What is democracy?
Depends on who you ask.
If you ask me, I will hang out in Tolstoy, and I will answer that all democracies are democracies in their own way.
But in general democracies are characterized by a regime elected by free elections, whose function is to express the will and values of the people, and to be replaced by free elections.
And if they ask: And what if the people want terrible and terrible things?
I will answer: nothing will help it anymore.
Unfortunately, my position was unacceptable on the prestigious boulevards in Israel.
"It is important to remember that democracy is not just majority rule. Democracy that violates human rights is not democracy in my eyes. After all, the Nazi party was also elected by a democratic majority," Aharon Barak warned in an interview in 2015, shortly after the election (again). As a result of chronic voting failure among the people.
"The rule of law is not just the rule of law. The rule of law means the rule of law that essentially maintains a kind of internal morality," Barak stated, and needless to say, the internal morality of whom he meant.
The correct inner morality is not that of the man with the ballot paper.
According to Barak, the rude voter is the last step on the way to Nazi Germany: "In Germany in the early 1930s, the Supreme Court could not invalidate laws. I firmly believe that if Germany then had a strong court and judicial review, it could have been prevented. "Hitler."
Until the voter casts Hitler on us with a wave of a note, the Israel Democracy Institute instructs the gullible voter on how to differentiate between two possible types of democracy: substantive or hollow.
"Elections, basic laws and decisions according to the will of the majority - are not enough for democracy. We must also have essence," an animated video educator loves the ignorant public.
"A substantive democracy is one that guarantees human and civil rights, minority rights, and defense mechanisms against majority tyranny. Democracy is more fragile than it seems and may be its own greatest enemy."
The institute did not need Hitler and settled for Erdogan, but the idea is clear.
The ballot box and the people are the enemies of democracy.
It is a pity that the proponents of substantive democracy did not dwell enough on the tangible elements of the system of government that were in their hearts.
Here the resident is completely different from the written Torah. The parchment scrolls of substantive democracy will contain Supreme Court rulings including terms such as "proportionality", "sustainable interpretation", "purposeful interpretation", "reasonable person", and "the enlightened public".
In 2019, Aharon Barak added another democratic innovation: "What do you do when the intention of the legislature is not clear? What happens when the intention is clear but is attached to an old law? The rule should be the intention of the legislature, but there are situations where the intention should not be determined. What is the intention of the legislature, you can ask what is the intention of the reasonable legislator. "
Yes Yes.
Legislators, the representatives of the public elected for this purpose, must pass an abstract test of reasonableness established for them by a Supreme Court judge who is not bound by law, but by the values he supports, regardless of public values.
But what does substantive and value-based democracy look like in action?
Is she as beautiful as animated videos and as just as speeches by a Supreme Court president?
Proponents of Democracy also agree that it needs a framework of laws and institutions.
For example, bills and votes in the Knesset.
All of these are beautiful and good, but do not always guarantee a correct vote.
This week, MK Boaz Toporovsky Mish Atid solved this problem. When the other members of the Knesset committee were called for consultations, he voted unanimously - orally - on a series of bills and amendments to the law.
MK Boaz Toporovsky // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon,
The empty shell of the democratic apparatus remained in the room, in the form of a table, chairs, ombudsmen and officials - each of which had the same effect on the essential procedure: zero. There is also a future: to protect democracy, the party itself defends itself against a democratic mechanism, lest it lead to the undesirable result that Lapid will not head it.
The Supreme Court heard a petition this week demanding permission to introduce chametz to IDF bases on Passover. The direction was clear. "A seven-day matzah diet," Judge Yitzhak Amit called Passover, while President Esther Hayut hinted: To give an answer to those who want to eat chametz on Passover and it is their right.
It is impossible that if there is a will, they will not find a solution. "
The Israel Institute for (Substantial) Democracy published a survey in 2018 according to which 67% of Israeli Jews do not eat chametz on Passover.
According to a survey by the Israeli Congress from 2021, 61% of the public believe that despite disagreements, the court is not the place to decide the issue of chametz. 58% oppose the introduction of chametz into hospitals and IDF bases.
That is, before us is a clear case of majority tyranny.
The majority of the Jewish public in the Jewish state does not regard eating matzah as a method of nutrition.
It connects to the chain of generations, to the story of the birth of the people of Israel and its departure from slavery to freedom.
"And Haggadah to your son" is performed by 94% of Israeli Jews, in one way or another.
None of them, even those who do not observe chametz, do not treat eating matzah as a dietary whim.
The judges in response: The Jews of Israel are neither reasonable nor enlightened.
the solution?
Their values should recede from the "right" and "will" of a minority that this "diet" is not to their liking.
Supreme Court // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon,
Here, too, the formal framework is maintained: a Supreme Court hall?
there is.
Judges in black robes?
In abundance.
Legal terms such as "conditional order" or "interim order"?
For all that.
And all this does seem democratic to praise, and essential from head to toe.
To protect democracy itself, the pre-Hitler voter was replaced by a much more successful mechanism: the removal of the opposition from the vote in the Toporovsky case, the tyranny of the unelected minority in the Supreme Court case.
If you want, you can call it "substantial democracy", but you can also call it "purple cauliflower".
Both are equally similar to democracy.
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