The involvement of the chaos in the institution of the presidency is unpleasant and at most annoying • But its presence in the justice system is like seasoning a cup of coffee with 3 fingers of dynamite • Opinion
Illustration: Shimon Engel
When President
Ruby Rivlin assigned the task of forming a government to Netanyahu, he did so with some reluctance.
"This decision is not an easy decision in my eyes on the moral-value level," the president admitted, although of course the morals and presidential values have never been part of the set of considerations for this particular task.
To emphasize his displeasure a little more, he gave up the personal meeting with Netanyahu.
Some sourness was recorded in the ranks of the right, but not enough media admiration, so the president increased the pressure on the gas pedal and fled the Knesset, so as not to participate in the festive photo together with the faction leaders and the president of the Supreme Court.
Comments were heard from the stands.
But the earth did not tremble in the face of a repeated violation of the rules of ceremonial protocol.
Why would you tremble?
One can bet that the absence of this or that president will not be felt among viewers of the picture in future generations.
During his tenure, the current president has abandoned too many protocol rules - the most important of which is to sever contact with politics, thereby harming the brand he embodies.
The institution of the presidency is entirely a protocol.
To this end it is created: to take a person, scrub him from all the political lines of his character, and turn him into a state ceremony with legs.
But if you can give up the ceremony - you can also give up the institution.
Ignoring the rules of the ceremony is not a big disaster, but can create confusion, similar to the confusion we feel in the face of ambiguity regarding etiquette: who opens the door to whom, who is first in line, who waits for whom: the one who leaves the elevator or the one who enters it.
These rules do not always have a recognizable logic (a strong and powerful woman does not need a man to open the door for her!), But in many cases they control order in the human mess.
They are one of the many mechanisms created by man to build a functioning society, in which the individual's freedom of action is limited, and important values are placed within a clear framework that also pours meaning into them.
Meaning is also essential for a functioning society and for a sense of social and personal meaning, as well as law and order.
Clear rules of the game apply to everyone.
These are not the gatekeepers - but the threshold itself.
The human mess,
which I will now call by its honorable name "chaos", is an important component of human society, as it expresses the element of freedom in man, but while the mixture of chaos in the presidential institution is unpleasant and annoying, its presence in recent years is like a spice. Coffee with three fingers of dynamite.
Since Aharon Barak's constitutional revolution, the law is no longer a law.
Is "text".
In his essay "General Principles of Law in the Interpretation of Law", Barak wrote: "The purpose of the legal text consists of two elements: a subjective element and an objective element. The subjective element concerns the intention of the creator of the text. This is the intention of the founding fathers; Who enacted a law; this is the common intention of the parties to the contract; this is the intention of the mitzvah. The intention expresses a subjective element. It is a description of a historical-psychological-biological reality that occurred in the past (...) the objective element - and it interests us, because it expresses the basic values of The method - is about the role of the norm in the method. "
According to Barak, the "objective" element of the text is the judge's interpretation.
It is not bound by the language of the law, the intention of the legislature, the authority of the legislature - since these are at the "lowest level of abstraction."
Total text.
And Barak adds many words about "objective" and "subjective" and "constitutional" (Israel has no constitution), about combinations and mergers and the basic principles of the system, until the head is dizzy and the law disappears.
With so many discussions about the basic principles of the penalty kick - it is no longer possible to play football.
The method proposed by Barak
is legal chaos.
And chaos is not systematic.
Therefore the legal system collapses when it is not well defined, when it is whimsical, when it is not repairable because it is the only one in charge of exposing its shortcomings, and of course - finds itself nothing wrong.
The legal system becomes chaotic when the Supreme Court discusses lack of jurisdiction in basic laws, and when the legislature does not set before it the objective boundary, as provided by law - and the hands of the Knesset are bound, as it has accepted the judge's objective interpretation of the purpose of the law.
This is chaos.
The legal system becomes chaotic when Deputy Supreme Court President Hanan Meltzer states that the Attorney General has been given the exclusive authority to determine the prime minister's incarceration, and a week later the court asks the state and the ombudsman to respond to a petition demanding declaration of Netanyahu's incarceration. Laws that are disqualified by the judiciary, powers given and taken according to the "fundamental values of the system" or other invention, emptying existing laws of content in favor of an objective interpretation based on some values, which are also not fully worded and did not gain public trust. This is chaos, and
Netanyahu's trial is conducted in the same chaotic manner: the law enforcement system violated the law when it opened an investigation against the prime minister without lawfully obtaining the approval of the ombudsman.
The judges admitted this - but continued the trial.
This is chaos.
The defense asked to know if the main prosecution witness, Ilan Yeshua, is a state witness - the prosecution refuses to answer and the judges reject the defense's request.
This is chaos.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Liat Ben-Ari, who is suspected of a series of economic offenses amounting to hundreds of thousands of shekels, answers all the questions in her interrogation "I have no idea", and yet gives a speech on the use of governmental power and benefits.
This is chaos.
The power of chaos should not be underestimated to corrupt everything it touches.
Sometimes its price is low.
The behavior of the president and the breaking of his tools will at most lead to the abolition of the institution of the presidency, or to disregard it.
Not bad.
But similar ideas may arise regarding the importance of the law in Israeli society, and here the result will be disastrous.
