From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, March 28th.

We'll turn now to the crisis in Israel, where mass protests and a general strike yesterday caused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

to delay his plan to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court. NPR's Daniel Estrin joins us from

Tel Aviv now. Hey, Daniel, we really appreciate your time today when there's so much happening

and you're reporting for the whole NPR network. So thanks for coming on WNYC today. Hello from New York.

Thanks. Thanks, Brian, for having me. Could you remind people of some of the basics here?

What's the role of the Supreme Court in Israel compared, say, to the role of the Supreme Court in the United States?

Well, I think we have to understand, first of all, there's no Constitution in Israel.

You know, this is something that usually

countries that they're founding draft a constitution, but there was not an agreement when Israel

was found in 1948. What does that constitution stand for? There are too many groups here in Israel,

religious and secular Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and they didn't all agree on the basic premise of what Israel should be.

Should there be freedom of equality between Jews and Arabs?

Should there be equality between men and women?

So that's kind of the background you have to understand that Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state. There's an inherent

oxymoron there when today 21% of the country is not Jewish. They're Palestinian citizens of

Israel. So there's always been this tug of war between the Jewish character and the democratic

character. And, you know, so with no constitution, there is instead this set of

basic laws that guarantee basic human rights in Israel. And the one institution that is tasked with

protecting those rights is the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court really is the only check on

power in Israel.

There are not as many checks and balances in Israel like there are in the U.S.

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