I confess to breathing a sigh of relief when I first learned of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s June 5 decision to appoint Knesset member Amir Ohana, a member of his Likud party, as Israel's next justice minister. Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich, the self-proclaimed candidate from the United Right, had said on June 3 that he wanted to take Israel back to the days of King David. Thus, the appointment of Ohana two days later enabled Israel to sound the all-clear siren, for now. 

Over the years, Ohana has made his stance toward the Supreme Court clear. We know it to be a negative attitude in a country without a written constitution or a second house of parliament and where the Supreme Court is the only institution that can stand up to the executive and legislative branches. Ohana's perspective is shared by many on the Israeli right who consider the power of the Supreme Court excessive. On the other hand, Ohana has not suggested turning Israel into a country governed by Jewish religious law. That alone makes him preferable to Smotrich.

Ohana undoubtedly belongs to the school of thought that cannot understand how a particular group of unelected people — a Council of Sages, in his words — can be allowed to impose limits on duly elected officials. At one point, he went so far as to assert that Israel was nothing less than a “dictatorship of the Supreme Court.” It would therefore be for the best if someone who holds such a position as well as the reins of the Justice Ministry were to leave office after elections in September. I hope the voting results make such an outcome inevitable. Until then, however, there are a few signs that the damage Ohana might be able to do is limited.

Upon being sworn in to the Knesset in December 2015, Ohana made a point of describing himself as “a Jew, an Israeli, a Mizrahi [of Middle Eastern origins], a gay, a Likudnik, a security hawk, a liberal and a supporter of the free market.” Unlike Knesset member Moti Yogev of HaBayit HaYehudi, Ohana has never insinuated that he wants to take a bulldozer to the Supreme Court building. Furthermore, he is a lawyer, so one can safely assume that he has no such plans. As a gay man, he is well aware of how much the LGBT community owes to Supreme Court rulings, without which Israel would not have recognized same-sex marriages conducted overseas and would not legally acknowledge the children he and his partner adopted overseas because they are a gay couple. There is not a chance that a majority of the Knesset — whose members are elected, unlike judges — would allow such.