Tag: government power
Israel’s Judicial Reform and Protests
Israel in the past six months has felt like a madhouse, a political protest the size of New Jersey, an unending traffic jam, a lab for bad ideas, a glimpse of the future of Western democracy in the social-media age. It has also been a classroom, even for those of us who think we’re experts. I’ve lived and written here for nearly 30 years. But as I stood among thousands of other protesters outside the Knesset on Monday, the midday
Israel’s Netanyahu Mistakes Majoritarianism for Democracy
The Knesset’s passage of legislation yesterday to curtail the authority of Israel’s Supreme Court marks a new era for the state of Israel. The disjuncture comes not because of the legal implications alone, although they are substantial. Nor because of the economic, diplomatic, and security damage wrought in the short time since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office, although it is considerable. Rather, the new era begins because of the damage that proceeding with the bill has done to
Why Republicans Are Turning Against Free Speech
The American right has lost the plot on free speech. The passage of Florida’s House Bill 1557, which bans “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation and gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade and in a manner that isn’t “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in all grades, K–12, is merely the latest in a string of what the free-speech-advocacy organization PEN America has called “education gag orders” that have been proposed by Republicans and passed by red-state legislatures from coast to