, all means are legitimate in his eyes, including damaging Israel's status as an independent and sovereign state. But what is Knesset Speaker Ohana doing there?

For Netanyahu, the media is perhaps more important than anything else. This excessive affection played a part in his legal troubles, and the result is that two of the three cases for which he is standing trial deal with his conduct in relation to Israeli media. Even today, since the establishment of the current government, Netanyahu's emissary, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, has made repeated attempts to take control of Israeli media, to dismantle independent public broadcasting and subordinate it to the government - that is, to the Prime Minister's wishes. To this end, the government is trying to pass Karhi's Communications Law in the Knesset. But what can be done when communications issues traditionally fall under the jurisdiction of the Knesset's Economics Committee, and the Economics Committee chairman is MK David Bitan, who for various reasons is not among the automatic yes-men in the Likud faction and is not among those who grovel before the royal family? And so, the Prime Minister, through his operatives Amir Ohana and Knesset Committee Chairman Ofir Katz, arranges to transfer the discussion of the communications reform bill from the Economics Committee to a special committee they established for this purpose, placing at its head a Knesset member who would be amenable to them and would pass the law as the Prime Minister wishes.

David Bitan, in his remarks, touched on the root of the problem: "Unfortunately, I find myself at a crossroads where I must defend the Knesset against the government's infringement on the Knesset's authority and status." And indeed, what the government has done here, through its operatives Ohana and Katz, is to trample every rule and procedure so that this issue, so sensitive to the Prime Minister, would not go through proper discussion in the Knesset's Economics Committee, where it should have gone in the first place.

In a parliamentary system, as practiced in the State of Israel, separation of powers is inherently deficient. True, the Knesset elects the government through a confidence vote, but once it is elected, the government controls the Knesset through the coalition majority. Moreover, since the constructive vote of no confidence was legislated, the government can only be toppled through a confidence vote for an alternative government, so in practice, the Knesset has no way to bring down the government. When the Prime Minister exercises unchecked control over the government, and the government, as mentioned, controls the Knesset, it turns out that the Prime Minister controls both the government and the Knesset, and we are dangerously approaching one-man rule.

In their conduct, the Prime Minister and the Knesset Speaker will be remembered as those during whose tenure the Knesset deteriorated to the point of becoming an irrelevant factor in Israeli governance. This is a severe blow to Israeli democracy, and we must remember that our national resilience depends on the State of Israel being both Jewish and democratic state. Democracy in the deep sense of the term - a liberal democracy, where, in addition to free and fair elections, the rule of law prevails rather than the rule of man and all are equal before it; where individual freedoms are preserved, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and where political and social pluralism exists.