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| Left wing protest against judicial reform in Tel Aviv last night (VIN) |
I would bet that not one in ten of those tens of thousands of Israelis who have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s proposed judicial reforms has the slightest clue as to the legal and jurisprudential issues involved. And that is even more true of foreign dignitaries, from President Biden to French president Emmanuel Macron, who have urged Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to go slow on judicial reform.No high court in the world has arrogated to itself anything like the power that the Israeli High Court claims. It functions as a super-ombudsman over the government, and at times as a super-legislature. Nearly thirty years ago, Maariv editor Shmuel Schnitzer wrote of the Court, “Elections have become a mere formality. Learned men of elevated principles have emptied democracy of any meaning.”
The “constitutional revolution” that Justice Aharon Barak declared in 1992, said former minister and Israel Prize laureate in law Amnon Rubenstein, caused Israel’s High Court to be viewed as the most activist supreme court in the world: “[I]n many respects, the High Court under Barak has become an alternate government.”
No, that is not me saying this. It is Jonathan Rosenblum in his latest column in Mishpacha Magazine. It should be noted that Israel’s prime minister has agreed to President Herzog’s request to not go forward with a bill that would drastically change the balance of power in Israel – switching it from the near unfettered control of Israel’s self selecting Supreme Court to the near unfettered control of Israel’s elected Knesset. I’m glad to see that a possible compromise is in the offing. Since either of the two extremes practically guarantees a sort of dictatorship by one branch of the Israeli government or the other.
As noted in a recent post, there is not a doubt in my mind that judicial reform is in order. There is also no doubt in my mind that the ‘remedy’ as originally proposed is as bad as the ‘disease’. That is the beauty of compromise. You generally get the best of both worlds that way. Or at least a balanced government where one side doesn’t contrrol everything.
Which brings me to the ongoing protests – mostly by the left - against judicial reform. (It should be no surprise that opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid took advantage of the misguided outrage represented by these protesters and joined them).
The fact that the bill to overhaul the judiciary has been tabled at the request of Israel’s President Herzog seems to be lost on them. Either that or they don’t care. That’s because they have their own agenda which is demonstrated by how various protestors demonstrated – as Described by VIN:
(One) protester dressed up as prime minister Netanyahu in handcuffs, a reference to his numerous legal issues.
In Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, dozens of women are seen dressed up as handmaids from Margaret Atwood’s book “The Handmaid’s Tale” about a fictional future society that oppresses women and forces them to be handmaids of males. The women fear that the judicial reforms could roll back feminist rights in Israel with the courts unable to protect those rights effectively.
It’s pretty clear what’s going on here. It is the left that is behind all of this. Their opposition to judicial reform is really about opposition to the values of the Torah that contradict their more ‘enlightened’ secular view of morality. They do not for example want to lose the right to choose abortion on demand for any reason – or no reason at all. These are the kind of rights the current Supreme Court fully controls. Any legislation against full abortion rights would be struck down as ‘unconstitutional’. Despite the fact that there is no constitution at all.
I cannot emphasize enough that Judaism can’t be defined by Jewish culture that is not somehow based on the Torah. Or defined by the mere fact that people living there identify as Jews without the slightest hint about what makes them Jewish and thereby distinctive from non Jews. A religion without religious principles is no religion at all.
What Jews did hundreds of years ago culturally is not what they do today. Yiddish theater for example did not exist until relatively recent times. Judaism must be defined the things that were always a part of its culture. And that means base Halacha like Shabbos and Kashrus. Which has been with us and defining us for thousands of years.
Unfortunately the secular left does not see it this way. They have been victimized by the lack of a proper Jewish education and instead have been indoctrinated to see greater value in general culture than in their own biblical heritage. They see gay marriage (for example) of greater moral value than the prohibition against gay sex.
This is what those protests are all about, in my humble opinion. Although I’m sure there is a small percentage of liberal observant Jews involved in those protests as well, I’m pretty sure the vast majority of them are from the secular left.
However, as I also said recently, it is important to add the following. Religious coercion is not the way to go about changing how secular Jews think. That would be counterproductive. Even members of the Charedi parties have acknowledged that. If I recall correctly it was Charedi Knesset member Moshe Gafni that opposed legislation that would have shut down maintenance work on Jerusalem’s Light Rail on Shabbos. He said that this legislation would generate even more secular hatred of Charedim than already exists.
The new far right government also opposed legislation that would take away rights already granted to the LGBTQ community. And a bill submitted that would criminalize immodest dress at the Kotel was also tabled by the new government. So that all this angst by the secular left about religious coercion is premature. Unfortunately the protests continue unabated as though none of these things have happened.
The left needs to step back and take a look at what is actually happening and not what they think is happening.
The possibility of judicial reform in Israel seems to be consuming western democracies too. Virtually al of them have been critical if Israel’s attempt at doing it. But I think Jonathan is right. Their criticism is ill conceived. I doubt they realize how dictatorial Israel’s supreme court has been since the mid 90s. If they did understand it, they would agree that it needs to be reformed. To put it the way Jonathan does:
CRUCIAL TO ANY understanding of the current Israeli legal system is recognition that it is almost entirely the creation of one man, Aharon Barak, who served on the Court from 1977 until his mandatory retirement in 2006, and as Court president from 1995 to 2006. Thus, the current reform proposals are far from radical departures, but rather an effort to return the High Court to its role over the first nearly four decades of Israel’s existence.
To which I say, amen! Israel’s return to a balanced democracy should be supported by everyone.