This week, we’re going to look at democracy from two different perspectives, through the eyes of two different scholars. One is an Israeli, while one is an American who often teaches in Israel. One studies Israel, while the other studies Russia and the United States. But the cracks in democracy to which they each point are chillingly similar. We hope that by hearing them both in the same week, our readers and listeners will find themselves musing not just on what is happening in Israel, but on how what is happening in Israel is a mirror of much of the West.
We begin this week with Professor Yaniv Roznai, one of Israel’s leading jurists. His recent book, coauthored with Noam Gordon, is Democracy in Retreat: Populism, Polarization and the Judicial Overhaul.
In their book, Roznai and Gordon argue that democracy is not usually lost through sudden coups, but through a gradual, legal, and “gentle” erosion of institutions.
While the book draws on global patterns, it focuses heavily on the Israeli case, particularly the judicial overhaul efforts and the political climate surrounding October 7.
Roznai and Gidron identify what they see as a dangerous synergy between two forces: Populism and Polarization.
Populism: Leaders frame themselves as the only true representatives of “the people” against “corrupt elites” (often the judiciary or media). This creates a justification for removing institutional constraints that “block the will of the people.”
Affective Polarization: When society is deeply divided and citizens feel hostility toward their political rivals, they become willing to tolerate undemocratic behavior from their own leaders.
The Loop: Populist leaders intentionally deepen polarization because a polarized base is less likely to punish its leaders for eroding democratic norms as long as “the other side” is being defeated.
There’s much more to the argument; Roznai fears that Israel’s situation is dire. To be sure, not everyone agrees, but as he a leading legal scholar in Israel, hearing how he sees our present situation is key to understanding what keeps many Israelis up at night when they think about the future of the country they call home.
Yaniv Roznai is a Professor and Vice-Dean at the Harry Radzyner Law School, and Co-director at the Rubinstein Center for Constitutional Challenges, Reichman University. He holds a PhD and LL.M (Distinction) from The London School of Economics (LSE), and LLB and BA degrees (Magna cum Laude) in Law and Government from the IDC.
In 2015-2016, Yaniv was a Post-Doc Fellow at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, University of Haifa and at the Hauser Global Law School, New York University (NYU). In 2013, he was a visiting researcher at the Program in Law and Public Affair (LAPA), Princeton University. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Milan in Italy, Mae Fah Luang University in Thailand, University of the Basque Country in Spain, Koç University in Turkey, Graz University in Austria, and Emory University in the United States.
He is a Co-Chair of the Israeli Section of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S) and an elected member of the Council of ICON-S between 2019-2022. He is the Co-Founder of the Israeli Association of Legislation and was a Co-Chair between 2017-2020. He is an elected board member and former secretary general of the Israeli Association of Public Law. Prof. Roznai's scholarship focuses on comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory, legisprudence, and public international law.
His book, “Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments - The Limits of Amendment Powers” was published in 2017 with Oxford University Press – Constitutional Theory Series. In 2018 it was awarded the Inaugural International Society for Public Law (ICONS) Book Prize (and shortlisted for the Hart-SLSA Theory and History Book Prize). His book "Constitutional Revolution", co-authored with Prof. Gary Jacobsohn, was published with Yale University Press in 2020.
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For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.
It is a very, very stormy and rainy day here in Israel, which is the reason that though Professor Yaniv Roznai and I were planning to actually have this conversation in his office at Raichman University in Hertzelia, my wife implored me not to brave the highways again like we did a couple of weeks ago when water was flashing everywhere and it was really actually pretty dangerous. So I hope the next time we do this, Yaniv, if we can do this in person. It would It would really be a pleasure. But in the meantime, I'm really very grateful to you for coming on today to talk about an issue that was once really the central headline about the state of Israel, more or less from January '23, really, I guess, till the end of September '23. Those were the nine months in which the issue of judicial reform was really tearing Israel apart. And we tried to bring on, as we always do in Israel, from the inside, people from a variety of views. We had on Moshe Koppel, who is the Kohelet forum, who I think some people would argue is the intellectual godfather, so to speak, of the judicial reform.
A very smart person who believes very strongly that judicial reform is necessary. He was not at all happy with how it was rolled out, and he was not happy with all of the clauses of the proposal that were ultimately suggested. But he was definitely in favor of judicial reform, and he was by no means abashed about it. He's highly articulate, highly smart. On the opposite side of this, we brought you on back in those days to talk to us about why you were so deeply concerned about judicial reform, why you felt it was so dangerous to Israel's future as a democracy and as a referee of reports periodically, not with either of you, but in her own terms, we brought on from Hebrew University, Professor Neta Barak Koren, who I think did some wonderful work explaining to people, both in English papers and in Hebrew papers, what's wrong with the current system? What is the proposal to change it? Why is the proposal to change it too much and problematic? What would a more moderate proposed change be that she thought might even address some of the needs but not go too far? So we did what we always do in these issues, which was to try to bring in an array of viewpoints because what matters here is not what I think, but what matters is what Israelis Israelis who are leaders in their fields think.
And we're back to judicial reform. We're not back to the judicial reform because it is the main subject in the headline. But if you read the Hebrew press, it did not go away and you hear murmurs of it all the time. The continued attacks on the attorney general are part of that, it seems to me. If those people who were very much following, by the way, the end of the war and looked at the instance in the Knesset and who was invited and who was not invited to that sitting of the Knesset and who the ministers of the government did not want present, it was very telling and quite inappropriate, if you ask me. So this is happening, and it's not over. The present government, and certainly its ministers, have every intention of pushing this forward. And the reason I wanted to have Professor Roznai come back and talk to us once again is because several months ago already, he and a colleague, Noam Gidron, published a book in Hebrew, which is a fabulous book. It's a short book. It's a brief read, but it's a very compelling and disturbing read to me.
It's not out in English yet. And so therefore, the only way of getting our mostly English-speaking listeners and readers to understand what it is that he and his colleagues are talking about was to bring him on. We're going to put a much longer biographical summary of Professor Yaniv Roznai in the notes for today. But just to do it very, very briefly, Yaniv Roznai is a distinguished Israeli journalist and a leading global authority in comparative constitutional law. He is the full professor and vice dean at the Harry Radzyner Law School at the Reichman University and co-director of the Rubenstein Center for Constitutional Changes, also at Reichman. He holds a PhD and an LLM with distinction from LSE, of course, the London School of Economics, and an LLBMBA degrees, Magnus Cum Laude from the IDC itself. In 2015 to 2016, he was a postdoc fellow at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law Under Extreme Conditions at Haifa University, and the Hauser Global Law School in New York University. He has taught and been involved with Princeton, the University of Milan, Mai Fa Luang University in Thailand, the University of Basque country in Spain, Kutx University in Turkey, Emory University, Graz University in Austria.
I could go on and on. He is internationally, greatly in demand because his scholarship is so cutting edge and because he's such an excellent presenter and because he talks about issues that are so critical, really in our conversation to Israel today. But of course, these are issues that we see all over the world. When we look at modern democracies, American democracy is obviously very much under attack, many people would say. Orban's work is already done. Putin's work with whatever little bit of democracy there was in a fledgling democratic Russia is already done. This is not only an Israel problem, it's a worldwide issue, but we're focused today on Israel. And nobody better to talk about this than Professor Yaniv Roznai. So Yaniv, thank you very much for taking the time to come on. Why don't we begin by giving us a little a little bit of a sense of the argument of the book that you wrote on democracy in retreat with Noam Gidron, what the two of you argue, what's happening worldwide, but why is Israel vulnerable to your minds in a unique and special way.
So thank you very much, Daniel, for inviting me and for this very general introduction. So Noam and I, basically, what we try to do is to make our academic work accessible to the greater public and to try to explain in a relatively concise and brief manner the risks that we see to Israeli democracy. And what we are trying to do is to link three elements and bring them together. And these three elements are, one, populism and populist governments. Basically, the idea by populism, we mean that governments pretend to represent the real people against those corrupted or detached elites. The deep state, as if the people speak in one voice, and this one voice comes out of the the road of the leader or the leading government. And part of it is the populist project. So if I represent the people, and the people are the sovereign, so basically, I'm sovereign and I have sovereign powers, and I can do whatever I want. And therefore, any limitations on my power, opposition, constitution, courts, the media, etc, all these mechanisms that limit my power are simply undemocratized democratic because they undermine the very notion of populist sovereignty.
So populism takes a very democratic idea of populist sovereignty and takes it to the extreme. And you can add to that also the notion of majoritarianism. The rule of the majority is the basic condition for democracy, but populism takes it into extreme. I want the elections, I have the majority. Therefore, I speak on behalf of the real people, and therefore, any limitation on majority power are illegitimate, and I can get rid of them, weaken them, etc. So we take this notion of populism, and we connect it to polarization, and especially effectiveness or emotional polarization. So not so much ideological polarization, but basically, if I have to put it briefly, how much I hate the other side and love my own leader. And we try to show how this plays within the Israeli society. And we link populism to polarization, because on the one hand, populism comes more or less top-down from the leaders, and polarization is within the society, so it's bottom up. And we try to show how populist leaders actually have an incentive to widen and deepen polarization in order to achieve various undemocratic reforms. And we'll probably come back to that later and we'll see how it played during 2023.
But there's a third element to polarization and populism, and that is the institutional arrangements. If you look at some other countries, populism is not unique to Israel, although we can talk about some of the unique features of populism in Israel. But for the populist project, in other words, the undermine of various democratic institutions, sometimes it's not very easy because you have a rigid constitution, or you have a very elaborate and rigid Bill of Rights and strong judicial review, and various political mechanisms that make it very hard for the government to push forward with various reforms. Think, for example, of a presidential veto in presidential systems, or think of a federal system in which you have a vertical separation of powers between the central government and the states. Just remember the tough life that the governors gave to Trump during COVID. You can do whatever you want if you have states or provinces or lander from below that pushback. So the institutional arrangement, Noam and I think, is a crucial element that we need to remember in this triangle of populism and the populist projects, on the one hand, polarization, on the other hand. And here, Israel, we think, is extremely vulnerable to the populist project.
And the reason is that unlike many other countries, Israel has a very, very weak system of checks and balances. In all other democracies in the world, really, without an exception, there are various mechanisms that make sure that political power is not centralized with one organ. So we've just mentioned federal systems and presidential systems. But think of parliamentary systems where you have two chambers within the parliament, two houses, lower house and upper house. Then you have some a political check within the political process that can slow down or even block various proposals. Think of constituencies or some a regional element in the elections. If I'm the representative of Bristol in the British Parliament, I care about my party, I care about my government, but I also care about my own voters in Bristol because I want to get elected again in Bristol. So this puts within the political process another interest, in a way, a local interest that is important in the process. And think, of course, on various supranational mechanisms. Think of the EU, for example. So the European Union, you have the European Parliament, and you have the European Court of Justice. And all those 46 states that are members to the Council of Europe are subordinated to the European Court of Human Rights and to the European Convention on Human Rights.
So there are all these mechanisms that make sure that political power is decentralized. Israel is the only country in the world, the only democratic country in the world without any such mechanisms.
it is lacking any of the above mentioned mechanisms for checking governmental power. We are not a federal state. We're a unitary state. We don't have any presidential veto. We're a parliamentary system. Unlike many other parliamentary system, we only have one chamber in the Knesset in the parliament. We are not subordinated to any supernatural institution. So basically, in our system, the political power is almost without any checks within the political process. I'm putting aside the court, which we'll come back to in a second. And in the Israeli case, it gets even more complicated because it is not only that in our parliamentary system, the government controls the Knesset, but basically, those who control the Knesset and the legislators are maybe five or six politicians, those who had the coalition parties. I think of Netanyahu and Smotrich and Ben Gvir and Goldknopf. We're talking about six politicians, more or less. And whatever they want, is what will happen because they can impose their will through coalition discipline. So we have six politicians controlling the legislator without any rigid constitution or any limitations, which gives the government enormous powers in Israel. So if you have a populist government, basically, there are hardly any checks on what they can do in the political process. And here I come to the judiciary. There are basically two organs that can limit this governmental power. And one is the attorney general who is part of the executive. But basically this is a professional and independent jurist that is mainly the main gatekeeper within the political process, the government adopts hundreds of decisions every day in governmental departments and the legal advisors to the government on the main gatekeepers to make sure that there are no rights violation, rule of law, corruption, etc. So that's one organ. And the second organ is the judiciary. We have a very strong and independent Supreme Court, or at least we used to have one, that is very strong. And we needed that strong court because of the strength of the government.
So I have to be clear because I think that my own opinion is not very much clear in the public agenda in the sense that I'm not a big fan of courts and of the court. I mean, I'm happy to reduce the powers of the judiciary if in turn, we manage to put various checks and balances within the political process. So I want to strengthen the Knesset. I want to strengthen the people in the process and weaken the government. So if it was up to me, I don't want even the court to never intervene in any decision. But in order to do that, you need very good mechanisms that would make sure that there are no rights violations within the political process. And this is not the case. So just to sum up this argument, Israel has very weak limitations on political power. And therefore, when you have a populist government, democracy is at greater risk compared to to other countries. So this is basically, in a nutshell, the argument that Noam and I are trying to put in.
I have a lot of different questions that I want to ask you about this because they go off in different kinds of ways. I want to talk about possible fixes when you say that you want to strengthen the government because you're not a huge fan of the courts running everything. I'd like to hear what that would entail a little bit. Does that involve regional representation to a certain extent and so on and so forth? I want to hear your take on the whole issue surrounding the Attorney General in this particular instance right now, which has become a huge brouhaha. And I want to get a sense of your sense of what the government that we actually have right now and that we're going to have probably until October, I would guess. And then it may very well get reelected, I think, is not out of the question in some way, shape, manner, or form. What you think the plan is. In other words, assuming that we're fortunate and the war stays mostly silent, then there's a little bit of a kerfuffle here or there, but the days of war for an hour behind us. What do you imagine the government's plan to be? And how do you see 2023 re-erupting?
So let's talk about a little bit first of all, what you think the fixes are. What would it take to strengthen the government as you see it? Second of all, say something about what's going on with the Attorney General, because I think a lot of our listeners and readers don't know a lot about who she is and why the attacks on her are so vociferous. And then let's talk a little bit about what you think is waiting for us as Israelis as the political process continues.
The first thing that we have to fix is to stabilize our constitutional system. I don't think that many of the listeners abroad realize how fragile our system is. In the US, it's almost impossible to amend the Constitution because the Americans have the most rigid Constitution in the world. We're talking about 27 amendments since the adoption of the Constitution. In Israel, only in the last decade, we had more constitutional changes than the entire US history. We're basically talking about an average in the last eight or nine years We're talking about average of almost five constitutional amendments a year, and it's very easy. So if tomorrow the Knesset wants to abolish basic law, the judiciary or basic law, human dignity or to amend it, it can do so in a single day with a simple majority of three versus two or two versus one. And so no special majority, no temporal restrictions within the process. Extremely easy to enact and to amend basic laws. So the first thing that we need to make sure is to stabilize that system, because what it means is now every government in power or every majority in power can, in a way, make dramatic shifts in our constitutional order. And this is not healthy.
What is going to have to do? You have to change the laws by which basic laws can be amended. You need a three-quarter majority to change basic laws. How does it work in your mind?
So exactly. So I was thinking of something like two-thirds majority. I think of like 80 Knesset members, and some a temporal restriction that you would have to wait a certain period, let's say three or four months between the readings, to make sure that this is not just a momentary caprice, but something that is well thought of and deliberated, etc. And if we had this procedure, already the system would have been in a better place. And this is something that I think that is crucial. The second element is a Bill of Rights. Unlike any other democracy, Israel is behind in protecting fundamental rights. And I'm not talking here, Daniel, about some progressive rights, such the right to Wi-Fi. No, I'm talking about elements, rights that were recognized over 200 years ago in the American and French Revolution. Equality, free speech, freedom of religion, the very basic rights that we regard them as natural rights that should not be taken away easily. And these rights are not protected explicitly in our basic laws. It is true that these rights get some protection by the court, thanks to its interpretation of human dignity. But it's not enough, and it's not legitimate.
And we want the legislator to be able to put in writing that all men are equal. They don't want to do it. So I think we need to complete our Bill of Rights. And again, if you look at an average constitution, a modern constitution, you would an average of 35 rights protected. I don't want to go there. I'll settle for just equality and free speech and freedom of religion, the right to education, a limited It's a limited set of rights that need to be included in our basic laws. That's the second element. The third element, I talked about some institutional issues. Look at our Knesset. The Knesset has 120 Knesset members. This was a very good number for January 1949, when the Knesset was established, when we had about, I don't know, 500, 600,000 people in Israel. Now we have 10 million citizens. We need to expand the Knesset because this is our representatives. I should be able to approach them, to meet with them, to send them emails and letters. So we need to expand the Knesset. Also in New Zealand, you have 120 parliament members, but for 5 million citizens, not 10 million.
So we need to make the Knesset bigger and stronger with more professional staff, really to enable them to do the professional work that they need to do, which is basically a legislation and supervision of the government. And vice versa, we need to to make the government smaller. Look at the current government. In its peak, we had about 40 ministers and deputy ministers, 40. This is insane. There is no justification.
And each one costs a fortune.
So first, of course, there's the economic, but the inefficiency. And there is no justification in Israel for more than 12 ministries, really. And add to that the fact that we also have a very high number of committees within the parliament, within the Knesset. Each Knesset member has to be simultaneously in three or four committees. They cannot do their work properly. Look at the situation now. We have 120 Knesset members. Deduct from them between 35 to 40 ministers or deputy ministers, more or less. The speaker of the House, the chairs of the committees, you are left with grosso modo 70, 74 Knesset members who are supposed to do all the work. It's insane. So this is one institutional element that must be fixed, this relationship between the Knesset and the government.
The third element that I think is crucial, or the fourth element, if we include the Bill of Rights, is the electoral system. The electoral system. Israel is the only democracy among Western democracies that its electoral system is lacking any either regional or personal element. So when I go to vote in the elections, I put in the ballot, one ballot that says only my party. This could be Likoud or Yesh Atid or whatever. But that's it. And in many other countries, you either have what we call a semi-open the ballot so I can actually list those candidates that I think that are good. Or if you don't have that, you have some a regional element, as we've mentioned earlier. And this is important because it improves the connection between the voters-
It creates some accountability, basically.
Exactly. And that's the second element, the accountability. We always ask ourselves, how the hell is it It's not possible that the current government is not establishing a commission of inquiry? How come? How come? How come that in the Israeli country, we have a majority of the people who want transportation in Shabbat and who want civil marriage? How come this doesn't translate to some a political policy? It's not about the people that they are mean or bad. It's a matter of interest. And nowadays in our electoral system, all the interests and the incentives are not to do what the larger public wants or the greater public interests, but what your electoral base want or the leader of your party. Because I need to remind you that most of the political, at least now in Israel, the political lists now in Israel, the political parties, are actually dictatorial. So there is no open primaries, no elections, no open democratic process. I don't know if people are aware, half of the Knesset members now were elected by a single person or elected by a single person. It's insane.
Meaning, just to explain what you mean, you meaning that there was no primaries in their party. So it was the head of the party that made up the list of the 120 people in her party or his party, and somebody picked them. It could be their aunt, their uncle, their neighbor, the guy that they used to be in business with. But the only person who determined they're getting on the list and therefore, they're getting into the Knesset was the person at the head of the list. That's what you're saying, right?
Spot on. So all these issues are issues that must be fixed. And again, not to bring us into, I don't know, an ultra modern idea of democracy, but simply to put us in line with existing Western democracies among OECD, et cetera, because we are so much behind when it comes to liberal democracies.
Give me a sense a little bit about how this might work. You said that 120 people was fined for 1949, when we had our first elections in January 1949. Now we are, let's say, 10, 11, 12 times the size of that. We've gotten to 10 million people. You're obviously not proposing that the Knesset be 1,200 people. You're not talking about 10 times the population, so 10 times the size. That's ridiculous. I mean, obviously, the House of Representatives is 435. The Senate in the United States is 100.
Altogether, it's 535. There are 360 million. So I understand that you're not suggesting that. So I'm interested in hearing from you about two things, and one of them in particular, I think even more than the size, is this whole issue of regional representation, which people are always asking me about. How would it work? So give us a sense, what do you think is the optimal size of the Knesset? Are you talking about having a second house of the Knesset? Are you giving up that that ship has already sailed? And how would we take the system that we have and amend it somewhat so that you would vote for a party But there would still be some regional representation. I live in Beer Sheva. I'm going to just give people an example, by the way. Part of the reason that Ben Gvir won is because he put on the sides of busses in Beer Sheva, 'mi po Bal ha'bait?' who owns the house here? Because people in Beer Sheva were scared of going out at night because of Bedouin violence and crime. And that's what they cared about. They wanted their 16-year-old daughter to be able to go to the mall on a Saturday night and not to be scared. And if Ben Gvir said he was going to take care of that, then they'll vote for Ben Gvir. And then we've lived with what we've ever had to live with. So what do you see as an optimal size for the Israeli parliament, given the fact that we're now about a 10 million person country? And how does one keep the system that we have basically while also injecting into it a certain amount of local representation.
So I don't have in mind any revolutionary idea. I want a small scale change, a relatively small scale. Imagine, for example, that instead 120, we would have an extra 60 Knesset members, okay? Bring it to 180. And these 60 members will represent 60 districts, for example. Each district selects one person. And At the very least, even if it's not a different house, at the very least, you would have a large segment within the Knesset that would represent some a regional interest. I think this this is something that is doable. I actually think that the idea of regional or inserting into the process some regional element is something that is quite accepted within the various research centers, et cetera. The problem, of course, is that there is what we call the agency difficulty. No one within the process has any incentive of changing it. So especially not the smaller parties, because the current situation in Israel, that Israel is overly representative, which means that you have many parties, and the smaller parties have relatively greater powers than their power in society or think, for example, think of the current government. The Likud, obviously, is the governing party. But the Likud is much weaker in a relative sense than Ben Gvir and Smotrich, because they are the king makers. And that is a big problem because then it pushes the government to the more extreme ends, and we need to change it. And if you insert a more regional element, those who would be weakened by that procedure are the weaker parties. Okay, the ultra-orthodox or the Arab.
So we would have some element, some mechanism by which you'd have some regional representation. The Knesset would be a little bit bigger so that there'd be more people to actually do the work. We would try to professionalize it and so on and so forth. Can you talk to us a little bit about the Attorney General, who, to my mind, seems like an extremely capable and admirable person, but I could be wrong about her politics, and you can tell me if I'm missing something. But it was under relentless attack from Ben Gvir, from Smotrich, from Levin, from Goldknopf. I mean, Goldknopf less now, obviously. But what's your assessment of the job that she's been doing, even just recently now, talking about that maybe Bibi should have to fire Ben Gvir because he's creating what she calls irreparable damage to the Israeli system? I mean, she's been out there very much as a force in a way that it's hard to remember a previous attorneys general doing. On the other hand, she's dealing with a situation that previous attorneys general haven't had to deal with. So give us, Professor Yaniv Roznai, his assessment of how she's doing, what she's up to, and whether the critiques are in place and so forth.
So first, maybe it's important to understand the unique position of the Attorney General within the Israeli system. So as I've mentioned earlier, the attorney general is basically an independent juries selected by an independent committee. This is a change that took place about 25 years ago. In the past, it was only the government appointing the attorney general. But now this process is that the government is appointing someone after recommendation of an independent committee, in a way, to make sure that this person is really independent, and you cannot get rid of her or him very easily. So you need certain justifications. One of them is, for example, that you cannot work with her or him. Now, the attorney general has a very important role in our system because she is, according to the judgments of the Supreme Court, she is the official interpreter of the law before the government. So if I'm a minister or if I'm now in the cabinet meeting, whatever the attorney general tells me, this is the law to the government. Of course, the court can say otherwise, but she's the official interpreter of the law when it comes to the government. So not only she's extremely powerful, because not only she is the official interpreter, but she also has the prosecution.
Imagine that you're a minister and I'm your legal adviser, and I tell you, Daniel, what you're doing now is illegal or disproportionate or unreasonable. And if you don't listen to me, then you are perhaps facing a criminal charge here. You would think twice whether to do that or not. So she plays these two roles, and there are additional two roles. One of them is that she represents the government in litigation. So she needs to defend certain acts, etc. And if there are certain actions that are illegal on their face, she can say, for example, I will not defend that approach. And if you want to defend it, bring your own private lawyer to represent that approach. And the final hat that she wears is the hat of the, let's say, public interest. So the attorney general has a unique position in various cases, for example, child adoption and elections and many other legal affairs. So it's a very, very powerful actor. And the current attorney general, Gali Baharav Miara, was appointed in the previous government. I need to remind us. But because it's an independent position, she is not replaced whenever a new government is formed. So she continues her term until she ends her term. She has a term limit. And many of the arguments or claims or criticism against her now is that she's actually blocking the government from acting. This is the accusation. She doesn't allow us to govern. She blocks everything we do. Now, I think here we need to put things in proportion. It is true that unlike previous governments or previous attorney generals, she has raised, let's say, a red flag many more times than others before. That is true. But you also need to consider that the current government has been pushing forward with many, many prima facie illegal and unconstitutional maneuvers, and never any government before has tried, and therefore, she has to block many more things. Now, I think we can really argue on, let's say, three or four issues, whether it was she was correct or not, that this would be the battle. But when I see, I don't think that any of her legal opinions was far fetched or totally unreasonable. So to my mind, at least, every legal advice she gave was within a certain, let's say, sphere of reasonables, or it was a very reasonable legal advice.
And again, we're talking about a small number of cases where you can argue that she's gone too far, maybe three or four cases. And when you look at the larger picture, our government is is almost finishing four years. In these three and something years, the government has adopted thousands of decisions, resolutions, appointments. She has blocked What? 15 issues, 20 issues? So this is basically, so there's not even a real justification for the accusations. And nonetheless, what she's blocking are things that are important for the government, illegal things that the government wants to push forward. And that is why the government is trying to get rid of her. So at first, they try to go to go through the golden route and get rid of her according to the procedure. They failed to do so. So they changed the procedure in an illegal manner, and this was blocked by the court, unanimously, a unanimous decision by our Supreme Court, including very conservative judges. So this was blocked by the court, and she is still in her position. But as you've mentioned correctly, there are endless attempts to delegitimize her, to undermine her, mainly they're trying to make her leave the position.
So just to give you one example, the Minister of Justice changed the lock in his office in Tel Aviv, because once a week, the attorney general was walking from that office in Tel Aviv. So he changed the locks on the door so that she cannot answer.
It's high school. It's really high school.
Exactly. But this is what she's facing. So they are refusing to call her the Attorney General. They call her that lawyer. And when she comes to the cabinet, they put her in the corner to sit in the corner and not in the center. These issues. But she is so strong that I don't think that she really gives a lot about it. She knows her job, she's doing her job, and this is what frustrates them. So they tried to get rid of her. They couldn't do it. Now they're trying in a very in a blitz within the Constitutional Law Committee, they're trying to split the role of the Attorney General to two different roles so that the government will be able to appoint its own legal adviser as a personal appointment. They hope, the government is hoping, that this would make her resign from office.
And we need to remember that all this is happening against the backdrop of Netanyahu's criminal trial, because as I've mentioned, the Attorney General also heads the prosecution. So Netanyahu's dream is to replace Gali Baharav Miara with someone of his liking that he can choose someone convenient that would basically end the trial in a convenient settlement, and this would be the end of it, because the trial is not going very well for Netanyahu. This is his dream, basically.
Let me ask you something, and I'm beginning to wrap up here because I want to come back to the thesis of your book, which is about the democracy in retreat. I want to get a sense of how worried you are about the retreat at this point. I'll put a couple of questions out there, and you can pick and choose how you want to answer them. So one question is, would it be better for the country just to give him the pardon? Again, that's a whole issue. How one pardons, can one pardon, can a person be pardoned before they're convicted? I mean, a thousand different issues. But would it be better from the point of view of the country for Herzog just to give him the pardon, as unpopular as it might be? If Bibi wasn't worried about his case, would he then no longer be so dead set on the changes to democracy that have you and your colleagues so worried. And to go back to other examples, I think we said this before, maybe not. If you look at me, I understand Putin. What's Putin up to? I mean, there wasn't much of a democracy to pull apart.
But Putin really kind of wants to restore the great Russia of all. That's why he needs the Ukraine because it's part of a classic Russia. It's also a warm water port. But in all, what Putin wants is the glory days of Russia. Trump says he wants to make America great again. It's some of that. It's obviously enriching himself and his family and his cronies to a certain extent. And in his mind, I'm sure he believes that he's taking care of certain excesses that had taken place in previous administrations, and particularly democratic administrations. And many of his voters actually seem to agree with that part of what he's doing. Bibi, I could be very naive here, but I don't have a sense to what Bibi wants to do is to leave office with a quarter of a billion dollars in Swiss bank accounts. It just doesn't seem to me, he likes to be treated well. He He likes to fly nicely. He likes to have nice suits. I don't think that this is really fundamentally about him privatizing some major industry and taking the money for himself. That doesn't seem to me to be the issue. He also seems to me to be a person who's among all the people that we just mentioned, Putin, Trump, and Bibi, by far the best read, by far the most historically knowledgeable and insightful.
And by far, I think a person whose reputation in the history of the State of Israel matters a tremendous amount to him. And so I'm asking myself, what's really motivating him here? If he was not dealing with this judicial issue in his own case, how much when he gets to bed at night, is he really worried about the excesses of the court? How much when he gets into bed at night, is he really worried about what the Barak Court did for so many years that he thinks was an excess? And to what extent, if we just let him off the hook and said, Okay, you know what? You do this, we'll do that, we'll let you off the hook, how much of this would go away? And therefore, my second question if it doesn't happen that way, and if Herzog does not give him a pardon or because maybe he would have to admit something and he won't admit it in order to get the pardon or whatever, in how much danger is this country? How worried are you that, let's say, The court cases don't go away. Some version of this coalition is reelected in October. We have, let's say, four or five more years of it, whatever, four more years of it. How worried are you about what Israeli democracy really is going to look like, let's say, six years from now?
These are all terrific questions. Let me start with what Netanyahu really wants, which is hard to say. I'm not a psychologist, but let me tell you that. Netanyahu admired Aharon Barak, and he admired the idea of a strong and independent court. In 2012, he came to the Supreme Court and spoke with Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch for her retirement. And he explained how an independent court is the most crucial pillar of a democracy. And without a strong independent court, there is no democracy, etc. And throughout the last 20, 30 years, there were always attempts or proposals to limit the judiciary, et cetera. Netanyahu always blocked them, always blocked them. It is only now in this current government that Netanyahu basically gave Yariv Levin and his partners a blank check to do whatever they want, because first, I think it was now convenient for him that he's now under trial. But The problem is, I think that we are way beyond that, and the judicial overhaul is, I think now, much bigger issue than Netanyahu and his criminal trial. So I think even if you pardon now Netanyahu, which I think would be a mistake, nothing would change.
Daniel, if you would go to a bully in school and he asked you for a $20, and you give him the $20 in the next day, will it end? No, he would just ask for $40. And I think that now the current government is acting like a bully, unfortunately. We have a set of politicians who want to govern without limitations. And basically, they're not only trying to undermine any limitations on their power. So we're talking, look at the blitz that is now going on in the Knesset. They only change the Judicial Selection Committee. They change the law about the Ombudsman of the Judges. They want to lower the salaries of the judges. They tried to get rid of the Attorney General, and now they're trying to undermine the entire institution of the lawyers and the attorney general. At this very moment, as we speak, there are bills in parliament to undermine civil society and various human rights organizations. There are various proposals to undermine free and independent media. There are various proposals that would change the way electoral laws. So the government is doing all these things. So they're trying to govern without any limitations. But moreover, what do they want? They want political entrenchment. They They want to stay in power. That's the idea. So I think that Netanyahu and his partners want to stay in power. But for Netanyahu, I don't think, I'm not sure. As you mentioned, it's so much about the money. I think it's about the legacy. I think that Netanyahu truly believes that he's the only leader who can save Israel and anyone else would bring Israel to destruction. I think he truly believes it. He has this grander illusion, and I think this is what motivates him and his family. But Netanyahu is not alone here. He has his partners. So the ultra-Orthodox, they want to get exemption for military service, and they want to have a discriminatory allocation of budget. So they want to get more money. And the only organ that blocks them is the Attorney General in the court. And we have Smotrich and his partners that they want to push forward with the annexation and extension of the occupation. And the only organ that blocks them is the court and the Attorney General.
So we have here an amalgamation of interests. Netanyahu, together with Smotrich, together with the ultra-Orthodox. And we need to add to that the fourth element, and this is what I call the ideologies, Yariv Levin and Simcha Rotman. And these people really believe that democracy is only the will of the majority. That's it. So I think this all comes together. And this, I think, Daniel, is a good place just to put again what I've mentioned earlier about polarization in Israel. Because when you asked In 2023, Likud voters, why do you support or do you support the reform in the judicial system? We had about a third saying that they do not support and two-thirds who said they support. And when you ask these two-thirds, why do you support the reform? Is it because our court is too activist? Is it because the Supreme Court judges are, I don't know, detached elites? They tie the hands of the IDF. Why? Why do you support this reform? The best predictor of supporting the judicial reform was how much I hate the other side and love Netanyahu. The best predictor. So it's about this polarization. And And this is very worrying. Why? Because if you know that your political base will support whatever you do, whether it's in the judicial sphere, whether it's in other spheres. For example, you have Turkey now sitting in Gaza and not establishing a commission of inquiry. You know that your political base will still support you simply because they hate the other side. This gives you an incentive to expand and deepen polarization. And this is why we have now all this campaign against the court, against the President of the Court, the elected President, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who they say that they don't recognize him, and they refuse to call him the President of the Court, and the Attorney General as enemy of the state. This is the political campaign, us versus them. They are the enemies, and they need this campaign. They need this campaign in order to first, to deepen polarization, and second, to shift away any sense of responsibility to October 7 and what happened from this elected government to other people.
My last question, because I know you have a tremendous amount going on today, and I want to make sure that you get the class on time and all of that. My question about the future is really, at the end of the day, all that matters. This is all about what's the future going to look like. And so my question is, let's assume for whatever reason that we get some similar government elected in October, a little tweak here, a little tweak there, some change in the parties, but ostensibly the Haredim is still part of it. Smotrich and Ben Gvir are still part of it, Levin is part of it, the Likud has some control. Something like what we have now, a little change, maybe. What do you think Israel looks like at the end of that administration, that condens, let's say five, six years from now, what are you worried Israel is going to look like, and what do you think Israel is going to look like?
So I think that the coming elections are the most important elections in the history of the state for the future of Israel as a liberal democracy. If, God forbid, we would have the same, more or less, government, this means that in five years or a few years or 10 years, okay, Israel will no longer be the same Israel that you and I know. It would be more similar to Turkey and Lebanon. Maybe it would take 15 years more or 20 years. But this is the direction. We already had 90,000 people leaving Israel this year, many of them academics, doctors, engineers, high tech people. And many of the people around me. In these industries, they say that the next election is the test. If we get the same government, you would have about, let's say, additional 150 to 200 people, 1,000 people leaving Israel. And this is the people that are most crucial to our economy, to our science. And this would be a disaster for the future of Israel. And I very much fear for our futures. And this is why I think that the liberal camp must unite. They must understand what's at stake here. And it's not the end of the story because we've seen in 2023, there is a large liberal population who care about the future of Israel as a liberal democracy. So I don't think it's the end of the story. I think that we can still calculate a different route. If we would have a normal and sane coalition in the coming elections, I think we can still stabilize the system and maybe even change direction to a better future. But if this doesn't happen for some reason, and one of the things that I fear is that Netanyahu will try to undermine competitive elections here, then this would be a disaster for our future, unfortunately.
Well, what would be important for our future is for your book to be translated into English, I have to say. Demokratia Be'Nesiga is really, it's a short book, and it's not one of these very hard to understand academic tomes. It's very accessible to the popular reader, but it's critically important because it's not yet out in English. I thought it was important to hear, at least from one of the two authors, about how they understand the structural threats to the fundamental changes in Israeli democracy. I can't imagine a better introduction to the ideas of the book and to a clear statement of what's at stake, which is basically everything. So Professor Yaniv Roznai, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. I appreciate having you back on after we talked about this in 2023 during the judicial reform. And hopefully the next time we get you on, we'll even talk about how all of these things that you're so worried about actually never came to be that Israel has restored itself to being one of the world's great liberal democracies. And although you have a full, rich career ahead of you, it can perhaps be a little bit less encumbered by worry. I'm not quite sure we're going to have that conversation so quickly, but we'll have one conversation or another, and I very much look forward to it. And thank you very, very much once again.
Thank you,. I hope so, too.
