Netanyahu: These decisions should be left to the government that is elected by the people

Earlier today I spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about economic growth and judges in Israel. Please take a listen. Well, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proposing judicial reforms that frankly I think could save Israel's economy and its national security. He joins me now. We welcome back Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By the way, has a great book out called Bibi, My Story. Prime Minister, welcome back to the show.

We appreciate it. Let me try to get this right. I've been reading up not an expert on Israel's judicial laws, but it sounds like you've got this unelected Supreme Court that basically has virtually unbridled powers of judicial activism. I mean, it could cut into the economy, national security and all the rest of it. Now, tell me A, if that's right, and then B, can you do anything about it, sir? Well, I think the main problem is that the functioning of a proper democracy requires the balance between the three branches of government, legislative, executive and judicial. In Israel, that balance has been taken off the rails. And what we're trying to do is put it back in, we probably have the most activist judicial court on the planet.

And the reform, and this has taken a price of our economy, you know, that when you have excessive litigation, it cuts, it's like over-regulation. It prolongs business deals. It prevents you from doing infrastructure projects. It cuts into the economy. You have armies of lawyers. So, you know, I think that the rule of law is not the rule of lawyers. The rule of law is not the rule of judges.

Chief Justice Marshall, the first great justice of the Supreme Court, said that judges should decide what the law is, not what the law should be. And unfortunately, in Israel, that's where we've gone. We're trying to bring it back. And I think it'll help the Israeli economy in a major way. I think it's going to add, actually, one to two percent of extra growth to our GDP every year, because you're releasing this heavy boot on this coil spring of Israeli initiative. And the spring will uncoil, and the Israeli economy will be even stronger than it is today. And it's very strong.

Well, so as I understand it, also reading up on this, at one point a few years ago, the Supreme Court ruled out the development of these phenomenal natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean, which would give you and everybody, actually in Europe, a tremendous booster shot. So that would, you know, capital would leave Israel, entrepreneurs would leave Israel, oil and gas developers would leave Israel. I don't know what their logic was, but it sounds like a nutty decision. Well, it was held up in court decisions for about six years. I myself had to go to the Supreme Court on a question that probably shouldn't have been there in the first place. But, you know, we passed it. We had huge demonstrations, by the way, and protests.

Many of the people are protesting now against these democratic reforms. Protests had then against taking the gas out of the seabed. They said this was destroy Israel's economy and environment. Guess what? They said, believe it or not, it would destroy Israel's democracy. Well, we finally got it through, many years too late. Israel now has, among the lowest gas prices in the West, the lowest electricity prices in the West, we are a net exporter of energy to our Arab neighbors, to Europe. You know how important that is.

We're energy independent. All of that was held up for years with excessive litigation. This is the province of the government. The decisions on the economy, the decisions on military matters, the decisions on many other matters should be left to the government that is elected by the people. Let the people decide. If you make the wrong decisions, you'll be booted out. It happened to me once, but, you know, I was re-elected for the sixth time.

And one of the things that I was re-elected about, Larry, was to have this judicial reform to bring back Israel to where just about all the democracies are today, a balance between the three branches of government. Well, I think, you know, it just sounds like the Knesset and the Prime Minister, who are elected, should have a lot of authority to choose Supreme Court justices. I'm just using the U.S. model. I'm very parochial here, but I don't want to see Israel lose all its best capitalists and entrepreneurs because you've got, I don't know, whether it's a left-wing court. It sounds like a left-wing court.

So can you move back towards the American model? Well, or a different model. There are various possibilities, but I think most people agree that it's time to correct the imbalance that has happened in the last 20 years and it has become a real issue in the public. And I think it's also stymies our economy. I hear these protests that say, this is going to hurt the Israeli economy. No, it's not. I mean, all these countries that have the kind of reforms or they don't even need the reforms that we're installing that have a good balance between the three branches of government, they're perfect democracies. Canada is a perfect democracy.

Britain is a perfect democracy. You know, the European democracy is a perfect democracy. And America is a perfect democracy. So we, in many ways, we're the outlier. And I think that we have to come back to the fold of what is common and proven best practices of the balance of the three branches of government. It's very good for the economy. And you know where we're not good in the economy? I mean, we have our ease of doing business is very low.

Our GDP per capita nominal GDP has passed Britain, France, Japan, even Germany because of these free market reforms that I've led as the Prime Minister and as Israel's finance minister because of the gas that we took out of the sea that people protested against. And because of many other things that we did. But one thing that is not good is the over bureaucracy and over litigation. And forcing contracts in Israel is rated 75th in the world. 75th. So we obviously, we think that by having this judicial, these democratic judicial reforms will also help resolve the over litigation that permeates Israeli society.

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