Castrating the Israeli Supreme Court

How many times have you heard this line: Look, I admit that there are problems with Israeli democracy, e.g., its treatment of its Arab citizens, and the Occupation. But the country is still at war with the Arabs, and in time, things will improve. After all, once the Arab citizens were under a military government. Now, at least de jure, they are equal citizens. Any restriction of civil liberties are temporary measures. As for the Occupation, when peace comes, it will cease to exist. And in the meantime, the Israeli judiciary is there to protect civil liberties.

That sentiment, of course, forms an essential part of the faith of the Zionist liberal. For thirty years, I never questioned it.

But what if the reverse is true -- what if there is a slow deterioration of civil liberties and the rule of law, both within Israel proper and in the Occupied Territories? And what if these civil liberties are being curtailed, not during a period of relative stress, but during a period of relative calm, like the present?

What does the Zionist liberal then say about the prospects for Israel's future?

On Sunday, the Israeli government approved Justice Minister Daniel Friemann's proposal to amend the Basic Law on the Judiciary in order to curtail the Supreme Court's power. Read about it here. Specifically, the Supreme Court would not be able to strike down any law that does not violate two Basic Laws (human dignity and freedom, and freedom of occupation) and when those two laws are violated, the court's decision could be overridden by a simple majority in Knesset. For example, if a majority of Knesset members voted on legislation banning Arabs from public beaches in Israel, the court could strike that law down -- only to see it overrruled by a simple majority of the Knesset. And if the Knesset passed a law barring Palestinians from seeking monetary compensation for damages done by the IDF, the High Court could not even intervene, as it does now.

In other words, the Israel government's decision, if it becomes law, will castrate the Israeli judiciary system and remove the only bulwark of civil and human rights in Israel.

Note that this decision was made at the calmest time in Israel in recent memory. The Second Intifada is dead, and no rocket falls on Sederot. By this decision the Israeli government says that in order to survive as a Jewish state, it cannot be a real democracy, but rather a banana republic, where the judiciary has little teeth and no independence.

Of course, Daniel Friedmann also wants to politicize the process of the selection of judges. He hasn't been able to do that yet, but he will. The independent judiciary that Alan Dershowitz praised so highly in his Case for Israel (and with little justification, as Norman Finkelstein pointed out) will be a thing of the past.

I don't believe in historical inevitability. But we are witnessing the continuing evolution of Israel away from whatever democratic roots it had, and, in my view, the seeds of this evolution are right there in the state founded in 1948. Note that this decision was not made by a rightwing government, but by a centrist government.

And that is the silver lining. For in decisions like these Israel unmasks itself. It cannot appear as a virtual democracy, with a court upholding the virtual rights of West Bank Palestinians, a court that always opts for the security of the occupier over that of the occupied. Better that the sham so admired by Dershowitz, and so trumpeted by the Israeli foreign ministry, be exposed for what it really is.

Yet for those, like the present writer, who care about Israel and who still find it painful when the truth of Zionism is exposed, the government's decision hurts.

Illusions die hard.

The Israel-Palestinian Victory at Bil'in -- A Sweet New Year

There are some small victories, small points of light in the dark night of occupation. But this will be a big one, if the army and the government obey the High Court of Justice.

For the last several years, Israelis and Palestinians have been protesting about the route of the separation wall in the area of Modi'in. The route was designed primarily to provide Israeli real estate developers more land to sell to Jews, to annex more land by the State of Israel, and to destroy the lives of villagers in Bilin so that there would be more land. Security, as usual, had little, if anything to do with the route of the security fence.

Does the above description sound outrageous? Not to the High Court of Justice that decided this week to direct the government to make a security fence around Modi'in, instead of the planned Lebensraum wall (the Hebrew equivalent of "Lebensraum" -- merhav mihyah -- was used by Nachum Barnea, Israel's most respected and read journalist, in his shabbat column in Yedi'ot to describe the wall. I hope, God willing, to report on what he wrote.

This is a victory for a gallant band of non-violent protesters (the rock-throwing Arabs in their midst were long ago revealed to be General Secret Service provocateurs, but that's another story).

While older Jewish supporters of the good-old-moral-Labor-Zionism have been writing their polemics in the Diaspora, a young group of protesters -- they call themselves "anarchists" mostly as an inside joke; they have no ideology besides fighting for Palestinian rights -- have been risking their lives facing the rubber bullets of the IDF.

Please read the article below, especially if you are a Peace-Now, knee-jerk, opponent of the Occupation -- the sort of person who thinks Tom Friedman knows what he is talking about. The next time you write out a check for the New Israel Fund, try to think of ways also to support the activists who are sanctifying God's name in public. (And keep writing the checks for the New Israel Fund....)

They, and other groups like Children of Abraham, Ta'ayush, Breaking the Silence, ICAHD, etc., are the future of Israel. May God grant them the strength to continue in their struggle.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/901786.html

A victory for the anarchists

By Meron Rapoport

"I remember the moment I marched among a crowd of Palestinians," said one of the Israeli activists who participated in the ongoing demonstrations near the village of Bil'in, this week. Those demonstrations led to a High Court decision a few days ago ordering the rerouting of the separation fence near the village. "I served in the army, and my first instinct was to look for the signal operator and to check if we were marching properly spaced. The Palestinians shouted 'Allahu Akbar,' which is supposed to be the nightmare of every Israeli soldier, but I suddenly realized that I was with them, that they weren't my enemies."

One must understand. Anyone who went to demonstrate in Bil'in knew that he stood more than a small chance of getting hurt somehow by "his" army: by clubs, tear gas, rubber bullets. Undoubtedly, there were a few who sought out this violence, but it also befell those who did not seek it out. It was part of the deal. The violence that the soldiers and Border Police officers employed against the Israeli demonstrators on an average Friday in Bil'in surpassed that used against the settlers during the entire evacuation of Gush Katif. Nevertheless, a few hundred Israelis made this trip every Friday, without fail, for the last two and a half years. Not all of them at once. Sometimes five, sometimes 50, sometimes 100. But they came.

Most of these people were young, sometimes very young, and they gathered under the rubric of "Anarchists Against the Fence." The Zionist left had no presence there. Not Peace Now and not Meretz (some Meretz MKs sometimes assisted the arrestees, but no more than that) - and certainly not Labor. Older organizations from the non-Zionist left were supportive, and provided logistical assistance, but the initiative still came from the anarchists. They led the struggle.

Without question, it was a rather small group. Not everyone, even the most devout leftist and vigorous opponent of the occupation, is prepared to come and take a beating, to run up and down hills, to breathe tear gas, to be arrested. But it wasn't an insignificant number either, this group of people prepared to come to blows with the establishment. In Bil'in their goal was simple and tangible: to restore the lands to the Palestinians.

It will be interesting to see what their next goal is.