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.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.