Netanyahu Lectures on Democracy in Knesset Speech

By Yisrael Price

YERUSHALAYIM — In his debut speech in the Knesset on Monday after receiving the mandate to form the next government, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu lectured the plenum on the principles of democracy.

“Democracy is built from the spark of debate. If we can, we’ll reach agreements. If we can’t reach an agreement, the majority decides. Once you harm the will of the majority, you’ve harmed democracy,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu asserted that he would not be cowed by leftist fear-mongering about the far-right and threats to Israeli civil society:

“I don’t accept the moral preaching” of the outgoing government, Netanyahu said, accusing it of violating “every norm of proper governance.”

Outgoing Defense Minister and National Unity party chairman Benny Gantz on Monday accused  Netanyahu of “attacking democracy” over his intention to advance the passage of a bill which would empower the Knesset to overrule a High Court decision to strike down a law with a simple majority of 61 MKs.

Gantz said, however, that he would be willing to support an Override Clause requiring a supermajority of two-thirds of the Knesset to override a Court ruling.

“What Netanyahu is seeking to carry out here is a ‘corruption revolution,'” he said. “I say to the members of the future coalition – what will happen the first time you override the Court with a majority of 61, and one minority or another feels that they are not part of the state? Whoever does this is acting in the name of corruption.”

“When you overrule the Court by a majority of 61 — half of the people — you will feel that this is the government of half the people,” Gantz warned.

Outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid told his Yesh Atid faction meeting on Monday that the incoming government’s policies forget that Israel is a “Jewish state”, not a “Halachic state.”

Returning to his old ways of inciting against the religious community (put on pause during the election campaign), Lapid alleged – falsely – that under the new government, “yeshiva students will receive more money than IDF soldiers,” and that Religious Zionism head Betzalel Smotrich wants to pass a law “to separate men and women in the public sphere.”

As for being in the opposition, Lapid said recently: “If someone asks where we will be – we will be here in the Knesset day and night, we will be in the streets, we will be in the town squares, we will be on the bridges. We will not be silent, we will not disappear, we will not give up, we are fighting for the future of our children.”