Ehud Barak's call to raise the protest against the government's judicial coup to the level of civil disobedience was met with cries from the coalition benches and demands that he be put on trial.
On the contrary, this will be the final nail in the coffin of Yariv Levin's initiative to harm the Supreme Court, make the ministers' legal counsel permanent, and dissolve the Bar Association. This is what happened in countries that ceased to be democracies.
Not that those who cry out against civil disobedience know what this is all about, but humanity has experienced quite a few of them, and can learn lessons. Even in Judaism. It is possible that some of the events at the time of the Exodus against Moses were like this. And it is likely that Jeroboam's disengagement from Rehoboam due to the refusal of the tribes of Israel to pay high taxes to the House of David was civil disobedience.
The refusal of the Americans to withdraw their commercial contracts in favor of the British Treasury, which did not grant them representation in Parliament, was certainly civil disobedience, which only later developed into war and the establishment of a sovereign state in 1776. Mahatma Gandhi became a beacon of civil disobedience and overcame the British who massacred the Indians. Dr. Martin Luther King's struggle is portrayed in academia as civil disobedience, and some scholars attribute this to the functioning of "This is Our Land" against the disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
Demonstrators in Petah Tikva following the arrest of a protest activist // Archive photo: Ziv Price
First, in 1974, there was the Yom Kippur protest against civil disobedience that ousted Golda Meir as prime minister, even though she enjoyed a solid majority in the Knesset.
The definition of the essence of civil disobedience in political science, psychology, sociology, and philosophy dates back to the 19th and 20th centuries and focused on America. Her most prominent designers were Henry David Thoreau and John Rawls (also Sarah Margaret Fuller, but she drowned at sea at a young age).
This is a complex definition: civil disobedience is a nonviolent act of conscience and publicity, but against the law. It recognizes the legitimacy of government (unlike revolution) but seeks to change it. Its initiators are assisted by the courts and base their work in an effort to persuade the majority to support them (the results of the polls on Channel 12 and Channel 13 three days ago are a tool for supporters of civil disobedience).
Rawls, wandering through America's prestigious universities, went so far as to quote oxymoron, a kind of internal contradiction: "Disobedience to the law within the limits of loyalty to the law."
The familiar move is avoiding military service – due to Israel's unique security situation, I believe that those who use it must exercise caution.
Other familiar and agreed upon tools for civil disobedience are tax avoidance, general strikes, and demonstrations.
Elements of civil disobedience are also found in the Jewish heritage as it was shaped some 2,000 years ago: "There is no decree against the public unless the majority of the public can abide by it." Centuries later, Maimonides ruled that if the decree has already been imposed and the public does not comply with it, it is void. This is a revolutionary concept that is not surprising when it comes to the author of the "Perplexed Teacher". As noted, the results of television polls adequately meet the definition justifying civil disobedience.
What the incidents of civil disobedience have in common is that the government did not assess their power in advance, and at crucial stages of the struggle believed that exercising more force would eliminate them. Civil disobedience in Israel is already taking place, while the government is now in a state of power intoxication and believes that the intensity of the demonstrations has waned, and according to all indications, Netanyahu and Yariv Levin are wrong. The pilots, high-tech professionals and doctors who took time off have already announced their return to Kaplan to welcome Shikma Bressler of the Weizmann Institute, who received a professorship this week, and the intensity of American pressure is increasing. There was no worrying and dramatic news this week that the United States had stopped funding scientific activity in Judea and Samaria – a cause for concern at Ariel University, and this is only the beginning.
The United States has embarked on a troubling path in President Joe Biden's hostility to Israel. In practice, the protest is already in the stage of civil disobedience, but Netanyahu and Levin follow the rule of "eyes for them and they will not see."
What the incidents of civil disobedience have in common is that the government did not assess their power. Civil disobedience in Israel is already taking place, and the government is in a state of power intoxication and believes that the intensity of the demonstrations has waned
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