Oh, for the best, expect the worst, some preach and pain, some tiredness, the way of knowing which way it's going.

Oh, for the best, expect the worst, oh for the best.

Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Friday, March 24th, 2023. I'm John Pudhord. It's the editor of commentary magazine with me as always executive editor, a green wall tie a

John media commentary columnist Christine Rosen, high Christine, hi John.

And Christine's colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington commentary columnist Matthew continuity. Hi Matt. Hi John.

So yesterday, a couple of interesting things happen in Israel. I'm just going to give a little preview because we're going to talk about it on Monday with Dan Seymour, the author of startup nation and one of those plugged in people I know about the Israeli political scene.

You know, weeks and weeks and weeks of protests. And oddly enough, BB Netanyahu, the new and the new the newly elected prime minister, even though of course had been prime minister for almost the entirety of the for the entirety of the of the 2010s.

BB legislation passed the Knesset BB had been constrained from talking about the political issues facing the country because his own attorney general had announced that

he had a conflict of interest and therefore shouldn't be part of the negotiations over how to settle down the country and the wake of the proposals being made to change the nature of the Israeli judiciary.

If you wanted a why that happened, you will now understand why many people in Israel think that some of the methods and methodologies and systems of government in Israel need to be reformed such that the underling of the prime minister, the attorney general, is in a position to order.

The prime minister what he can and cannot do in regards to negotiating over his own government. Now remember, as you hear about this and read about this, that this all followed an election that Netanyahu's coalition won.

So the election is over and the BB coalition won and ordinarily when a coalition wins an election and it runs on certain types of things and particularly in a parliamentary system where there are very few checks and balances and you have a you have the legislature is also the executive branch or the executive branch and legislature are kind of co co terminus.

The party the new party empowered gets to pass its legislation like that's that's how it works and a lot of people in Israel are now objecting to the results of the election this very simple democratic fact which is that you winner you lose and then if you win you exert your will for the for the people in your coalition and one of the many issues that was

adjudicated in the election was judicial reform and yet hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets every every Saturday night and yesterday during the day and what was called like a day of disruption or a day of destruction or a day of the D D D function or something like that.

Closing down highways like taunting the cops into using water cannon and all of this so it's like a you know it's like the pussy hat rebellion against Trump except it's much larger it's sort of in size terms it's more like the George Floyd protests.

But remember they come after the election not before the election and they're all they are all claiming that the new coalition is going to institute fascism in Israel.

Okay so what happened yesterday was that a new piece of legislation passed that makes it harder for the prime minister to be compelled to step aside following in the precepts by the way of our own 25th amendment so there was a there was a thought that the that the Israeli Supreme Court which is the subject of a lot of this controversy could actually order that you know who to take a leave of absence.

And because he is under indictment on these three two or three extremely bogus charges by the way but we don't even have to deal with that.

And the new the new law basically says that you need a two thirds vote of the Knesset to impose a leave of absence on the prime minister which again follows along a temporary leave of absence which follows along our own 25th amendment rules which involve people close to the prime minister invoking the 25th amendment on grounds of incapacitation or other things.

But the bar there are various but the bar is incredibly high in order to in order to interfere with the will of the people in that fashion seems to me to be a perfectly legitimate piece of legislation unless what you want is to have somebody get the guy out that you hate and as we know in America and other places now.

The ends really do justify the mean so people hate be they want to mount okay i'm just gonna finish with this and then we'll talk about this morning.

The coalition got elected to past judicial reform judicial reform in Israel takes various forms the most controversial proposal involves.

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