(If you have received this by email, please click on the title to read the latest version. I often correct typos and continue to edit my essays after publishing the first version).
In a previous essay I argued that Israel is simultaneously expanding outward with maximum violence and contracting inward as the society it claims to serve votes with its feet. The Zionist project is collapsing because it is structurally unsustainable and what is happening now is its acceleration not just in relation to the Palestinians but internally.
Israel’s government has just declared itself above its own laws.
Ynet, Israel’s most popular newspaper — essentially a tabloid read by the vast majority of Israelis — is reporting what it calls a ‘shock’ decision by the Israeli cabinet to openly defy a ruling by Bagatz, Israel’s Supreme Court, the highest court in the country (my translation from Hebrew is below). The Hebrew word tad’héma, in the article’s title indicates a really big shock.
It is important to read Israel’s media in the original rather than rely on English-language reporting in the Western press, which despite everything Israel is doing still tries to soften the edges to protect Israel’s image. In a society where there are few secrets, the Hebrew-language media reveal more of the truth than their English-language counterparts.
Netanyahu has been doing in Israel what Trump has been doing in the United States: systematically hollowing out democracy and its institutions. Both are doing this to protect themselves from legal accountability for their crimes. Both know that the only thing standing between them and indefinite power is functioning democratic institutions — so they are dismantling them one by one. They know democracy is their real enemy, and they are massacring it.
Never mind that Israeli ‘democracy’ was always only for Jews. Palestinians inside and outside Israel’s borders have never lived under anything other than a brutal, arbitrary and dehumanising military dictatorship. But Israeli Jews lived under the illusion that democratic institutions protected them. That illusion is now being stripped away in public, and the stripping is accelerating.
The specific details of this particular ruling — the Second Broadcasting Authority Council, the machinations around its composition — will probably not mean much to readers outside Israel. The detail that matters is that the Israeli government has announced it will not comply with its own Supreme Court’s ruling, and basically do as it pleases.
In reality Netanyahu has been making all the decisions and running the country as a de-facto dictator anyway for a while now. The Knesset — Israel’s parliament — already functions as a performance of democracy, just as Congress does in the United States. But now it is official and out in the open.
The word ‘shock’, tad’héma, in the Ynet article is laughable. I do not believe that Israeli judges — some of whom have routinely enabled and excused horrendous, sadistic crimes against Palestinians — are suddenly waking up to a new reality. Pretending to be shocked is rich. I have little sympathy for Israeli judges and other ‘liberals’ who have spent decades providing legal and moral cover for crimes against Palestinians. What is coming for them is not misfortune, it’s poetic justice — a direct consequence of what they have enabled and sanctioned for decades. A settler-colonial, apartheid society could never be a democracy.
The legal consequences for Israel are worth pointing out. The Ynet report acknowledges that this move could damage Israel’s standing internationally and expose it to proceedings in international tribunals. The principle of complementarity is the key to understanding this. Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute — it signed in 2000 but never ratified — and the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israeli nationals derives from Palestine’s territorial jurisdiction, which the court upheld over Israel’s objections. But the principle of complementarity holds that the ICC defers to functioning national legal systems. If a state is genuinely investigating its own conduct, the ICC is obliged to step back. This is the shield Israel has tried to hold up — pointing to its own legal institutions as evidence that it is capable of self-regulation.
When the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the prosecutor made clear that the door to complementarity remained open. If Israel conducted genuine domestic proceedings, the court would defer. A government that has now publicly announced it will not comply with its own highest court has just slammed that door on itself. It has destroyed, in a single cabinet decision, whatever residual argument it had for being treated as a self-regulating, democratic legal system.
I expect a fresh wave of emigration by those Israelis who do not wish to live under dictatorship. But what I am really watching for is how the world responds — especially Britain, whose government has been abusing its own laws to suppress Palestine advocacy, allowing Israeli interference in its elections and judicial processes, and offering cover to Israel in full view of a televised genocide.
Those precious Israeli ‘liberals’ who are so ‘shocked’ need to understand that any regime capable of doing what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians was always going to turn those same capacities on its own population. Annihilationist settler-colonialism is not limited only to the target population. It is a way of organising a society — its institutions, its psychology, its relationship to law, to truth, to the humanity of others.
Once we start ‘othering’ it is the dehumanisation and othering themselves that become the organising principles. They cannot be curbed by laws because it is those very laws that they will seek to destroy first. Israeli ‘liberals’ should have paid attention to Niemöller.1He learned the hard way that once regimes target people, any people, no one is safe. The devil doesn’t play fair and doesn’t honour deals.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Israel’s government declaration to disregard the Bagatz decision is a milestone that foreshadows the imminent collapse of the Jewish settler-colony. How long this collapse will take depends on the action of the rest of the world, and its willingness to continue to collude with, and cover for Israel’s war crimes. But while we await our own countries to finally do the obvious, millions of Palestinian lives are hanging in the balance.
English translation of Tova Tzimuki’s Ynet report from yesterday, 5th July 2026 | 17:11.
Shock in the Judicial System at Government’s Actions: “This is a Complete Regime Change”
Legal figures say a single line connects the declaration of non-compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling on Channel 2 Authority, and the “muzzling” of the Attorney General’s office. They warn the decision will negatively affect not only relations between the branches of government — but also Israel’s standing internationally. “This is a transition from substantive liberal democracy to formal democracy,” they claimed.
The legal system received today (Sunday) with shock the government’s decision not to honour the Supreme Court ruling regarding the Second Broadcasting Authority — a negative and unprecedented milestone in the collision between the executive and judicial branches. Moreover, legal figures assess that the government’s declaration will negatively affect Israel’s standing in the world — and could lead to action against it in international tribunals.
The figures emphasised that this is an unprecedented move that signals the government’s escalating hostility toward the rule of law. They argue that this step — combined with splitting the Attorney General’s office and changing the method of appointing judges — represents a complete regime change: a shift from substantive liberal democracy to formal democracy.
They assessed that the unprecedented move will affect not only Israel’s international standing, but could also lead to action against it in international tribunals. Israel has relied on more than one occasion on the principle of complementarity in international law — including in the appeal against arrest warrants issued against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. This is a foundational principle of the Rome Statute, on which the ICC in The Hague is based, which holds that responsibility for investigating suspected offences rests first and foremost with national legal systems, so long as they are independent and functioning effectively.
The storm surrounding the government’s declaration: “They’re normalising non-compliance ahead of election day”
According to the legal figures, it is no surprise that the government’s declaration came simultaneously with the Constitution Committee’s discussion accelerating legislation aimed at splitting the role of the Attorney General into a legal adviser and a state prosecutor — with the emphasis on drastically reducing compliance with the AG’s guidance and legal opinions.
Dr Gil Limon, Deputy to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, said during the committee session: “While we are speaking here in the Constitution Committee, during a cabinet meeting taking place in parallel, the Communications Minister’s proposed resolution has been tabled — declaring the government’s non-recognition of the actions of the Second Authority Council, contrary to a Supreme Court ruling.”
He continued: “This is how it will be done after the law passes — when legal opinions or court rulings that the government dislikes arise, it will carry out an overruling. The law will normalise systematic violation of the law.” Limon made clear that the coalition is working toward the government becoming the body empowered to determine the law for itself.
“This covers an entire world of legal counsel on matters of resource allocation, the validity of appointments, conflicts of interest, coalition finances, police independence, emergency law, electoral law, and media independence,” he said. “In all cases where concern for basic democratic principles arises, the voice of the Attorney General will be silenced and he will be unable to fulfil his role. That is not an Attorney General — it is a different role entirely.”
According to the legal figures, a single line connects the call not to comply with the Supreme Court ruling and the ‘muzzling’ — effectively the elimination — of the institution and role of the Attorney General.
Earlier, as noted, the government announced it would not honour the Supreme Court ruling that reinstated the Second Broadcasting Authority Council in its previous composition. The government statement noted that any decision or appointment by the Council would be annulled — including any possible approval for the sale of Channel 13 to the ‘tech entrepreneurs’ group’.
The government’s statement — which effectively endorsed the proposal of Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Justice Minister Yariv Levin — stated that “the decision was taken in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling of 17 June, which reinstated the previous government’s Second Broadcasting Authority Council even though the number of serving members had fallen below the minimum threshold prescribed by law. The government determined that the rule of law binds all branches of government, including the court. A ruling that directly contradicts the clear language of the law cannot confer authority that does not exist in law, and therefore the government will not recognise actions taken under it.”
The order the government decided not to honour was issued approximately three weeks ago — effectively freezing the government’s decision to alter the composition of the Second Television and Radio Authority Council, and ruling that the current Council would continue in office until the petitions filed against the move were resolved. In an unusually sharp ruling, the justices hinted at suspicion that the resignations of Council members had been a deliberate attempt to frustrate the legal proceedings and disrupt the court’s work.
The German Lutheran pastor who initially supported the Nazis and later became a fierce opponent and concentration camp survivor.
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