Shlomo Karhi: Government has the right to carry out ‘regime change’ in Israel

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi told a Law Committee meeting on Sunday that the government has the right to carry out “regime change” in Israel and remove standards and procedures that have been established long-standing in that it was brought to power by the public.

The Likud lawmaker’s outburst – which was made public through a recording leaked to Israeli media – came as the commission examined the government’s decision to cut ties with the left-wing newspaper Haaretzafter its editor, Amos Schocken, called Palestinian terrorists “freedom fighters.”

The measure taken against Haaretz – a measure that Karhi said received unanimous support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office – requires the government to remove all advertisements and government tender announcements that were likely to appear in the print edition or on the newspaper’s website.

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While Karhi claimed that this decision had been taken in response to Schocken’s comments, he had initially proposed imposing sanctions on the newspaper last November, citing the “defeatist and false propaganda” which, according to him, was being spread by the newspaper while the country is currently plunged into war.

In his remarks, which were broadcast on television news in prime-timeon Sunday evening, Karhi referred to his previous attempt to sever all ties with the newspaper, telling his colleagues present at the commission meeting that he “waited for the attorney general’s office to comment the proposal, and they refused it… claiming that it is political, that it is a change of regime.”

“We are elected by the public, we can change the regime if we want,” he still says in this recording.

And the communications minister sparked angry reactions again on Sunday – when, in an interview with the ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Berama, he said he thought the High Court of Justice “should be abolished.”

It should be replaced by a new Court of Justice “whose powers would be defined by the Knesset” and which would not “eat away the foundations of democracy”, he clarified during this interview.

He walked back his statement later on Sunday evening and, in a message that was published on “make their headlines with things that I have been saying for years”.

The government recently began reintroducing elements of its plan to radically overhaul the justice system, fiercely fought for on Israeli streets. This legislative project – which has been put on hold since the pogrom committed by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 – mobilized, every week, hundreds of thousands of people throughout Israeli territory, who condemned a initiative which would lead to a certain weakening of Israeli democracy.

The government claims that the judiciary is too interventionist, that it is not representative of the population and that it opposes the will of the majority.

Parliamentary immunity for all

The committee also gave its support on Sunday to a bill sponsored by Likud member Tally Gotliv that would strengthen parliamentary immunity for lawmakers.

The legislation would prohibit hearings in civil suits or opening investigations into lawmakers unless the Knesset determines, with the support of 90 MKs – 120 of whom sit in the Knesset – that the facts of which a lawmaker is accused did not occur in the exercise of his duties.

The bill, if passed, will not apply to cases of fraud and breach of trust.

In the explanatory notes accompanying his text, Gotliv asserted that Israeli courts “do not have the necessary tools to intervene, to evaluate or to determine the framework within which deputies carry out their functions, or what is done to s ‘perform these functions’.

Many police investigations require secrecy in their initial stages. If passed, the bill would effectively prohibit police from investigating a variety of crimes – ranging from sex offenses to theft to terrorism – without first obtaining supermajority approval. of parliamentarians.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara issued a legal opinion warning that her office believed the bill would turn parliamentary immunity “into a sanctuary de-facto against investigations, against criminal prosecutions, and against the initiation of civil proceedings.

“The bill gives excessive and almost decisive weight to the freedom of action of a member of the Knesset,” wrote Baharav Miara, “and it dismisses important considerations of equality before the law and the principle of ‘Rule of law’.

Gotliv responded by rejecting the prosecutor’s warning and asserting, in a message that was published on X, that her legal opinion “does not hold water.”

“You got used to everyone greeting you in tense silence, well, not anymore,” added Gotliv, who has often opposed Baharav-Miara.

Addressing the Times of Israel On Sunday, Amir Fuchs, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, said that over the years, Israeli courts have reduced the immunity granted to lawmakers for their activities. as part of their official duties and that in trying to oppose this trend, Gotliv is essentially seeking to transform the Knesset into a “city of asylum”.

The text is expected to undergo a preliminary vote in the Knesset plenary session later this week, after receiving support from the Law Committee.

Gotliv insisted that the law would not be applied retroactively – meaning it will not affect the defamation lawsuit filed against Gotliv by activist Shikma Bressler. The latter filed a complaint after Gotliv, unfoundedly, sought to link this leader of the anti-government protest movement to the Hamas terrorist group and the pogrom that was committed on October 7, 2023.

When the defamation trial opened in September, Gotliv interrupted the judge several times, insisting that he had no jurisdiction over her because of her status as a legislator.