“Traitor. anarchists. Terrorists.” This is how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describes the demonstrators who take to the streets against his government week after week. But one look at the high numbers of participants – hundreds of thousands protesting – is enough to debunk the claim of the “left minority”. Or a look into Eliad Schraga’s office.
Schraga is a lawyer and the main organizer of the protests. From the 13th floor he looks over Tel Aviv. On a shelf are military awards and photos of his six children in uniform. All are paratroopers like him. The 63-year-old has fought for his country in three wars. He was commander of one of the toughest units in the Israeli army. The first to drop over Beirut in the 1982 Lebanon War.
But the fight against judicial reform is his most important so far, he says. Because it is about the DNA of Israel. “The Netanyahu government wants to transform our liberal democracy into a fascist-theocratic dictatorship,” says Schraga. “We will prevent that.”
According to polls, we are 66 percent of Israeli citizens, including half of Netanyahu’s voters, who oppose judicial reform. Netanyahu and his right-wing extremist and ultra-Orthodox coalition partners want to oust the Supreme Court, which is the government’s sole supervisory authority. Basic laws that protect minorities should be able to be rewritten at will by a narrow parliamentary majority. Should the Supreme Court object, perhaps because a new law is racist or misogynistic, the government could simply overturn it. That is the core of the reform.
Eliad Schraga can usually be found these days in a tent next to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the demonstrators. Today he retired to his office in Tel Aviv. He needs rest to write petitions against the government’s proposed legislation. “They introduce a new law every day,” says Schraga. You can hardly keep up.
During the night, the government passed a law that gives Netanyahu the greatest possible immunity. According to this, the prime minister can no longer be declared unfit to govern because of allegations of corruption, but only for health reasons and even then only with a three-quarters majority in parliament. Netanyahu no longer has to fear that the Attorney General could suspend him because of conflicts of interest. The head of government is currently facing three corruption cases in court.
“That is the real reason for this reform,” says Schraga. “The government is a criminal gang trying to escape justice.” It says so in a calm voice. Schraga has been fighting corruption in Israel for 33 years. It doesn’t matter whether it’s from the left or the right, he says. He describes himself as “right-wing” and the “plumber of the nation” because he takes care of the dirty work of cleaning the pipes. The lawyer founded the “Organization for Good Governance”.
He has uncovered numerous corruption scandals, including that involving Israel’s ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was sentenced to two years in prison. The investigations into the “submarine affair” also go back to him. It is about the suspicion that Thyssenkrupp paid bribes so that Netanyahu would buy German submarines for Israel, which the army actually did not need.
Many members of the new government are old acquaintances for him. For example, Netanyahu’s coalition partner Aryeh Deri of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Deri has already been convicted three times and is serving several years in prison for corruption. Netanyahu made him interior and health minister. But the Supreme Court ruled that Deri could not hold a ministerial post as he was recently convicted of tax fraud. He had vowed to stay out of politics for seven years as part of a deal with prosecutors that would spare him another prison sentence. Without Deri, Netanyahu has no government. Therefore, a law was quickly drafted after the Supreme Court is not allowed to remove ministers from office.
There are three motives for the judicial reform, says Schraga. Motive one is that criminal politicians want to protect themselves from the access of the judiciary. Motive two is the preservation of privileges for the ultra-Orthodox parties and their clientele. There has long been a dispute in Israel about whether religious men and women have to do military service like everyone else. Ultra-Orthodox men mostly focus on their study of the scriptures. In return, they receive a modest amount of social assistance.
The new government wants to establish the right to study the Torah. With that, ultra-Orthodox would neither have to serve nor work. Motive three are the interests of the settler parties. The Supreme Court stands in their way, says Schraga, because it prevents expropriations from Palestinians in the West Bank. Each of the current governing parties has a self-interest in removing power from the Supreme Court, says Schraga.
He reacts scathingly to the objection that the government is democratically elected. “I can think of others in history who were elected only to abolish democracy. Citizens have given Netanyahu a mandate to lead Israel — not to change the country’s DNA.”
Shraga used to be a member of Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu’s party. He was an assistant to former Attorney General Dan Meridor. Back in 1990, Finance Minister Shimon Peres’ so-called stinking maneuver was exposed. Labor Party Peres sought to undermine his unity government with Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir by forging a secret pact with Shas leader Aryeh Deri to form a new government. Peres bribed Likud ministers to defect, says Schraga.
That was when his campaign against corruption began. Without further ado, Schraga painted a sign with protest slogans about the decline in morality and marched in front of Peres’ residence. There, a TV crew from the evening news saw him and did a short interview with him. “These politicians don’t deserve to lead our country,” said Schraga. A short time later, thousands of people joined him to support his protest.
Today he has that goose bumps feeling from back then, he says. “The people who are out on the streets now are the pillars of society. They carry the army and the economy, they pay the taxes and aid for the ultra-Orthodox who don’t work and don’t do military service. Without us, this government will not manage. We carry half the population on our backs,” says Eliad Schraga. And: “We will not give up.”
