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Israeli President Isaac Herzog told a joint session of Congress a week ago that democracy was in our people’s very DNA. The Knesset’s decision to eviscerate democracy just a few days later shows that the people will have to fight for their freedom, nonetheless. It will be a difficult and drawn-out struggle.

The calamitous bill passed last Monday 64-0 because the opposition walked out of the chamber in disgust. The legislation usurps massive power from the judiciary for the executive, essentially eliminating judicial oversight. The “reasonableness standard” it abolishes has been a staple of Israel’s jurisprudence, similar to the situation in many countries based on common law. It had been used sparingly but was critical for discouraging the worst government abuses and corruption. But with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on trial for bribery and other corruption counts, the government he leads wanted to clear the way for him.

In so brazenly overreaching their authority, the coalition lawmakers demonstrated their lack of the most elementary patriotism and sense of responsibility. The task of fixing the crisis they created now falls to our vibrant civil society and to the Supreme Court itself. Seven petitions to annul the new law have already been filed, and the Supreme Court decided last Wednesday that it would hear them in September.

But we could also use some help from our friends, first and foremost the United States. President Joe Biden, who clearly loves Israel, should show some tough love this time. Netanyahu has not earned a meeting with the American president at the White House (or anywhere else for that matter).

Israelis — and Netanyahu, in particular — need to learn the consequences of going down a path that diverges dramatically from the values we have shared with the U.S., and the Biden administration should make this crystal clear. So should members of Congress. To have a special relationship based on shared values, you need to actually share values.

We recall a meeting with F.W. de Klerk, the former South African leader, who explained what caused him to turn his back on apartheid some three decades before. He said it was the combination of international pressure with the insurrection from within. 

Despite the differences between the two cases, we fear it will have to happen to and in Israel, as well. 

The coming days will demonstrate what values Israel actually adheres to. If the Israeli Supreme Court strikes down this contemptible law, expect the reckless and cynical Netanyahu government to try to circumvent it, perhaps by firing key gatekeepers whose job is to guarantee the rule of law. A constitutional crisis beckons. Everyone will need nerves of steel, including the police and the other law enforcement bodies, such as the Shin Bet security agency (which a co-author of this piece once led).

Of course, many true friends of Israel have long bristled at the more familiar actions of the ultra-nationalist right in Israel: the oppression of the Palestinians, the growth of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the tolerance of Jewish hooligans violently rampaging in Palestinian areas. 

Compared to these outrages, the so-called “judicial reforms” might seem to be a nuanced matter. But in fact, they are a dagger striking at the heart of the notion that America and Israel have shared values. 

The proposals included measures letting the government to appoint cronies to the Supreme Court, override even its puppets on the court via its majority in parliament and remove critical checks on corruption. Down the road, they include removing “fraud” and “breach of trust” from the list of crimes officials can be charged with — two of the three charges Netanyahu is currently facing in his trial.

Given that Israel lacks a formal constitution — its idealistic 1948 Declaration of Independence and a series of easily amended “basic laws” are no substitute — and that the same coalition controls the government and the parliament, these proposals amount to a near-Putinization of what has until now been a liberal democracy for 75 years. Netanyahu would effectively control all three branches of government.

This reflects a vulgar view of democracy as amounting to a tyranny of the majority, wildly out of sync with the American system of checks and balances on top of guarantees for each citizen secured by the Bill of Rights.

Moreover, these “reforms” — more accurately the systemic oppression of the rule of law and the demolition of the judiciary — were never put before the voters, as Netanyahu’s Likud party had no platform, and Netanyahu did not even mention them in a major speech on his priorities for the new term delivered days before they struck.

All the polls show he would lose today, and strong majorities oppose the reforms. For more than half a year, hundreds of thousands of Israelis from all walks of life and from all parts of the country have been demonstrating against the assault on their democracy. The leaders of the protest movements include a wide array of top figures from the military and security establishment, from industry and business, and in particular from the high-tech sector — which accounts for about a sixth of Israel’s economy, half its exports and most of its growth.

Israel’s security is also imperiled: Reservist units critical to national defense are warning they will cease to volunteer for duty if the Jewish state ceases to be a proper democracy.

Friends of Israel need to understand that Netanyahu is lying to foreign media that any reform will be done only by wide consent; the reality here in Israel is that the progress of the judicial coup d’état continues apace, as this week’s vote tells us.

It is ironic that the legislation comes the week Jews observe Tisha B’av, the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. The annual fast is widely seen as a symbol of the calamities that have come when the Jewish people were needlessly divided and weakened before their enemies. 

Israel is by now on the threshold of dictatorship. Yet we are optimistic, because the massive resistance movement that has arisen in Israel, with hundreds of grass-roots organizations working together and more being created by the day, shows that President Herzog was actually right. It shows that after years of indifference and fence-sitting, the liberal-democratic camp understands that it needs to fight for its freedom and the future of Israel as a liberal democracy, in a determined manner and for the longer term. But we cannot do it alone.

Admiral Ami Ayalon was the director of Israel’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet; the commander of the Israeli Navy; and a cabinet minister. Gilead Sher is a former senior peace negotiator, chief of staff to Israeli PM Ehud Barak and cofounder of the Central Headquarters for the 2023 pro-democracy resistance. Orni Petruschka is a former IDF pilot, high-tech entrepreneur and social philanthropist, who cofounded the Central Headquarters for the 2023 pro-democracy resistance.

The rest is here:
Israels democracy movement is ready for a fight and we need your help - The Hill

Former President Donald Trump has again been indicted by a federal grand jury. The four-count indictment lays out how Trump refused to accept that he lost the 2020 election. It describes how he contested the election in court and, when that failed, he supported a fake electors scheme. It explains how he pressured his vice president to ignore his own oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Finally, it reveals, in gripping detail, how he instigated and failed to stop the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But Trump did not try to steal the 2020 election alone. The indictment lists six co-conspirators in his attack on democracy, all of whom used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to subvert the legitimate election results. Five of them are attorneys.

The indictment makes clear that this was not a conspiracy of sleazy political operatives or even violent insurrectionists. Instead, the indictment reveals that this attack on democracy was effectuated by lawyers using bad faith legal maneuvers and intentional acts.

Over and over, the indictment alleges that these lawyers enabled and carried out a criminal conspiracy against democracy in an attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters. Trump may have been the ringleader, but he alone could not have filed frivolous lawsuits, enticed fake electors with concocted legal theories or used the law to try to pressure the vice president.

It was these lawyers status as lawyers that made them so effective in carrying out the scheme. While some on Jan. 6 wielded knives and bats, the chosen weapon for these five individuals were their law degrees, which they shamelessly used to subvert our countrys free and fair elections.

In the intervening years since the 2020 election, many of these lawyers have become objects of ridicule, the punchline in jokes. But mocking the lawyers who facilitated Trumps criminal conduct risks minimizing their culpability. More importantly, it obscures the deep and problematic culture that appears to pervade the ranks of the Republican legal establishment.

Rudy Giuliani, presumed co-conspirator 1, is remembered for the hair dye dripping down his face and the fact that he held a press conference in a landscaping parking lot. But, in 2020, Giuliani was not a joke. He was a successful federal prosecutor and U.S attorney who successfully prosecuted the mob and Wall Street corruption. He became the mayor of New York City and ultimately ran for president.

Jeffrey Clark was a high ranking official at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he had also served in the Bush Administration. He had been a longtime partner at one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. John Eastman was a former clerk to Judge Michael Luttig and Justice Clarence Thomas. He had worked at a top law firm and eventually became the dean of a law school. Sidney Powell had been a federal prosecutor for a decade and, after leaving government, represented high profile defendants in complex white collar criminal cases. Similarly, Kenneth Chesebro was a Harvard trained lawyer with decades of litigation experience.

There is no question that Trump is the ultimate villain of the Jan. 6 insurrection. But he didnt act alone.

These five attorneys were not fringe players; nor were they too inexperienced to know better. Each of them was an experienced trial lawyer who knew better. They had achieved levels of professional success that made them capable of resisting Trumps entreaties. None of them were campaign operatives set to lose their jobs, or otherwise suffer professional setbacks, had Trump accepted that he lost the election.

Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of the indictment is that it was not the political and campaign staff that were pushing the lawyers to falsely claim fraud it was the reverse. Time and time again, the indictment includes instances where campaign and Republican state and federal employees and officials who were not lawyers are telling the attorneys there is no basis to contest or challenge the election.

On Dec. 8, 2020, Jason Miller, one of Trumps chief political sycophants, wrote to the former president: When our research and campaign legal team cant back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why were 0-32 on our cases. Ill obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but its tough to own any of this when its all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Little did Miller know, Trump and his co-conspirators were only halfway done. By the time President Joe Biden took office, Trump and his allies would file and lose more than 60 separate post-election cases challenging the results of the 2020 election. In each of those cases, Republican lawyers, often multiple attorneys, signed their names to pleadings that were just conspiracy shit. Most of those lawyers are not named in this indictment. While some face consequences with the bar, most will never suffer any professional sanction.

Too many Republican lawyers still peddle election lies and conspiracy theories today without consequences from their party. They are invited to Republican Party events, headline conservative gatherings and still capture legal work from the parties candidates and elite. It is notable that on the same day that Trump was indicted in Washington, D.C. the Republicans former nominee for Michigan attorney general, Matthew DePerno, was separately indicted for tampering with voting machines.

But to be honest, even the mainstream GOP lawyers those that dont openly defend explicit election subversion faithfully traffic in the pernicious lies that underpin it false claims of fraud and excusing voter suppression. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) recently described voter suppression as a cancer [that] metastasized from the Big Lie and Jan. 6.

Republican lawyers dont see it that way. They want to believe that you can vilify voting and engage in tactics to suppress the votes of minority and young voters and then turn it off the day after the election. Worse still, they want us to believe that it is moral to draw that distinction.

There is no question that Trump is the ultimate villain of the Jan. 6 insurrection. But he didnt act alone. As the indictment makes clear, Trump was aided by at least five individual Republican lawyers who deployed their credentials and status as attorneys to subvert the 2020 election, and most detrimentally, the will of the people.

The rest is here:
Trump, Five Lawyers and Their Conspiracy Against Our Democracy - Democracy Docket

On July 11, Uzra Zeya, the highest-ranking U.S. State Department official to visit Bangladesh in the past three years, said that the United States looks forward to deepening its ties with Bangladesh for the next 50 years. Bangladesh is often overlooked in the formation of a new cold war in Asia, but Washington needs it on its side. For that to work, however, the United States is going to have to make some hard decisions about how it deals with Bangladeshs democratic crisisand the leaderships ties to both China and India.

At the height of the Cold War, with India and the Soviet Union by its side, Bangladeshthen East Pakistanfought a civil war in 1971 to become independent. On Dec. 3, 1971, India militarily intervened, and a war that lasted only 13 days saw the surrender of the Pakistan Army and the independence of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is now a boomtown. Over the past decade, the country has built the vast Padma Bridge, along with a string of other critical infrastructure projects. Its per capita income has outpaced India and Pakistan, and living standards have shot up.

But alongside economic growth has come the crumbling of democracy. Since coming to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed and her party, the Awami League, have been ruling the country with an iron fist.

Hasina presents herself as the bearer of the legacy of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a war hero who led Bangladeshs independence. The Mujib-led government followed a pro-Soviet foreign policy, and, at the end of his rule in 1975, made Bangladesh a self-styled one-party socialist state. That year, Mujib, along with most of his immediate family members, was killed in a military coup. His daughters, who were living abroad, survived.

The two general elections that propelled Hasina to power were heavily rigged, to the extent that the outgoing Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ito Naoki broke all diplomatic niceties and said that he heard about ballot box stuffing by the police overnight, even before the polling started.

Human rights and rule of law have taken a back seat, elections are routinely rigged, and a reign of terror has silenced much of the opposition, disappearing opposition leaders and human rights activists.

A recent documentary by Sweden-based Netra News paints a gory picture of the abduction business. According to the report, Bangladeshs military intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, runs a location known as Aynaghar (the Mirror House) where activists who fall foul with the government are kept illegally imprisoned for an indefinite period, sometimes years.

The inhabitants of the Mirror House are more fortunate than those picked up by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Even though it was formed as a counterterror paramilitary unit of the police, members of the Bangladesh Armed Forces also serve in the RABs different units.

Two former military officers who were in the RAB told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that key figures in the ruling government may be harnessing the elite force for political gain, with tacit approval, at the very least, from the highest offices in Bangladesh.

The RABs notoriety for killing people in framed encounters was so widespread that in December 2021, it earned the inglorious title of being the first Bangladeshi organization to earn sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The U.S. intervention worked like a tonica sign that Washington can do a lot more. The RAB abductions stopped overnight. And to the Biden administrations credit, its kept turning up the pressure on the Bangladeshi government. The latest move is a U.S. announcement of visa restrictions on any Bangladeshi individual, believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.

Announced by the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in July, the policy puts Bangladesh among a group of unattractive bedfellows Nigeria, Uganda, and Somalia. Those restrictions didnt have much effect in Nigeria and Uganda, but they played a part in pressuring Somalias government to allow direct universal suffrage ahead of next years vote.

Theres reason to hope the measures might work in Bangladesh, too. Local plutocrats have invested their ill-gotten wealth heavily in U.S. and Canadian real estate, so much so that a small neighborhood in Toronto, Canada, is known as Begum Para, the Wives Community. This is the area where the wives and family members of Bangladeshs elite live. If Canada follows Washingtons lead and imposes sanctions, it will rob Bangladeshs plutocrats of their unfettered access to the lush life in the West.

Hasina has been making trouble for herself in Washington by hobnobbing with China and Russia. Bangladesh has recently decided to make loan repayments in Chinese yuan for a Russian-built nuclear power project in order to bypass the U.S. sanctions on Russian banks.

Hours before the Ukraine conflict entered its second year, Bangladesh abstained from voting in a U.N. General Assembly resolution that demanded that Russia immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine and called for a cessation of hostilities.

Hasina justified it by telling the parliament, When the U.S. supported Pakistan [in Bangladeshs independence war] by sending its Seventh Fleet, it was Russia who stood beside us. Therefore, we must help those who helped us during our dire need.

This year, Hasina also inaugurated a naval base of the Bangladesh Navy that houses two Chinese-built Ming class attack submarines. The installation, named after her, is at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal, and there is a serious worry that the base might use anti-piracy operations as the pretext to let Chinas Peoples Liberation Army Navy use the facility.

Thats annoyed Washington, which needs Bangladesh to take a strong stance on Myanmar, where China is increasingly influential as a backer of the brutal junta. But Dhaka, when it comes to its eastern neighbor, has shown weakness rather than strength.

China views Bangladesh as acentrallocation for its strategic advances in the Indian Ocean. In case of a naval blockade in the South China Sea, China will need either Burma or Bangladesh or both for a sea opening. This is why China doesnt want to see a democratic government in both countries.

The Hasina-led regime isnt keen on supporting the U.S. policy of giving non-lethal assistance to the National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmars government in exile. The NUG consists of some members of the parliament that was dissolved in a Chinese-backed military coup in 2021. Recognized by the European Parliament asthe legitimate representatives ofMyanmar, the NUG and its armed wing Peoples Defence Force already control half the country. A democratic and free Myanmar under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi will not let China treat the country as a vessel state.

For a long time, New Delhi was able to stymie U.S. efforts to revive Bangladeshs democracy. India considers the political status quo in Bangladesh crucial to keep its insurgency-prone northeastern states calm. The ruling Awami League government has extradited to India the leaders of all the major anti-Indian insurgent groups and has made sure that the country is not used for any anti-India activities. In a controversial deal, the Hasina-led government has also let an Indian company built a power plant near the Sundarbans, the worlds largest mangrove forest. In exchange, India, worlds largest democracy, has let Hasinas autocracy run unchecked.

India used its influence to coax the leader of Jatiya Party, Bangladeshs fourth-largest political party, into joining the 2014 general election. The partys participation gave some form of inclusiveness to the rigged election that followed. The election was boycotted by all other major political parties.

The United States didnt have a strong voice in 2014. That seems to have changed; Washington is no longer willing to stand by. But to really make a difference, Washington needs to ignore Indian concerns and facilitate free and fair elections in Bangladesh.

Hasina has an uphill battle to face before the next general election in January 2024. In a string of statements made from their respective capitals, China and Russia have openly shown their support for her regime. Irans state television has also joined the bandwagon. Encouraged by this, South Asias longest-serving tin-pot dictator may be tempted to crown herself the prime minister for the fourth time in a row through another rigged election.

But if the United States acts firmly, continuing visa sanction threats and signaling its desire for a clean vote, Bangladeshis may have the chance for their first fair election in 15 years. This alone may not be enough. In May this year, in a letter written to President Biden, six members of the U.S. Congress suggested that the country impose stricter individual sanctions and ban Bangladeshs law enforcing and military personnel from participating in U.N. peacekeeping missions.

Its high time that the Biden administration walks the talk and helps Bangladesh hold free and fair elections. This will discourage other bad political actors in Asia from forming a common alliance. It will also show commitment in facilitating democratic alternatives across the continent.

Some suggest that the way out of the present political impasse in Bangladesh can be a U.N.-supervised election, as suggested by Rep. Bob Good and 13 other members of the U.S. Congress. They urged the UN, in combination with impartial governments around the world, [to] participate in supervising and conducting free and fair elections in Bangladesh. This should include the provision of peacekeeping forces to prevent intimidation, harassment, or assault of voters.

Bangladesh may be small, but its now strategically important for the United States. Washington shouldnt leave the country to its fate again.

See the rest here:
Washington Can Give Bangladesh's Democracy the Kiss of Life - Foreign Policy

1. Biden calls on Nigers junta to release Bazoum and restore democracy  The Guardian
2. What would West African bloc's threat to use force to restore democracy in Niger look like?  The Associated Press
3. Last bastion of democracy in the Sahel: Uncertainty in Niger prompts concern among allies  FRANCE 24 English

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Biden calls on Nigers junta to release Bazoum and restore democracy - The Guardian

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On Tuesday, at roughly the same time that Donald Trump was indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election, liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in as a new member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, giving progressives their first majority on the court since 2008. The new composition of the court has major ramifications for American democracythe previous conservative majority came one vote shy of ruling in favor of Trumps effort to reverse Joe Bidens victory in Wisconsin and upheld the gerrymandered mapsthat locked in huge GOP legislative majorities and a series of laws that made itharder to vote.The new liberal majority could now unwind that, restoring democracy and majority rule in the state.

On Wednesday, voting rights groups filed a new lawsuit challenging the GOPs gerrymandered maps. The suit claims that the state legislative maps violate the Wisconsin constitution by retaliating against some voters based on their viewpoints and free speech; treating some voters worse than others because of their political views and where they live; and defying the promise of a free government enshrined in the state constitution. (Separate litigation could also be filed challenging the states congressional maps, where Republicans hold six of eight US House seats despite the evenly divided political makeup of the state.) By taking their challenge directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, state and national voting rights groups hope that new maps will be put in place before the 2024 election. Law Forward, a progressive legal group based in Madison, filed the lawsuit alongside organizations that included the Campaign Legal Center and the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School.

Since 2011, when GOP operatives drew new redistricting maps in secret, Wisconsin has been one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. The lines adopted by Republicans in 2021 preserved and expanded the GOPs advantage, largely because the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that it would choose state legislative and congressional mapsthat made the least changes from the 2011 maps, which virtually ensured that the new lines would be heavily stacked in the GOPs favor. GOP assembly leader Robin Vos admitted that the least changes requirement was not in the [Wisconsin] Constitution and that the new lines were passed for partisan purposes.

In 2022, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was reelected with 51 percent of the vote and Democrats won 4 of 6 statewide elections, but Republicans retained 67 percent of state Senate seats and 65 percent of Assembly seats. They attained a supermajority in the senate and came just two seats short of gaining asupermajority in the assembly, which would have allowed Republicans to overrule the governors vetoes and make him functionally irrelevant.

While campaigning for a seat on the court, Protasiewicz said that the GOPs maps were absolutely, positively rigged, and do not reflect the people in the state. Republicans will try to force Protasiewicz to recuse herself from the redistricting case and even floated the idea of impeaching her during the campaign in April, although Evers would simply choose her replacement under that scenario.

Extreme gerrymandering has given Republicans in the legislature a green light to entrench their own power such as when they passed a series of lame-duck laws stripping power from Evers after he won election in 2018 while allowing them to block popular policies on issues like abortion, guns, and education with little accountability.

Voting rights activists believe that striking down the gerrymandered maps is the first and most important step toward making Wisconsin a truly representative democracy again. As Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler told me after the 2022 election, the state is not a democracy as long as these maps are in place.

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This New Lawsuit Could Restore Democracy in Wisconsin Mother Jones - Mother Jones