Israel's Tech Sector Says Judicial Overhaul Could Hurt Economy (wsj.com) 51
Israel's technology sector is pushing back against the new government's planned judicial overhaul, saying the proposed changes are spooking investors worried about economic stability, the independence of the courts and a right-wing legislative agenda. From a report: This week, a large Israeli software company said it would move its money out of Israel and the general partner of two venture-capital firms said future money raised could be kept abroad. Those moves followed a letter from hundreds of Israeli economists warning that the judicial changes would concentrate political power and remove democratic checks and balances in a way that "could cripple the country's economy." Two former Bank of Israel governors warned in an opinion column about the negative economic impacts of changes to the top court.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his recently sworn-in government are advancing plans that would give the ruling coalition control over which judges are appointed, and allow a simple majority of lawmakers to override decisions by the Supreme Court. The plan would also limit which cases the court can hear. Top members of the justice system and the political opposition have criticized the overhaul as an attempt to concentrate all power in the hands of the ruling coalition. Israel is highly reliant on its technology sector, which accounts for 15% of the country's gross domestic product and around half of its exports. The country has prospered in recent decades, attracting foreign investment that has fueled an explosion of startups and technology companies. Many Israeli tech companies are based in or have workers who live in the Tel Aviv area, a base for secular and liberal Israelis, many of whom oppose Mr. Netanyahu's government.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his recently sworn-in government are advancing plans that would give the ruling coalition control over which judges are appointed, and allow a simple majority of lawmakers to override decisions by the Supreme Court. The plan would also limit which cases the court can hear. Top members of the justice system and the political opposition have criticized the overhaul as an attempt to concentrate all power in the hands of the ruling coalition. Israel is highly reliant on its technology sector, which accounts for 15% of the country's gross domestic product and around half of its exports. The country has prospered in recent decades, attracting foreign investment that has fueled an explosion of startups and technology companies. Many Israeli tech companies are based in or have workers who live in the Tel Aviv area, a base for secular and liberal Israelis, many of whom oppose Mr. Netanyahu's government.
Re:I've seen this article before! (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you actually read the article? Netanyahu is proposing to change the rules to allow a simple majority in the Knesset to override a Supreme Court decision. This is a dangerous power grab and a threat to democracy. And that spooks investors and is bad for the economy.
Re:I've seen this article before! (Score:4, Insightful)
A theocratic ethnostate is more important than wealth. See Iran for a comparable example that's much further along.
To superstitionists democracy is a disposable tool in their pursuit of theocratic social control. Such weapons are best not shared and those disaffected can simply move to the US or Europe.
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And this isn't some mild theocracy either. The party joining the coalition doesn't even think the majority of Jews in Israel are really Jewish enough, which is a serious matter in a state where citizenship is based on religious identity. This is not all ultra-orthodox, those parties are all over the map, but there's a distinctly isolationist state-within-a-state style of ultra-orthodox parties (give us more budget and also give us more exemptions). It is even a problem within the current coalition, as ma
Oh no, not the economy! (Score:1)
Fuck the people. The economy is at stake!
Re:Oh no, not the economy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck the people. The economy is at stake!
They're not freaking out because they're worried the changes will take power away from companies, they're worried the changes will eliminate rule of law and destabilize the country.
In other words: "Fuck the people. Fuck the economy. Fuck the country. Our stranglehold on power is at stake!"
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his recently sworn-in government are advancing plans that would give the ruling coalition control over which judges are appointed, and allow a simple majority of lawmakers to override decisions by the Supreme Court
If all it takes is a legislative majority to override the court then the courts can no longer act as a check on the legislative branch.
Re: Oh no, not the economy! (Score:4, Insightful)
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The supreme court in the past never made the law. They never legislated from the bench. That's a myth being told to try to discredit it. The supreme court adjudicates when there is legal conflict - laws and be and frequently are in conflict with each other and so a court must decide on these conflicts. The losers in those legal arguments often go and whine about legislating from the bench. In reality congress writes rules that are intentionally vague, as they're easier to pass and it kicks the can down
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And, if you think that the economy doesn't matt
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That's not really how it works. What happens is the out-there groups get a few cabinet positions in exchange for going along with everything else. If they don't and let the government collapse they're likely to get nothing in the new coalition.
These people aren't stupid. They understand how their system works and the limits if what they can demand.
At least under the Israeli system there's a chance for smaller parties to have a say. Under the US system we get the same party with 2 names pretending to swi
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The difference is that in the US those "small parties" are lumped in with the majority parties. Ie, the fring element that was holding up the house leadership votes would have been part of a minor party in a parliamentary system. When parties in the US are described as having "strange bedfellows", it means that multiple wings are in a coalition even though they're technically in the same party; in a parliamentary system this is less likely as those wings would be their own separate parties. Right now th
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There are no wings of anything in the US. We have one party with two names. No matter who is in office the major policies as expressed through budget spending remain exactly the same. There are some cultural meat "wedge" issues they pretend to care about but not enough to do anything about them.
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The problem is that it's most definitely NOT the majority that wants to kneecap their supreme court. The issue is that Israel's coalition system is designed to allow capture by the most extreme 5 or 10%. I don't follow it in detail, but my understanding is that their leader has to do exactly what the most conservative, rabidly racist 5% of the population demands because he needs that block of votes to keep above the 50% majority required for a government.
Well the problem is that the leader is a crook who probably goes to jail if he doesn't become Prime Minister and change the law to save himself.
Because of that none of the moderate parties want to partner with him... so he's left with a coalition of the far right and the extremely far right.
Still I think coalition systems work better in general. In the US the major Conservative party was also captured by the far right because the 2-party system means that partisans dominate the party primaries and general e
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I understand where the meme of "both parties are the same" came from, and that it still carries some weight as far as large numbers of both have sold out to moneyed interests. But the assertion that "both parties are equally extreme", that needs further explanation.
I can't think of anything anything the Democratic presidents in my lifetime have seriously pushed for that qualifies as extreme, unless you mean "extremely establishment" or "extremely watered-down" or "extremely moderate" to the point of useless
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The tradition has been to lean left or right during primaries, with varying amounts of angle to the lean, then lean to the center in general elections. Generally the big funding comes from the partisan sides away from center but the big votes come from those closer to the center who aren't strictly party loyalists or ideologues.
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I understand where the meme of "both parties are the same" came from, and that it still carries some weight as far as large numbers of both have sold out to moneyed interests.
Well it didn't come from my comment. I asserted that Israel had been taken by the "extremely far right" and the US Conservatives had been captured by by the "far right".
But the assertion that "both parties are equally extreme", that needs further explanation.
That wasn't my assertion. I said voters were left to choose between "two fairly extreme candidates" but I didn't say the candidate were equally extreme and I certainly didn't claim that of the parties.
I can't think of anything anything the Democratic presidents in my lifetime have seriously pushed for that qualifies as extreme, unless you mean "extremely establishment" or "extremely watered-down" or "extremely moderate" to the point of uselessness. Perhaps you've heard the foaming-at-the-mouth Woke Scare and assumed that stuff is actually part of the Democratic platform.
The fact you completely misread my comment suggests your partisanship is giving you a biased perspective.
The US Democrats are not nearly as ex
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Well, you're implying that democracy cannot be socialist, when it very much can be. Witness Nordic countries in the past which were clearly social-democrat (and which freaked out some people even in the 50s who were too stupid to see the difference between communism and trade unions). Now it's true that some socialist governments have become corrupt dictatorships, but so too have many capitalist countries.
Part of the problem here is tradition. The US has a long tradition that the three branches of govern
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Their government system: democratic.
Their economic system: capitalist
Which part of their system is socialist: nothing
The right-wing has plenty of blind spots, but this is a persistent left-wing blind spot. The Nordic countries are NOT SOCIALIST. they are capitalist democracies that have decide
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They're social-democrats, which is not socialist but leans towards social values (ie, socialized medicine, etc). While it's not socialism, if you go back in time there were many in the US who distinctly treated this as a gateway to socialism. Even today "socialist" is used as an epithet on the right where it doesn't apply; it's the demonization term. Biden isn't socialist, Pelosi isn't socialist, and yet they are labelled that daily on the far right media. US is just weird though.
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Bernie Sanders? Now that guy is a card carrying socialist that rebranded himself as an "independent social democrat" so he could win at least a few votes at the national level. At least the democratic party keeps him well away from the real levers of p
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That's not true at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden).[1] This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining[2] based on the economic foundations of social corporatism,[3][4] and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy[5] — with Norway being a partial exception due
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https://www.government.is/topi... [government.is]
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Not every country has a hard-on for the Left/Right divide as we do in America. For them their socialism is a settled and completely normal thing.
Pretty much all first world nations practice some level of socialism including our own. This whole "the Scandinavians arent socialist" nonsense is just American right wingers trying to edited out successful leftist policies from well run countries.
Are they exclusively socialist? Of course not. Are they a hybrid system like every other first world nation? Of course
Turns out... (Score:5, Informative)
Turns out companies find the elimination of checks and balances in a democracy is worrisome in the context of long term stability.
One of the few things holding back the Israeli government even a little from even more illegal annexations of Palestinian territory has been their country's supreme court. By making their decisions overturnable with a simple legislative majority this new highly conservative government effectively sidelines them and will likely increase annexations which will spur more violence from the Palestinians and possibly another intifada and that's not good for business!
Of course this is quite possibly what the conservatives want as they're currently quite heavy on Zionists who insist God entitles them to take territory from the Palestinians. Violence from the Palestinians makes for a great excuse for more oppression and even works as a justification for more annexations.
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Exactly! Those poor peaceful Palestinians who have just been living peacefully in the country of Palestine for thousands of years until the evil people came along and attacked them for no reason and built walls and other bad things!
The history of the region is -much- more complex than that, to say the least.
Until -everyone- acknowledges that and is willing to step back and seek true peace the wars will continue. Making a Good Guys v Bad Guys school yard silliness out of it guarantees more death.
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I mostly agree but it's still even more complicated than that and goes waaaay back before modern history. Even if we just look at the last 100 or so years, lots of fucked up stuff has happened. The Turks were fucking around, the British were fucking around, the Nazis were fucking around, the UN was fucking around, the US was fucking around, the Russians were fucking around, and I'm sure several others I'm forgetting at the moment were fucking around.
Palestine wasn't even a real place until well after Isra
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They make 100% sense because everyone else sensibly understand exactly what she meant. No one but pedants is talking about genetic matches.
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Lol, yes AC, building walls worked to dramatically reduce the murder rate of Israelis. Defending yourself is now theft and murder, *eye roll*
Hey do they still have that whole thing about thing about killing Jews in the Hamas founding documents?
https://irp.fas.org/world/para... [fas.org]
Learn something. Don't be such a simpleton.
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Right, a minority of Palestinians have acted violently so the Palestinians dont deserve their territory anymore.
The Palestinians are the ones with minimal power here being oppressed. And of those Palestinians engaging in violent acts, would Americans act much differently if they lost a war and then had to watch their country slowly disappear. Desperate people naturally lean towards desperate measures. That doesnt justify groups like Hamas but it does explain where they get their support from.
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Straw man.
There are no non-terrorist non-Iran backed Palestinians to negotiate with. The fledgling pro democracy Palestinian leadership were literally gunned down on the streets decades ago. As stated elsewhere in this thread but it's so much more comforting to just turn one of the most complex situations on the planet into a childish "Jews bad, Palestinians good" trope.
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There are no non-terrorist non-Iran backed Palestinians to negotiate with. The fledgling pro democracy Palestinian leadership were literally gunned down on the streets decades ago. As stated elsewhere in this thread but it's so much more comforting to just turn one of the most complex situations on the planet into a childish "Jews bad, Palestinians good" trope.
What a convenient claim for letting Israel off the hook for holding a people in thrall for over a half century. The Palestinian Authority is a perfectly acceptable body for the Israelis to work with. The fact that Israel has chosen to not seriously engage them for around 2 decades now is its own fault, not the Palestinians.
As stated elsewhere in this thread but it's so much more comforting to just turn one of the most complex situations on the planet into a childish "Jews bad, Palestinians good" trope.
What is with right wingers characterizing any negative word said of Israel as something about Jews? Israel is a nation state. Criticizing its actions is not criticizing Jews, it's simply
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The PA are a lot of the same people who gunned down the pro-democracy people in the streets and it wasn't 50 years ago. They are not legitimate representatives of the people although Israel has tried to work with them anyway for lack of serious Palestinian representation.
The whole "I don't hate Jews, I just hate Israeli policy" thing is so old. There are zillions of wars and people all over the planet with actual real genocides going on far worse than anything happening in Gaza but only Israel gets beat u
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They are not legitimate representatives of the people although Israel has tried to work with them anyway for lack of serious Palestinian representation.
Not true, Israel has not engaged in any serious peace efforts since the 90's. If you're going to insist otherwise, cite a source.
The rest of your post is laughable. "You can't blame Israel for problems it's creating cause Jews!" Utter ridiculousness. Israel has been throwing up road blocks for any form of peaceful resolution for decades now. Almost 10% of their country now lives in settlements considered illegal by everyone but the Israelis and those people will never vote against their homes. At this point
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And btw you do realize there was never a country known as Palestine, right?
The Gaza Strip was a part of Egypt. The West Bank was Jordan. Gaza Strip was taken after Egypt attacked and lost. West Bank was ceded to the PLO after the king of Jordan invited them in to his country and they tried to assassinate him. He decided to let them have the land and washed his hands of them rather risk further assassination / coup attempts.
Egypt doesn't want Gaza back. They built a wall.
Jordan definitely doesn't want t
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Exactly! Those poor peaceful Palestinians who have just been living peacefully in the country of Palestine for thousands of years until the evil people came along and attacked them for no reason and built walls and other bad things!
The history of the region is -much- more complex than that, to say the least.
Until -everyone- acknowledges that and is willing to step back and seek true peace the wars will continue. Making a Good Guys v Bad Guys school yard silliness out of it guarantees more death.
The situation is complicated therefore we shouldn't complain when Israel uses force to expel Palestinians, build settlements on their land, and eventually annex it?
Notice how Israel has remained steadfastly neutral on Russia's repeated invasions of Ukraine? It's because if Russia successfully annexes regions of Ukraine it will mean less blow back when they eventually start annexing the occupied territories.
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Actually, many of the ultra-orthodox parties originally were not Zionist and never aligned when them (ie, they would get the Holy Land back when God himself smote the enemy with His Finger, not because of some armies). This changed a bit after WWII when the desire for a separate state became a bit more acute. And today in Israel the ultra orthodox parties aren't unified at all and have very different special interests that they want. Some won't ally with Netanyahu at all because they see him as a crook w
Re:Probably the Ones Bribing Netenyahu (Score:4, Insightful)
Ehhh... you clearly didn't read TFA. They're fighting changes that will make it easier for Bibi and his gang avoid consequences for corruption.
Re:Why does business think it owns the government? (Score:5, Informative)
DId you even read the fucking article? The tech sectors are opposing an anti-democratic power grab by a right-wing coalition bent on overriding Supreme Court decisions.
The fascist takeover of Israel (Score:2)
is almost complete. Oh the irony.
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No they don't. Many countries don't have this. Even the United Kingdom doesn't have a constitution, and it's the system of government that we borrowed the most from. Even in some countries that do have constutitions they aren't very strong, they're changed quickly and easily, or they rewrite the constitutions often to suit the current power holders.
Technically, the US could ignore the constitution too if it wanted to. I mean in more blantant ways than normal. It is really only convention that holds it t
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I'm Israeli. Our memory is not very good.