This Is What a Tyranny of the Majority Looks Like

In a democracy, the responsibility of the elected government is to serve all the country’s citizens, not only those who voted for them. In a democracy, the people have a voice and the government is attentive to the needs of all the country’s citizens. Not only on election day.

In a despotic regime, the main goal of the government is to perpetuate its survival. It sees the people as subjects, not citizens, who are there to serve its needs. The people have no voice; they are ignored, and their needs are subjugated to the government’s will.

For almost two years here in Israel, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been out protesting, every week. This government has not even deigned to listen. Rather, they have done all they can to break our resolve. We have been ignored, and dismissed, maligned as traitors and terrorist supporters. Like all unpopular regimes intent on survival, they are obsessed with being perceived as weak if they compromise. To them, compromise means giving in to the demands of the protesters, and if they capitulate, they fear that their regime would collapse. This is how a regime intent on perpetuating its survival thinks, not a government in a democracy, elected to serve the people.

To this government, we are not citizens; we are subjects.

They aren’t even trying to hide anymore. Karhi was the one who let the cat out of the bag; their goal is nothing less than a total and complete regime change. Any pretense that they might have once had, trying to gaslight us that the judicial coup was motivated by a desire to rectify a skewed judicial system and is in the best interests of the country, has gone. The legislative proposals are coming thick and fast, and they reveal an urgency to complete their radical regime change before November 2026, the date by which the next elections must be held. They need to get it done before they can be voted out.

They say, “Beyachad Nenatzeach”, but their call for unity is but a cynical trick of deception, a ruse to silence the protests, so that they can continue to advance the legislation for their coup, while unhindered by mass protests. They have not halted their obsessive fixation to push through their iniquitous agenda, even for a minute! They know that they have an absolute majority to ram through their legislative agenda, and they will use it without hesitation or remorse – as we have seen.

The laws they propose will give them absolute power and control – not only of the electoral process, but also of all the watchdog institutions in place to protect our democracy: The Courts, the Press, the Attorney General, and Law Enforcement. And they’re not going to stop there; they want render the Opposition toothless, by depriving it of the tools to challenge the government. The only explanation there is for passing laws that render the Opposition so devoid of any ability to be effective, is that want to make sure that they will never find themselves in the Opposition. Ever. It is the ultimate power play, and they will stop at nothing.

The Coalition celebrating the passage of the state budget in the Knesset. Courtesy of the Times of Israel, (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90).

Their plan has already been put in motion:

They already have tabled a legislative proposal that the Supreme Court will have no authority to reverse decisions of the Knesset election Committee, which has the authority to disqualify parties and candidates from standing – and who holds the majority in the committee, which is a reflection of the representation of the current parties and the seats they hold in the current Knesset? Their goal is through legislation, to manipulate the parties eligible for being elected, to make sure that they will always have an entrenched majority. By, disqualifying the Arab parties, under the pretense that they “support terrorism”, they can effectively disenfranchise an entire sector of the population of right to vote, by depriving them of a party to vote for (specifically, the Arab Sector).

The government’s assault on so many facets of our democratic system all at once. is so all-encompassing and is so meticulously planned and all-encompassing, that it takes a Herculean effort to keep your eye on all the balls in play. Imagine a billiard table, with the balls careening off in different directions. Levin, Rothman, Karhi, Smotrich, Goldknopf, Ben Gvir and Netanyahu are all shooting to sink them into pockets. And when they are all sunk, so is our democracy.

You have Levin putting forward legislation for the Justice Ministry to seize control of the Bar Association’s subscriptions. (In which democracy does the government have control over professional guilds)? He intends to use his control of the funds to blackmail the Bar Association’s representatives on the Judicial Appointments Committee, to force them to vote with him and the Coalition. This will not only influence the appointment of judges, but also election of the next President of the Supreme Court, and this will give him control of the Judicial Selection Committee. He is not delaying the vote for the President of the Supreme Court out of bloody-mindedness; he is waiting for the legislation to pass before he convenes the committee – and with 64 (now 68) votes in his pocket, it will pass. It has already passed its first reading.

At the same time, Shlomo Karhi, the Minister of Communications (what a joke that is), has used his ministerial authority to decide that the government will no longer place advertisements in Haaretz. Karhi is maliciously using it as a cudgel to punish Haaretz, because it is openly critical of the government. It is nothing more than an act of petty vindictiveness, aimed at starving Haaretz of revenue and forcing it into financial difficulty. It will also have the added intended effect of forcing the paper’s readership to abandon it, thereby reducing its influence. These advertisements provide a public service and contain important information which the public needs to know about. How is it even conceivable that the government refuses to post these advertisements in one of the foremost national newspapers in the country? Karhi has also tabled plans and a draft for a bill to shut down Kan 1 and 11, the national public radio and television. Why? Because they are also critical of the government and he cannot fire the presenters and journalists, who are protected by labor laws. And this is government likes to boast that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

And, while all this is happening, the “religious”, messianic zealots in whose hands control this government really lies, are beginning to implement their plan to permanently occupy Gaza. And to resettle not only Gush Katif, but also regions populated today by Palestinians, on the ruins of their homes. Netanyahu is powerless to stop them. He has proven many times that he will do anything to maintain his coalition, and this will be no exception. Especially when this initiative enjoys such broad support within his own party. Thus, Netanyahu’s limp rebuttal, that building settlements in Gaza is not on the coalition’s agenda, has as much value as that of a eunuch offering to donate to a sperm bank.

Smotrich is the most determined and passionate proponent of this initiative. This is the same Smotrich who is the Finance Minister, who has just passed the most restrictive budget the country has had for the last twenty years. His explanation of the need to impose higher taxes and cuts to government spending is that he has no choice because of the cost of the war (which this government intentionally prolonged, I will remind you). Under this government’s rule, the budget deficit has risen for the eighteenth successive month and is now 168 Billion NIS. The planned budget deficit for 2025 is now 4.4% of our Gross Domestic Product. It stands today at 8.5%. The government’s priority should be to rebuild the kibbutzim and other settlements in the Gaza Envelope, before the issue of resettling Gaza is even considered. The conservative estimate to rehabilitate the Gaza Envelope settlements, is 19 billion NIS. In this budget, they have allocated less than a tenth of this sum. And that doesn’t take into account repairing the damage in the North, where 46 thousand business have been destroyed by the war. And still, Smotrich is pushing to build settlements in Gaza. Government operations are funded by taxes – OUR taxes. WE are going to pay for the building of these settlements, and OUR sons and daughters are going to have to do longer army service and more reserve duty, just to protect them. Goldknopf’s golden calves, the yeshiva bochers don’t work, so they don’t pay taxes and neither do they do army service. We do. Let’s face it: to them we are their worker ants; we exist to work to provide taxes to finance them and to serve in the army to protect them. The sense of entitlement they have, to think that they can milk our pockets dry, and use our service in uniform to be their “Shabbes goy” to protect their settlements, is obscene!

Minister of Housing, Goldknopf, UTJ’s Yitzhak Goldknopf, with a map of prospective settlements in Gaza during a tour of the Gaza border area, November 28, 2024. Courtesy Times of Israel.

Are Smotrich and his thugs unaware that everything Israel does is being examined under a microscope, worldwide, all eyes are on Gaza? With the ICJ deliberating on whether Israel is committing genocide and the ICC, having already issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes, Smotrich and Goldknopf pushing forward with their dream to resettle Gaza, are playing with fire. Seemingly oblivious to the delicate and precarious predicament of Israel’s international status, these fanatics are openly defying all the warnings, and are deluded enough to believe that there will be no repercussions, because Trump is in the White House.

They are literally destroying the country. They are bankrupting us. They are decimating our international legitimacy and making us a leper colony. And worst of all, they are endangering our security, our existence and our lives.

I doubt we will survive another two years like this – let alone another term. If we wait for the next elections, it will be too late. If we don’t stop them now, I fear that we will have seen our last democratic elections.

#ElectionsNow!