"The 64 Knesset members who voted on Monday in favor of the law canceling the reasonableness standard have struck a serious blow to the State of Israel’s infrastructure of democracy and have signaled the direction in which they plan to take the country, namely dictatorship. They did it in a Knesset empty of opposition lawmakers, befitting of a imperious group that chose to ignore the millions of citizens who took to the streets for weeks to express their concern about the change in Israel’s democratic structure.
"All those 64 will be remembered forever as being responsible for crushing the rule of law and fatally undercutting the separation of powers. Even the moderate forces in the coalition, who worked to forge a compromise with the opposition and soften the terms of the law, will not be able to wash their hands of it. They are no less responsible for this black day than the law’s architects – Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman Simcha Rothman.
"But the heaviest blame falls on Benjamin Netanyahu. The most destructive prime minister in Israel’s history has again proven that he is prepared to sacrifice Israel’s democracy for his personal political survival. Netanyahu is smashing Israel into tiny parts using the divide and conquer method. He incites and stirs up emotions, disrupts, tears the social fabric, crushes the rule of law and weakens the judicial system – all in order to escape the horror of judgment. Netanyahu is taking revenge on the system that decided to put him on trial, and along the way he is taking revenge on the entire country..." -- Haaretz editorial board, July 25, on the passage of a law undercutting the independence of Israel's judiciary and paving the way to dictatorship. Read that last paragraph again -- does it remind you of a certain lawless Malignant Loser? The forces of ultra right- wing authoritarianism are showing us in plain sight their methods and goals, whether it's in Texas and Florida, or Hungary, or now Israel. They're determined to have a dictatorship. They must be stopped.
