Israel adopts pro-democracy law, all hell breaks loose.

Military personnel threaten to strike; Hezbollah and Iran plot; Biden adds fuel to the fire.

Yesterday, Israel’s democratically elected Knesset voted to curb the power of Israel’s undemocratic judiciary. In what, by any fair analysis, is a pro-democracy move, the Knesset took away the Supreme Court’s ability to nix laws it deems “unreasonable.”

Israel erupted in protests, which is fine. But many military and national security personnel vowed that, in protest, they would not meet their service obligations. This is not fine.

Although the issue of judicial power in Israel is none of America’s business, Joe Biden weighed in. Naturally, he weighed in on the wrong side, arguing that a change like this one shouldn’t be undertaken without bipartisan support. Biden has never treated such support as a prerequisite for imposing significant change in the U.S.

Let’s start with the Knesset’s decision to stop Israel’s Supreme Court from voiding legislation the judges consider unreasonable. It’s inherently undemocratic for any body of unelected judges (and the Israeli Supreme Court is such a body) to strike down a law passed by a democratically elected legislature. Thus, the howling that Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Knesset are undermining democracy is absurd on its face.

This doesn’t mean that judicial review of legislation is always a bad idea. On balance, I favor the judicial review of legislation the U.S. permits.

But that’s because the review is designed to ensure that the legislature doesn’t violate our Constitution — the supreme law of the land. U.S. judges aren’t supposed to strike down a law because they think it’s unreasonable.

U.S. judges sometime abuse their authority to review legislation. In these cases, the Constitution becomes a pretext for imposing personal notions of reasonableness. But these abuses aren’t frequent and severe enough to justify opposing judicial review, in my opinion.

Israel is a very different case. It has no constitution with which to justify and constrain judicial review. Without any real anchor, judges are free to overturn laws that fail their personal “reasonableness” test.

In a society where nearly everyone agrees about what is reasonable, this system might be acceptable. But neither the U.S., nor Israel, nor any free society I know of meets that description.

In the U.S., many consider late term abortions to be murder (or something close to murder), and therefore worse than unreasonable. But many other Americans don’t share this view, at all.

On the other side of the divide, many Americans consider bans on abortion in the first six weeks unreasonable. But many Americans disagree completely.

The same phenomenon exists on a host of other major issues. Indeed, disagreement on nearly all important policy questions is so profound that neither side finds the other side’s position reasonable.

If anything, Israeli society is even more divided than ours. Thus, it’s eminently reasonable for the Knesset to have taken away the Supreme Court’s ability to void legislation as unreasonable. The mass protests that this move has produced — along with the mass protests in its favor — reinforce the reality that his society is too divided to form consensus on what’s reasonable.

I should also note that the Israeli Supreme Court’s right to review legislation for reasonableness appears to be a partisan creation. According to Avi Bell, an Israeli law professor, the Supreme Court’s criterion of “reasonableness” was developed after 1993 in a judicial power grab to counter the rise of the democratically elected Likud party. Since then, the Supreme Court has used it to force the firing of senior officials including cabinet members, block and delay military operations, raise and lower taxes and welfare benefits, and bar major foreign-policy initiatives.

This much judicial power is an affront to democracy.

Nor does annulment of the reasonableness criterion prevent judicial review or entail countenancing violations of human rights. Most of the main review grounds in administrative law will remain.

These points on the merits notwithstanding, it is, of course, the right of those who oppose the new legislation to protest vehemently. At that same time, it’s the right of authorities to disperse and arrest protesters who turn violent or violate the law.

The big problem with the protests is this: Large numbers of IDF reservists, members of the Mossad and the Shin Bet secret service, air force pilots and technical staff, special ops personnel, elite units, intelligence personnel, and military doctors have said they won’t report for duty now that the judicial overhaul legislation has passed.

This form of protest amounts to an attempt by national security personnel to dictate Israeli judicial policy by holding Israel’s national security hostage. That’s about as undemocratic as it gets.

Melanie Phillips quotes a journalist who supports this form of protest against the judicial reform legislation, who calls it an attempted military coup. Phillips writes:

While some protesters are undoubtedly motivated by a principled (if misguided) opposition to the judicial reform, the leaders of this insurrection made it clear from the get-go that such opposition was merely a useful ploy to sweep aside the democratically elected wishes of the public and bring down the government it had elected. 

Whatever label one attaches to a refusal by national security personnel to serve unless they get their way — in this case, the undemocratic way of maintaining the Supreme Court’s unprecedented power — that refusal is anti-democracy and disgraceful.

It also poses a serious threat to Israel. Israel’s enemies — Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Quds forces —reportedly are all now “discussing ways to upgrade the work of resistance” in light of the protests.

Speaking of disgraceful, Joe Biden’s White House said this:

It is unfortunate that the vote today took place with the slimmest possible majority.

And Biden himself has said, in discussing the legislation. that it’s best not to make fundamental changes unless they have widespread support.

These statements make sense only if one views them the way Phillips views the Israeli protests — as a way to “bring down the elected government.” Absent this motive, Biden’s complaint is the height of hypocrisy.

Biden had no problem with ending the ability of the Senate to filibuster key judicial and executive branch nominees. This was a fundamental change that had no bipartisan support. He had no problem with passing Obamacare along strictly partisan lines. This was a fundamental change in our health care system.

If Israel, under a new, left-leaning government, restored the Supreme Court’s power without widespread support, there’s no doubt that Biden would be delighted. He doesn’t care about widespread support. He’s all about siding with the Israeli left.

There’s nothing new about this. Democrat presidents have been trying to bring down Netanyahu since the days Bill Clinton.

What’s new and particularly dangerous, though, is giving encouragement and ammunition to protesters who have resorted to jeopardizing Israel’s national security in order to get their way. Plus encouragement to Hezbollah, Iran, and Hamas, all of whom hope to use this dispute to harm Israel.

Biden had his press secretary say that “the core of [the U.S. Israeli] relationship is certainly on democratic values.” If so, Biden should favor the pro-democracy reform Israel has just instituted. But the real point is this: How Israel organizes its democracy should not be America’s concern.

Nor, as noted, is it Biden’s real concern. He simply wants to topple Israel’s democratically elected government.

That shouldn’t be his mission, either.