Elite Resistance to Populist Constitutional Change in Israel – An Ethno-Class Analysis

In the elections to the 25th Knesset (parliament) held in Israel on November 1, 2022, three populist political parties – Likud, Shas, Religious Zionism – together won fifty-seven seats out of 120, just short of an absolute majority. This achievement was part of a world-wide populist upsurge – from India to Argentina, from Turkey to the United States. The newly elected populist government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, has launched a frontal attack on the country’s democratic structure, consisting of no less than 200 new laws, among them: changing the way judges are selected, so that the governing coalition would have the final say in judicial appointments, at all levels; a "nevertheless clause" that would enable the Knesset to overrule constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court by a simple majority of Knesset members; and, the only law enacted so far and subsequently annulled by the Supreme Court, barring the Court from using reasonableness as a standard when reviewing government decisions. The announcement of this plan had generated unprecedented resistance from the country’s liberal elite. Until the war between Israel and Hamas, which began with a deadly surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 (the timing of which may or may not have been influenced by the internal discord in Israel), hundreds of thousands of people (out of a population of ten million) had been going out to demonstrate against it every Saturday night for ten months. The demonstrations were led by some of Israel’s most prominent hi-tec entrepreneurs, business executives, scientists, academics, medical doctors, jurists, and retired military leaders. This elite mobilization came as a surprise to activists and observers alike. Since the demise of the Oslo peace process with the Palestinians in 2000, the Israeli elite had mostly stayed out of politics, preferring, rather, to enjoy the country’s growing economic prosperity. What accounts for this sudden change of heart, I would argue, is the threat felt by the largely Ashkenazy (European), largely liberal upper ethno-class as the largely Mizrachi (Asian-African), largely populist lower ethno-class seems to have gained the political upper hand. The current war with Hamas brought the constitutional revolution, as well as the protest against it, to a temporary standstill. But the conflict between the two ethno-classes will not go away, and the country’s democratic character is bound to remain an important arena where that conflict will play out. At the time of writing, it is unclear how long the war will last and whether or not it will expand to additional arenas, such as Lebanon. But, for reasons to be explicated in my paper, when the dust settles, the fortunes of the anti-democratic, ethno-national populist forces in Israel are likely to be enhanced.