Opinion Great revolutions are made with a large majority Israel today

Benny Gantz's reputation in matters of consensus is somewhat dubious.

The one who loosened his oath "only not Bibi", and joined the fifth Netanyahu government, is the man who is largely responsible for the tripping up of a historic, one-time opportunity, to annex, by broad national agreement, about 30 percent of the territories of Judea and Samaria to the State of Israel.

Gantz and the Minister of Justice on his behalf, Avi Nissenkorn, also torpedoed the possibility of carrying out reforms in the judicial system already in 2020, with broad agreement (including a superseding clause), and despite all this - Levin and Netanyahu should jump with both hands on Gantz's worthy proposal from yesterday: the establishment of a cross-party team And political camps that will discuss the legal reforms, and adopt agreements within six months (Ganz's proposal), is an excellent idea.

Decisions that change the order of the world, even if it is a counter-revolution to a judicial revolution that has been embodied in excessive intervention for years, a revolution that the public and its representatives were not asked about, deserve to be accepted by a large majority.

A cross-party team could legitimize the changes Levine is proposing, even if they are watered down.

Such a team will also reassure many in the public who feel today - rightly or wrongly - that the ground is falling from under their feet.

Gantz

You should listen to him, photo: Oren Ben Hakon

The staff details can be negotiated.

It is not certain, for example, that half a year should be allotted for its operation.

Less is possible.

But great deeds should be done by a large majority.

There are also really no significant differences between the fundamental positions of Gideon Sa'ar, the outgoing Minister of Justice (from Gantz's party), and some of the critics of the reform plan, and the positions of the incoming Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin.

Whoever looks, for example, in Sa'ar's book ("Conversations on the Road", 2019), will discover there statements remarkably similar to Levin's.

There, Sa'ar attacks judicial activism, criticizes the lack of reforms in the judicial system, supports in principle the superseding clause (albeit modified) and the splitting of the role of the attorney general, and even supports a public hearing for the Supreme Court judges during appointments.

To a cross-campaign team of the type that Gantz proposes, it would be useful to include senior legal experts such as former justice ministers Prof. Rubinstein and Friedman, as well as former justice ministers such as Ayelet Shaked.

This will give his recommendations more validity.

The basis for its action will be a prior agreement that significant reforms are indeed needed.

The goal will be to reach them.

In the meantime, the supreme judges will decide what they will decide regarding Deri's appointment, which is indeed problematic, but the reforms are bigger than Deri's personal story, and they are indeed necessary. 

The inventors of the probability bar

Over the years, the judicial system has taken liberties that are not its own.

Instead of concentrating on the interpretation of the law, the judges ran forward, until in quite a few cases they became road maps, policy makers and inventors of the bar of reasonableness.

Is it reasonable, for example, that the same court, which qualified the candidacy of Meir Kahane and Azmi Bashara for the Knesset, will determine that it is unreasonable to approve the appointment of Deri as a minister?

In recent years, the reason for reasonableness has been expanded to such an extent that the judges have penetrated the domain of the executive authority.

As Judge Solberg put it himself: "Interfere in the administrative discretion in a sweeping manner, also in relation to non-judicial aspects of the discretion."

In other words, the judges entered into public controversies that were not theirs, under the pretense of instilling values, that the proper place to resolve them is not the court.

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