A new bill in Israel, “which seeks to destroy academia, is another link in the Netanyahu government’s chain of destruction, aimed at strangling Israeli democracy” and turning “Israel into a dictatorship”.
16 Jan. 2026
Netanyahu’s Destructive Coalition Turns Its Attention to Crushing Academia
Jan 16, 2026 12:17
The bill to “strengthen transparency and public oversight of the Council for Higher Education in Israel” has nothing to do with transparency or public oversight. Its purpose is to eliminate the independence of Israel’s higher education system and fully subordinate it to the government. This is another route, one of many, by which the regime coup seeks to crush every entity that safeguards independence – from the judiciary to the civil service and from the media and the world of culture. Academia is also in the crosshairs.
On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation is scheduled to debate the draft law. Its advancement means just one thing: The government is determined to turn Israel into a dictatorship.
The bill submitted by MK Avichay Buaron (Likud) excels in its debauchery of the language. “It is important to maintain the professionalism and independence of the Council for Higher Education in Israel,” Buaron claimed, while in fact advancing precisely the elimination of both these characteristics.
The bill would dissolve the council in its current composition, and give the education minister broad powers in appointing a new council, “so that it can express and promote the worldview of every education minister’s voters.” The council’s professional echelon will also not survive: The minister will be able to hire and to fire at will – or whim – senior officials in the council and its planning and budgeting committee, who manage an annual budget of around 15 billion shekels ($4.8 billion). Thus, another regulator will be sacrificed on the altar of politicians’ lust for power.
In Buaron’s vision, the council, more political and “straightened” than ever, will become the supreme administrator of Israeli academia. All institutions of higher education will be subordinated to it and will lose their academic and administrative independence, which is (still) enshrined in law. Failure to comply with the directives of the government-controlled body will trigger an automatic budget cut, depending on the duration of the “violation.” To destroy any remnants of academic autonomy, Buaron also suggests that with regard to matters the government designates as having “national importance,” it could expropriate the council’s powers and do as it sees fit.
Since its enactment in 1958, the Council for Higher Education in Israel Law has sought to uphold the fundamental principle of separation between the government and academia, based on the understanding that a strong and thriving system of higher education must be founded on research excellence and long-term professional considerations, not shortsighted political interests. It is the latter that Buaron wants: to give the government absolute control of academia. The government will determine research priorities, allocate the resources as it desires and cut the budgets of noncompliant institutions.
Buaron’s bill, which seeks to destroy academia, is another link in the Netanyahu government’s chain of destruction, aimed at strangling Israeli democracy.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
