Recent statements by Israel’s minister of justice Amir Ohana have brought back to public attention the controversy between those who wish to defend the unchecked power of the country’s overweening Supreme Court—paradoxically condemning any complaint about the power of this unelected oligarchic body as “undemocratic”—and those who wish to impose limits on its authority. Moshe Koppel comments:

[O]ne might be tempted to argue that the court is limited by its dependence on the law, that it has to work with the laws it’s given by the legislature. . . . This sounds plausible, but it doesn’t hold water. First, the court here makes frequent use of a [unique] doctrine it calls “interpretation by objective purpose,” which means that a law should be interpreted neither according to its plain meaning nor according to the legislature’s intent, but rather however the court deems appropriate. In short, statutory language does not constrain the bench on any occasion in which the bench does not wish to be constrained.

Second, and more shockingly, the claim that statutes can only be struck down in accordance with constitutional principles is also now being challenged. The court has agreed to hear petitions against the constitutionality of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. Since Basic Laws are Israel’s equivalent of constitutional legislation, this challenge to a Basic Law’s constitutionality is incoherent. The court’s agreement to hear this case . . . is tantamount to the claim that nothing is outside its purview, including the constitution itself.

I invite those who are now defending the court to provide an example of a single situation in which the court disapproves of a law or government action but does not—and, in their opinion, should not—have the authority to intervene. Careful: an example where the court chooses not to exercise its authority is insufficient; it needs to be an example where it doesn’t have the authority.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.