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Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu attends Arnon Milchan's video testimony
Latest twists and turns in Bibi’s trial
In one of the more damning moments of Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Hollywood mogul, took to the stand (virtually) on Monday to say his piece.
A longtime friend of the PM, Milchan testified for the prosecution and said that during Bibi’s previous tenure (2007-2016) he sometimes gave gifts to the PM and his wife – most commonly cigars and champagne – in exchange for business and tax favors.
By saying that the Netahyahus had at times requested kickbacks, the powerful media tycoon undercut the PM’s claim that this case comes down to nothing more than one friend giving some gifts to another.
Quick recap: Bibi, who has ruled over the right-wing Likud Party for decades, is currently facing three separate criminal cases for bribery, corruption, and breach of trust. Milchan, who has produced scores of blockbusters including “Pretty Woman” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” is a key witness in just one of them.
Milchan’s testimony, which he’s giving via video link in the UK, where he lives, will go on for several more days. Still, this isn’t the most serious case facing the PM – that one is known as Case 4,000 and linked to allegations that Bibi greenlit regulatory decisions to benefit a telecoms giant in exchange for favorable media coverage.
Crucially, Bibi got some good news related to that case in recent days, with reports that judges overseeing Case 4,000 have in recent days called on the prosecution to seek a plea deal owing to insufficient evidence.
Given the sluggish nature of Israel's judicial system (and the PM’s stonewalling tactics) even if negotiations over a deal fall through, some legal experts say that proceedings, including appeals, could drag on until as late as 2029.
Explosions light up the sky after the Israeli military struck Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza.
Israel prepares for Gaza escalation
Israel is bracing for fierce retaliatory strikes after taking out senior members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Israeli authorities have told families living in southern border communities to leave their homes, while bomb shelters in central Israel have also been opened.
What’s the trigger this time? Israel conducted air strikes on the Gaza Strip early Tuesday that resulted in the death of three PIJ heavyweights: Khalil Bahtini, the group’s commander for the northern Gaza Strip; Tareq Izzeldeen, the intermediary between PIJ’s Gaza and West Bank factions; and Jehad Ghanam, who headed the military council. Two of the commanders’ wives and children were also killed in the bombing along with other civilians, bringing the death toll to 13. Around 20 others were injured.
Israel’s security apparatus says the militants were responsible for a series of rocket attacks on Israel in recent weeks, as well as attacks against Jews inside Israel.
PIJ, which is backed by Iran, says that it will inflict a heavy price on Israel, which continued to bomb several targets in the Strip on Tuesday, including targeting an anti-tank guided missile crew in southern Gaza.
There are several things to watch in the days ahead.
First, will Hamas join PIJ in striking Israel? The former, which has fought several wars against Israel since forcefully taking control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, has been at loggerheads with the rogue PIJ for starting fights with Israel before at times when Hamas’ leadership has not sought an escalation. (In 2019 and 2022, for instance, Hamas stayed out of fighting after Israel targeted senior PIJ members.)
Indeed, a coordinated PIJ-Hamas operation would up the ante … significantly. One Israeli minister warned that the Israeli army will assassinate Hamas stalwart Yahya Sinwar, who heads the group’s activities in the Strip, if the militant group joins the action. That would spark a tinderbox.
And will Hezbollah and other militant groups in Lebanon join the fray, causing Israel to fend off attacks on multiple fronts? Hezbollah responded to the strikes by pledging “complete solidarity with our brothers in the PIJ,” while Iran is reportedly urging Hamas to join the fighting.
What about the political implications at home for Israel? In a recent GZERO World interview with Ian Bremmer, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak called the ongoing Palestinian issue “the elephant in the room” amidst ongoing domestic turmoil.
Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partner, Itamar Ben-Gvir, recently boycotted the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, accusing the government of a weak response to recent rocket and terror attacks inside Israel. Ben-Gvir said that Tuesday’s strikes on Gaza were “a good start,” but could Bibi be ratcheting it up now to placate the far-right and prevent the crumbling of his fractious coalition?Israel’s political crisis, explained
What happened, exactly?
Since taking office last December, the far-right coalition led by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu had been trying to get legislation passed that would give the executive full control of the supreme court’s composition and allow the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) to overturn supreme court rulings with a simple majority.
While many of the reform’s proponents are motivated by a desire to check what they’ve long viewed as an overly activist, liberal, and anti-democratic judiciary, Bibi himself primarily saw it as a means to stay out of prison and in power.
The judicial overhaul was met with unprecedented opposition, with hundreds of thousands of Israelis across the political and social spectrum taking to the streets nationwide for 12 consecutive weeks. Thousands of mission-critical soldiers and reserve forces said they wouldn’t report for duty if the legislation passed, and several diplomats resigned from their posts in protest. The country’s business community and tech sector threatened to paralyze the nation’s economy if the government didn’t recalibrate, with hundreds of international economists, leading banks, credit rating agencies, and even Israel’s central bank chief warning the overhaul would seriously harm the nation’s business and investment climate.
Still, Bibi refused to back down.
The showdown came to a head over the weekend when Bibi summarily fired Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister and a member of his own Likud Party, for publicly warning that the legislation would be detrimental to national security.
Mass spontaneous demonstrations erupted almost immediately across the country. Critically, Israel’s largest labor union, representing nearly a quarter (!) of the total workforce, announced a general strike for the first time in its history, shutting down everything from Ben Gurion Airport to shopping centers, hospitals, universities, local governments, and every McDonald’s in the country (they were … not lovin’ it). This prompted more Likud members to speak out against the bills, raising concerns that they would not get enough votes to pass.
Bibi finally blinked on Monday night, delaying a vote on the legislation until the Knesset’s summer session (which starts after Passover and goes until July) in what he called “a timeout for dialogue.” By Tuesday morning, the trade unions had called off the strike.
And so, the crisis was defused — for now.
Who wins and loses from the suspension?
After three months of ceding no ground despite the damage done to Israel’s social, economic, and military fabric, one could be tempted to see Bibi’s announcement as a climbdown or a concession. It’s not. The pause is a pit stop, a tactical breather to lower tensions and deprive the opposition of momentum that doesn’t commit the government to any genuine concessions in return.
Bibi hasn’t canceled the legislation. On the contrary, he has promised his far-right coalition partners that he will still ram it through, and with his own physical freedom on the line, there’s every reason to believe it’s only a matter of time until he tries again.
His pledge to hold good-faith negotiations with the opposition is made more challenging by his using the same speech to blame the pro-democracy “extremists” for inciting civil strife. There’s nothing to prevent the prime minister from announcing a breakdown in talks at a time of his choosing, leaving the government days away from being able to pass the legislation.
In fact, Bibi’s only material concession was not to the bill’s critics but to the hard right, which got promised a brand-new national guard under the direct command of Israel’s extremist national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to help tackle rising crime in mixed Jewish-Arab cities. Given the police force’s reluctance to repress pro-democracy protests in recent weeks, a private militia may even prove an asset to Netanyahu when the time comes to push the reform through once and for all.
Would the judicial reforms spell the end of democracy?
A political system as fragmented as Israel’s, where no one party can ever control the government and where coalitions are incredibly hard to put together and even harder to maintain, has an inbuilt structural check on all power: division.
This informal but deeply entrenched check is more binding than the formal check that is separation of powers, and it makes Israel’s democracy more resilient than Hungary’s or Turkey’s. There’s nothing Bibi or anyone can do to change that.
Yes, the proposed overhaul would in theory empower the executive and parliament to constrain the judiciary, but political division would limit how strongly any governing coalition could constrain judiciary independence in practice. In fact, the very reason why the judiciary is so strong in Israel is precisely because of how structurally weak Israeli governments are.
The idea that any one side or leader could suddenly and irreversibly take control of the supreme court, when you have 15 political parties and it’s almost impossible to get a majority to agree on anything and any government can fall apart overnight, begs credulity.
That doesn’t mean the judicial reform is a good idea — it isn’t. Israel’s democracy would take a hit, as would its economy. But it wouldn’t be the catastrophe or “attempted coup” its opponents claim.
What does this all mean for Bibi?
Like Donald Trump, Bibi is a political animal. Unlike Trump, he is an incredibly skilled tactician. These two features have allowed him to hold Israel’s highest office for 15 years despite countless scandals and challenges to his rule, defying all predictions. But he’s neither infallible nor invincible.
Dismissing his defense minister for warning about a potential national security threat — literally in his job description — was a lapse in judgment, prompting trade unions, the entire security apparatus, and some senior members of his party to lose confidence in him. So was attacking patriotic reservists as refuseniks and saboteurs in a country where virtually every citizen serves in the military. He definitely underestimated the degree of popular backlash the judicial overhaul would face.
Are these missteps enough to end his political career?
Perhaps. The Gallant episode has forced some of the more establishment-minded Likud members to see Bibi for who he has become: a man desperate to avoid jail no matter the cost to the nation. More damningly, his Monday “capitulation” is leading the hardliners to start questioning his worth as a partner. For a leader like Bibi, the only thing worse than looking incompetent is looking weak.
True, the government still commands a slim majority in the Knesset, and Bibi will probably manage to keep his fragile coalition together for at least a few more months. But he could easily lose the support of several Likud MPs if the legislation proceeds in the summer as he’s promised the far right, and he could easily lose the far right if he reneges on his promise — or if he can't muster the votes from his own party to get it passed.
To be clear, it’s entirely possible this isn’t the issue that ends the Netanyahu government. But sooner or later, something will break the coalition. And when voters head to the polls next, they will remember that it was Bibi who pushed the country to the brink for personal gain.
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- Israel's judicial reform could destroy democracy from within, says former PM Ehud Barak - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Why Netanyahu critic Ehud Barak calls Israel's government "clearly illegitimate" - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Explains: Why Israel's judiciary reform is so controversial - GZERO Media ›
- How Bibi could end Israel's democracy (or get ousted) - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Explains: Why antisemitism is increasing around the world - GZERO Media ›
- "Golda" looks back at Israel's controversial former PM - GZERO Media ›
Fire burns as people attend a demonstration after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the defense minister, Tel Aviv, Israel, March 27, 2023.
Netanyahu’s climbdown
After civil unrest swept Israel in recent days, PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu announced Monday night that he would suspend the divisive judicial overhaul that, among other things, would allow the government to almost exclusively select judges.
Twelve weeks of unprecedented protests and strikes brought the country to its knees and caused Bibi to freeze the legislation until after the Passover break in May. But he stopped short of acknowledging how his actions — including firing the defense minister who criticized the judicial overhaul — have fueled the current unrest.
Instead, the PM blamed far-left agitators and the media for backing the protesters, while members of Bibi’s far-right coalition government called on their supporters to counter anti-government protesters in Jerusalem.
Though the mass strike has been called off for now, many protesters say they won’t be placated until the judicial overhaul is off the agenda entirely. For their part, opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz said they were willing to meet with the government to try and forge a path forward but noted that they had doubts about trusting the PM and needed to proceed with caution.
Despite the fact that far-right coalition partners are keen to see the reforms passed, they reluctantly signed off on the pause. Leaders of the Religious Zionism Party said that though the PM’s move was a “mistake,” they will continue to back him. But for how long?
Fresh polls released Monday night show that Bibi’s Likud Party would see its number of seats in the Knesset (parliament) plummet from 31 to 25 if elections were held today.What We're Watching: Russian nukes in Belarus, Israelis vs. Bibi
Putin to deploy tactical nukes in Belarus
Vladimir Putin on Saturday announced that Russia plans to send tactical nuclear weapons to staunch ally Belarus. Construction of storage units will be completed by July 1, although Putin was vague on when the nukes themselves would be deployed. (Recap: Tactical nukes are lower-yield atomic weapons that can’t take out entire cities like strategic ones.)
The Russian leader said he made the decision after the US and UK announced they would be supplying Ukraine with anti-tank rounds made from depleted uranium. What’s more, Putin believes that Russia is well within its right to do this since America already has US tactical nukes in six NATO countries and that Moscow is not violating its nuclear non-proliferation obligations because it’ll retain control over the weapons.
US officials downplay the idea that storing Russian tactical nukes in Belarus will impact the war in Ukraine, which is already well within range of the Kremlin’s vast nuclear arsenal. But the announcement might be a provocation aimed at rattling Western public opinion against helping Ukraine as Russia struggles on the battlefield. Also, there’s currently no clear path forward for a negotiated settlement despite last week’s high-stakes meeting between Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.
Russia has often played up its nuclear rhetoric when things are not going well in Ukraine. In fact, Putin reportedly considered using tactical nukes last fall but finally decided against it. Still, the fact that the nuclear option is on the table at all should be alarming to anyone.
Israel is on fire. Will Bibi freeze the judicial overhaul?
Tens of thousands of Israelis left their beds and hit the streets late on Sunday night after news broke that Israeli PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Then on Monday, thousands of demonstrators descended on Jerusalem to protest outside the Knesset (parliament).
Also, Israel’s biggest trade union joined calls for a general strike for the first time since the creation of the modern state, resulting in Ben Gurion International Airport suspendingall departing flights.
Quick recap: Gallant was the first member of Bibi’s Likud party to have called for the government to suspend judicial reform legislation. A former navy commando, Gallant had demanded a halt on the grounds that the reforms were imperiling national security after scores of soldiers and army reservists said they wouldn't show up for training.
With Israel's economy at a standstill, all eyes are now on Netanyahu, who is reportedly planning to announce that he’ll put his plans on ice. But his national address has been delayed.
Meanwhile, high-profile government ministers — including Justice Minister Yair Levin, the architect of the controversial reforms — said they would support the PM if he halts the legislation, fearing it will lead to the collapse of the government. That’s a non starter for far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who threatened to topple the government if it backs down on the changes.
Still, many analysts and academics now believe that Netanyahu, the ultimate political survivor, has overplayed his hand this time around and that nothing will placate protesters but the end of the Bibi era once and for all.
An aerial view of Israelis protesting in Tel Aviv as PM Benjamin Netanyahu's nationalist coalition government presses on with its judicial overhaul.
A night out on Tel Aviv’s Democracy Boulevard
I headed out Saturday night into the arid Tel Aviv night. Not knowing where I wanted to end, I followed the flapping sea of blue and white.
Throngs of people — kids, wheelchair-bound elderly, 20-somethings locked in arms — hauled Israeli flags, which in recent weeks have taken on a whole new meaning for Israelis fearful of where their country is headed. Usually waved as a symbol of national pride, the flag has morphed into an emblem of dissent.
Though spring has just landed, the air was thick in Tel Aviv. And that highlights again the idiosyncrasy of a cosmopolitan, progressive hub in the heart of the Middle East.
I followed the steady beating of drums and arrived at the recently dubbed Democracy Boulevard.
More than 200,000 people hit the streets of a cramped Tel Aviv — in addition to hundreds of thousands in cities around the country — for the twelfth week in a row to protest the Netanyahu government’s attempt to set on fire the symbiotic relationship between the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and the Supreme Court.
Absent a formal constitution, it’s all they’ve got.
As thousands of protesters marched, sang, and chanted, a crackly version of the Declaration of Independence — recited in 1948 by David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, a kibbutznik with Albert Einstein-like hair — blasted over a loudspeaker.
The founding fathers, the background narration reminded the crowd, had vowed to “foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants … based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.” The point being made was clear and direct: we’ve digressed.
But as is often the case with large, leaderless movements, the demonstrations here have at times evolved into a broad display of public rage with an unruly focus.
I encountered many women wearing fire-engine red, holding signs lamenting the perceived anti-women agenda of Israel’s most right-wing government in history.
(Just last week, the government rejected a law that would require men charged with domestic abuse from wearing ankle-tracking devices. Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right minister responsible for law enforcement, says the law would unfairly malign men.)
On Kaplan Street, a handful of women painted the palms of their hands red, meant to represent the government’s indifference to domestic violence after five acts of femicide in 2023 alone. They stood beside makeshift coffins labeled with the names of women recently murdered by their husbands.
It was a disarming scene and I thought about Michal Sela, a young woman with milky skin and smiling eyes I once knew, who was stabbed to death in 2019 in Jerusalem. In a small country like Israel, the pervasive issue of domestic abuse hits home.
There were also other discordant agendas at the scene. A large chorus of anti-settlement protesters held signs against “Israeli apartheid,” some waving Palestinian flags. Many walked by dismissively and asked Ma hakesher? (what’s the connection)? To them, elusory chants about the occupation fail to meet this specific moment. But for others, it’s all one of the same — an asterisk hovering over Israeli democracy.
Perhaps that gets to the heart of it all: Competing visions of what Israel can — and should — be.
I approached a group of pensive-looking seniors donning shirts that read “Diplomats for democracy.” I asked them about their stories and why they were there.
Shlomo Gur, 70, is a former diplomat who represented the Israeli government in the US, South Africa, and elsewhere over a 20-year career in the foreign service. He said he “has never seen anything of this magnitude from a grassroots movement in Israel” in his entire life. Gur explained that he fears his country is “going down the drain.”
This sentiment was cross-generational. Stav Tsur, 27, said she is committed to “fighting for democracy” and against a government that she deems to be “corrupt.” Asked if she thinks protests are having any impact on government decision-making, she said that they already are,” pointing to the fact that the proposed legislation is “already moving much slower” through the Knesset than many expected.
Finally, I spoke to a female doctor wearing a religious head covering who preferred not to be named. She said she showed up as much to send a message of solidarity to her fellow citizens as to protest the government itself. “It’s important that everyone feels that lots of different people feel the same way and that we’re in this together,” she said.
I continued along Kaplan Street but turned around just before the Ayalon highway, where police were targeting protesters with water cannons. Growing more and more frustrated with a movement that won’t yield, they have used increasingly heavy-handed tactics to try to quash the group’s spirit.
The crowd showed little sign of dispersing, but my sister and husband were hungry. Time to dig into some falafel and call it a night.
Check out a few photos from the evening below.
Demonstrators drape the national flag of Israel on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.
What We’re Watching: Bibi’s defiance, US strikes in Syria, Lula’s China visit, Putin’s Hungary refuge, India vs. free speech
Bibi’s not backing down
Israelis waited with bated breath on Thursday evening as news broke that PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was preparing to brief the nation after another “day of disruption” saw protesters block roads and strike over the government’s proposed judicial reforms.
The trigger for the impromptu public address was a meeting between Bibi and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, also from the ruling Likud Party, who has voiced increasing concern that the looming judicial reform would threaten Israel’s national security, particularly as more and more army reservists are refusing to show up for training.
That never happened. While he talked about healing divisions, a defiant Netanyahu came out and said he will proceed to push through the reform, which, among other things, would give the government an automatic majority on appointing Supreme Court judges. This came just a day after the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed a bill blocking the attorney general from declaring Netanyahu unfit for office due to a conflict of interest over his ongoing legal woes and his bid to dilute the power of the judiciary. In response, the attorney general released a letter Friday saying Netanyahu's involvement in judicial reform is "illegal," suggesting a much-dreaded constitutional crisis may have begun.
Two things to look out for in the days ahead: First, what does Defense Minister Gallant do next? If he threatens to – or does – resign, it could set off subsequent defections and be a game changer. Second, how do the markets respond? Indeed, markets rallied Thursday before Bibi’s address in hopes that the government was set to backtrack on the reforms that are spooking investors, but the shekel value slumped after the speech.
US strikes Iranian-backed group in Syria
The US confirmed Thursday that it had struck an Iranian-backed group in northeastern Syria after a Tehran-aligned militia launched a drone attack against a US base near the province of Hasakah, killing at least one US contractor and injuring another contractor as well as five US troops.
While strikes on US bases in northeastern Syria are not necessarily uncommon, the scale of casualties seen Thursday is quite rare. Indeed, a high-ranking US official recently said that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, which takes orders directly from the supreme leader, has launched 78 attacks on US positions in Syria since Jan. 2021.
The US Department of Defense, meanwhile, said that the drone used in this attack was of Iranian origin, and that President Joe Biden had given the go ahead for a precision-guided retaliatory strike on an Iranian-backed group that reportedly killed 11 fighters.
Video footage suggests the strike was on Deir Ez-Zor, a province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields. The US still maintains around 900 troops in the country’s northeast after President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of roughly 2,000 troops in 2018. It is at least the fourth known attack on Iranian assets in northwestern Syria under the Biden administration.
Iran, for its part, has not commented on the strikes, but the likelihood of increased tensions with the US is only rising.
Lula takes his beef directly to Xi Jinping
“Tell me who you walk with,” the saying goes, “and I’ll tell you who you are.” Well, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva is rolling deep to his upcoming summit with Xi Jinping, taking nearly 250 businesspeople along for the ride. More than a quarter of them are from Brazil’s powerful meat export industry alone.
That tells you everything about the trip’s main focus: trade, trade, and more trade. And why not? It was during Lula’s last stint as president that China displaced the US as Brazil’s largest commercial partner, fueling a historic economic boom as it gobbled up huge quantities of Brazilian meat, soybeans, and iron ore. Nowadays, facing a much tougher economic and political environment, Lula is keen to recapture some of that commercial magic.
But the geopolitical context also matters. Important as China is commercially, the US is Lula’s most important regional security and investment partner, and Washington was Lula’s first trip beyond Latin America as president. As the US-China rivalry deepens, Lula and his dealmaking entourage will need to tread carefully in a world that is splitting apart under their feet.
Hungary is a safe space for Putin
The Hungarian government said Thursday it wouldn’t jail Vladimir Putin if he came to Hungary, despite the International Criminal Court’s recent issuance of an arrest warrant for the Russian president for war crimes.
Budapest’s reasoning was a doozy: While they have signed and ratified the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, they say they haven’t gotten around to incorporating it into Hungarian law yet, so no-can-do on arresting Putin.
It’s all purely hypothetical, as there’s no chance of Putin going to Hungary any time soon. But that’s the point. Hungary’s avowedly “illiberal” PM Viktor Orban has long made clear that he won’t just toe the EU party line on Russia. He’s reluctantly gone along with EU sanctions on Russia, but he’s also said the EU is needlessly expanding and prolonging the war by arming Ukraine – something his government won’t do.
Moscow, for its part, says arresting Putin abroad would be “an act of war.”
India's opposition leader sentenced to prison for defamation
The world’s largest democracy seems to be getting less comfortable with a key tenet of it: free speech.
Rahul Gandhi, a member of the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party, was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison for “defaming” Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was also disqualified as a lawmaker by the lower house of parliament. In April 2019, Gandhi referred to the PM — along with two corrupt officials also named Modi and charged with embezzling millions of dollars — as “thieves.”
This is a big deal because Gandhi is Indian political royalty. After all, he's the son, grandson, and great-grandson of prime ministers (his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was India's first PM), and was surely planning to run against Modi for the top job in 2024. What's more, he recently completed a five-month-long march in hopes of reviving the Congress party, which for decades dominated Indian politics but took a beating from the BJP in the last election.
Although his party is appealing the conviction, the stakes are very high for Gandhi due to a provision in India’s election law that disqualifies MPs sentenced to, coincidentally, at least two years in prison for any offense, including defamation. Gandhi turned to Twitter in defiance, tweeting up a storm on Thursday with messages like "Long live the revolution" and quoting Mahatma Gandhi with "truth is my God."
Meanwhile, opposition groups accuse the PM of using the courts to go after his political rivals. Indeed, Gandhi’s sentence comes on the heels of the recent arrest on corruption charges of Manish Sisodia, the head of the AAP, another opposition party that runs the capital, New Delhi. Democratic backsliding indeed.
Thousands gathered at the Place de la Concorde to denounce the government’s use of a constitutional loophole to pass the pension reform, raising the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly.
What We’re Watching: France’s fiery response, Poland’s first big step, Israeli president’s “civil war” warning
Macron bypasses the legislature on pension reform
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday made the risky call to bypass the National Assembly, France’s powerful lower house, and push through a very unpopular pension reform scheme.
As expected, protesters responded with anger. More than 300 people were arrested overnight, and on Friday morning demonstrators halted production at a fuel refinery and briefly blocked traffic on a highway outside Paris.
(A brief recap on the proposal that’s sent France into a tailspin: Macron’s government wants to incrementally raise the national retirement age by two years to 64 by 2030. Starting from 2027, workers will need to have worked for 43 years, up from 41, to access a full pension.)
Why’s he doing this? Macron has long said that France's public spending, 14% of which goes toward its pension scheme – the highest of any OECD country after Greece and Italy – is crucial to addressing its growing debt-to-GDP ratio. But this approach is very unpopular in France, where retirement is sacred and government interference is abhorred.
Fearing he wouldn’t have the votes in the lower chamber, Macron triggered a constitutional loophole to get the bill through (it had already passed in the upper chamber). But by taking this route – which his political opponents say renders the bill illegitimate, though it is legal – Macron now opens himself up to serious political blowback.
On Friday, a group of opposition centrist lawmakers — backed by the far-left NUPES coalition — filed a no-confidence vote against the government, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen announced she'll table her own. But any vote would need to pass by an absolute majority to topple the government – meaning PM Élisabeth Borne and the cabinet, not the president. Still, that’s very unlikely to happen, analysts say.
But Macron, who cannot run again after 2027 due to term limits, is not out of the woods. Unions have vowed to make the government pay, and prolonged strikes are expected. Meanwhile, far-left and far-right factions say they’ll intensify efforts to topple the French government.
Bibi rejects judicial compromise. What now?
It’s been another dramatic 24 hours in Israel as the country moves closer toward a constitutional crisis over judicial reform. President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, came out with a compromise proposal to placate both the government — pushing to limit the power of the courts — and opposition factions that dub the move a judicial coup. Crucially, Herzog warned that the prospect of “civil war” looms large.
Five (out of six) opposition party leaders now say they support Herzog’s proposal, which they can live with despite not being perfect. But Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who’s increasingly powerless as he tries to appease a discordant far-right coalition, rejected the pitch, calling it “one-sided.”
Meanwhile, anti-government protests continued to sweep Tel Aviv and elsewhere, and scores of army reservists said that they will not show up for training in protest.
As the government moves ahead with its plans, the future looks more and more uncertain. What’ll happen if the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passes a law which then gets struck down by the Supreme Court? Would citizens — and the military — obey the legislature or the courts? When asked what to expect, Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli justice and foreign minister, said: "Anarchy.”
Polish fighter jets for Ukraine
Ukraine finally got its wish — sort of. On Thursday, Poland announced that it’ll supply Kyiv with MiG-29 fighter jets, the first NATO member to do so. That sounds like a big deal, right? Yes and no.
For months, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has been begging the US and its European friends for warplanes to fight Russia. But NATO allies have been slow-walking him because that might push the Russians to escalate on the battlefield. Yet, the Soviet-era MiGs — of which Ukraine has a few dozen relics — are hardly the modern warplanes Zelensky wants, and they’re no match for Russia’s Su-27s.
Still, perhaps Poland's gambit will encourage other NATO countries to follow suit — and maybe even force a rethink on sending Ukraine more high-tech warplanes in the future. After all, that's exactly what happened weeks ago with heavy tanks until the US and Germany changed their mind.