Yariv Levin

Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin addresses the Knesset ahead of a vote to abolish the reasonableness standard, Jerusalem, July 24, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Israel’s justice minister gives away the real aim of the judicial coup’s first law

In a Knesset speech, Yariv Levin listed five gov't decisions that were blocked for being ‘unreasonable.’ All were about Palestinians and the occupation.

By Ben Reiff July 25, 2023

Nearly 200,000 right-wing Israelis attend the “March of the Million” rally in Jerusalem in support of the government's planned judicial overhaul, April 27, 2023. (Flash90)

A pro-government rally reveals the Israeli right’s internal cracks

Netanyahu's far-right partners overestimated their power to pursue the judicial overhaul. Now, they are turning the pressure on the prime minister.

By Meron Rapoport May 2, 2023

Opposition MKs holding Israeli flags during a discussion and vote on the government's judicial overhaul plans in the assembly hall of the Knesset in Jerusalem, February 20, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Why Israel’s opposition won’t talk about the real goal of judicial overhaul

Government officials have explicitly said their legal reforms are about annexation. Opponents won't admit it because they share the same vision.

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man February 21, 2023

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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is interviewed by Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit at the Haaretz Conference on Peace, November 12, 2015. (photo: Tomer Appelbaum)

Plenty of talk about ‘peace,’ little commitment

When leaders from center-left aren’t willing to deepen the struggle against the occupation, it’s hard not to feel that they, too, prefer the status quo. Notes from the Haaretz Conference for Peace. The most genuine moments at Thursday’s Haaretz Conference on Peace came from two right-wing speakers — Yariv Levin and Ze’ev Elkin, both ministers…

By Noam Sheizaf November 13, 2015

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in front of Israeli flags, July 20, 2014. (Photo by Haim Zach / GPO)

The ‘Jewish Nation-State Law’: Turning liberal Zionism on its head

Cementing the supremacy of national group rights over individual minority rights upends the precarious balance between Jewish and democratic, upon which liberal Zionism relies. For the ‘Nation-State Law’s authors and political patrons, however, this is just the beginning. Liberal Zionists of all stripes tend to have one thing in common: the belief — or at…

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man November 28, 2014

Free speech silenced (Yossi Gurvitz)

Bill aims to strip citizenship, curb speech — a bellwether of Israel’s Right

A senior Likud MK is proposing to suspend much of Israeli democracy. His bill has zero chance of passing muster, but it does show where the Israeli Right thinks the future of the conflict lies. MK Yariv Levin (Likud), chairman of the House Parliamentary Committee, is pushing a new directive — temporary legislation — to “combat…

By Dimi Reider November 26, 2014

Israeli soldiers near the Palestinian city of Halhul, where the bodies of the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers were found. (photo: Activestills)

Refusal by elite IDF reservists angrily dismissed as ‘political’

Following the public refusal of 43 reservists of the IDF’s 8200 intelligence unit, politicians and other veterans of the unit have openly denounced the reservists, viewing their refusal as an unacceptable politicization of their army service. Political leaders both from the government and the opposition condemned 43 reservists from Israel’s prestigious 8200 intelligence unit who stated their refusal to take…

By Dahlia Scheindlin September 14, 2014

Israeli setters hitchhike at the Gush Etzion junction, next to the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, June 16, 2014. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Kidnapping is proof the occupation can’t protect Israelis

Israelis deserve a leadership that is capable of interrupting the cycle of violence; they deserve more than juvenile assurances of retaliation. By Nathan Hersh Last month MKs Yariv Levin (Likud) and Orit Strock (Jewish Home) submitted a series of bills seeking to annex Area C of the West Bank to Israel. What would things look…

By +972 Magazine June 21, 2014

The old church in Kfer Bir'im. (photo: Activestills.org)

Law dividing Christians, Muslims is a classic colonial tactic

Instead of promoting equality and the non-racialization of citizenship in Israel, right-wing MKs are adopting a classic colonial law to weaken the non-Jewish community’s ‘threat’ to the country’s ethnic order. The Knesset this week enacted a new law that legally distinguishes between Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel regarding employment opportunities. Though the law does…

By Amjad Iraqi February 28, 2014

Jerusalem clergymen. (photo: Yossi Gurvitz)

New law dividing Christian, Muslim Arabs legalizes inequality

Israel ratified a new law that legally distinguishes between Muslim and Christian citizens of the state, Haaretz reported Monday. The bill, which easily passed by a 31-6 vote in its third and final reading, recognizes the Christian Arab population as a separate, though not national minority for the first time. The law, which expands the Advisory…

By Mairav Zonszein February 25, 2014

Activists and Bedouin residents protest against the Israeli Knesset Internal Affairs Committee tour in the Negev, regarding the Prawer Plan, in the Bedouin village of Al Sayyed, November 24, 2013. (Photo: Activestills.org)

Having never asked, Israel’s gov’t ‘surprised’ Bedouin reject Prawer

Israeli coalition leader Yariv Levin predicted that the cabinet will likely throw out the current version of the Prawer Plan, hours after former minister and co-architect of the plan Benny Begin clarified that he never said Bedouin supported the plan, as some Knesset members originally perceived. “I wish to again make clear that contrary to what…

By Mairav Zonszein December 10, 2013

Map of the planned Prawer-Begin Plan (Courtesy of MK Dov Khenin)

See the Prawer Plan map Israel’s government was keeping secret

Former minister Benny Begin, who helped draft the Prawer Plan, denies saying Israel’s Bedouin support the plan: How could they if they never even saw it? (Click the map to enlarge.) Until now, nobody knew the extent of the Prawer-Begin Plan. No government official or statement has detailed how many Bedouin citizens will be displaced,…

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man December 9, 2013

Panel of the Israeli Supreme Court (file photo, Activestills.org)

Jerusalem bill: A return to anti-democratic legislation?

By a 5-4 majority, a ministerial committee on Sunday approved a bill that proposes to require 80 Knesset members to approve any negotiations about the future of Jerusalem before the issue can even be discussed in peace talks, as reported by Israeli press. It sounds like a technicality: the bill is far from passing as…

By Dahlia Scheindlin October 22, 2013