The judicial reforms are essential to saving our democracy – opinion

OMER DOSTRI

While the Left actively opposes the proposed judicial reforms, the Right largely supports them.
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STUBS OF the different parties from which to choose are on display at a voting booth, on Election Day, November 1. Most of the public came out to vote in free and democratic elections in favor of the measures we are hearing about these days, says the writer. / (photo credit: MICHAEL GILADI/FLASH90)

In recent weeks, Israel has witnessed a piercing public debate about the intention of the Netanyahu government to carry out a comprehensive reform of the legal system in Israel. On the one hand, the opponents, most of whom are identified with the political Left, claim that the plan is actually a regime coup that will lead Israel to the loss of democracy and turn it into a dictatorship, no less.

On the other hand, the supporters of the plan claim that the changes are necessary in view of the strengthening of the judicial authority vis-à-vis the executive and legislative authorities, which led to an imbalance and the actual elimination of the separation of powers in the country.

Opposing forces

The opposition camp was joined – as expected – by most civil society organizations, closed elitist cliques and unions (retired commanders, security personnel, judges and lawyers, reserve pilots, and politicians and public figures belonging to the same branch) and media in Israel. The latter went to the battlefield while trying to help lead loud public pressure against the incumbent government in any way possible.

The highlight event, so far, of the opponents came last Saturday night in the form of a mass demonstration in Tel Aviv. The demonstration received indulgent and supportive media coverage, designed to exert maximum pressure on the government, including promos on the news channels, pompous headlines, live breaking news, live updates on the Telegram channels and on Twitter about every protester who arrived on the scene, exciting selfies of enthusiastic journalists who came to cover the demonstration and more.

In the face of this massive pressure campaign – with the help of international factors – the current government must not surrender. Most of the Israeli public came out en masse to vote in free and democratic elections exactly in favor of the measures we are hearing about these days.

CENTRAL ELECTION Committee workers count the remaining ballots at the Knesset last week. (credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)

In the end, in order to restore the balance in the separation of authorities in Israel, it is necessary to curb the legal system that has gained unimaginable power following the judicial coup carried out by the former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak without any struggle on the part of the Knesset and the government. The desire now of the current Netanyahu government and Minister of Justice Yariv Levin is to return the situation to the way it was before.

And here the question arises: did democracy not exist in Israel until 1993, when the illegal changes were made in the relations between the authorities? It certainly existed and therefore the hysterical outcry of the Left camp does not reflect reality.

Furthermore, most of the changes in Levin’s plan are intended to strengthen the separation of powers and to give a broader expression to the elected officials sent to parliament by the people. This is at the expense of government officials and judges who are not elected and who have no responsibility for their rulings or actions but still enjoy powerful and unprecedented powers.

This need was understood even in the Left camp in 1993, when the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin – with the help of the Meretz party and Aharon Barak itself – added an override clause to the Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation. Finally, it is important to remember that the original purpose of the court was to resolve conflicts and struggles between the citizens of the country in a peaceful manner in accordance with the law of the state and not to interfere in the government’s policy, let alone not to legislate themselves.

And what about the way the judges are chosen? Isn’t it appropriate that the judges do not choose themselves? Is there a more legitimate and reasonable demand that elected officials from the executive and legislative branches be the ones to choose the judges, alongside the representatives of the judges on the committee, whose voices will, of course, be heard?

Seniority rules

Levin’s proposal regarding changing the appointment of the president of the Supreme Court, abolishing the seniority system, is also important and necessary. Why, therefore, should the president of the Supreme Court be appointed according to his seniority and not according to his qualifications? Would we like to see a business owner or organization that would promote employees or managers only because of their seniority, while hardworking, professional and more suitable employees are left behind?

The government’s plan also includes a reference to the cancellation of the reasonableness standard. Today, this pretext allows the court to invalidate and frustrate the decisions of the elected echelon by vague and abstract means. The magic word unreasonable is enough to damage the policy that the minister is trying to promote. Since they are flesh-and-blood judges, despite the beautiful cloak and aura surrounding their position, there is no reason to assume that they better understand than others what is a reasonable decision and what is unreasonable.

Rather, such a determination should be accepted by a broad consensus, from a person with responsibility accompanying his powers, who was sent to his position by the people and who received a mandate from the citizens to represent them and promote the view of their faith – of course, in accordance with the laws of the state.

Opponents of the plan also complain about the intention to turn the legal adviser from a professional position into a position of trust. However, this is a necessary step since the role of the legal adviser, as the name indicates, is to advise the minister on the correct legal way to promote his decisions and policies.

The fact that the adviser will become a personal appointment does not mean that the minister will break the law or that the legal adviser will allow him to do so – obviously, the adviser will act in accordance with the laws of the state. Otherwise, the goal is to streamline and simplify the decision-making processes in the government ministries, which today are sometimes thwarted and slandered by legal advisers who do not like the minister’s policy and are not enthusiastic to help promote it, to say the least.

If so, the government’s plan for changes in the judicial system not only does not harm democracy, it is intended to restore and strengthen the democratic foundations in the state that have eroded and even disappeared in recent decades since the undemocratic judicial revolution. Hence, the threats and intimidation of the Left camp regarding the end of democracy are not aimed at the necessary changes in the judicial system, but refer to the very existence of the right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The issue is not the reform of the judicial system but a lack of readiness and willingness to accept the people’s decision and the democratic results of the latest elections. The irony is that the very same people who claimed against Netanyahu that he was dragging Israel into repeated rounds of elections, now disavow the results of the elections that were held only two months ago and demand a rematch. In other words, they want to drag Israel into further elections. Is there a limit to their hypocrisy and duplicity?

The writer is a researcher and an Israeli publicist. He also holds a PhD in political studies.

Israel Daily News – January 16, 2023

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Christians, Jews must fight war on Christmas and Hanukkah together – opinion

TULY WEISZ

When our traditions are confronted with the deliberate falsification of history, Christians and Jews must stand together to dispel the darkness by bringing more light into the world.
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People at the Annual Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony in Jaffa, December 19, 2022. /  (photo credit: TOMER NEUBERG/FLASH90)

When Christmas and Hanukkah coincide, as they do this year, both faith communities must be vigilant against the war on Christmas and Hanukkah being waged by those seeking to undermine Judeo-Christian values and rewrite history.

Israel goes to great lengths to show respect for its Christian citizens and is the one country in the Middle East where Christians are not persecuted. Tourists to Bethlehem, however, are confronted repeatedly with the false message that Jesus was not a Jew, but a Palestinian Arab.

Palestinians and their antisemitic enablers sponsor slick PR gimmicks like “Christ at the Checkpoint” that absurdly claims that Jesus was Palestinian and so if he were alive today, he would be persecuted by Jewish soldiers at Israeli security checkpoints. This perverse form of Cancel Culture goes back to Yasser Arafat, who claimed that Jesus was an Islamic militant. Such revisionist history uproots the very source of Christianity and is completely ridiculous, as even history’s most notorious antisemites acknowledged Jesus’ Jewish identity.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis waged their own war on Christmas and tried to reinterpret the holiday, precisely because they were so hostile to the Jewishness of Jesus. Even Hitler could not have imagined denying that Jesus was a Jew and so he tried rewriting lyrics to Christmas carols, encouraged mothers to bake swastika-shaped cookies and tried inserting pagan, Aryan symbols into the holiday.

Appreciating the history behind Hanukkah can provide a proper response to the Palestinians, who are egregiously attempting to rewrite history.

King Antiochus IV, who reigned over Jerusalem from 215 BCE to 174 BCE, forced his subjects to renounce their religions and abandon their cultures. In his brutal effort to eradicate the Jewish faith, Antiochus prohibited Torah study, and the observance of Shabbat and kashrut under the strict penalty of death. The ruthless king removed the High Priest from his position and defiled the Temple by erecting Greek idols there.

Under this crushing religious persecution, a small band of Jewish rebels led by Matityahu and his son, Judah, united in a fight against the mighty Greek army and in defense of the God of Israel. When Antiochus learned about the rebellious Maccabees, he sent a large military force to wipe them out. Though the king’s army vastly outnumbered the Maccabees in numbers and weapons, the small group of freedom fighters defeated their powerful adversary and liberated Jerusalem from foreign occupation.

Santa Clause rides a camel outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, December 22, 2022. (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

THE MACCABEES entered the Temple, cleared it of idols and rededicated it in 139 BCE. Upon entering the Temple, the Maccabees found only enough pure olive oil to rekindle the golden menorah for one day. Yet, by a miracle of God, the oil burned for eight days.

While the holiday is widely known as the Festival of Lights, it is really the Festival of Miracles, commemorating, “the wonders He performed for us in those days and in ours.” Indeed, the modern return of the people of Israel to the land of Israel in the 20th century was also a victory of a small number of Jews over a much larger enemy force.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the newly birthed state of Israel, which was immediately attacked by eight well-trained and well-armed Arab nations. Miraculously, the infant country with only 600,000 citizens, many of whom were survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, held on and defeated their much stronger attackers.

Two decades later, the neighboring Arab countries tried again to wipe Israel off the map and push the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. In 1967, against seemingly insurmountable opposition, Israel likewise persevered in battle, tripling its territory and reuniting Jerusalem under Jewish sovereignty – for the first time since the Maccabees controlled the city – in the miraculous Six Day War.

And the miracles continue

Today, the Jews have returned to their ancient and everlasting homeland. The once desolate soil of the area that used to be known as Palestine is lush and fertile once again, and Israel is a world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship. One almost has to contrive willful blindness not to see the miracles of biblical proportions that God has performed for Israel over the last century. This is why, after centuries of persecution and antisemitism, so many Christians are now standing with the Jewish people and supporting Israel.

Tens of millions of Christians around the world are overwhelmingly pro-Israel for they see the success of the Jewish State as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. As such, the ancient Jewish lessons of faith and freedom on Hanukkah are particularly relevant to Christians today.

RABBI YISRAEL Meir Lau lights the hanukkiah at the Tel Aviv Great Synagogue on the fourth night of Hanukkah, last year. (credit: TOMER NEUBERG/FLASH90)

Hanukkah commemorates the ancient Jews’ stubborn loyalty to their God and their land despite efforts by strong forces preventing them from practicing their faith. God rewarded the Jews for their dedication by performing miracles on their behalf, which we remember today by lighting the menorah.

When Christmas and Hanukkah share a date, it’s an opportunity for Christians and Jews to celebrate our shared history, our common origins in this region, and the values we both hold dear. And while it is true that there are important differences between Jews and Christians and our two holidays, what unites us is far more significant than what divides us. And so, when both of our faith traditions are confronted with the deliberate falsification of history, Christians and Jews must stand together to dispel the darkness by bringing more light and illumination into the world.

The writer, a rabbi, is the founder of Israel365 and the editor of The Israel Bible, which are both dedicated to strengthening relationships between Jews and Christians in support of Israel. He can be reached at: RabbiTuly@Israel365.com.

New gov’t has no intention of dealing with the Palestinian issue – opinion

GERSHON BASKIN

One person, one vote is a reality that the failure of the peace process and the non-existence of the possibility of a viable Palestinian state next to Israel has led to.

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Palestinian Authority and Israeli flags (illustrative) / (photo credit: Provided by the Lausanne Movement)

As the classic Israeli political slogan goes: when the Palestinians are violent, we must not speak with them. When the Palestinians are quiet, we have no need to speak with them. When they enlist Israeli activists to provide human protection against the Israeli army or Israeli settler violence, we call the protectors anarchists and traitors.

When Palestinian-Israeli Knesset members support their own people against the occupation, they are called supporters of terrorism. When the Palestinian leadership uses non-violent tactics, such as going to the international community, we call it diplomatic terrorism. When non-Jewish and non-Arab states call to boycott Israel or Israeli settlers, they call it antisemitism. When Jews in the Diaspora or in Israel protest against Israel’s policies and actions, they are called self-hating Jews.

The bottom line is the new government of Israel, just like the previous governments for decades, has no intention of dealing with the Palestinian issue. There are no plans to end the occupation. There are no thoughts of finding a way to enable Palestinians to reach any form of national self-determination.

In Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own words, the only people with any national rights on the territory between the river and the sea is the Jewish people. From his perspective, there is no genuine Palestinian people with genuine national rights on any part of the land between the river and sea.

There is no need for a legal opinion of the International Court of Justice in the Hague regarding whether or not the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem is permanent or illegal. It most definitely is. Israel has no intention of cooperating with the international court because, from the standpoint of Israel, there never was an occupation since you can’t occupy your own land.

AN ARAB-ISRAELI voter casts his ballot at a polling station in Kafr Manda, in the March 2021 Knesset election. Between the river and the sea there is a non-Jewish majority and they do not live with democracy, says the writer. (credit: JAMAL AWAD/FLASH90)

Israel will continue

Israel will continue to violate international law. It will continue to build illegal settlements. It will make official and authorize some 100 settlements that the governments built and supported but did not officially recognize because they thought they were pulling the wool over the eyes of the world.

They will repopulate settlements that were vacated in the past. They will continue to steal Palestinian land, chop down Palestinian olive trees and destroy Palestinian water wells. The Israeli army will continue to raid Palestinian towns, villages and cities on a nightly basis and continue to arrest hundreds and thousands of Palestinians. Israel will continue to hold hundreds of Palestinians in administrative detention without charges and without trials.

ISRAEL WILL continue to lie to the world that the Palestinians are not occupied and that the existence of the Palestinian Authority proves that the Palestinians have an autonomous government.

The world will continue to speak about the two-state solution and the need for Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate but they will do nothing to actually move the parties in that direction. The US will continue to inform the rest of the world that it is in charge of what is called the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which has not existed since 2008.

Countries like the US, Norway, the UK and Germany have a special relationship with Israel and a special connection to the so-called peace process will not recognize a state of Palestine. Israel will continue to enjoy impunity for whatever it does to the Palestinian people, including the most recent decision to remove 14 villages in the south of the West Bank with more than 1,000 residents.

The world will remain silent. The majority of Israelis don’t see, don’t know and don’t care. Jewish extremists will continue to move into Israel’s mixed Jewish-Arab cities with the expressed intention of proving to the Arabs who is the boss. More housing projects will be built only for Jews in those towns under the guise of housing for religious Jews. Jewish extremists will change the status quo on the Temple Mount, which will set the region aflame.

The two-state solution is dead. There is no Israeli Palestinian peace process. The PA is dysfunctional and inept. Hamas is a machine of hate without any coherent pragmatic strategy that can help the Palestinian people. The world doesn’t care or is too afraid of Israel to do anything to change the situation.

The conclusion I have come to in the face of this disastrous reality is to adopt a strategy of one person, one vote. This is a strategy that recognizes that with no other political horizon, at least let us base our decisions on the equality of every human being who lives on the land between the river and the sea.

No one is superior to another. There is no one who deserves more rights than another. There is no one who is worthy of more dignity than another. There is no more democratic nation-state of the Jewish people. That slogan is a lie, between the river and the sea, as there is a non-Jewish majority and they do not live with democracy.

One person, one vote is a reality that the failure of the peace process and the non-existence of the possibility of a viable Palestinian state next to Israel has led to. How can any decent person reject the idea of one person, one vote?

The writer is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to Israel and to peace between Israel and its neighbors. He is now directing The Holy Land Bond.

Israel Daily News – January 10, 2023

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