 I'm Mark Shklav, the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we're going across the sea to Israel to talk with Israeli attorney Amit Akko. Amit is a founding partner of the law firm of Kantor and Akko, where his practice focuses on Israeli immigration law, which opens doors to foreign nationals to come into Israel. I've asked Amit to discuss life, law, and current events in Israel. Welcome Amit, good to see you, how are you? Hi, good to see you too, hi Mark. And I'm from Israel, everything is good. If I can say aloha as well to you. Thank you, aloha, yes, good. We say shalom. Shalom, okay, shalom and aloha. Very good, I like that. Okay, before we get started, and a lot of questions about life and law and current events, let's take a look at a map of Israel and please tell me where you live and what's it like to live in Israel. Right, so, well, this country that you now see on the map, it's only established in 1948. And where I live is actually in the center of the heart of Israel, which is the city of Tel Aviv, a very vibrant city on the beach. And it's actually, you can see it on the beach there in the middle of the map. And from there, if you want to go to the borders of Israel, it will take you 15 minutes. You see how narrow it is, 15 minutes with the car from east to west. And it will take three to four hours going up north and then south to Elat. So this is really a small country which I so proud of. Okay, well, that's interesting to know. It takes, yeah, that's almost like Oahu in a way, traveling around the size. Now, you practice law in Israel and briefly, what is the Israeli legal system based on? What is it? And you have a high court, explain what that is. Sure. So Israel was actually established in 1948 after the British have left the country of Palestine. And they left behind them the system of law, which is the British legal system, which is a bit different than the one that you know in the US. For example, we do not have any constitution in Israel. What we have is a set of legislations that actually touch all areas of life and criminal and administrative law. And the judges, what they do is they interpret the law when they see a case in front of them. So that is a bit interesting. And this is the English legal system that was imposed on us on 48. The system of law in Israel starts from the magistrate court. And then if you want to appeal against the decision of the magistrate court, you go to the district court and from there to the high court of justice. Now, the high court of justice, beside of being dealing with appeals from the district court, they also deal with judicial review, which we will touch a lot today because of some changes that we will be discussing a bit later, I assume. They deal the high court with every judicial review of individuals against decision of the government. Okay, so the high court is like our Supreme Court in the United States. Is that an accurate comparison? Well, I'm not that knowledgeable into your Supreme Court, but I assume yes, it's similar to that. Okay, now, yeah. I will tell you some other interesting stuff about the judicial system. We don't have jury like you have in the States. Okay, that's a difference, yeah. Now, yeah, I want to ask you, there have been a lot of new stories recently about the high court. But first of all, could you explain what the Israeli democracy is like, the government is like? What comparison there? How can you explain it to Americans? What the governmental system of Israel is like? Right, so in Israel, we have only one parliament and it's called the Knesset. Knesset is very old word that is being taken from our Bible and it means a parliament of 120 members. Now, this is a national wide proportional representation which means that all over the country in one day, everyone choose for a party. And those parties later, they divided the mandates between them which is allocated by the numbers of voters and then they form 120 people from several different parties. And this is like a direct vote for the Knesset, for the parliament. And so people don't vote for candidates per se, they vote for a party. Is that right? Correct, it's exactly right, yes. Okay, that's quite a bit different than we are used to here in the United States where we vote for candidates. Although I am sure the party affiliation plays an important role here also. But so that means if your party gets a substantial number of votes, who gets to represent you? How do you select the people? Actually what happened after the election, the president of Israel, we have a president as well. The president selects the member of the Knesset that have the most possibility to form a government which means that he can form a coalition of at least 61 members of parliament and together they form the government. So let's say for example, the leading party is the Likud now in Israel, they have, let's assume 40, they need another parties that together they have more than 21 members of parliament in order to form a government. So the government always should be more than 61 members of the parliament, otherwise they are falling in the next vote. So it must be 61 members. So that's what happened the last time, right? I mean the last election there was some type of a coalition formed, is that right? Correct, no, I mean it always happens, I mean always by somebody who can make a coalition. If not it goes to another member of the parliament that he will try to make a coalition and if he doesn't, and if he can't make it then we have another election. So basically if you will look into the politic maps between 2019 and 2022 now there were four general elections in the country because none of the parties could make a strong alliance with other parties to form a strong government. So the longest that there have been is one year and three months and this is the recent up until November this year when there was an election which Benjamin Netanyahu won for the eight time I think he is forming a government in Israel and but now we have, and this is the significance now the change, you have quite a strong coalition of that is made up from religious far right politic parties and the Likud of course which is his political party and this is for the first time since 2019 that there is a strong government. So how has that affected the climate or the political climate in Israel? I am guessing that when you do that form a kind of a coalition like that everybody gives in something and gets something. Is that accurate or how does it work and what is the current situation? Well, somebody calls with no offense the Turkish Bazaar because indeed as you have mentioned when he wants to make a coalition with the religious party for example they will demand and they know their power because he wants to be to form a government. So they demand a lot of budgets for religious organizations like schools, like high schools, yeshiva they call it. So definitely they want a lot of support to the religious parties and also there is another political demands of the far right parties which would like to have more powers towards Palestinians for example there are more nationalists and they are for example they want the West Bank to be inhabited by many Israeli Jewish people so that it will belong to Israel at the end. So this is, yeah I mean it caused a lot of contraversion now when there is a new government in the country. Well, yeah and I'd like to ask you I mean what has been the reaction to these changes or these actions within Israel within the citizens of Israel? How are the normal Israeli people feeling about this? You said the normal Israeli people there are no normal Israeli people to my opinion but let's leave that aside for a second. Yeah, I mean if as you have mentioned as we have discussed before actually almost half of the population is not voted for that government that's for sure. So they look into this new regime or the new government they look at it as very in a very threatened way because what actually happened from the beginning of this government they have decided that they would like to make some significant changes. One of them is in the high court which we have just touched before but they also would like to make a stronger police and to deal with demonstrator more harshly and there was a lot of demonstration in Israel since the beginning of this government but I assume that by the end of the day everything will come back to normality because this is part of the political game to go a little bit too much and then to negotiate and go to the middle again. So I believe that will be the same case and one study case should be the high court thing. Tell us more what is what's being proposed with respect to the high court? Right. So one of the fundamentals of our system is that you have the judiciary system and you have the army forces and you have also the Knesset which is the parliament and we need to balance between them and what happened in Israel and since the 80s in Israel since Aaron Barak was the high court, the president of the high court of justice, the right wing parties, they actually think that the high court intervened too much within the government decisions. And I would give an example. If something, I mean if the government for example make a decision that they do not want to provide a right to demonstrate for example. This is for you and me and the audience and I'm sure about it. This is an irrational decision. So if a citizen go to the high court of justice and they say they barred my right to demonstrate, the court will find it irrational decision. Now, what they would like to do now is to not, I mean, not to allow the courts making decision that against the government that are based on rationality because the other argument, their argument is that the government was elected and they are the one to make a decision on what is rational and what isn't a rational decision. So they want to limit the strength of the high court and many people are afraid of it a bit in Israel because they think that the government should be watched by the courts in a way. So this is only one example. The other example is that the right wing parties, what they want is to make a system whereby in case they don't like, I would say, or they don't agree with the high court decision, what they want to do is to overall the court decisions by a simple majority of 61. And again, many people see that as a very strong hazard towards the Israeli democracy. Because for example, if they will decide that no, you cannot tell somebody not to vote, it's irrational. Then they simply rule against it. And in a simple majority in the parliament, which is 61, they will make a decision to overrule the high court decision and then they will be able to not let people go on demonstration. So they're saying, don't be ridiculous, we will never do that. But what we are trying to do here is to change the law in such a way that will allow us to govern this country, which maybe they are right. I mean, naturally, obviously, half of the people agree with them. So this is now a big controversy in Israel and people go on demonstrating about it. This weekend in Tel Aviv, there are more than 100,000 people who are demonstrating. Yes, it is, wow, because bear in mind that Israel is a small country and our population is only 9.5 million. So it's not that big country and not a lot of citizens. So it's quite a lot. So for a rainy day, it's an issue that's still in controversy and still to be decided. There is some concern about the threat to democracy and you seem to be hopeful that it will be resolved appropriately without downside, hopefully. No, yes, I believe so. I believe so because, I mean, look at Israel. I mean, we've actually built a country from 48. We've gone through a lot of situation whereby there were demonstrations and people didn't agree with each other. But at the end of the day, I'm sure that we will know better how to navigate things and find the compromise that I think that politicians nowadays, they see that they have no choice but to get to it and not to use a lot of force in order to make changes. Do the changes slowly. Let me ask you, you talked about this proportional system of government where the party is really the one that gets the votes. Has there been any talk about changing that system or is that gonna be kept? Because it seems to me that when you don't vote for a particular candidate, but for a party, you're not quite sure who represents you. I mean, from my point of view, but has there been any talk about changing that at all? Definitely. I mean, actually, the system that I described before was the system that was all the time in the country up until 20 years ago, I think, that there was a change in the law and the people had two votes. One for a party and one for a leader. But that changes after six or seven years because this system didn't prove itself right. So we've tried that in Israel for a few years, one or two elections, I'm not sure. But then we found out that it's better to go for one party. But I think in light of the last five elections there might be a change in the future in relation to how the elections will be made and how the parliament will be ruled, to my opinion. Yeah, there might be a change in that. Okay, now I wanna ask you a little bit about your practice of law. And you help people, you open doors for people to come into Israel. Who is coming into Israel? And I mean, this also is affected, I think, by the political system and the government and the courts, people view these things. But who is looking to come into Israel? Who are you helping to come in? Okay, right. So let's talk about Israel first. Who is coming to the country? I'm always saying, and I always said that if there was no wars around Israel and there was no conflicts, like with the Palestinians, I think Israel is heaven for every person in the world. You can find what he's interested about in Israel. Say for example, if somebody is interested about history, there's so much history around, so much religious places for Muslims, for Christians, for Jewish people. I mean, for everyone, there is a places to see. If you were looking to the south, it's deserts. If you were looking the north and I say it's only three hours drive, you see it's like you see mountains and snow and there's a lot of beach and Jerusalem. It's amazing country. So a lot of tourists arrive to Israel. They come on pilgrimage and they come sometimes as independent to see the country. There's a lot of young people come to see the vibrant life in Tel Aviv, which is really 24-hour city and it's very friendly towards gay people and lesbians and straight people. Everyone is happy here. Okay, and also, yeah, yeah, yeah. And also there is the business community. Israel is actually very prosperous in terms of economics, in terms of industry and high tech and the nanotech and all types of high technology. So many people arrive to Israel in order to do business and they also come to work in Israel. And these are the population that our law firm assists in. So say for example, if a company needs to send people into the country to work within the research and development course or to work and to establish research facilities in Israel or to make even a power plant in Israel, those people need a work visa and our law firm which title corporate immigration law firm, we help them do the work visa in Israel to allow them to work in compliance, which is very important nowadays. Is it hard to get into Israel? I mean, is you have to pass some security laws or anything like that? Well, yeah, I mean, when you are entering and departing from the country, you're always subject to security profiling. The security agencies would like to know who the people that are coming to the country to see if it's dangerous to let them fly or fly in and fly out. So definitely there is the security aspect, but there's also the immigration aspect of it that they want to see that, I mean, because Israel is such a small population, they wanna see that there is no change of population by people coming in without a proper visa or without knowing exactly what they're coming to do. So yeah, if there are people who wants to come to Israel in order to look for a job like job seekers and such from Africa, most probably there will not be allowed in, like I think in many other countries in the world, not just from Africa, I'm saying from all over, but definitely there is a lot of scrutiny at the airport towards inbound passengers to see if they have the proper work visa or if they come to visit that indeed they are allowed to visit the country from security reasons. And last but not least, we have the Jewish people that Israel was based on the big, from the beginning on the, I mean, one of the reason for having the state of Israel is that it will become a home for the Jewish people. So in that respect, there is one of the fundamentals law in Israel is the law of return which allow every Jewish person in the world to come over to Israel and get the Israeli citizenship. Now, recently we've seen many new immigrants from Russia and from the Ukraine. And basically if you will look before, I mean, the state of Israel was actually born into bringing new Jewish people to build this country. So if my father came from Iraq and my mother, her family came from Europe after the Holocaust, this is a melting pot here. And so it's a home for the Jewish people and these are also people that are coming to Israel. When you see a crisis, for example, in France, where there was some racism over there, you see a big waves from France arriving to Israel, et cetera, et cetera. So that's how it goes. We go from crisis to crisis and more Jewish people come over to live in Israel, in our home country. That's interesting, especially the Ukraine-Russia issue. Now, you know, from our viewpoint here in the United States, we see Israel and if you look at the map again of Israel, it seems to be surrounded by different countries and not all of them, I think, are friendly. But what do you tell your prospective immigration clients about this? And are they concerned? Of course, when you look in the TV, I mean, what they see in the frame is the conflict normally. They don't see other things. So people are definitely worried if they see a demonstration, people throwing stones or whatever. But basically, I tell them that it's very peaceful to live in the country. I love living in Israel. Honestly, I have choices, but I made a decision that I want to live in this country because I believe this is our country and we will protect it and we love it and it's peaceful. I mean, most of the people, the experts that are coming into the country, they are surprised by how quiet it is, how peaceful it is. And it doesn't look as it looks in the news. That's on the one hand. And indeed, we are surrounded by Arab countries which don't wish us all the best, I think, if to put it mildly. We have Lebanon in the north with the Hezbollah over there that are controlled by Syria. We have, by Iran, sorry. We have Syria, which they have their own issues now that they need to solve, which surprisingly gave us some quiet. And we have Jordan that we made a peace with them, which is good. We also made a peace with Egypt in the past and Egypt was the strongest Arab country. So this is a bless. And we also, thanks to the United States, had the Abramov aircoards now, which is a peace with the UAE and Bahrain. And we are very happy and optimistic because of it. So we thank the US for that and for assisting us, keeping us so strong. And yeah, thank you. So it sounds, I mean, you are very hopeful and also the view of Israel from you who live there and deal with important immigration issues is very hopeful. And we have a minute left. What is the future of Israel in your mind? What do you see as what is going to happen to Israel despite all these conflicts internally, externally? What is your view? Exactly. I mean, we built our country exactly, as you said, despite all the hardship that we have around us. I believe that Israel will continue to grow and prosper in the next few years. I believe that the education, which is very important to us in Israel and the fact that the innovation will continue to progress. We see, I believe that advanced technology in water, for example, will assist the world in climate changes solutions. I believe that our stronger democratic country as a democracy will stay stable despite all the noises that are around. I think it's just a matter of time and everything will be resolved and will be a strong democracy and will continue to be that way. I believe that our stronger military assisted by the US a lot and we are thankful for that every day will continue to ensure the state security, which is very important with the border that we have, with the long border that we have. And I believe that when prosperity will come and the peace will come, hopefully, and we are looking forward to it really, with all our hearts, everyone in Israel wants to have peace with the Arab world and that will bring many, many tourists into the country and it would be a paradise. Well, that's a really interesting viewpoint of Israel, really as a homeland and that has survived and grown and prospered despite all the adverse adversity around it. And that's a great outlook. I appreciate hearing that from you and an inside look at Israel, Amit Akko, I really appreciate your time and talking with you today. Is there anything you'd like to close with? Yeah, I would just like to thank the audience and of course to you, Mark and to the amazing guy at Think Tech Hawaii for inviting me today and it was pleasure and I want to see you in Israel. All right, well, aloha and shalom. Shalom, shalom, bye. Thank you. Thank you, Amit, aloha.