How many lies can one person tell in six minutes? If this ever becomes a sports competition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could win a gold medal based on his interview Tuesday with CNN’s Jake Tapper. The U. S. network shared a six-minute clip of the interview, during which Tapper asked Netanyahu about his government’s plan to weaken the Israeli judiciary. Tapper asked several smart questions. He quoted former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s criticism of the plan ; mentioned that even stalwart Israel and Netanyahu defender Alan Dershowitz has come out strongly against it ; and confronted Netanyahu over the fact that he is promoting the plan while his own corruption trial is ongoing. Netanyahu, in response, lied on several key points. . . ‘Three judges sit and choose’ The most glaring and obvious lie was Netanyahu’s claim that in Israel, a panel of three judges controls judicial appointments, including Supreme Court justices. Netanyahu compared this imaginary system to the U. S. process of judicial appointments and managed to get a nod of agreement from Tapper. In reality, though, the Israeli appointment system is not controlled exclusively by the judges, but instead by a committee in which politicians, judges and the Israel Bar Association are all represented – and no side has the upper hand. This committee has faced a lot of criticism in recent years and there is definitely a strong argument to be made in favor of reforming it. However, Netanyahu’s proposal would give complete power over all judicial appointments to the government – a stark change from the current situation in which politicians, judges and lawyers must seek consensus candidates. Netanyahu tried to convince Tapper that he is merely importing the U. S. model of appointing justices to Israel, his body language seemingly asking: “How can anyone be against that?” What he “forgot” to mention is that in the United States, there is a clear separation between the executive branch and the legislative branch. This does not exist in Israel, where the governing coalition usually controls the Knesset. In the United States, the Senate, which approves judicial nominations, is often controlled by the opposite party to the one in the White House. In addition, senators are elected on a regional basis, representing specific states. In Israel, under Netanyahu’s plan, the government would nominate judges and have the ultimate power to approve them. There are no checks and balances of the kind that exists in the U. S. system. Tapper mentioned Dershowitz’s opposition to Netanyahu’s plan. It would have been good to quote the legal scholar’s specific advice to Israelis on the issue of judicial nominations, which he made in a recent interview with Haaretz. He called the U. S. nomination process “a disaster” that has “completely politicized the Supreme Court,” and begged Israelis to “copy from us our checks and balances, not our failures. ” ‘What about Canada?’ The issue on which Tapper pressed Netanyahu most was the “override clause,” and for good reason. This proposal would give the smallest possible Knesset majority, 61 lawmakers, the power to override any Supreme Court decision, creating a reality in which there would be no limitation on the powers of the government. If, for example, the government wanted to ban gay people from sitting in restaurants, confiscate property from Israelis with certain political views or shut down Haaretz newspaper, and the Supreme Court ruled those decisions illegal, the smallest possible majority in the Knesset could reinstate them and there would be no protection for those whose rights have been trampled. Netanyahu responded by saying that Canada also has an override mechanism. However, he ignored the fact that Canada has a constitution guaranteeing basic rights and freedoms (Israel doesn’t have a constitution); that Canada’s override clause has specific limitations and constraints, while his suggestion is much broader; and that there are provincial legislatures in Canada that have varying degrees of influence and independence, whereas in Israel the government would be all-powerful if this plan became law. ‘This has nothing to do with my trial’ Early in the interview, Tapper confronted Netanyahu with his own past quotes in favor of a strong, independent and undeterred Supreme Court, and asked why has he changed his mind. After Netanyahu claimed that he has not changed his mind on the subject, Tapper asked the inevitable question, addressing the large elephant in the room that so many pundits and journalists try to ignore: Netanyahu’s own corruption trial. The prime minister immediately responded that there is no connection between his government’s efforts to weaken the judiciary and the fact that his own fate lies in the hands of three judges at the Jerusalem District Court. But Netanyahu’s justice minister and the man pushing forward the plan, Yariv Levin , has said otherwise. He told the Knesset two weeks ago that Netanyahu’s indictment “contributed to a very broad public understanding that there are failures that need to be corrected” in the judicial system. Levin, to his credit, is a true believer, a lifelong ideological opponent of judicial review who has been dreaming of this moment for years. The man who has completely changed his mind on the judicial question is Netanyahu, and that happened only after the State of Israel decided to put him on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. As his supporter Dershowitz told Haaretz, “He was right back then and he’s wrong now. ” ‘There are safeties’ At some point in the interview, tired of trying to provide details, Netanyahu simply stated that there are many safety provisions in his plan that will protect the rights of Israeli citizens and limit the government’s power. He didn’t mention any, though, and for good reason: there simply aren’t any. The proposed law is written in such a way that shuts down every possible loophole and potential opening for the courts to intervene in cases where the government will harm the rights of Israelis. It is not just the override clause with the smallest possible majority (some critics of the plan have suggested instead an override clause that requires a larger majority and forces the government to recruit support from opposition lawmakers in order to cancel Supreme Court decisions). It is the combination of that major change together with giving the government absolute control over judicial appointments and requiring a majority of 12 (out of 15) Supreme Court justices to strike down any legislation to begin with. Combine these three changes and you get a Supreme Court handpicked by the government, that can only conduct judicial review if 80% of its justices agree, and even then, can see its decision overridden by the smallest possible majority in the Knesset. There definitely are safety provisions in the plan – all of them working in favor of entrenching the powers of the government. ‘I’m willing to hear counteroffers’ Tapper, who seemed at times genuinely worried about the direction all this is going, tried more than once to get Netanyahu to say that he’s willing to soften the plan and find a compromise with the opposition. Netanyahu, reluctantly, said he is “willing to hear counteroffers. ” This quote follows the long tradition of Netanyahu saying nice things in English to foreign audiences and doing the opposite in Israel. There is no lack of counteroffers to discuss: softer and more balanced versions of a possible judicial reform that many opposition lawmakers could actually offer their support for. Netanyahu and his far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies won the Israeli election fair and square last November. No one expects them to just maintain the status quo. But the legislation they are currently promoting is extreme and unbalanced, and could easily be replaced with a more consensus-seeking alternative if they wanted. In fact, on Monday, a day before CNN aired the Netanyahu interview, Israeli media reported that Supreme Court President Esther Hayut has offered to begin talks with the government over the need for judicial reforms. She asked, however, that in order to facilitate this dialogue, the current legislation be put on hold. Netanyahu’s coalition refused. But that didn’t stop him from telling Tapper he is open to dialogue. .