Thousands of Israelis again took to the streets in mass protests Monday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government successfully passed just a handful of the wide-ranging judicial reforms it had previously launched. this year.
But a dispassionate analysis of the perhaps unprecedented civil war now plaguing the Jewish state leads to certain conclusions. That is, the acerbic backlash has nothing to do with substantive separation of powers issues or details of constitutional theory, it has everything to do with the left. An insatiable personal distaste for Prime Minister Netanyahu and a deep-seated cultural unease about the more nationalistic and religious direction Israel is currently heading. (Related: Ian Howarth: Outdated anti-Semitism lurks behind left-wing hatred of Israeli leaders)
For the first 45 years after the founding of modern Israel in 1948, the Jewish state operated according to the British governance model. That is, there was no written constitution, but a judicial system based on parliamentary primacy and subordinated common law. To this day, Israel does not have a written constitution, but that began to change in the early 1990s when former Israeli Supreme Court President Aharon Barak self-declared a so-called “constitutional revolution.”
By snapping his fingers, Barack displayed powers to the Israeli Supreme Court that no other judicial court around the world has, even though there is no legal basis for doing so.
These powers include, among other things, the power to hear any matter at any time and for any reason, no matter how transparent it is and regardless of the legal “position” of the plaintiff bringing the case. From judicial review under Israel’s 13 quasi-constitutional “fundamental laws” to judicial nullity based on highly subjective findings of “unreasonableness,” for virtually any reason, any law, policy, or even ministerial or Ability to overturn even ministerial appointments. and the nepotistic power to veto the judge’s own successor due to the peculiar composition of Israel’s judicial selection committee.
Anyone with a vague knowledge of comparative constitutionalism, let alone the American constitutionalism advocated in the Federalist Papers and ratified by the U.S. Constitution, will notice a clear problem here. .
Judge Robert H. Bork was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, but his nomination was derailed by the assassination of Senator Ted Kennedy. I have written In his 2003 book, Intimidating Virtue, he states: “The pride of place in the international judicial transformation of a democratic government rests not with the United States or Canada, but with the State of Israel. It is establishing an unrivaled authority.” And indeed, in the two decades since Bork made such an observation, the situation has deteriorated significantly.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party and other right-wing allies made reform of the tyrannical left-wing Israeli Supreme Court a key campaign pillar ahead of last November’s Jewish national elections, resulting in: A conservative coalition was born with a majority of 64 out of 120 seats. in the Knesset, the parliament of Israel. The coalition has implemented a wide range of measures, from amending the composition of the judicial selection committee, to adding a hotly contested Knesset “null clause” clause, to reducing the binding power of Israel’s tyrannical “attorney general”. proceeded with reform measures.
But amid a national meltdown of secularists and the left, demonstrators shut down countless highways, threatened reservists to not serve, and drained billions of dollars of investment money out of the country. But Prime Minister Netanyahu said the country was collapsing, with the country’s only international airport temporarily closed due to strikes. Withdrawn in late March.
More recently, in an attempt to save face and prove that a coalition of conservative parliaments representing an increasingly conservative nation could pass something To expose Barack’s judicial Frankenstein, the government has argued that the Israeli Supreme Court should criticize laws, policies, ministers/ministers for the highly subjective reason that the laws/policies/appointments are somehow “irrational”. It passed a very narrow bill that codified that appointments could not be revoked.Horrible media misinformation aside, it that’s all Parliament voted on the matter earlier this week.
The “reasonableness” law is just one part of a broad package of reforms launched earlier this year. Moreover, the notion that courts—especially in an unconstitutional society presumed to be premised on British parliamentary supremacy—can be invalidated Any Opposing a government law or action on the grounds that the law or action is “unreasonable” is utterly incomprehensible. For example, judicial review in the context of the U.S. Constitution requires proper jurisdiction, a legitimate plaintiff “position,” and (most relevant here) judicial avenues. written Laws, such as constitutional, federal, state, and regulatory laws. (Related: Hammer: Bibi Netanyahu is back, his victory speaks to Israelis’ biggest concern)
Surprisingly, Israel’s Supreme Court has already said it will consider legal complaints against “reasonableness” laws, a farcical situation in which a judicial court tries a bill that strips it of its own jurisdiction in a society without a constitution. will fall into It’s clearly insanity.
Tragically, the Israeli Supreme Court is not the only one to be outraged over the government’s streamlined common-sense “rationality” law. The Israeli left is utterly deaf and utterly oblivious to the stark difference between the sweeping reforms undertaken earlier this year and the smaller legislation passed this week.
Reservists still threaten not to do military service, capital still flees the Jewish state’s thriving high-tech industry, anarchists still block highways, protesters still block MPs from entering parliament. Trying to. It’s as if nothing has changed.
The obvious explanation is that the national runaway of the Israeli left and the international runaway of the world left have nothing to do with actual legal change. Indeed, over the past few years, key liberal Knesset members such as Yair Lapid have expressed their interest in regaining legitimate legislative powers wrongfully stolen by the Israeli Supreme Court.
Rather, there are two reasons why violent protests continue.
The first and simplest reason is that Israel and the world left despise Benjamin Netanyahu. They see Israel’s longest-serving prime minister as a selfish, Machiavellian, despicable, power-hungry pseudo-dictator, like Russian king Vladimir Putin, or Egad. — Former President Donald Trump. Indeed, given the similarities in legal persecution from their own Deep State (or some jokingly calling their Israeli analogue the “Deep Shtetl”), and the intensity of their respective Left’s loathing. The similarities between Netanyahu and Trump, then, are somewhat eerie.
A second, more fundamental reason is that protesters see reform (appropriately) as a proxy for the widespread culture war currently being waged between two dueling visions of Israel. It means that That is, more secular, more socialist, disproportionately Ashkenazi, often Tel Aviv. The existing Israeli ruling class, embodied by the liberal Israeli Supreme Court. And the more religious, more nationalistic, disproportionately Sephardi and Mizrahi, often the “deplorables” of Jerusalem, are embodied by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s conservative coalition in parliament.
Seen in this light, the nature of people like veteran New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who has repeatedly voiced opposition to reform, is understandable. They are men and women who have grown up with Israel as a Labor-led socialist state. There the aspirations of Jewish nationalism were subordinated to the demands of universalist liberalism.
These men and women fear that their particular conception of the Jewish state will be lost to the record of history.
To learn more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate authors and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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