In a striking display of Israel’s deepening political divisions, former Prime Minister and opposition leader Yair Lapid recently threatened to boycott Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the Knesset on 25 February 2026. Lapid’s warning was unequivocal: Unless Chief Justice Isaac Amit received an official invitation—as parliamentary protocol dictates—the opposition would abstain from the session. This move, risking a hollowed-out chamber and potential diplomatic friction with a key ally, underscores a profound domestic rift. To Lapid and his allies, the Supreme Court is a bastion of democracy requiring urgent protection; to the Right-wing stalwarts of Netanyahu’s coalition, it is often viewed as an undemocratic adversary that must be brought to heel.
This tension is the culmination of the Supreme Court’s long journey, beginning with its roots in the British Mandate period (1922–1948). Upon Israel’s founding in 1948, the court inherited colonial-era legal tools, including emergency regulations and procedural mechanisms, to maintain order amid war and uncertainty.
It adopted a conservative, pragmatic stance, prioritising state stability over bold interventions. Over the decades, the court issued rulings that protected individual rights and limited executive power, gradually building its reputation as a liberal institution—even though it frequently sided with the government and security forces.
For instance, it has upheld deportations of terrorist family members as deterrents, endorsed targeted strikes on militants during conflict (with limits), and affirmed Israel’s Jewish character in law. These decisions, often rejecting petitions from human rights groups, show the court’s alignment with national security priorities.
Yet the rulings that truly shaped its Leftist image focused on equality, property rights, and checks on authority—issues that resonate with concerns over discrimination and fairness. A landmark case in 1979 barred Jewish settlements on privately owned Palestinian land without proven security needs, safeguarding Arab property rights against state encroachment. Remarkably, Right-wing Prime Minister Menachem Begin accepted the verdict and ordered evacuation of the site, reinforcing a national consensus that court rulings must be obeyed—a norm that lasted for decades. Subsequent decisions amplified this perception. The court limited media censorship to genuine security threats, banned routine use of physical force in interrogations, prohibited discrimination in land allocation based on nationality, required adjustments to security barriers to reduce harm to Palestinian communities, and outlawed using civilians as human shields in military operations. It struck down laws attempting to legalise settlements on private land, ended exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men from compulsory military service (a duty shared by men and women since Israel’s inception), capped prolonged detention of migrants, invalidated clauses binding future governments to major deals, disqualified a convicted minister from office, restored tools to curb arbitrary decisions, and mandated enlistment for yeshiva religious students with funding penalties for non-compliance.
The court’s role was fundamentally redefined in the 1990s under Chief Justice Aharon Barak. Viewing Israel’s Basic Laws as a nascent constitution, Barak asserted the judiciary’s power to strike down Knesset legislation. This “Constitutional Revolution” shifted the court from a passive arbiter to an active supervisor of the state. He achieved this by expanding locus standi—allowing any petitioner to challenge government actions—and promoting a broad doctrine of justiciability, famously arguing that “everything is justiciable.” Furthermore, he broadened the reasonableness doctrine, permitting the court to invalidate administrative decisions it deemed unbalanced. Over time, Barak’s expansive reach created a growing consensus—extending well beyond the political Right—that the judiciary had become disproportionately powerful relative to the other two branches. In today’s polarised climate, it is noteworthy that during Barak’s tenure, even the late AG Noorani—a prominent Indian constitutional expert known for his staunchly Left-leaning and socialist perspectives—expressed significant professional appreciation for Barak and the Israeli judiciary’s activism.
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Public perception of the court
Paradoxically, the court has become a victim of its own success. By boldly defending rights and oversight, it provoked fierce resentment from Right-wing leaders and segments of society, who view it as an elitist barrier to elected majorities. From their vantage, the judiciary is irredeemably broken—not fixable through tweaks, but in need of subjugation to restore proper balance. The clash reached its peak under Netanyahu’s latest government, formed in late 2022 as Israel’s first purely Right-wing coalition, free of Centrist or Left-leaning partners. In 2023, it launched sweeping judicial reforms to curb the court’s influence—limiting its review powers, changing judge selection processes, and allowing parliament to override rulings.
These moves aimed to shift power decisively toward the executive and legislature. The proposals ignited massive protests—the largest in Israel’s history. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets week after week, with peaks drawing crowds in the hundreds of thousands nationwide (including estimates of up to 5 lakhs on some Saturdays, per organisers and media).
Some of the most eloquent speakers in the protests against the government came from the ranks of scientific research and the high-tech sector—central to Israel’s economy—alongside senior army officers, reservists, intelligence veterans from agencies like the Shin Bet, and others who had served in compulsory conscription.
From the perspective of Israel’s 20 per cent Arab citizens, who remained largely detached from the demonstrations both for and against the judicial reform, the struggle over the Supreme Court’s powers was perceived as an internal Jewish conflict.
The demonstrations blended secular determination with appeals to democratic principles. Crucially, many protesters were not opposed to the principle of re-balancing the branches of government; indeed, many embraced the criticism that the court had overreached. However, they viewed this specific government’s legislative steps as an attempt to subordinate the judiciary out of mala fide, rather than a good-faith effort at reform. Critics from the Right argued that the protesters, who are present in many centres of power in Israel, do not respect the democratic election of the Right-wing government and are prepared to harm Israeli security and the economy in order to disrupt the legal reform. (In practice, the Netanyahu government did panic and freeze most of the controversial legal sections regarding the Supreme Court.)
The court’s rejection of core reform elements in 2024 intensified the divide. By 2025, the appointment of Chief Justice Amit sparked an outright boycott by the Justice Minister, who refused to formalise it or include Amit in state events—a pattern extended to Modi’s upcoming visit, prompting Lapid’s defiant response.
Although Israel’s Supreme Court has mostly ruled alongside the security establishment and government—rejecting many liberal petitions—the key cases it upheld, especially those protecting minority rights, equality, and property against state overreach, have indelibly coloured it as Leftist in public perception.
This stands in contrast to India’s Supreme Court. While certain Right-wing circles in India criticise their court for overreach and a lack of transparency—echoing the rhetoric heard in Israel—there remains a fundamental difference in public legitimacy.
Unlike the legal community, which values the intellectual rigour of a judgment regardless of the outcome, the general public in many democracies has come to view the judiciary rather like a sporting event. The primary concern is no longer the law itself, but whether the umpire ruled for or against one’s own ‘team’. Herein lies the distinction: The Indian Supreme Court has delivered landmark rulings that align with the Right-wing government’s agenda, such as Shahyara Bano, the 2019 Ayodhya verdict and the unanimous upholding of the abrogation of Article 370.
By contrast, the Israeli court lacks equivalent conservative milestones. Without these perceived ‘wins’ to balance the scales in the eyes of the Right, the institution remains a lightning rod for polarisation—its future a critical litmus test for Israel’s democratic equilibrium.
Lev Aran is a former coordinator of the Israel-India Parliamentary Friendship League and an Israel-based freelance columnist and journalist. He tweets @LevAranlookeast. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)