1.
"The light of the eyes will make the heart happy" (Proverbs).
The commentator R. David Altshuler (18th century) explained in his commentary "Castle of David", that it means to enlighten the eyes about something about which we have doubts.
That's why we are happy, "because there is no joy in the world like letting go of doubts."
It seems that the words can also be applied to the heated debate in recent weeks, since the Minister of Justice Yariv Levin brought his plan for changes in the judicial system, since the fallout has fallen and the masks have been removed.
In a sharp speech, the President of the Supreme Court, Judge Ester Hayut, challenged the plan and in fact defied the intention of the government and the Knesset to enact such a law, even before it was enacted. If we disconnect the speech from the speaker, it will become clear that this is an opposition speech. This is where the innovation lies in Hayut's words, not their content, which he repeated On the holy impurity of those who do not live among their people but in the imagined reasonableness they set for us.
In this respect, Minister Levin's answer to the Supreme Leader Hayut was more original, because for the first time all the cards were laid on the table.
Levin spoke on behalf of a huge public, which for years has seen how the arena of political decision-making moves from the legislature to the court.
This expanded the right to stand and granted it to any individual, even if he was not directly harmed by the government's activities or its laws ("the full court of law").
2.
The public debate takes place in fascinating proximity to the cases of the book "Shemot".
Before the Israelites leave Egypt, they must first be awakened.
Moshe teaches them that it is not natural for them to be slaves, and that they were once free and therefore deserve the right to decide their future.
The Israeli public was largely dormant when Aharon Barak carried out the constitutional revolution and strengthened the Supreme Court at the expense of weakening the Knesset and the government.
The trial of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and the scandalous revelations that daily expose the nakedness of the investigators and the prosecutor's office, led a broad public, which usually does not delve into the relationship between the legal system and the government, to be drawn into the issue. Today, it understands that boundaries have been crossed in the social contract between the public and those who trust the rule of law and civil rights.
3.
A group of people gathers from 70 postcards to create a just society.
How will they decide what the common principles of justice and morality are?
To this end, the American philosopher John Rawls coined the term "veil of ignorance" - which is the participants' ignorance of their true status in society;
The screen hides it.
The idea is to suspend opinions and prejudgments in order to arrive at decisions as cleanly as possible.
They don't know if their decisions will improve their social status after the veil of ignorance is removed, or harm it.
In this way, Rawls believed, it would perhaps be possible to establish a just and fair distribution of resources in the rights and duties of the individual.
Visitors to the "Lifting the Blazing Curtain" monument in memory of Booker T.
Washington, one of the liberators of the slaves in the USA, photo: Skegeepedia/wikipedia
I think this is the line of demarcation between the view of the world of animals and Levin.
The first assumes that we are still behind the veil of ignorance.
That is, the judges rule from a place free from prejudgments and worldviews, especially free from the influence of their political worldview.
Although Hayut admits that they apply value considerations in the ruling, she does not explain how she succeeds in detaching herself from her early worldview, when deciding on value issues that are not purely legal.
4.
Here in the High Court of the Union of Families (2006) Hayut stated: "The armed struggle waged by the terrorist organizations... requires appropriate preparation... the enactment of laws that will respond to security needs... and this is what the Citizenship Law aims at." And immediately qualifies: "It must be added and examined Does the violation of the constitutional rights to equality and family life granted to Arab citizens... caused as a result of the restrictions and prohibitions... in the Citizenship Law, meet the requirement of proportionality." Who determines what proportionality is? The question is particularly acute in relation to controversial value issues.
Hayut continues: "The terror of terrorism, as a terror, may be a dangerous guide for the legislator who seeks to deal with its perpetrators. It may cause democracy to overstep its bounds and drift into establishing 'wide margins' for security purposes, while improperly and disproportionately harming human rights... Let us not To say 'security at any cost'. We must consider the price we will pay as a society in the long run if the citizenship law, with its sweeping prohibitions, continues to find its place in our law book."
This is not a judgment but a worldview.
The preservation of democracy, in the way that Hayat sees it, forces us to give up a certain degree of the security of the citizens and risk terrorist attacks.
What is the size?
Animals know.
That is why it invalidated the citizenship law, and in fact allowed the entry of thousands of Palestinians into Israel as part of "family reunification".
Luckily for us, the majority of the judges (six against five!) thought otherwise.
But it is hard not to see how later the court may invalidate the law of return on the grounds of inequality and damage to democracy and "the price we will pay as a society in the long run".
This ruling was the main catalyst for the Basic Law: Israel - the nation state of the Jewish people.
Until then, the judges had no legal tool, other than the security reasoning, to prohibit the entry of residents from a hostile area that is in a military conflict with us.
The nationality law allows the court to ban the entry of Palestinians also in order to preserve Israel as a Jewish state.
But since Aharon Barak decided to turn the Basic Laws into a constitution on the way, based on which he enacted ordinary laws, the barbarians learned the system and enacted a Basic Law establishing the Jewishness of Israel.
The court itself acts by virtue of a basic law, and because of this, it cannot challenge basic laws that are above it.
But just as Barak decided to disqualify laws without any authorization in the law, since the Nationality Law was enacted, they began to discuss the possibility of disqualifying basic laws in the name of the "principles of the democratic system" and the mobilization of the Declaration of Independence and other excuses, designed to give the court the power to do what no other court in the world can not do.
5.
Compared to Hayut, Justice Minister Levin sees what most of us see: the veil of ignorance has been lifted, and the court rules on issues of value according to the early worldview of the judges.
Do we not know, more or less, how each judge will rule on issues of security, religion and state, immigration and the like?
Hayut claimed that Levin's plan would harm civil rights.
Definately not!
The plan does not concern the court's ability to rule on most issues, but only on those that are not legal but political, i.e. public disputes whose decision rests solely with the people, i.e. their elected representatives in the Knesset.
In the name of what utopian truth was the ability to decide taken away from the elected officials?
What wisdom stone does Esther Hayut possess, that she is superior to another person in deciding on issues of value?
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