Judges in Israel have a unique veto on the selection of new judges.
Swearing in of judges at the President's House (Photo: Noam Moskovitz)
The struggle between the judiciary and elected officials is not unique to Israel.
It has been going on for decades in the western world with the clear victory of the judicial systems, at least until now.
The judges took on increasing power through judgments that were not given according to the legislation of the countries' parliaments, but apparently according to international, moral and other "norms", which in the eyes of the judges take precedence over the decisions of the elected officials.
The moves of the judges involve, among other things, their "up-to-date" legal interpretations of the articles in the states' constitutions: not according to what was written in these constitutions originally, but according to what the judges think should have been written in them if they were compiled in our day - probably under their guidance.
This struggle is one of the issues that determine the results of the elections in the USA, where the president decides who will be the candidates for the Supreme Court and who the senators approve or reject. All of this was done, mind you, without a committee for appointing judges. Indeed, how sad to think that there are countries in our world that are anti- Democracies like the USA, where the judges are forced to go through, mercifully, selection by the elected officials and not by themselves.
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The redheads!
What will happen if the Knesset passes a law stating that all redheads in the country will be executed?
Judges of the Supreme Court (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)
The struggle between the judicial systems and the elected representatives is part of the more general struggle between cosmopolitanism and nationalism.
On the one hand, there is a desire to impose on the people the values of the people of the "enlightened" world - graduates of the best television studios and social science faculties.
On the other side is the desire for the country to be run according to the way decided by the sovereign people, who have their own unique values and tendencies and according to which they want to live.
The same struggle as mentioned also takes place here, although in Israel things have reached a level that does not exist in any other country.
It's not just because in Israel, in the absence of a constitution, the judges invented a kind of constitution (mainly based on the "human dignity and freedom" law), whose blessed amorphousness allows almost unlimited judicial freedom;
This is also because judges in Israel have a unique veto on the selection of new judges - and somehow, the candidates who advocate for curbing the power of their colleagues are almost never elected.
It is therefore no wonder that many judges throughout the Western world, as the former President of the Supreme Court, Dorit Binish, recently proudly stated, are full of admiration for our way of electing judges.
Of course you are amazed!
I wish they had such power... and there is another difference between us and the rest of the western countries.
Contrary to what is happening in Israel, in the other countries there are no battle cries defining as "anti-democratic" or "fascist" the attempts of elected officials to have the judiciary override the laws of parliament.
But when you ask us:
What is actually contrary to democracy in these moves?", came the regular answer of the fighters in "fascism": "The redheads!
What will happen if the Knesset passes a law stating that all redheads in the country will be executed?
Who will stop such a law if not the court?" Because, as we know, the majority in Israel, which has become a "mob" since the right-wing elected to power, will rush to trample the minorities with a rough foot.
The "redhead" argument is the use of an absurd and unrealistic example that does not, and cannot, prove anything.
Because in the existing, non-absurd reality, what prevents the enactment of such a law or similar to it is not any court, but the social and political culture of the Jewish people.
The threat news to readers of the "red-headed" scarecrow is not intended to protect the life or freedom of any hypothetical minority - be it a redhead or one with curly black hair - but to allow a very specific - and completely non-hypothetical - minority group to subjugate its will For the majority, through the judicial system and the legal advisors.
In this struggle, it is not difficult to identify who is the anti-democratic side and who is not.
The writer is a doctor, writer and playwright
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