In the 1995 Mizraḥi Bank decision, the Israeli Supreme Court deemed that the country’s Basic Laws—pieces of legislation that lay out the functioning of the government—serve as its constitution. Thus then-Chief Justice Aharon Barack granted the court the authority to strike down laws it judges to be unconstitutional, even though Israel has no written constitution. This decision laid the groundwork for the Supreme Court’s habit of dangerous overreach. But in an upcoming case, the court will consider reversing this precedent in such a way as to arrogate even more power to itself. Eugene Kontorovich and Shimon Nataf write:

On December 22, the court will hear challenges to the constitutionality of the nation-state Basic Law. By agreeing to hear such challenges, the court is suggesting that while Basic Laws are enacted through the sovereign power of the people, there is some law even higher than these Basic Laws. And the only body with the authority to determine the contents of the invisible “higher law” is the court itself. In other words, . . . the court believes that it has the power to strike down the constitution as unconstitutional.

The nation-state law was just the start. The court has recently issued orders claiming jurisdiction over the constitutionality of changes in the Basic Laws regarding government structure that were enacted by the Knesset to implement the recent national unity-government arrangement. The court’s orders have suggested that such constitutional amendments can be struck down if the court believes they were adopted “in bad faith,” whatever that means. Most likely, the court will uphold all or most of these measures—but by simply agreeing to hear cases about the constitutionality of the constitution, the court positioned itself formally and openly as supreme over the Israeli legal system.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.