ISRAEL (IINO)
1/22/23
Straight talk: Israel’s need for judicial reform Barry Shaw
Israel’s court rules on economic, security, political and demographic issues. And it is chosen undemocratically. Op-ed.
Jan 19, 2023, 11:51 AM (GMT+2) – Much has been said and written recently about Israel’s new government pushing judicial reforms.
The incoming government views past decisions taken by Israel’s Supreme Court as undemocratic and autocratic rulings which, they claim, have been politically biased interference in the business of government for several years.
The origins of their complaint stems from the intrusion of Judge Aharon Barak who became the President of the Supreme Court.
In Israel, the President of the Supreme Court is not elected to office. The “democratic process” for promotion to that position depends on years on the bench, seniority rather than competence.
The most senior justice is designated President of the Court, and the next senior justice becomes Deputy President.
Things changed when Aharon Barak, the senior in line, ascended to the presidency on the retirement of the previous President, Meir Shamgar, in 1995.
He became the most pro-active chief justice and his decisions were of a decidedly leftwing persuasion.
Barak was instrumental in expanding the power of the court and used it to reject certain laws passed by elected governments in Israel’s Knesset, usually those led by the Likud, although Israel has no constitution on which to base that rejection.
One non-political example:
Netanyahu fires Deri in accordance with Supreme Court ruling
The Shas Party leader will retain his title of vice premier after being stripped of his ministerial roles. Benjamin Netanyahu says he will seek “any legal way” for Deri to “continue to contribute to the State of Israel.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri in the Knesset.
(January 22, 2023 / JNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday the dismissal of Shas chairman Aryeh Deri from his ministerial positions.
The announcement follows last week’s Supreme Court ruling that Deri’s appointment was “unreasonable in the extreme” due to a prior tax fraud conviction.
In his letter of dismissal, Netanyahu wrote, “As you know, I decided to appoint you as deputy prime minister and minister of the interior and health with the approval of the majority of Knesset members due to the fact that I see you as an anchor of experience, wisdom and responsibility that are important to the State of Israel at all times, and especially at this time.”
The Supreme Court issued the ruling despite a Knesset amendment passed in December to allow Deri to serve as a minister. The amendment specified that a ban on persons serving as ministers for seven years if convicted of a criminal offense applies only to those serving active jail sentences. Deri was handed a suspended jail sentence as part of a plea bargain on tax fraud last February. The law had been unclear on whether the seven-year ban applied to suspended sentences.
“This unfortunate decision ignores the will of the people, as reflected in the great trust that the public gave to the people’s representatives…when it was clear to everyone that you would serve in the government as a senior minister,” wrote Netanyahu.
Esther Hayut’s war against democracy Caroline Glick
The Supreme Court president has transformed the court into a super-legislator, empowered to dictate the terms of laws to the people’s elected representatives, based on the values of the justices.
(January 22, 2023 / JNS) Friday morning brought the first piece of good news from Israel’s Supreme Court in years. Yediot Ahronot’s top headline declared that Supreme Court President Esther Hayut intends to resign if the Knesset passes Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s judicial reform package.
Hayut’s stewardship of the court over the past six years has been disgraceful and destructive to both the court and the State of Israel. The Hayut court dropped even the pretense of judiciousness. Hayut cast the court on a course of ideological radicalism and politicization that has no parallel anywhere in the world.
Hayut’s radicalism was well known in the legal community. She wasn’t then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked’s first choice for the court’s top slot. But Shaked had no say in the matter. Israel’s current judicial selection process protects justices from accountability to the public and its elected representatives. Supreme Court justices have a veto over nominees to the court, so everyone who gets the nod from the Judicial Selection Committee, including ostensibly conservative jurists, must embrace the organizational culture and values of the sitting justices.
The justices also control who serves as president. Under the current selection system, the president is the senior associate justice when the sitting president reaches retirement age. By controlling who gets appointed when, the justices are able to predetermine the identity of the president. In 2017, Shaked tried but failed to cancel the seniority selection process, and Hayut was promoted.
Outside observers were exposed to Hayut’s radicalism immediately before she took office. She set it out in a speech before the Bar Association in September 2017. Not one for understatement, Hayut compared herself and her colleagues to God.
[Ed.: (“God” – who most of us will remember from the last chapter. ) IINO’s not-so Supreme Court has a superiority complex...]
HE WHO GRABS TOO MUCH MAY LOSE EVERYTHING By Yonoson Rosenblum
No government action or failure to act was beyond the purview of the Barak Court
JANUARY 17, 2023 – IN 2017, I was invited to participate in a panel in Palo Alto on the topic “The Majority Votes, a Minority Rules.” The minority thus fingered was the Israeli chareidi community, which is why I was invited at the last minute. I began, however, by stating that the only minority that rules in Israel is the country’s High Court. That has been a regular theme since my first piece in the Jerusalem Report in 1997, entitled, if memory serves, “The Man Who Would Be King,” on Court President Aharon Barak and his judicially declared “constitutional revolution.” Nearly one hundred columns and long essays followed on related topics.
The thrust of many of those pieces was to demonstrate how anomalous the Israeli legal system is when compared to other stable democracies, and how anti-democratic those anomalies are. In a critical 2007 review of A Judge in a Democracy by Aharon Barak, who as Court president single-handedly established Israel’s High Court as the most powerful in the world, Judge Richard Posner, one of America’s leading legal thinkers as a professor and judge, concurred with the earlier judgment of Judge Robert Bork that Barak had established “a world record for judicial hubris.” (Barak’s tenure as Court president ended in 2006, but his successors were all his acolytes, and the “constitutional revolution” continues to rest on his arguments.)
Traditionally, Posner wrote, democracy has been defined in procedural terms: “a system of government in which the key officials stand for election at relatively short intervals, and are thus accountable to the citizenry.” That, however, is merely “formal democracy,” according to Barak. His interest is in “substantive democracy,” which encompasses all sorts of “human rights” and requires an independent judiciary to discover those rights and enforce them. Those “human rights” go far beyond the political rights — freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, and freedom of petition — essential to a functioning democracy.
In Barak’s view, the world is filled with law — i.e., there is no human action that is not subject to a legal norm, and judges are empowered to determine those norms. In furtherance of that vision, Barak did away with traditional legal doctrines of standing (who may bring a suit) and justiciability (what subjects are appropriate for judicial determination). He boldly declared that even call-up orders in wartime are not beyond the scope of judicial review.
RUSSIA GIVING ARMS TO IRAN by Micha Gefen
January 19, 2023 – While it’s no surprise that Russia and Iran are working together, their relationship has now reached a new level.
Russia is now sending fighter jets to Iran. This is on the back of Iran supplying Russia with assassin drones for its war in Ukraine. Russia is set to prepare a new offensive in Ukraine with 1.5 million troops.
The alliance between Russia and Iran is dangerous for Israel as it strengthens the Mullahs noose around the Holy Land.
Iran is preparing for a final assault on Israel and with Putin’s help Iran becomes even more dangerous for Israel.
Palestinians Beat and Pepper Spray Elderly Christian, Stone Coptic Church in Jaffa by Raymond Ibrahim
01/19/2023 – Though unreported in Western languages, another instance of hostility for Christians and their churches in the Holy Land recently occurred.
On Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2022, a group of Palestinian “youth” assaulted a Coptic Christian church in Jaffa. After hurling stones and empty glass bottles at St. Anthony’s Church, they stormed it and savagely beat Fr. Michael Mansour, its priest.
While loudly cursing Christianity and personally insulting him, they pepper sprayed the elderly clergyman.
The same Palestinian “youth” proceeded to curse and hurl stones at a Latin church in the same vicinity.
Discussing this incident in a later interview, Fr. Michael, who has lived and been serving his Coptic flock in Jaffa for some four decades, said that he had felt “dizzy and short of breath” after being pepper sprayed, and had collapsed, but thankfully recovered. He prayed for peace and calm to be restored, and asked that God may shed his grace on his assailants.
[Ed.: You may wonder why I posted this under IINO, instead of ‘ISLAM’. The reason is that it is IINO to blame for these thugs living inside our country, when they shouldn’t be. “They MUST go!” Capiche?]
