Even Israel’s library isn’t

JENNI FRAZER

What on earth is happening in Israel, I ask myself?

To be honest, no good answers come to mind, except there seems to be an unending debate over what constitutes democracy in the Jewish state.

On one hand, there are the thousands of people who are now turning out, week after week, to demonstrate against the government and its radical plans for judicial reform. Last Saturday night was the eighth week of such protests, and though I feared that people would begin to su er from demonstration fatigue, in fact the opposite seems to be true, with more people showing up every week.

The demonstrators say Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are tampering with democracy. But Netanyahu has complained bitterly that the demonstrators themselves cannot accept the democratic result of the most recent elections.

The poisonous effects of what we must call “judicial reform” — although “judicial destruction” seems to me to be a more accurate term — is now seeping into many more aspects of Israeli society than simply the Supreme Court itself.

Consider, for example, the musical expert Professor Yehoash Hirshberg, who last week was awarded the Israel Prize for his services to music. The Israel Prize is roughly a more prestigious version of our honours list, the major difference being that there are far fewer such awards.

I am obliged to the writer Norman Lebrecht for pointing out that “within hours of the announcement of his award, social media were filled with demands for it to be cancelled”.

And this, Lebrecht tells me, is because the 84-year-old music scholar has expressed concerned criticism of the attacks on the judiciary. He says he is too old to go out demonstrating himself, but is very anxious about the government’s plans.

In a free-for-all atmosphere where anyone can say anything, hatred and cancellation appear to be the order of the day.

And talking of anyone being able to say anything, what are we to make of Amichai

Chikli, apparently the current diaspora minister, telling the American ambassador to Israel to “mind your own business”, because of his suggestion that Bibi should “pump the brakes”, or slow things down, with regard to his plans for the Supreme Court? Is this a way to speak to the man who, let us face it, is the representative of Israel’s paymaster, the US administration?

I mean, Chikli might think that in private, but surely going on national TV to express such views is the other side of stupid.

Meanwhile, the toxicity rolls on. There is now a government bill, it emerges, to interfere in the leadership and independence of the National Library of Israel – plans so far advanced that last week more than 100 leading Israeli authors and poets signed a petition, warning that if the government proceeded with this action, they would refuse to donate their archives to the library or allow their publishers to hand over copies of their books.

Among the signatories are David Grossman, Eli Amir, Haim Be’er and Fania Oz-Salzberger.

Israeli media reports on the bill have noted that right-wing politicians have been targeting the library for the past year, since the appointment of former state attorney Shai Nitzan as library rector – because Nitzan was closely involved in preparing the corruption charges against Bibi.

It’s not that long since Bibi himself was praising the importance of an independent national library.

But on this, as with everything, the self-serving prime minister has apparently changed his mind about as often as you and I change underwear.