If you ask longtime Likud member and former justice minister Dan Meridor for his assessment of Israel’s current state of affairs, he’ll respond that the country is in crisis over its existence as a democracy. The struggle is no longer between Right and Left but between those who respect democratic norms and values and those who do not.
Meridor, 78, is a vocal opponent of the current Likud-led government and was active in protests against its judicial reforms. But, for most of his career, he was a key figure in the Likud and in the Israeli Right in general.
The son of longtime Menachem Begin political associate Eliyahu Meridor, Dan began his political career as government secretary in the 1980s, under prime ministers Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. He served as justice minister between 1988 and 1992 and was responsible for the passing of the influential Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.
He later served as finance minister, intelligence and atomic energy minister, and deputy prime minister. Dan Meridor also served as head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
The Jerusalem Post met with Meridor at the beginning of April in his spacious, light-filled apartment in Rehavia, Jerusalem.
Democracy is about more than majority rule
According to Meridor, democracy isn’t just about majority rule. Leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin also enjoy the support of the majority, but Russia is not a democracy, he said.
The defining characteristic of a modern democracy is that the focus is on the individual and not the group or nation, he said. As such, modern democracy also includes individual rights and freedoms, which protect the individual from abuses of power, and is “no less important” than majority rule, he said.
THE STATE of Israel was originally a relatively unique case since there were very few structural checks on the government’s power, and the government could do almost whatever it pleased. To balance that power, there developed in Israel a tradition of a strong judiciary, whose independence and activist approach was established in the first years of the state. Later, the independence of the attorney-general also became an important check on the government, Meridor explained.
Throughout Israel’s history, there has been a basic consensus on two things: rules of the game and core values.
In general, even without a constitution, 90% of Israeli politicians from both sides spoke the language of democracy, rule of law, and human rights, he said. The only factions who did not speak this language were Kahanists [Jewish supremacists] on one hand, and extremist [religious anti-Zionist] groups, such as Neturei Karta, on the other, he said.
Within this framework, there was room for argument over policy – on national security, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, economic policy, and more.
Today, however, the argument is no longer Right vs Left but between those who uphold the values of democracy and those who do not.
Meridor was among the members of the Likud who outlawed the Kahanist parties in the late 1980s. Today, however, Kahane’s followers are setting the tone in government, and “racism has become part of the discourse.”
The attempts to fire Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara were connected to this anti-democratic trend, Meridor noted. Baharav-Miara, according to Israeli legal tradition, decided for the government what was legal and what was not. Rather than attempt to fire her for blocking numerous government initiatives on the grounds that she was “a contrarian,” the government should ask itself why it keeps attempting to break the law, he said.
The attempts to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar were also part of this picture, and were “very dangerous” from a democratic perspective, Meridor said. It was obvious that Bar bore responsibility for the October 7 massacre by Hamas; but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself had stated, in its aftermath, that he would continue to work with Bar.
According to Meridor, it was clear that the renewed urgency to fire Bar was related to the developments in the Qatargate investigation, in which Netanyahu’s close aides were suspected of providing PR services to Qatar while serving the prime minister’s office. Firing Bar would essentially give Netanyahu immunity from criminal accountability and put him above the law, since any future prosecutor or investigator would be susceptible to being fired, Meridor said.
Qatar was a “schizophrenic case.” On the one hand, it had financed radical Islam, including Hamas, which acted violently against Israel; on the other hand, Israel’s official policy was to collaborate with Qatar – and Israeli officials traveled to Qatar frequently. Still, the fact that officials close to Netanyahu allegedly had business ties to Qatar outside of their official roles was “strange” and needed to be investigated, he said.
While democratic backsliding has occurred in Hungary, Turkey, Poland, South America, and other places. Meridor said that he had not believed it could also happen in Israel. Nevertheless, “It is happening. It is very hard and painful to say it, but it is happening,” he said.
He acknowledged that democracies were weakening all over the world, but said that he was not a “historical determinist” and therefore considered that the problem began with leadership.
While he did not mention Netanyahu by name, Meridor decried leaders who, rather than setting out a clear vision, adjust their position to match public sentiment. In Meridor’s opinion, political leaders are supposed to steer their citizens away from acting according to default “basic urges,” which are often irrational and sometimes violent. Today’s leadership in Israel utilizes social media to speak directly to citizens, but instead of leading, it develops its positions according to public sentiment, he said.
Leadership is also part of the solution, he said. Meridor expressed the hope that – if the 2026 election takes place freely, fairly, and on time – a new government will arise that will be a “return to Zionism” as opposed to the current “racism and extremism.”
He said that he would assist potential leaders who sought his opinions, but he also criticized some of the opposition’s leaders who, he said, cared too much about polls and were not clear enough in expressing their “flagship” policies that would serve as an alternative.
ASKED HOW October 7 had affected his views on Israeli security, Meridor’s answer was unusual.
The strategy of “containing Hamas” and attempting to reach long-term ceasefires was not inherently wrong, he said. Over the years, and under different prime ministers, Israel had refrained from conquering the Gaza Strip and eliminating Hamas after it took over there in 2007. This seems to have been a consensus, perhaps due to the lack of a plan as to what would happen afterward.
However, coming to terms with the existence of an extremist entity on its border required that Israel hold frequent “risk assessments” to ensure that the situation was stable. Such “risk assessments” are the full responsibility of the prime minister and the National Security Cabinet – who, in this regard, have been a “total failure,” Meridor said.
Weekly assessments, for example, could likely have conjured enough discussion to decide to take precautions against a Hamas invasion. Even the smallest measures, such as reinforcing the border with two battalions, could have made an enormous difference.
He agreed that part of the problem had been the strengthening of Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority. The PA is far from perfect and continues to pay salaries to prisoners who committed acts of terror. But since Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas took over in 2005, the PA has not been actively involved in terror. Israel should have seriously engaged with the US proposal to bring the PA into the Gaza Strip on the condition that the authority underwent reforms, Meridor said.
The conflict with the Palestinians was also connected to the threat to Israeli democracy, he said.
Following the 1967 Six Day War, two camps developed – the “Right,” or “national camp,” calling for the annexation of the West Bank and full citizenship to Palestinians; and the “Left,” which preferred the two state-solution.
It was clear to all, however, that annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians full rights was not an option. That would have been “racism, not Zionism,” Meridor said. He quoted Begin, who said that such a step would have turned Israel into “Rhodesia.”
He explained that today, the possibility of annexation without citizenship is considered legitimate, and this, too, is a threat to democracy.
His voice quivered slightly as he said, “This is the project of a lifetime, from a Jewish – and not just a democratic – perspective. We had built something enormous and wonderful here, with unparalleled success and under difficult conditions. We were proud of it, and I was proud of it my entire life.”
Meridor concluded, “Can one be proud of what is happening today? One cannot. I want to bring us back from the dark alley… to the beautiful and successful track.” ■
