Recent weeks and months have seen senior cabinet ministers launch a series of vitriolic attacks on the Supreme Court and its judges over a string of decisions that have not gone the government’s way.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said the government will “trample” Supreme Court President Isaac Amit. Justice Minister Yariv Levin has described the Supreme Court justices as “extremists” and their decisions as “political.” Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli called the court a “circus” and the president “a clown” — examples from just the past four weeks.

And Levin, Chikli and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi have publicly called on the government not to abide by specific court orders and decisions on several occasions.

Although the government has long railed against the Supreme Court — and indeed worked assiduously to pass legislation to weaken its authority — the recent verbal assaults have now reached levels of incendiary ferocity previously unheard of in Israeli discourse, which experts say appear to be a calculated assault on the legitimacy and power of the courts.

Speaking to The Times of Israel, Yaniv Roznai, a professor of constitutional law at Reichman University, said that the inflammatory rhetoric against the court, and against Israel’s system of legal checks and balances in general, is designed to delegitimize these institutions to make them less effective as brakes on executive power.

He noted that the government had initially gone about trying to “capture” several of these institutions, but having initially failed in that mission, it is now seeking to delegitimize them.

These efforts included legislation — which narrowly failed to pass — that would have handed the government full control over all judicial appointments, Levin’s push to install his preferred candidate as Supreme Court president, and the government’s attempt to fire the attorney general.

“They have tried to capture institutions, and when that fails they weaken and delegitimize that institution so that it is no longer........

© The Times of Israel