Americans watching events unfold in Israel are using Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial overhaul to make their case about the next U.S. presidential election.
The Israeli parliament passed a law on Monday that limits the Supreme Court's ability to overturn decisions made by the government, the first step of a broader effort from Netanyahu to curb the powers of Israel's justice system.
The contentious decision from Netanyahu's governing coalition, which is the most right wing and conservative in the country's history and which holds a slim majority in parliament, comes amid mass protests that have revealed deep fissures between those who want a more secular state and those who see the courts as an obstacle to their religious lives.
Although the political climate is not identical to the existing one in the U.S., critics of both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have used it to advance their arguments about why each candidate should not be re-elected in 2024.
Former U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann warned on Monday that what is unfolding in Israel is likely a "mild" version of what would happen in America in a second Trump term, while former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers tweeted that the law in Israel should serve as a lesson for American voters next year.
"I mourn today's vote in Israel. It is a reminder of a tragic lesson of history: great nations are brought down more often by internal decay than external threats," Summers wrote. "As 2024 approaches, I hope Americans will heed this lesson and resist the siren song of populist extremism."
Dov Waxman, director of the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, told Newsweek that while there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about what he called Trump's autocratic inclinations, if American democracy were undermined, it would take a different form than what is happening in Israel.
"The rule of law and the judiciary is under attack in Israel, whereas in the United States it is primarily voting rights and the integrity of the electoral process," Waxman said.
While some have used Monday's developments in Israel to sound the alarm about another Trump administration, others have pointed to the escalation as a sign of Biden's leadership weakness.
On Sunday, Biden urged Netanyahu not to move forward with the vote, expressing his concerns about the bill and its potential impacts.
"From the perspective of Israel's friends in the United States, it looks like the current judicial reform proposal is becoming more divisive, not less," Biden told his Israeli counterpart, according to a letter obtained by Axios. "Given the range of threats and challenges confronting Israel right now, it doesn't make sense for Israeli leaders to rush this—the focus should be on pulling people together and finding consensus."
Nonetheless, Netanyahu went forward with the vote.
"Israel passes its judicial reform in defiance of Joe Biden's complaints and the mass protests he likely funded," right-wing advocacy group Republicans for National Renewal tweeted. "The U.S. is losing all the credibility it has under Biden's rule. We need President Trump back in office."
But Waxman said blaming Biden or any of his senior Cabinet officials for Netanyahu's determination to begin overhauling Israel's judicial system would be unfair because the decisions of another world leader are out of their hands.
"Netanyahu was certainly aware of these concerns, but he chose to ignore the president's advice, as well as the advice of his own security officials," Waxman said. "I doubt there was anything more that President Biden could have done to stop Israel's far-right coalition government from enacting this hugely controversial measure."
