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Opinion The end of democracy? This is how the facts look in the face of panic Israel today

2023-02-24T14:20:33.113Z


Even after the reform, the supreme judges will have the same judicial tools that were used by the state to prevent injustices and violation of rights • Maybe someone in the government should start explaining this to the citizens


"To be freed from the dictatorship of Benjamin Netanyahu," declared a headline in "Walla!"

in 2014.

"Israel is starting to look like North Korea, and people are not taking to the streets," claimed a Haaretz podcast in 2019.

Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan already in 2016 identified in Israel "processes that took place in Germany in the 1930s". He was not the first, because Prof. Yeshayahu Leibovitch warned back in the 1980s about "Yudo Nazis".

The popular historian Yuval Noah Harari claimed in 2020 that "Israeli democracy is dead."

The journalist Ben Caspit also made the same claim that year, and the one before it, and the one before that.

And if not him, then others.

In short, Google has been exploding for years with warnings from the extreme left as if Israel is about to become Nazi, North Korean, Chinese, fascist or dictatorial.

This nonsense never caught on with the general public.

The people were smart enough to understand that this was false propaganda.

until this time.

In the current round, when the government presented the series of laws designed to regulate its relationship with the court, many began to believe that Israeli democracy was in danger.

In my mind's eye this week I saw elderly Jerusalemites on a bench holding a handwritten sign: "Saving democracy".

They sat down for the impromptu protest because someone convinced them too that the reform endangers democracy.

Is their fear justified?

Are our freedoms really in danger?

For our democracy?

For the independence of our court?

The answer is no and no and again no.

Yariv Levin, Simcha Rothman and the entire government did not do any advocacy work, but the reality is that there is no danger to Israeli democracy.

point.

Its modus operandi may change, as it changed in the first constitutional revolution brought about by retired judge Aharon Barak in the 1990s.

But, even before that revolution, and "even if the reform passes as it is, Israel will remain a democracy."

This quote is signed by Natan Sharansky, the greatest fighter against the communist regime of the USSR, the person who authored the book "The Advantage of Democracy", was decorated by the President of the USA with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and is considered one of the most important human rights activists in history.

By the way, his relations with Netanyahu cooled.

His words were said this week in an interview for the "Seeing Far Away" from "Israel Hayom".

Prepare for a diet

Why is there no fear for democracy?

Because the court will remain very strong even after the reform.

Because since the founding of the state, until this very day, and even if all of Levin and Rothman's proposals are approved as written and spoken, the court will have the same powerful tools that allowed it to prevent governmental injustices or violations of rights.

Nothing in the new proposals touches these tools.

what's the matter?

First is the legal interpretation.

Through it, since the 1950s, the Supreme Court has made a series of historic decisions, which limited the government and the Knesset and prevented infringement of rights.

No one is going to change or reduce the power of the court to interpret the law.

Second, the court's administrative review of the government and its ministries will remain as it was.

In the event that a decision is made without sufficient factual basis, or in conflict of interest, or due to extraneous considerations, or with discrimination, or in an unequal, arbitrary manner, without express authorization or in violation of the law - it will be annulled by the court.

As is happening today, and as was also the case until the Barak revolution in 1992.

With these tools, the Supreme Court, for example, anchored freedom of expression in the "Voice of the People" High Court in the 1950s. With these tools, conservative judges such as Menachem Alon and Moshe Landoi, among Barak's staunch opponents, invalidated Knesset amendments to the Party Financing Law as early as 1969 and again In 1989 - without the reason of reasonableness, and without the famous activism. Nothing will change here either, the court will not be weakened.

Another element of the diet that will undergo the reform concerns the break of the increase.

As published in "Israel Hayom", there is a high chance that the strengthening clause will not reach a third reading at all.

But even so, the required number of judges to invalidate a law would not be 15 out of 15 but less.

As for the power of the Knesset to "overcome" and cancel that illegality, it will probably be limited in time or will require the approval of two Knessets, meaning a significant postponement of the implementation of the overcrowding clause.

Another extremely important detail, which is not mentioned in most reports and interpretations, is the power that the reform will give the court, for the first time, to invalidate laws.

Indeed, not as an everyday act and not easily.

But instead of the constitutional jungle that has prevailed for decades in which the court dismisses laws without being authorized to do so, this time things will be regulated, and those who will grant the judges this power are none other than Rothman and Levin.

Ask Mandelblit

And what about the committee for the selection of judges?

Will Netanyahu, through Levin, appoint the Supreme Court judges who will one day acquit him when the thousands of cases reach the Supreme Court?

Will there be politicization of the court?


So it's always easy to scare, but what to do when the conspiracy is just as far removed from reality as the claim that the Shin Bet murdered Rabin.

why?

Because even after the reform, and even if the government is in sole control of the commission - which is unlikely to happen - the judges will be elected until they retire at the age of 70. This is in contrast to the situation in Switzerland, for example, where judges are generally members of a party and are elected for only six years.

In any case, from the moment a judge is chosen, no one knows what he will rule.

Ask Trump, who rolled the lawsuits against him to judges he appointed, and stole from them.

There is enough evidence that Netanyahu's appointees, like appointees in Israel in general, operate according to professional and not political codes.

Take a close example from the previous decade.

In 2011, Netanyahu's right-wing coalition played with the seniority system to get Judge Asher Grunis to be appointed president of the Supreme Court.

Grunis was indeed elected president, but did not make any concessions to the government.

The same thing happened, of course, with Avichai Mandelblit, Shai Nitzan, and Roni Alsheich, all of whom were appointed by Netanyahu, and while subordinate to him they stood up to him when they saw fit.

All the more so when it comes to the judge of the court in his office and Dan Din Tzedek.

And you don't have to go far.

In fact, these days conservative judges like David Mintz, Yosef Elron, Alex Stein and Noam Solberg repeatedly rule against the coalition, including in the Deri appointment case.

So the assumption that any judge will rule based on political considerations disgraces and tarnishes the judges themselves.

The first person who should have cried out against the insult was Supreme Court President Hayut.

But she, as you know, took sides.

In any case, the turnover rate of Supreme Court judges is very slow.

Even if the Netanyahu trial reaches the Supreme Court in five years, at least 10 of the 15 judges currently serving on it will be dismissed.

There is no scenario that Netanyahu will be acquitted if he does not deserve to be acquitted.

All these things, and many others, should have been explained to the people and the world by the ministers of the government and its spokesmen in the last month.

But the government was silent, and the opposition played against an empty goal and won.

at least temporarily.

Perhaps now, after the laws passed in first reading, someone from the 31 ministers and the five deputy ministers will do his best to calm the people down and put the demons that are burning the streets back into the bottle.

were we wrong

We will fix it!

If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us

Source: israelhayom

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