Israel Civil Liberties
Updated 2024-01-05
2023-11-10 Israeli Civil and Human Rights Degrade in a Time of War Many have been arrested, public demonstrations have been banned or discouraged—even social media postings have been policed.
Israel doesn’t have a constitution. Instead, a compromise reached in 1950 adopted a series of Basic Laws that could one day form a written constitution, but whose legal supremacy continues to be debated. The Supreme Court is the main body in Israel that is supposed to protect those rights included in the Basic Laws.
Before the October 7th attacks, Israel was gripped by months of mass protests over this very question of what role should constitutional rights and checks and balances play in its system of government and how should the judiciary enforce these protections, if at all.
Today, Israelis who want to protest government policies are harassed, intimidated, and arrested. It doesn’t matter whether the protests are against the government failure to get hostages released or protests against Israel’s killings of civilians in Gaza. Demonstrators are facing restrictions by police, violence by counterprotesters, and even violence by the police. And there is a growing hunger to expand even further government powers to stifle dissent.
Palestinian citizens of Israel bear the brunt of attacks on free speech, but so do Jewish Israelis who voice their dissent to current government policies. The new attempts to stifle dissent have a 21st-century frame, as the public arena has shifted online, and the government is using its arrest powers to stifle online speech. https://prospect.org/world/2023-11-10-israeli-civil-human-rights-degrade-in-war/
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