Whereas Israel’s voters have been moving to the nationalist and religious right, most of its top judges have clung to a more liberal and secular view of the world. On November 10th Salim Joubran, one of three Supreme Court judges deciding the fate of the country’s former president, Moshe Katzav, upheld his conviction for rape. Almost no Israeli batted an eyelid, even though the judge who dispatched the eighth head of the Jewish state off to jail was an Arab, from a community that now makes up one in five of Israeli citizens.

Liberal Israelis, however, complain that legislators in Binyamin Netanyahu’s ruling national-religious coalition are seeking to destroy this pluralistic ethos in the courts, as well as in other institutions of state, including the armed forces and civil service. In particular, worried liberals cite a series of bills apparently designed to promote right-wingers to the Supreme Court.

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