The Knesset on its Birthday: From Shared Norms to Broken Democracy

As Israel’s parliament marks its birthday today, Tu BiShvat, the New Year of the Trees, allow me to recommend a visit to the Knesset Museum in Jerusalem. It offers a space to remember what once was, and to imagine what might have been.

The museum is housed in the building where the Knesset convened before moving to its permanent home in 1966. Entry is by guided tour and requires advance registration. During the tour, our guide emphasized that most of the signatories of Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948 had immigrated from non-democratic countries in Eastern Europe, yet they chose democracy as the form of government for the nascent state.

They were deeply influenced by the democratic ethos embedded in Zionist thought as well as by British parliamentary traditions. Also, many had arrived during Ottoman rule and were intimately familiar with the shortcomings of the regime that preceded the British Mandate, and was widely perceived as corrupt and inefficient. Some leaders of the pre-state community had lived and worked in Western countries, enabling them to compare life under authoritarianism with governance that derives its legitimacy from the people and is accountable to them.

By contrast, most members of today’s Knesset were born in Israel, into a democracy. Some came from Western countries; others immigrated from authoritarian regimes, including the former Soviet Union. All should understand what happens when the separation of powers erodes, judges are appointed by politicians, and the rule of law is reduced to a hollow slogan.

One legislator stands out in particular: born in Tel Aviv and raised in Jerusalem, within walking distance of the Knesset, he spent many years in the United States, some of them under the name “Ben Nitai”. He now occupies the chair once held by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister. (Incidentally, the tour reveals that around the cabinet table in those challenging early years, there was room for only a dozen ministers.)

The tour described the respectful conduct of the first Speakers of the Knesset. Like many Israelis, I had seen the carnival-like atmosphere in the plenum during the speech of the U.S. president on the day hostages were released last October. We saw who was excluded (former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who threatens the incumbent in the polls, the President of the Supreme Court, who heads the judicial branch, and the Attorney-General), and we saw who was invited (a glamour-girl-turned businesswoman who served briefly).

In a break with tradition, the Chief Justice, symbol of the judiciary and its independence, was also not invited to today’s festive session in the Knesset to mark its birthday. As a result, opposition parties announced that they would not attend, and President Herzog followed suit. What should be the annual celebration of democracy has become a manifestation of divisiveness.

Given the extent of current partisanship, I suspected that the museum’s narrative of statesmanship and cooperation was distorted by nostalgia. I was wrong.

The first Speaker, Yosef Sprinzak, was elected unanimously. Such overwhelming support would not have been twice renewed had he not served all factions, standing above partisan disputes. With one brief exception following his death, when a coalition member defeated Ben-Gurion’s preferred candidate and served only until the next elections, the model of a broadly agreed-upon Speaker persisted for decades.

That tradition ended in 1992. After fifteen years of Likud rule or national unity governments, the Labor Party formed a coalition and, as customary, sought to appoint the Speaker. Likud demanded that the incumbent remain. The role became a battleground between coalition and opposition, and the consequences of that shift are still felt today.

The museum opened last August. That same month, the government decided to dismiss the Attorney General and to disembowel the public appointments committee. The country advanced toward abolishing professional search committees for senior positions, accelerated the Minister of Education’s takeover of the Council for Higher Education, thus effectively politicizing academia, and took additional measures to strengthen ministerial power while weakening institutional gatekeepers and eroding the separation of powers, which is at the heart of democracy.

Not everything in the Knesset in Israel’s early years was perfect or polite, and the tour does not shy away from presenting fierce disputes. But those conflicts were primarily ideological, focused on the priorities and the future direction of the young state. For a modest fee and a tour lasting just over an hour, a visit to an institution devoted to the origins of Israeli democracy allows one to understand what motivated lawmakers then, to compare that with the present, and to feel loss, sorrow and especially concern.