Law, Power, and Justice

www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/magazine/benjamin-netanyahu-israel.html

Excerpts:

bent on using the government’s majority to pass a package of bills that would do away with judicial oversight in the country and concentrate power in its hands

The governing coalition has the majority and the means to impose its decisions there. Now it was proposing to neutralize the only curb to executive overreach: the country’s Supreme Court.

The judicial overhaul has now jeopardized every one of his perceived accomplishments, including Israel’s economic success and its international standing. Netanyahu is “in a Job-like state,” Nahum Barnea, a veteran columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth, told me. His coalition members embarrass him on a daily basis. His legal woes are mounting. On top of which, Barnea added, “He can’t travel to the White House, and it’s killing him.” (Netanyahu’s meeting with President Biden on Sept. 20 was the first since Netanyahu’s re-election last November and came on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.) Still, many who know Netanyahu well rebuff the suggestion that he is losing control. “That’s like saying that Orban or Erdogan has lost control,” a former senior aide to Netanya