Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi asserted during a meeting of the Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday that the government has the right to carry out “regime change” in Israel, and do away with long-established norms and procedures, since it was elected by the public.
The Likud lawmaker’s outburst, made public in a recording leaked to Hebrew media, came as the committee discussed the government’s decision to sever ties with the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, after publisher Amos Schocken recently referred to Palestinian terrorists as “freedom fighters.”
The move against Haaretz, which Karhi asserted had received unanimous support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, will require the government to cut off all advertising and announcements of government tenders, both in the print edition and on the newspaper’s website.
While Karhi claimed that the decision was a response to Schocken, he first proposed imposing sanctions on the newspaper last November, citing what he called the publication’s “defeatist and false propaganda” during wartime.
In his comments, as broadcast on primetime TV news shows Sunday evening, Karhi referred to his previous attempt to cut off all ties with the newspaper, telling his colleagues on the ministerial committee that he had been “waiting for the Attorney General’s Office to comment on the proposal, and they’ve refused… claiming that it’s political, that it’s a regime change.”
“So? We are elected by the public; we can change the regime if we want to,” he asserted.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) with Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi at the plenum hall of the Knesset, in Jerusalem, on May 1, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90/File)
The communications minister caused an additional furor on Sunday, when, in an interview with ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Berama, he said that he was of the opinion that the High Court of Justice “should be abolished.”
Instead, Karhi said, it should be replaced by a new judicial court “whose powers would be defined by the Knesset,” and which would not “gnaw away at the foundations of democracy.”
He doubled down on his statement later on Sunday evening, and, in a post on X, called the backlash “boring” and “predictable,” and accused the press of “making headlines from things I’ve been saying for years.”
The government has recently started reintroducing elements of its bitterly opposed judicial overhaul program; the legislative gambit, sidelined since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre, brought hundreds of thousands to the streets weekly before the war in protest at the undermining of Israel’s democracy.
The government argues that the judiciary is overly interventionist, unrepresentative, and thwarts the will of the majority.
Parliamentary immunity for all
The Ministerial Committee on Legislation also gave its backing on Sunday to a bill sponsored by firebrand Likud MK Tally Gotliv that would strengthen lawmakers’ parliamentary immunity.
The bill would prohibit the hearing of civil suits or opening of investigations into lawmakers, unless the Knesset determines, with the support of 90 of the 120 MKs, that the activity the legislator is accused of undertaking was not carried out in the performance of their duties.
The legislation, if passed, would not apply to cases of fraud and breach of trust.
In the bill’s explanatory notes, Gotliv argued that Israeli courts “do not have the tools to intervene, assess, or determine the framework for the fulfillment of the MK’s duties, or what is done for the fulfillment of these duties.”
Many police investigations require secrecy in their initial stages and, if passed, the bill would effectively bar police from investigating crimes ranging from sexual offenses to theft and terrorism without gaining the approval of a supermajority of lawmakers.
Anti-government activist Shikma Bressler (R) and MK Tally Gotliv (C) arrive for a court hearing in Bressler’s defamation lawsuit against Gotliv at the District Court in Lod, September 17, 2024. (Jonathan Shaul/Flash90)
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara issued a legal opinion in which she warned that the bill would turn parliamentary immunity “into a de-facto sanctuary from criminal investigation and prosecution, and the filing of civil lawsuits.”
“The bill gives excessive and almost decisive weight to a member of Knesset’s freedom of action,” Baharav Miara wrote, “and it pushes aside the weighty considerations of equality before the law and the principle of the rule of law.”
Gotliv, in response, dismissed the attorney general’s warning, and claimed in a post on X that her legal opinion “does not hold water.”
“You’ve become accustomed to everyone saluting you in tense silence, well, not anymore,” added Gotliv, who has often clashed with Baharav-Miara.
Speaking with The Times of Israel on Sunday, Amir Fuchs, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, said that over the years, Israeli courts have narrowed the immunity granted to lawmakers for activities performed as part of their official duties, and that by trying to push back against this trend, Gotliv was essentially seeking to turn the Knesset into a “city of refuge.”
The bill is expected to advance to a preliminary vote in the Knesset plenum later this week, having received the support of the Ministerial Committee on Legislation.
Gotliv has insisted that the law would not be applied retroactively, meaning that it would not affect an ongoing defamation suit filed against Gotliv by activist Shikma Bressler, due to unfounded claims made by Gotliv that sought to connect the anti-government protest leader with the Hamas terror group and the October 7, 2023 onslaught.
On the opening day of the defamation trial in September, Gotliv repeatedly interrupted the judge, insisting that he had no jurisdiction over her as a lawmaker.
