Israeli startups are moving jobs and money out of the country

>It's in this backdrop the judicial reform proposal takes the stage. It reduces the power of Israel's Supreme Court by dictating which laws the court can and cannot strike down. It grants more power to the elected members of the Knesset, rather than unelected judges.

In Israel there is no proper separation of power. Legislative and executive are essentially same . Judical branch is the only check and balance available in Israel. Also in reality Supreme Court stroke down in last 30 years only 22 laws (or some parts of them), and mostly because they were conflicting with pre-existing laws. This doesn't show "extreme power" of Supreme Court, but stupidity of combined legislative and executive branches that write bad laws.

So it might be sensational and inaccurate, but that's the existing rhetoric in Israel.

I do think the rhetoric is correct, btw, for sure directionally (and probably just fully correct). The prime minister is literally copying playbooks from other countries that have turned into dictatorships.

Also, the only reason to make such a huge mess in order to pass these reforms is if these reforms are really important for you - and the religious right that is pushing these reforms are making it very clear why they want them.

Then in 1995, in Bank hamizrachi verdict [0], the supreme court declared it has the authority to overturn regular laws according to basic laws, including basic laws which were legislated with 32-20 majority (out of 120 seats). The supreme court declared that the only thing required for a law to be constitutional is the string "basic law" in its name. (That this terrible idea took 30 years to blow up is an achievement).

Over the years, the supreme court had decided to intervene in things which are the open wounds of Israeli society. These include the issue of Haredim recruitment to the army (where the supreme court had cancelled many laws that seeked a resolution, from both sides of the political aisles), issues of religion and state (the last leftist coalition had fallen as a direct result of an intervention of the supreme court with Hametz laws, leading to the resignation of Idit Silman).

A bit like how the U.S. supreme court intervention into abortions has led to politization of the court, and into heavy pressure from Christians to pick "pro life" judges that eventually resulted in overturning the abortion verdict, we're seeing a similar dynamic playing out where supreme court preventing resolution of a political - religious conflict leads to politization of the court and to religious people seeking to pick judges.

My personal opinion is that the supreme court should've stayed out of this mess so that we wouldn't reach this point. I don't support politicization of the court but the court also bears a responsibility.

Politicians should resist the temptation intervene with the court, and the court should resist the temptation to intervene in politics.

And this is especially true in a country where the supreme court wasn't granted its authority from any constitution, but from its own verdicts.

[0] https://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A4%D7%A1%D7%A7_%D7%93%D7... (you'll need Google translate)

On a technical level it's wildly sensational and inaccurate. On a political level it's what a lot of the supporters of the judicial reform bills have been saying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

What does this even mean? I would argue Israel is safer now than at almost any other point in the last few decades.

and this is all WITH the place being currently in a state of chaos and PRO democracy protests.

The few places with growing economies and low(-ish) taxation that flavor wealthy and ambitious people: US, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Singapore, etc

Broke college student boycotting you doesn’t do much

This is an internal conflict related to the 3 factions of Israeli Jews colliding.

Israel lobby (AIPAC, DMfI) has spent hundreds of millions defanging any left-based dissent to Israeli policies and pushing for candidates that s don’t dare to say anything about Palestinians much less all the money sent to Israel.

Be very careful about the EU. There's a reason there's only one big software company, SAP, and that their product both sucks fat balls and their market cap is still tinier than tiny compared to the SV usual suspects.

The EU is typically not a welcoming environment for entrepreneurs. Taxes and paperwork are through the roof and god forbid you succeed for the rich are nearly universally hated.

The latest development is that although the EU has no fiscal competence the EU Commission will draft a rule so that a yearly tax on wealth shall be imposed in every single EU country. At first it was supposed to be a yearly tax on those worth more than $50m but now it's already changed to "tax the 1%" (which is a lot of people). The goal of the tax is to bring in more revenues annually than the entire yearly budget of the UE (which represent a sizeable portion of each EU country's GDP): I did the math and it's pure insanity.

The EU is overall a place that'll bleed you dry.

The problem these startups have is that the government has been democratically elected, but the demographics are swinging religious populists into increasingly permanent control.

That's democratic! But it's the consequence of ultraconservatives having 12 children when liberals have 2. Let's use a more precise term for what they don't like.

However, the legal overhaul does curtail the court's ability to assert a more libertarian, liberal agenda. The government is pushing a religious agenda that will change the nature of the country, and that causes significant consternation to the largely secular population that makes up the hi-tech nation.