Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast.

Today is Monday, July 24th, 2023. I am John Poghoritz, the editor of commentary magazine,

which means always executive editor, a greenwald high a John media commentary columnist,

Christine Rosen, high Christine, John Washington commentary columnist, Matthew, hi, Matt.

Hi, John and joining us today, one of our favorite guests, tablet, contributing editor columnist,

host co-host of the unorthodox podcast and author of the one of the most important pieces that we

have published and commentary in the last several years, the return of paganism,

Leo leave of it, highly L, kalamja. Thank you for saying Shalom, as we are, as we speak,

the Knesset in Israel is voting on the second and third readings, meaning the ultimate passage

of the reasonableness bill. That is one element of three elements of the judicial reform package

that the new Netanyahu government introduced in its first week in January and thereby set off

this unprecedented and astonishing now seven months of protest against these measures and

after delays and delays. The bill, at least one element of this tripartite bill will presumably pass

as we are speaking here. If it does, we will make note of that during during the course of the

podcast though, that probably means that when you're listening to it, it will already have passed.

And I think everybody who pays attention to the news has seen the footage over the weekend of

tens of thousands of people supposedly, I don't quite understand the logistics of this,

marching on the highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which is about 40 miles,

marching from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to confront the parliament, the Israeli Knesset to make their

disgust, distaste, and hatred of this bill plain and evident as that was going on. There were

supposedly negotiations going on at the residents of the country's president, Isaac Herzog,

who was of course in Washington last week showing the flag for Israel, give a very good speech,

...