“Israel isn’t Poland,” chant Tel Aviv protesters as Warsaw says Israel consulted on justice reform

The Israeli government consulted Poland over the judicial reforms that have sparked mass protests, says a Polish minister. Some of the protesters in Israel have explicitly declared they fear their country is following in Poland and Hungary’s footsteps.

“Of course, [when] speaking with Israel, we shared our experiences in this area to some extent,” deputy foreign minister Paweł Jabłoński told broadcaster RMF this morning when asked about the justice reforms and protests in Israel. “The Israeli side themselves asked us about it.”

When the interviewer suggested that that sounded like a joke, Jabłoński assured “I’m telling the honest truth, we talk about these issues”. He added that “Israel was interested in what happened in Poland and we’re interested in what’s happening in Israel”.

The minister noted, however, that “matters concerning the judiciary system are the internal affairs of every state”.

“If the majority in the Knesset [Israel’s parliament] decided that there is such a law, and now there are social protests, Israel will solve it itself, as it deems appropriate” he continued. “This is a democracy – just like any democracy, with various problems – but I am convinced that they will manage.”

Jabłoński’s comments came after some protesters in Israel expressed concern that their right-wing government, which came to power in November, is taking the country down a similar path as the national conservatives in power in Poland and Hungary.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in the past often enjoyed close relations with the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party in Poland and Hungary’s Fidesz.

“There’s a danger that Israel will become like Hungary and Poland, and we are very concerned. We don’t want that to happen,” one protester, Menachem Katz, told US broadcaster NPR. Two other demonstrators, Dan Lahav and Maayan Aharon, expressed the same concern.

Hadas Aron, a political scientist at New York University, told NPR that Isreal’s government is indeed taking a page from the playbook of Poland and Hungary’s governments.

A correspondent in Tel Aviv for Polish TV station TVN, which is often critical of the Polish government, reports that crowds have been chanting “Israel is not Hungary, Israel is not Poland” during demonstrations.

Since coming to power in 2015, PiS has pursued a radical overhaul of the country’s justice system, triggering a number of mass protests.

Experts, international organisations and Polish opposition parties say that PiS’s policies have undermined the independence of the judiciary, the rule of law, and democracy itself. A majority of the Polish public view the reforms negatively and believe they are intended to exert political control over the courts.

Between 2010 and 2020, Poland moved further towards autocracy than any other country in the world, according to the V-Dem index compiled by academics and other experts. Other international reports and rankings have produced similar findings.

PiS, however, argues that its reforms – which have included bringing judicial appointments under greater political control – have been necessary to purge the influence of “post-communists” from the judiciary, to stop judges from being a self-governing “caste”, and to make the courts more efficient.

However, a survey in January this year found that less than 9% of people in Poland believe that the country’s courts function better now than they did before the current government came to power in 2015, while over half think they have got worse.

Even the PiS prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has admitted that the overhaul of the judiciary has “not lived up to expectations”. His government has recently sought to roll back its new disciplinary system for judges in order to unlock EU funds frozen over rule-of-law concerns.

Main image credit: Lizzy Shaanan/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY 2.5)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.