Israel prides itself that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Which, for the moment, is true. Egypt pays lip service to democracy whilst never quite getting there. The rest don’t really do ‘politics’ in any meaningfully democratic way. So Israel is tolerant, accepting, all sorts of wonderful things. Because it is a secular democracy. It is not and has never been a ‘religious state’. And it is very progressive. Has a massive ‘tech’ industry creating and making wonderfully innovative stuff, from iPhones to cancer medicines. When tossers like Roger Waters want to boycott Israel you don’t see them ditching their phones, nor forgoing half their life-enhancing drugs which were created there.

So what they got to protest about?

Israel, since its foundation in 1948, has never had a majority government. Only coalitions. Getting into bed with those whose values may differ. Something Netenyahu has always been rather slick and efficient at doing, from the helm of his centre/right Likud party. And the ‘right’ in Israel are not Nigel Farage and the BNP. They are the ‘religious’. And for ‘religious’, read, as in any context, ‘nutters’. Doesn’t matter if they’re Jews, Christians, Muslims or Hindus, the extreme end of any religion is a strange and dangerous place. And you wouldn’t want them running your country. Unless Iran or Afghanistan is your idea of perfect statehood. Or Tennessee.

At the last election, Bibi joined forces with a hard-right religious party to make his majority in parliament. And coalitions are always about negotiated acts of quid pro quo. We’ll vote with you for this, but only if you introduce that.

Israel has no ‘upper house’ to control laws and legislation. That’s done by the Supreme Court judges who get to vet and check everything before its set into the law. And although the judges are pretty much hated by everyone in the country, without them, there would be no checks on any government, who could then change anything it wished, for its own benefit, effectively turning the nation into a dictatorship. And this is basically what Bibi has been proposing.

He wants to kerb the judges power to veto laws. And because this comes from the extreme right wingers who have always wanted Israel to look like Iran but with chopped liver, this would be catastrophic. Already their currency has plummeted and shares in their companies dropping because a Jewish version of ‘sharia law’ would look pretty similar. With restrictions on women, certainly action against the LGBTs, restrictions on sabbath work & play and all the usual extremist shit.

So although I’m sitting here in (dank, damp, dark, dismal) London, my heart is in Tel Aviv, protesting to keep my favourite city free from horrible religious intrusion and restriction.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx