Further down the slippery slope to dictatorship

I haven't written on the topic of the judicial reform/introduction to dictatorship since I walked to the Knesset a few weeks ago. Whilst I personally have not been involved in the demonstrations, nothing has changed since then in terms of anything changing in the attitudes of the Justice (sic) Minister and the chairman of the law committee. The president has made two speeches on the topic; the first was like a shot across the bows - a warning sign but doing no damage - whereas his speech on Thursday night (i.e. 09/03/23 - a translation of the speech can be found here) was of a different species altogether: much more militant.

I want to quote from the speech of reknowned historian Yuval No'ach Harari, author of the book 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' amongst others, who spoke at the main rally in Tel Aviv last Saturday night (04/03/23). The Guardian posted a translation of his speech that is. to put it mildly, excellent and outraged. I want to quote one part of the speech:

"Coups are not always carried out with tanks in the streets. Many coups in history were carried out behind closed doors with pens and papers, and by the time people understood the meaning of what was written in those papers – it was too late to resist.

History is full of dictatorships established by people who first came to power through legal means. It’s the oldest trick in the book: first you use the law to gain power, then you use your power to distort the law. When examined together, the laws this government is currently legislating have one simple meaning (and you don’t need a PhD in law to get it): if these laws are passed, the government will have the power to completely destroy our freedom".

Although Harari didn't say it outright, the closest parallel is Germany in 1933 when a madman was elected to the Bundestag, then became chancellor, repealed many democratic laws and finally started the path to the Holocaust. Have we learnt nothing from history?

Should the anti-democratic laws be passed, all that needs to be done is to repeal the laws concerning elections - and then Netanyahu, or his extremist son, or any of his henchmen, can become our dictator for the next 50 years. No wonder many people are suffering from extreme anxiety (apparently, the number of people seeking psychiatric care has jumped in the past month).

Ther was an interview with Harari on television last night; he repeated the second paragraph quoted above, but refrained from making the conclusion that I did (after all, he is a professor; maybe he wants his students - i.e. us - to make the conclusion on their own). But he did say that there is no way that we can return to the [legal?] situation as it was on 31/10/22, the day before the painful election day.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
69	11/03/2007	Weekend migraines (part 2)	Programming, Migraine
1589	11/03/2023	Further down the slippery slope to dictatorship	Israel