Israel's top official warns about sharp decline of public’s trust

The Zionist regime President Reuven Rivlin, who will decide who forms the next government, expressed concern about the state of Israeli democracy on Monday in a speech to high school civics students, as part of the presentation of the Israel Democracy Institute’s annual Democracy Index.

Rivlin noted last week’s riots in Washington and said democracies around the world are suffering. But he said action needed to be taken immediately in Israel, long before the March 23 election of the next Knesset.

In IDI’s comprehensive poll, led by Prof. Tamar Hermann, the institutions the public viewed more favorably were the IDF, the president, the courts and the police, whose support was found to be deteriorating. The public expressed the least confidence in the political parties, followed by the Knesset, the government and the press.

“Over the past two years, in which there were endless elections, the trust of the citizens in the institutions of the rule of law eroded more and more,” Rivlin lamented. “There are those who choose to criticize the police or the legal system or to be angry at me as president, but at the bottom of the list of the public's trust in the institutions of the state is not the president or the IDF but the Knesset, which is supposed to be a fortress of democracy, and the parties.”

He said he was especially disturbed by data indicating that more than 50% of respondents said it did not matter who they voted for.

There has been a significant decline in public trust in the Supreme Court, from 52% in June to 42% in October. Ranked next are the police (41% in October), and the media (32% in October). At the bottom of the list are the government (25%) and the Knesset, in which public trust collapsed from 32% in June to 21% in October.

Moreover, trust in political parties also took a severe blow.