Ezra Levant examines Florida’s $170K lawsuit against Antifa and Jane’s Revenge under the FACE Act for vandalizing pregnancy centers post-Dobbs, contrasting it with rare conservative legal action elsewhere. He links Israel’s protests against Netanyahu’s judicial reforms—like Knesset-approved Supreme Court appointments—to foreign interference (e.g., George Soros) and leftist resistance to elected right-wing leaders, arguing the reforms curb judicial overreach. Netanyahu’s pause and firing of a dissenting defense minister signal democratic control over military insubordination, forcing opponents to negotiate despite losing elections. The episode underscores how legal systems can weaponize or legitimize political battles, exposing double standards in accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
I want to talk to you about a lawsuit that the state of Florida has filed against Antifa, or at least a couple of Antifa members.
I'll take you through the lawsuit.
I'll read some of it to you, and I'll talk about how this could be a template for other right-of-center governors and Canadian provincial premiers, too.
At least I hope it becomes that.
We'll also talk to Joel Pollock about what the heck's going on in Israel with the big protests against Bibi Netanyahu.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
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All right, here's to the show.
Tonight, 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.
Shame on you, you censorious f**k.
You know, the lockdowns really shook my faith in police.
I've talked about this before, but it really is true.
Police were enforcing things that were not criminal offenses, they were often being bullies about it.
The best police were either reassigned to other files or, frankly, took early retirement or they were suspended from the force because they didn't want to get jabbed.
The best cops were weeded out.
Police didn't fight crime during the lockdowns, they enforced political dictates.
Those dictates often changed week by week.
How many people in a gathering, how many kinds of gatherings?
Costco and liquor stores are fine, but not churches.
What a joke.
But the police, or at least some of them, enthusiastically became political weapons.
Remember when they deployed more than 100 cops because some guy kept his smoked meat takeout restaurant open.
Remember that.
And he's a shame on you.
Shame on you!
Shame on these people!
Shame on these police!
Look at the way they started now!
You're a hero item!
Yeah, sorry, that's not real policing.
And having some public health nurse direct the cops like a private army, that's not how we do it.
The low point, of course, was when the police agreed to enforce a police state.
There was no national emergency.
The country was not in danger.
Trudeau was embarrassed, that's all.
So the police stomped on people, peaceful protesters, stomped on them with riot horses.
Oh, and then the RCMP had a good laugh about that in their internal WhatsApp chat group.
They talked about their jack boots crushing citizens.
Not a single one of those cops was suspended.
And that cop who assaulted Alexa Lavois, his name is Sergeant Jordan Arthur.
We're suing him for Alexa.
I should tell you that the RCMP says they're investigating him too, which is interesting, except they're lying.
They're a pack of liars.
The attack on Alexa was more than a year ago, but they still hadn't interviewed this Sergeant Jordan Arthur a year after the event.
Some interview, eh?
More like a whitewash and a cover-up.
What a disgrace.
What do you do when a cop is a criminal like that?
Because that's what it is, when a cop shoots someone with no justification with a weapon that isn't even designed to be shot at someone.
That is so, so gross.
So yeah, it's tougher than ever to back the blue, even though the good cops out there need more backing now than ever.
You know, they're destroying everything strong and male and proud in society.
Look at what they did to football, turning it into an anti-American woke take-a-knee mess.
Same with NASCAR.
Same with the military, which now says its greatest threat is global warming.
It's very much focused on diversity, including transgenderism.
Yeah, that'll be good for morale.
They're literally taking everything strong and proud and male, police, NASCAR, NFL, and corroding it from the inside for its own sake to weaken those institutions and also to demoralize former fans of these institutions, to demoralize men, really.
Back to the cops.
Where were they in America when Antifa riots swept the nation, creating chaos in the months before the 2020 election?
Well, some of them were busy bringing Trump protesters into the Capitol building, literally guiding them through the building, helping them find their way, and then arresting and jailing them for being in the building.
Lots of agents' provocateurs afoot.
Remember this?
In fact, tomorrow?
I don't even like to say it because I'll be arrested.
We need to go.
I'll say it.
We need to go in to the Capitol.
Let's go.
I'm going to put it out there.
I'm probably going to go to jail here.
Tomorrow.
We need to go into the Capitol.
Get into the capitol!
Said, Peacefully.
Okay, folks.
Drop the word.
As soon as the president's done speaking, we go to the Capitol.
The Capitol's this direction.
The enemy is not the beginning.
We are going to the capital.
We are cop the storm.
It stands the radiance.
It's tough to trust police anymore.
I'm sorry to say that.
I really wish I could say that I loved it when I was pro-cop full stop.
Say, just yesterday, left-wing activists, including transgender activists, stormed several government buildings, including the Capitol building in Nashville, Tennessee, the state capitol.
That's the state where the transgender mass shooting happened this week.
Did you see this footage on the CBC?
No?
No?
Take a look.
Here's another shot.
They're tussling with police.
Here's another clip.
So yeah, two years in jail for the January 6th meanderers, the great meandering.
Attorney General's Prosecution00:09:58
Are you kidding?
Don't you see?
The law only goes one way now, more and more.
Antifa is praised by the establishment.
Of course, here's Greta Tunberg wearing her Antifa shirt.
They're great.
The Proud Boys, which is a drinking fraternity, really, is literally on Canada's list of terrorist groups.
They've never committed a violent act in Canadian history.
They're not really active here, but 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.
He 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?
It all depends who's holding the stick.
Justice is not blind anymore.
Look 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.
Nothing to do with him and his term as president.
It's the re-litigation of Trump paying money to a stripper.
I mean, what has that even got to do with things?
Here's a letter from Trump's lawyer saying that the money was actually Michael Cohen's money.
And here's another letter signed by the stripper herself that says she never actually had sex with Trump.
Now, 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.
The 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.
I mean, that's why they're doing it.
You cannot trust the legal system in America anymore, not if there is politics afoot.
Here's a member of the grand jury in Georgia that tried to indict Trump, and she said she did it because she was excited about meeting him and personally serving him the subpoena.
Look at this person.
I personally want to hear from the former president.
I wanted to hear from the former president, but honestly, I kind of wanted to subpoena the former president because I got to swear everybody in.
And so I thought it'd be really cool to get 60 seconds with President Trump of me looking at him and being like, do you solemnly swear?
And me getting to swear him in?
I just, I kind of just thought that would be an awesome moment.
Yeah, I think things are broken, but they're broken just one way.
Have you ever seen a conservative in Canada or the states?
Have you ever seen a Republican ever use the legal system to fight a battle in this way?
And I don't mean to fight it unfairly.
I don't mean to twist the law and abuse it.
I mean, to actually fight a crime when the perpetrator is a leftist.
And that's my news today.
And it continues to impress me about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
He's one of 26 Republican governors.
They 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.
Now, every liberal governor does that.
Every Democrat does that.
But Republicans don't.
And it's amazing to watch the one guy who does.
Here's DeSantis' Attorney General announcing an exciting prosecution.
She says, Antifa and Jane's Revenge are criminal organizations and must answer for their illegal acts in Florida.
I am taking action to hold their members accountable for attempting to intimidate and threaten law-abiding citizens in our state.
And she links to this press release yesterday.
Let me read a chunk of it.
Attorney General Moody takes action against Antifa and Jane's Revenge members vandalizing Florida crisis pregnancy centers.
Attorney General Ashley Moody is taking legal action against Antifa and Jane's Revenge criminal activists who vandalize Florida crisis pregnancy centers.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's leaked decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, pro-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.
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.
Through 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.
Attorney General Ashley Moody said, Antifa and Jane's Revenge are criminal organizations and must answer for their crimes in Florida.
I am taking action to hold their members accountable for attempting to intimidate and threaten law-abiding citizens in our state.
Let me skip ahead to one more interesting paragraph.
Attorney General Moody is pursuing civil action against the defendants for violations of the FACE Act.
The 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.
So this law, the FACE Act, was obviously drafted to target pro-life people who were blocking access to abortion clinics.
That's pretty obvious.
But DeSantis is using that law to target people who are committing crimes against pregnancy centers, which is actually the literal definition of reproductive health.
It's not an ironic euphemism like the left uses it.
Here's the filed lawsuit itself.
Now, obviously, I'm not going to read all 22 pages of it to you, but let me just read a little bit.
Here, I'll read how it's called.
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.
I'll just read the opening paragraphs.
In 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.
These 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.
Since 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.
Defendants 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.
Defendants vandalized and threatened at least three crisis pregnancy centers in the state, including by spray painting on their walls the Jane Revenge calling card.
If abortions aren't safe, neither are you.
The state of Florida sues defendants for violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the FACE Act.
The FACE Act authorizes state attorneys general to bring a civil action against those who threaten persons or damage facilities providing reproductive health services.
Florida seeks statutory damages, civil penalties, and injunctive relief against defendants as provided by Section 248 C3B.
I think that's fascinating.
So it's not a criminal prosecution.
It's a civil prosecution going after them for money.
But that's the thing about the left is they've got a lot of money.
Here's an Antifa associated or Antifa affiliated tweet that says, share widely and get the word out.
Here's our press release announcing our campaign with our goals with the campaign and more information on the repression hitting Florida activist communities.
You can donate to the legal fund.
And then it links to Act Blue, which is a Soros-supported fundraising page for the left.
And if you click on the link to Act Blue, here's what it says.
Florida Repro Rights Legal Defense helps support the Legal Defense Fund for Reproductive Rights Organizers in Florida.
In an unprecedented use of the FACE Act, a law intended to protect abortion access and abortion clinics.
Pro-choice community members in Florida are being targeted and charged by the Department of Justice.
Read 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.
Donate here to support the legal defense fund for community members being targeted under the FACE Act.
We're facing enormous legal defense costs to fight these unjust charges in coordination with the South Florida Anti-Repression Committee.
All funds will be used for the cost of legal offense and defendant support for reproductive rights organizers in Florida being targeted, charged, and prosecuted under FACE Act.
And then, by the way, there's a mention that this is a charitable donation through the Sorot-supported Tits Foundation.
Well, they are right about one thing.
This is unprecedented.
Conservatives never fight back in court.
It's always prosecutions of the Proud Boys or Trump or the January 6th meanderers.
Trump's being prosecuted, a grand jury, over that porn star question, but not Hillary Clinton, not Bill Clinton, not Barack Obama, not Antifa.
How about here in Canada?
Here's a video of Derek Reimer, the Christian pastor in Calgary, being assaulted at a drag cringe story hour.
He didn't assault anyone.
He was assaulted, but he's the one who's being charged, not the ones who attacked him.
You know, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, her sovereignty act, suggests she might be taking some more legal steps that, you know, rarely have been done.
For example, the Firearms Act that Alberta has brought in to crowd out the Federal Firearms Act.
That's creative.
But where is the prosecution of Antifa, of eco-terrorists, of these violent transgenderists in Calgary?
Netanyahu's Knesset Plans00:15:17
I don't know, but I do know Ron DeSantis is showing us the way.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
That scene's from Israel where tens of thousands, some reports of 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.
I've heard many criticisms, but they just say he's destroying democracy.
He's creating a dictatorship, but I never hear any details.
Then I saw this clip of Netanyahu with Pierce 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 had never heard of this before, allows the court itself to veto new court appointments.
Here's Netanyahu making that astonishing point to Pierce Morgan.
The critics say it's not reform, it's regime change, effectively, is what you're trying to push through.
They say that what this bill will do, it'll 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.
In other words, the judiciary, they say, will be neutered.
And with that, the rule of law and with that, democracy itself.
Yeah, well, let's take that apart one by one.
The first thing that has to be understood is what is a democracy?
Democracy is majority rule with the protection of individual rights.
And 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.
Everybody understands that.
In 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.
So 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.
It doesn't exist anywhere in the democracy, such powers.
It 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.
All these things are unacceptable.
I wonder if this is the actual rationale for this grassroots protest or if it's grassroots at all.
I 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.
It 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.
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.
Well, Netanyahu is back, restored, so to speak, and it must make these Trump derangement types furious.
Imagine if Trump were to be re-elected in America in 2024.
That is how the left has reacted to Netanyahu winning recently.
And 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.
Well, 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.
Joel, great to see you again.
My 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.
Many of these reforms would be normal to Canada in the United States, and this whole thing is trumped up.
Am I wrong?
Am I simplifying things too much?
Why don't you help explain?
The hatred of Netanyahu is a little bit different.
In 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.
He's Israel's longest-serving prime minister, and some people are just tired of him.
They'd like to see somebody else have a chance.
Paradoxically, 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.
So 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.
There 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.
I 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.
Trump remains an outsider.
He'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.
Our system currently does not represent those preferences very well.
We 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 want it to, not the way that the American people want it to.
That's in serious need of disruption and reform.
Trump 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.
People don't like Trump because of his antics, because of his rhetoric, because of the things that some of his supporters do.
It's more a question of style with Trump, but he still remains indispensable because of the policies and ideas he brings to American politics.
But there are parallels.
And the parallel is this.
Both in the United States and in Israel, the left simply does not seem to want to accept democratic elections that it loses.
And it's not just in the U.S. and Israel.
It's also in the UK.
When 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.
But there were all these attempts to undermine the decision made by the British electorate.
And we see this over and over again, country after country.
When the left loses, they decide that the election was somehow wrong or corrupted or there was Russian collusion or whatever it was.
And yet they accuse the right of denying democracy.
So they accuse Republicans or they constantly lecture Republicans about the need to respect democratic elections.
I agree people should respect democratic elections.
I agree that January 6th was a very terrible event.
And yet, it's Democrats who constantly try to undermine faith in our democracy.
And even before the last midterm elections, Joe Biden was very wishy-washy on whether he thought they would be legitimate or not.
One gets the sense that it matters whether his party would have won or not.
Democrats have, in common with the left around the world, this tendency to attack democratic outcomes that they don't like.
So that's partly what's going on in Israel.
Well, 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?
I hear this absurd language.
He's ending democracy as we know it.
He's creating a dictatorship.
I heard one former senior government official say, it's no better than Iran.
He's making Israel.
I mean, it's just absurd overheating rhetoric, and yet almost none of them point to a specific thing.
I showed that clip from Pierce Morgan where Netanyahu says we want to be like other democracies where the elected officials choose the judges.
Judges can't veto who goes on.
I 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.
Are there any actual things he's doing that are so execrable?
So I looked into these judicial reforms when they were first proposed back at the beginning of the year.
And there are four basic reforms.
One 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.
It'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 or struck down in a particular way.
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.
They say, nope, the whole court has to hear it.
Another reform is what you mentioned, that the Knesset will be allowed to select the judges.
That is, the elected leaders of Israel would select the judges.
That's how we do it in the United States.
In fact, many of our judges at the state and local level are elected directly.
Another reform would allow government agencies to appoint their own legal advisors rather than relying on the Ministry of Justice to do so.
That seems just common sense.
And then there's one reform.
This 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.
So 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.
And when I brought that up with Israelis, and I had intelligent conversations with Israelis, they said, well, that's not such an important reform.
If we have to give one up, we'll give that one up.
There has to be some process of review, but we see your point and we're willing to compromise on that.
In 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.
So many of these reforms are quite common sense.
Some of them are more controversial, but there's room for compromise.
There's room for discussion.
That's not what the Israeli left did.
They took to the streets.
They protested.
They said, Netanyahu is trying to become a dictator.
They said we're no longer a democracy.
They called it a coup.
They called it an attempt to cement a regime.
They said terrible things about it.
You've quoted some of them.
And that's really where I stepped in and said, you know what, this is inappropriate.
Israel's support, Israel's security, depends on the idea that Israel is a democracy.
That's why the United States supports Israel.
That's why many Americans support Israel.
That's why Israel is able to defend itself in Europe.
If Israel became a dictatorship, that would be much more difficult.
Then 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.
It'd be a harder case to make, not impossible, but harder.
I don't think Israel could ever be a dictatorship because, frankly, and I can say this as a Jewish person, we're basically ungovernable.
We don't listen to anybody, so we could never run a dictatorship, nor could we live under one.
But 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.
And 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.
They want the world to pressure Israel.
They want to embarrass Israel because they are essentially holding the government hostage.
They're saying we are going to compromise the safety and security of the state of Israel if we don't get our way.
And 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.
And it has become a bastion of left-wing power over the last 20 or 30 years.
Many of the powers the Israeli judiciary has were simply seized.
They weren't given to it by an act of the Knesset or parliament.
They just were taken in what Chief Justice Aharon Barak himself said was a constitutional revolution.
He said, I'm having a constitutional revolution here.
I'm demanding the power of judicial review and so forth.
And 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 pass through the Knesset are immediately struck down by the Supreme Court.
Even 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.
And so there's an attempt to reel it in to place it once again within the norms of checks and balances in other democracies.
The United States has played a terrible role in this throughout.
Joe Biden, who himself was considering radical judicial reforms last year, talking about packing the Supreme Court.
He wants sweeping changes to American law.
He's lecturing Israel about not reforming something without a broader consensus.
Well, obviously, it would be wonderful to have a broader consensus, but the Israeli opposition isn't even willing to negotiate.
So finally, now, Netanyahu has paused his reforms.
Netanyahu's Triumph?00:08:06
He's allowed room to negotiate.
There will be some talks.
But ultimately, these reforms are going to pass.
They'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.
You can't have a left-wing dictatorship through the judiciary.
So there has to be some kind of resolution to this.
And, you know, that's something that's hard for people to wrap their heads around, but that's the reality.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think you confirm my point that, I mean, I just made a note of the four things you referred to: the right of the parliament to appoint judges.
Again, that's absolutely normal in Western democracies.
It'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.
Anyone who's opposed to that is tipping their hand that they know that was an abusive trick played by the Chief Justice.
And that doesn't actually take any power away from the Supreme Court.
It 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.
How anyone could object to that is unknown to me.
And then the third point you mentioned about having lawyers in individual departments from those departments as opposed to from the Department of Justice.
Again, that sounds like an administrative matter that no one would genuinely care about.
I agree with you that last point about judges being able to be overruled with a simple majority vote.
That goes against the concept of a constitutional democracy where minority rights are protected from the majority.
But those other three points that you mentioned are so completely normal that I say again, I think this is a pretext.
I don't think that these hundreds of thousands, if there's that many protesters, are bona fide.
I think that this is just like you say, a resistance, a refusal to accept the last election.
Some of it is their derangements against Netanyahu.
I accept your description of the differences between him and Trump.
But I believe that this is an orchestrated official people who are trying.
I mean, they don't dare do an anti-fistile riot across Israel because riots would be put down very quickly because so many people have firearms, the military, the police, off-duty.
I don't think they could try anti-fistal violence like the Democrats did in America under Trump.
But I think that's what this is.
I 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.
This all makes me want to support Netanyahu all the more.
I didn't like what he did about vaccines.
I think he was way wrong on that.
He was, I think, authoritarian and got that extremely wrong.
But that's not the battle lines today.
You have convinced me, Joel, that Netanyahu is the right guy here and that his opponents are in the wrong.
Well, the key decision was the decision to fire the Minister of Defense.
When Netanyahu went to the UK on an official visit, the defense minister gave an unauthorized speech.
And what he was saying was: look, look, you mentioned the protests, how there aren't riots in Israel.
What there were were desertions, military reservists refusing to show up for their service.
Israel is a small, vulnerable country.
It cannot afford to have reservists in a civilian army fail to show up for duty.
There were pilots who weren't showing up.
There were others who weren't showing up.
People on the left who decided they couldn't possibly defend their country if their government would do these judicial reforms.
So 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.
But on the other hand, he didn't do it openly.
He didn't do it to Netanyahu.
He didn't do it in a way that really allowed the democratic process to proceed.
He did it while Netanyahu was out of the country.
Essentially, he stabbed him in the back.
He's a member of Netanyahu's government, his cabinet.
He's the minister of defense responsible for the safety and security of the state of Israel.
So when Netanyahu got back, he had a choice.
He could either stop the judicial reforms right then and there and listen to the minister of defense, and then basically Netanyahu would have lost any mandate to govern, because then essentially the army would have been dictating to Netanyahu.
That would be the dictatorship.
Like to have the military.
Right.
Not just having the military dictate it, 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.
Netanyahu 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.
But you can't have that kind of insubordination and still have a democracy.
So 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.
It was really a democratic gesture.
It was actually the salvation of Israeli democracy was to fire the defense minister.
So, look, I think that there, again, are some reforms I would disagree with.
I don't like the idea of a conessed majority being able to overrule the Supreme Court.
However, I do think that it's quite appropriate to have some mechanism to overrule the Supreme Court.
We have one in this country.
You pass the constitutional amendment.
It's not a simple majority of the legislature.
It's a three-fourths majority of the states.
It's a much higher bar, but you can do it.
So I'm not opposed to there being some mechanism.
I just don't think it should be as easy as a majority vote.
But these are all details.
The 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?
And its power became way too out of hand.
And it really went too far, especially with the prosecution of Netanyahu.
Those on the left are saying, oh, Netanyahu is just messing with the courts because he's trying to save himself from prosecution.
I don't think that's true.
I understand why they see it that way.
If you see the prosecution as legitimate, I could understand that that would be a concern.
But when you look at the details of the prosecution, they're completely frivolous.
And 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.
I mean, if anything else tells you that Israel needs reform, that's it.
How 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?
I mean, Israel's legal fraternity, its judiciary, need to be reined in.
And where Netanyahu has succeeded is finally, everybody seems to agree with that idea, at least in principle.
And he has reestablished civilian control over the military.
We'll see where it goes from here.
It'll be very interesting to watch over the next few months.
But 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.
So I think we're not out of the woods yet here, but I think Netanyahu won a very important round this week.
Wow.
Well, very interesting.
And it certainly puts those street protests into perspective.
Joel, it's great to catch up with you.
Thanks very much for your time on this.
Thanks so much.
All right.
There you have it.
Joel Pollack, Sr. Editor-at-Large at Breitbart.com.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Phil says, hi, Ezra.
Butts and Censorship00:01:52
In your opening last night, you omitted one of the biggest butts, Gerald Butts.
Funny how the MSM is completely incurious about his role in the Trudeau government.
You know, you're right.
I just, I wasn't thinking about his last name.
His last name is Butts, and we were talking about big butts last night.
It's true.
It is weird that he is right back in the thick of things.
He was, I think he was at that Biden state dinner the other day.
He's certainly on the pundits' panels again.
He's being normalized, even though he's the crooked, corrupt aide who interfered with the SNC Lavalam prosecution and literally got the justice minister fired for being too ethical.
How is he polite company again?
That's really creepy.
Tyson Chowner says, Good show tonight, like always.
Regarding Bill C-11, I might need to get a virtual private network VPN service.
No government censorship for me.
Hopefully, this becomes a mainstream solution amongst Canadians.
I hear what you're saying, but I don't know if that's going to go normal or mainstream.
I mean, I don't know how many people use VPNs.
I think it's slightly technical, and it also defeats certain positive functions we like on the internet.
If the internet knows where you are, for example, Google maps can be more useful.
A lot of searches become more useful if the search engine knows geographically where you are.
A VPM is a digital tool that hides where you are.
It sort of spoofs that you're in a different country.
So I understand how that might work to get access to things that are banned in Canada.
But that is a band-aid at best.
We have to stop this censorship in the main.
And we've been getting our lawyers, our lawyers have been studying Bill C-11 and other censorship bills for over a year now.
And I hope to be able to announce something concrete that we'll be doing about it in the weeks ahead.