Ron DeSantis calls Antifa a criminal organization and launches a government lawsuit against them. Why can t we do that? It's March 31st, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show, where I talk about the Florida lawsuit against Antifa and how it could be a template for other right-of-center governors and premiers across the country. We'll also talk to Joel Pollack about what's going on in Israel with the protests against Bibi Netanyahu.
00:08:15.960So, yeah, two years in jail for the January 6th meanderers, the great meandering.
00:08:41.500Are you kidding? Don't you see? The law only goes one way now, more and more.
00:08:46.740Antifa is praised by the establishment. Of course, here's Greta Thunberg wearing her Antifa shirt.
00:08:53.620They're great. The Proud Boys, which is a drinking fraternity, really, is literally on Canada's list of terrorist groups.
00:09:00.140They've never committed a violent act in Canadian history. They're not really active here.
00:09:04.160But they're on the terrorist list, not because they're terrorists, but because Trudeau needed to be able to say right wing terrorist group and have something to point to.
00:09:13.060He didn't. My point, in case you're wondering what my point is, is that the rule of law is now malleable, isn't it?
00:09:21.380It all depends who's holding the stick. Justice is not blind anymore.
00:09:25.280Look at the news out of New York City. An extremist district attorney elected with George Soros money has indicted Trump and is calling for his arrest and extradition to New York from Florida.
00:09:36.800Nothing to do with him and his term as president. It's the re-litigation of Trump paying money to a stripper.
00:09:43.700I mean, what has that even got to do with things?
00:09:45.800Here's a letter from Trump's lawyer saying that the money was actually Michael Cohen's money.
00:09:55.460And here's another letter signed by the stripper herself that says she never actually had sex with Trump.
00:10:01.740Now, I don't actually care one way or the other if she had sex with Trump, if he paid her to stay quiet about it, whatever.
00:10:08.080The fact is, this is what Trump is being arrested and jailed for and that the justice system in the greatest city in America was twisted to accomplish for obvious political reasons.
00:10:18.980I mean, that's why they're doing it. You cannot trust the legal system in America anymore, not if there is politics afoot.
00:10:26.500Here's a member of the grand jury in Georgia that tried to indict Trump.
00:10:30.900And she said she did it because she was excited about meeting him and personally serving him the subpoena.
00:11:28.160They all have similar powers under their state constitutions, but he's the only governor who's using all the tools at his disposal to push his agenda on all fronts at all times.
00:11:38.980Now, every liberal governor does that.
00:12:14.020Attorney General Moody takes action against Antifa and Jane's Revenge, members vandalizing Florida crisis pregnancy centers.
00:12:22.400Attorney General Ashley Moody is taking legal action against Antifa and Jane's Revenge criminal activists who vandalized Florida crisis pregnancy centers in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's leaked decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
00:12:35.300Pro-abortion extremists from these criminal organizations sought to silence and intimidate crisis pregnancy centers workers and clients nationwide by vandalizing or even setting fire to their buildings.
00:12:45.900For instance, Antifa and Jane's Revenge, Caleb Hunter Freestone and Amber Marie Smith-Stewart are members of these groups and participated in at least three attacks against crisis pregnancy centers in Florida.
00:12:56.600Through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, Attorney General Moody is asking a federal court to assess damages and fines against the defendants of $170,000 each.
00:13:07.900Attorney General Ashley Moody said Antifa and Jane's Revenge are criminal organizations and must answer for their crimes in Florida.
00:13:16.640I'm taking action to hold their members accountable for attempting to intimidate and threaten law-abiding citizens in our state.
00:13:23.060Let me skip ahead to one more interesting paragraph.
00:13:26.480Attorney General Moody is pursuing civil action against the defendants for violations of the FACE Act.
00:13:30.800The FACE Act subjects civil and criminal penalties to any person who, quote, by force or threat of force, intentionally intimidates or interferes with or attempts to intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been providing reproductive health services.
00:13:47.320So this law, the FACE Act, was obviously drafted to target pro-life people who were blocking access to abortion clinics.
00:13:55.920That's pretty obvious. But DeSantis is using that law to target people who were committing crimes against pregnancy centers, which is actually the literal definition of reproductive health.
00:14:06.920It's not an ironic euphemism like the left uses it.
00:14:20.520The United States District Court, Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, so they're suing in Tampa, Ashley Moody on behalf of the people of the state of Florida, so that's the Attorney General, versus Caleb Hunter Freestone and Amber Marie Smith Stewart, defendants.
00:14:35.920I'll just read the opening paragraphs.
00:14:37.840In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's leaked decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, pro-abortion extremists from criminal organizations like Antifa and Jane's Revenge have sought to silence pro-life individuals through violence and intimidation.
00:14:51.840These organizations often target crisis pregnancy centers, nonprofit organizations that offer free services to pregnant women, including financial support, ultrasounds, and counseling, but do not perform or promote abortions.
00:15:04.380Since the Supreme Court decided Dobbs, Antifa and Jane's Revenge have vandalized and threatened these centers across the country by spray-painting their walls, breaking their windows, and even setting fire to their buildings.
00:15:16.580Defendants Caleb Hunter Freestone and Amber Marie Smith Stewart are members of Antifa and Jane's Revenge and have participated in these coordinated attacks in the state of Florida.
00:15:24.680Defendants vandalized and threatened at least three crisis pregnancy centers in the state, including by spray-painting on their walls the Jane Revenge calling card.
00:15:33.720If abortions aren't safe, neither are you.
00:15:37.860The state of Florida sues defendants for violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the FACE Act.
00:15:43.220The FACE Act authorizes state attorneys general to bring a civil action against those who threaten persons or damage facilities providing reproductive health services.
00:15:53.040Florida seeks statutory damages, civil penalties, and injunctive relief against defendants as provided by Section 248C3B.
00:16:18.420Here's our press release announcing our campaign with our goals with the campaign and more information on the repression hitting Florida activist communities.
00:16:29.040And then it links to ActBlue, which is a Soros-supported fundraising page for the left.
00:16:34.620And if you click on the link to ActBlue, here's what it says.
00:16:38.800Florida Repro Rights Legal Defense helps support the Legal Defense Fund for Reproductive Rights Organizers in Florida.
00:16:45.060In an unprecedented use of the FACE Act, a law intended to protect abortion access and abortion clinics,
00:16:50.340pro-choice community members in Florida are being targeted and charged by the Department of Justice.
00:16:55.000Read more about how pro-choice organizers are being targeted in attempts to chill, protest, and dissent since the Dobbs decision and now face federal charges.
00:17:03.200Donate here to support the Legal Defense Fund for community members being targeted under the FACE Act.
00:17:09.320We're facing enormous legal defense costs to fight these unjust charges in coordination with the South Florida Anti-Repression Committee.
00:17:16.820All funds will be used for the cost of legal defense.
00:17:18.580And defendant support for reproductive rights organizers in Florida being targeted, charged, and prosecuted under the FACE Act.
00:17:26.660And then, by the way, there's a mention that this is a charitable donation through the Soros-supported Tides Foundation.
00:18:18.240You know, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, her Sovereignty Act, suggests she might be taking some more legal steps that, you know, rarely have been done.
00:18:26.000For example, the Firearms Act that Alberta has brought in to crowd out the Federal Firearms Act.
00:19:27.380That scene's from Israel where tens of thousands, some reports have it as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest against Benjamin Netanyahu and specifically his proposed reforms for how the legal system works.
00:19:49.220I've heard many criticisms, but they just say he's destroying democracy, he's creating a dictatorship, but I never hear any details.
00:19:57.880Then I saw this clip of Netanyahu with Piers Morgan, the British interviewer, and I learned that one of the things that Netanyahu proposes to do is to allow the Israeli parliament called the Knesset and the Israeli prime minister to choose Supreme Court justices as opposed to the current practice, which I'd never heard of this before, allows the court itself to veto new court appointments.
00:20:23.320Here's Netanyahu making that astonishing point to Piers Morgan.
00:20:27.820The critics say it's not reform, it's regime change, effectively, is what you're trying to push through.
00:20:33.320They say that what this bill will do, it will arm you, the prime minister, with the power to appoint judges that you want, and for your government to overturn any judgment of the Supreme Court that you don't like, as long as there's even a one-vote majority in the Knesset.
00:20:46.320In other words, the judiciary, they say, will be neutered, and with that, the rule of law, and with that, democracy itself.
00:20:53.320Well, let's take that apart, one by one.
00:20:57.220The first thing that has to be understood is, what is a democracy?
00:21:00.660Democracy is majority rule with the protection of individual rights.
00:21:04.320And to get these two things, what you have is the checks and balances between the three branches of government, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial.
00:21:15.500In Israel, over the last 20 years, that balance has been taken off the rails, because the judiciary became not independent, it's always been independent, will always be independent, it became all-powerful.
00:21:28.400So it can nullify any decision of the parliament, the Knesset, and it can be a legal decision, a legal law, that's fine, but they say it's not reasonable, doesn't exist anywhere in the democracy, such powers.
00:21:42.680It can nullify any decision of the government, and often has, it can nullify any appointment of the government, it can intervene in military matters, it can intervene in our battle against terrorists, it can intervene in taking gas out of the sea that costs us billions of dollars, billions of dollars, I finally got it out.
00:22:02.380I wonder if this is the actual rationale for this grassroots protest, or if it's grassroots at all.
00:22:11.700I recall that Netanyahu and Trump were friends and allies, they worked together not only on economic matters, but on military matters, and on peace matters.
00:22:21.720It was Netanyahu and Trump who signed the historic Abraham Accords, putting an end, bearing the hatchet between Israel and Muslim states, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and other places, with a promising start to normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia as well.
00:22:39.080Well, I know also that the left have always hated Netanyahu, and George Soros himself personally invested in the campaign that finally dethroned Netanyahu two elections ago.
00:22:52.000Well, Netanyahu is back, restored, so to speak, and it must make these Trump derangement types furious.
00:22:59.080Imagine if Trump were to be reelected in America in 2024.
00:23:03.180That is how the left has reacted to Netanyahu winning recently.
00:23:07.580And I can't help but wonder if these people on the streets are some sort of color revolution, attempt to depose Netanyahu, just because some people don't like him and couldn't beat him at the ballot box.
00:23:21.800Well, let's talk to someone who actually knows what's going on, our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com, who has written about the subject in his latest post on Locals.com.
00:23:32.520My theory, as you just heard, is that Netanyahu is as hated in Israel by the left as Trump is as hated in America, and that these are exaggerated claims of dictatorship.
00:23:47.600Many of these reforms would be normal to Canada and the United States.
00:23:59.180The hatred of Netanyahu is a little bit different.
00:24:02.980In Israel, people will acknowledge that Netanyahu is very effective, but the common complaint, not just on the left, but also by some on the right, is that he's just been there too long.
00:24:14.280He's Israel's longest-serving prime minister, and some people are just tired of him.
00:24:18.220They'd like to see somebody else have a chance.
00:24:21.760Paradoxically, the left keeps giving Netanyahu reasons to return because they're pursuing these completely frivolous claims of corruption against him, and they've tried everything they possibly can to keep him out of power.
00:24:34.540So he remains the center of Israeli politics, and because of his language skills, because of his statesmanship, he remains indispensable both to the Israeli right and to Israel as a whole.
00:24:51.520There are very few political figures in Israel who can span the divide between secular and religious or secular and nationalist, who can speak to the democracies of the West as well as the other powers of the East and Asia and so forth.
00:25:09.040I mean, he's just become an indispensable person, and I know there are a lot of Israelis who wish it weren't so, but that's a little bit different from where Trump is.
00:25:19.340He's not really part of the political firmament, but he has a movement behind him, and he's the only person in the United States who seems able to articulate the policy preferences of the vast majority of ordinary Americans.
00:25:34.040Our system currently does not represent those preferences very well.
00:25:38.140We have a system in Washington that is corrupted, that has its entire separate ecosystem of interest groups and lobbyists and so forth who make sure that government works the way they wanted to, not the way that the American people wanted to.
00:25:52.140So that's in serious need of disruption and reform.
00:25:55.640Trump disrupted it somewhat, but he was up against a much more daunting challenge than I think even he anticipated when he promised to drain the swamp.
00:26:04.660People don't like Trump because of his antics, because of his rhetoric, because of the things that some of his supporters do.
00:26:11.560It's more a question of style with Trump, but he still remains indispensable because of the policies and ideas he brings to American politics.
00:26:22.120But there are parallels, and the parallel is this.
00:26:25.240Both in the United States and in Israel, the left simply does not seem to want to accept democratic elections that it loses.
00:26:32.540And it's not just in the U.S. and Israel.
00:26:35.440When Brexit was passed by a referendum, the Remain camp, the losing camp, insisted for years that the election had to be illegitimate or that voters didn't really understand the issues, that perhaps the referendum should be held again, or that the complications of leaving the European Union should result in a scaled-down Brexit.
00:26:57.320But there were all these attempts to undermine the decision made by the British electorate.
00:27:01.280And we see this over and over again, country after country.
00:27:04.820When the left loses, they decide that the election was somehow wrong or corrupted or there was Russian collusion or whatever it was.
00:27:14.280And yet they accuse the right of denying democracy.
00:27:17.600So they accuse Republicans or they constantly lecture Republicans about the need to respect democratic elections.
00:27:24.760I agree people should respect democratic elections.
00:27:27.140I agree that January 6th was a very terrible event.
00:27:30.460And yet it's Democrats who constantly try to undermine faith in our democracy.
00:27:36.900And even before the last midterm elections, Joe Biden was very wishy-washy on whether he thought they would be legitimate or not.
00:27:42.980One gets dissent that it matters whether his party would have won or not.
00:27:46.400Democrats have, in common with the left around the world, this tendency to attack democratic outcomes that they don't like.
00:27:54.640So that's partly what's going on in Israel.
00:27:56.340Well, let me ask you about the substance, because in almost none of the criticisms against him do I hear a particularization of what he's doing wrong.
00:28:07.120I hear this absurd language, he's ending democracy as we know it.
00:28:22.180I mean, it's just absurd, overheated rhetoric.
00:28:25.420And yet almost none of them point to a specific thing.
00:28:29.080I showed that clip from Piers Morgan where Netanyahu says we want to be like other democracies where the elected officials choose the judges.
00:28:39.980I mean, I really haven't heard of anywhere else in the world where judges get to perpetuate themselves or get to veto a pick by the prime minister.
00:28:48.280Are there any actual things he's doing that are so execrable?
00:28:55.600So I looked into these judicial reforms when they were first proposed back at the beginning of the year.
00:29:03.000One restricts the Supreme Court's power to strike down legislation by requiring the full Supreme Court to sit there and strike down the legislation, not just three judges who can be chosen by the chief justice, because that allows the chief justice to pick and choose.
00:29:18.520It's almost like saying, well, I'm only going to let the conservative justices decide this law because I want the law to be upheld and struck down in a particular way.
00:29:25.900Okay, so one of the reforms takes away the power of the chief justice to manipulate the outcome by choosing only the three or four or whatever panelists that are going to hear a particular issue.
00:29:37.220They say, no, the whole court has to hear it.
00:29:39.280Another reform is what you mentioned, that the Knesset will be allowed to select the judges.
00:29:44.580That is, the elected leaders of Israel would select the judges.
00:29:47.860That's how we do it in the United States.
00:29:49.180In fact, many of our judges at the state and local level are elected directly.
00:29:52.360Another reform would allow government agencies to appoint their own legal advisors rather than relying on the Ministry of Justice to do so.
00:30:04.580This is the most controversial, and it's one I actually disagree with, which is allowing the Knesset to override the Supreme Court on a majority vote.
00:30:11.280So I made clear very early on, I thought that one was a loser, because if you can allow the legislature simply to nullify Supreme Court decisions, you don't really have an independent judiciary.
00:30:22.880And when I brought that up with Israelis, and I had intelligent conversations with Israelis, they said, well, that's not such an important reform.
00:30:31.820If we have to give one up, we'll give that one up.
00:30:33.560There has to be some process of review, but we see your point, and we're willing to compromise on that.
00:30:40.280In fact, in recent weeks, some of the people who were most adamant in advocating for these reforms said that they were willing to give that one up.
00:30:47.780So many of these reforms are quite common sense.
00:30:52.860Some of them are more controversial, but there's room for compromise.
00:31:13.360And that's really where I stepped in and said, you know what, this is inappropriate.
00:31:17.020Israel's support, Israel's security depends on the idea that Israel is a democracy.
00:31:22.480That's why the United States supports Israel.
00:31:24.560That's why many Americans support Israel.
00:31:26.460That's why Israel is able to defend itself in Europe.
00:31:29.800If Israel became a dictatorship, that would be much more difficult.
00:31:33.280Then it would just be a question of whether it's in America's interest to support Israel, quite apart from whether it's a democracy or not.
00:31:39.220It would be a harder case to make, not impossible, but harder.
00:31:42.180I don't think Israel could ever be a dictatorship because, frankly, and I can say this as a Jewish person, we're basically ungovernable.
00:31:47.940We don't listen to anybody, so we could never run a dictatorship, nor could we live under one.
00:31:53.100But I think telling people that Israel is becoming a dictatorship or another Iran, which is a reference to the religious parties in the government, it undermines Israel's support in the world outside and therefore undermines Israel's security.
00:32:06.380And the reason that these people were doing it is that they're so desperate to avoid losing their own power that they want there to be outside intervention.
00:32:13.300They want the world to pressure Israel.
00:32:14.840They want to embarrass Israel because they are essentially holding the government hostage.
00:32:18.620They're saying we are going to compromise the safety and security of the state of Israel if we don't get our way.
00:32:23.100And that shows you how on target Netanyahu has been in focusing on judicial reform, because the judiciary, which some have called a juristocracy in Israel, exists above and beyond the reach of the executive and legislative branches.
00:32:38.060And it has become a bastion of left-wing power over the last 20 or 30 years.
00:32:42.600Many of the powers that the Israeli judiciary has were simply seized.
00:32:46.940They weren't given to it by an act of the Knesset or parliament.
00:32:50.380They just were taken in what Chief Justice Aharon Barak himself said was a constitutional revolution.
00:32:56.240He said, I'm having a constitutional revolution here.
00:32:58.440I'm demanding the power of judicial review and so forth.
00:33:00.560And the Israeli right wing, which has become more and more politically powerful in terms of its electoral results over the last two decades, has become increasingly frustrated that the things that they passed through the Knesset are immediately struck down by the Supreme Court.
00:33:15.240Even compromises with the left-wing parties are often struck down by the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court is this left-wing, in some cases, far left-wing backstop that just decides they're going to get rid of something they don't like.
00:33:27.140And so there's an attempt to reel it in, to place it once again within the norms of checks and balances in other democracies.
00:33:33.900The United States has played a terrible role in this throughout.
00:33:36.380Joe Biden, who himself was considering radical judicial reforms last year, talking about packing the Supreme Court.
00:33:42.480He wants sweeping changes to American law.
00:33:45.300He's lecturing Israel about not reforming something without a broader consensus.
00:33:49.420Well, obviously, it would be wonderful to have a broader consensus, but the Israeli opposition isn't even willing to negotiate.
00:33:54.300So finally, now, Netanyahu has paused his reforms.
00:33:59.720But ultimately, these reforms are going to pass.
00:34:01.360They're going to have to because you can't have a situation where the right-wing, the religious parties, the nationalist parties, basically half the country, feel that their vote is wasted because every time they vote in a government, nothing that government passes is ever upheld by the court.
00:34:16.200You can't have a left-wing dictatorship through the judiciary.
00:34:19.360So there has to be some kind of resolution to this, and that's something that's hard for people to wrap their heads around, but that's the reality.
00:34:27.200Well, I mean, I think you confirmed my point.
00:34:29.800I mean, I just made a note of the four things you referred to, the right of the parliament to appoint judges.
00:34:36.280Again, that's absolutely normal in Western democracies.
00:34:39.180It's actually shocking that that wasn't the case right now, to have a full panel of judges review government decisions, not just a selected small panel.
00:34:52.740That – anyone who's opposed to that is tipping their hand that they know that was an abusive trick played by the chief justice.
00:35:02.320And that doesn't actually take any power away from the Supreme Court.
00:35:05.880It just says if you're going to overrule the legislators, you have to have more judges in on it, but from the same Supreme Court.
00:35:13.120How anyone could object to that is unknown to me.
00:35:15.840And then the third point you mentioned about having lawyers in individual departments from those departments as opposed to from the Department of Justice.
00:35:24.160Again, that sounds like an administrative matter that no one would genuinely care about.
00:35:28.680I agree with you that last point about judges being able to be overruled with a simple majority vote.
00:35:35.000That goes against the concept of a constitutional democracy where minority rights are protected from the majority.
00:35:40.340But those other three points that you mentioned are so completely normal that I say again, I think this is a pretext.
00:35:47.520I don't think that these hundreds of thousands, if there's that many protesters, are bona fide.
00:35:53.880I think that this is just, like you say, a resistance, a refusal to accept the last election.
00:36:04.880Some of it is their derangements against Netanyahu.
00:36:07.400I accept your description of the differences between him and Trump.
00:36:10.320But I believe that this is an orchestrated official people who are trying, I mean, they don't dare do an Antifa-style riot across Israel because riots would be put down very quickly because so many people have firearms, the military, the police, off duty.
00:36:28.060I don't think they could try Antifa-style violence like the Democrats did in America under Trump.
00:36:35.920I think this is the left refusing to accept the restoration of Netanyahu, personal hatred, and a lot of interference by Westerners, including, I'm certain of it, Soros, who has gone on record as being anti-Netanyahu before.
00:36:49.980This all makes me want to support Netanyahu all the more.
00:36:53.420I didn't like what he did about vaccines.
00:36:57.020He was, I think, authoritarian and got that extremely wrong.
00:37:01.060But that's not the battle lines today.
00:37:03.260I, I, you have convinced me, Joel, that Netanyahu's the right guy here and that his opponents are in the wrong.
00:37:09.900Well, the key decision was the decision to fire the minister of defense.
00:37:15.040When Netanyahu went to the U.K. on an official visit, the defense minister gave an unauthorized speech.
00:37:21.400And what he was saying was, look, look, you mentioned the protests, how there aren't riots in Israel.
00:37:26.940What there were, were desertions, military reservists refusing to show up for their service.
00:37:32.340Israel is a small, vulnerable country.
00:37:34.460It cannot afford to have reservists in a civilian army fail to show up for duty.
00:37:39.840There were pilots who weren't showing up.
00:37:41.240There were others who weren't showing up.
00:37:42.520People on the left who decided they couldn't possibly defend their country if their government would do these judicial reforms.
00:37:49.100So the defense minister, on the one hand, he made a good case, which is that we need to consider the security implications of some of what's happening right now.
00:37:56.860But on the other hand, he didn't do it openly.
00:38:00.280He didn't do it in a way that really allowed the democratic process to proceed.
00:38:05.940He did it while Netanyahu was out of the country.
00:38:08.280Essentially, he stabbed him in the back.
00:38:10.520He's a member of Netanyahu's government, his cabinet.
00:38:12.720He's the minister of defense responsible for the safety and security of the state of Israel.
00:38:17.740So when Netanyahu got back, he had a choice.
00:38:20.960He could either stop the judicial reforms right then and there and listen to the minister of defense.
00:38:25.580And then basically Netanyahu would have lost any mandate to govern because then essentially the army would have been dictating to Netanyahu.
00:38:34.720Right, not just having the military dictated, but having a left wing takeover within the military and then having the military tell Netanyahu, the elected leader of the country, he's not allowed to proceed with these reforms.
00:38:46.180Netanyahu fired the minister of defense and that caused a shockwave throughout Israel because the military is so venerated in Israel that it's just not something one does.
00:38:55.440But you can't have that kind of insubordination and still have a democracy.
00:38:58.300So actually what Netanyahu did was he asserted civilian control of the military, fired the minister of defense, and that then allowed Netanyahu to slow down, not to stop, but to slow down the judicial process.
00:39:53.300The question is, does Israel want to actually be a liberal democracy with checks and balances, or does it want to be a juristocracy, which is essentially run by a legal fraternity that chooses its own members?
00:40:05.960And its power became way too out of hand, and it really went too far, especially with the prosecution of Netanyahu.
00:40:13.220Those on the left are saying, oh, Netanyahu is just messing with the courts because he's trying to save himself from prosecution.
00:40:19.820I understand why they see it that way.
00:40:21.040If you see the prosecution as legitimate, I could understand that that would be a concern.
00:40:24.480But when you look at the details of the prosecution, they're completely frivolous.
00:40:27.880And even so, these powers of the judiciary—for example, until recently, Netanyahu wasn't even allowed to speak about the judicial reforms that he was promoting because he was under this strange restriction from the attorney general.
00:40:42.500I mean, if anything else tells you that Israel needs reform, that's it.
00:40:46.740How can you have the leader of the country unable to talk about the most important issue in the country because of some ridiculous ruling by the attorney general?
00:40:54.360I mean, Israel's legal fraternity, its judiciary need to be reined in.
00:40:59.080And where Netanyahu has succeeded is finally everybody seems to agree with that idea, at least in principle.
00:41:05.960And he has reestablished civilian control over the military.
00:41:10.040It will be very interesting to watch over the next few months.
00:41:11.780But I think that despite the fact that he stood down this week, he has actually won this round because the left in Israel will now have to decide whether they're going to negotiate and play along or whether they are going to walk away from the table and try to assert that they have the right to decide which way Israel goes, even though they didn't win the last election.
00:41:28.740So I think we're not out of the woods yet here, but I think Netanyahu won a very important round this week.