It is generally believed that democracy should not be abolished in wartime, but rather politely wait for the fighting to end. In fact, that's what the Supreme Court has done in recent decades. He amassed governmental power without a legal source of authority, ruled according to the worldview of the judges, and his control of the Judicial Appointments Committee ensured that their worldview would win a majority on the court, even if not among the public and its elected representatives.
We got used to it. Therefore, the disqualification of this week's Basic Law can be regarded as a technical offense of speeding up the ruling, so that it will include retiring justices Esther Hayut and Anat Baron (who in her ruling compared the danger of Hamas with the danger of correcting the cause of reasonableness), and as a disregard for the commandment of unity in wartime. Trifles of things.
The Supreme Court's destruction of power is not only a matter of principle about the essence of democracy, separation of powers, etc. It has practical implications for the character and actions of the State of Israel. The court granted standing rights to radical leftist organizations and foreign governments, abolished Israel's immigration policy, intervened in the punishment of terrorists, in IDF combat methods, and it will not hesitate to invalidate the Law of Return as well. In addition to the justices' disavowal of the law, there is a majority among them whose commitment to Zionism, Judaism and nationalism is somewhat wavering.
The Supreme Court justices' lust for power has no restraints, and those who gain power do so to use it. The missiles won't rust on the pedestals. The Supreme Court has stockpiled weapons against the will of the majority, against the sovereignty of the people, and against the legislature, and it has used them time and time again. He declared war on democracy – and won.
In the name of unity on the right, they have given up democracy for the time being. But unity is a one-way street, in which the right gives up its goals, while the left is kind enough to accept the right's sacrifice
Only two justices – Solberg and Mintz – believe that the Supreme Court does not have the authority to strike down Basic Laws. Which suggests that the Supreme Court's problem is even more serious than we thought. An overwhelming majority of judges placed themselves above the public and its elected representatives. This week, the same people themselves published rulings on another matter they were not authorized to discuss: the incapacitation clause in Basic Law: The Prime Minister. Although they did not reject the amendment, they ruled (without authority) that the law would take effect only in the next Knesset. Thus, the term of an elected prime minister is in the hands of people who despise the right-wing public in particular and the democratic system in general. Rust won't be here. The petitioners are already warming up on the lines, and the entire Kaplan camp is still willing to use its assets: academia, the media, the doctors, and perhaps again the refuseniks of the Air Force.
The leaders of the right-wing camp in the Knesset and in the government humbly accepted the hammer of judgment that was thrown at their heads, and in the name of unity gave up democracy for the time being. And here it is worth addressing the meaning of the word "unity" in this context: unity is a one-way event, in which the right gives up its goals, rights and achievements, while the left does its best to accept the right's sacrifice. Supreme Court justices do not recognize the word in any meaning. They also kicked this artificial unity.
They don't need unity, because for a year they blocked intersections in their honor, admired them in studios, and pilots refused to report for training so that, God forbid, a mechanism would not be created that would increase majority representation on the Supreme Court. Doctors left their shifts, the Histadrut shut down the economy, the government obeyed all their whims, was forced to repeatedly swear that it would obey High Court rulings, and sent lawyers to beg them in hearings on petitions whose very hearing exceeds authority. Who is the gullible to replace this forceful worship party with a ruling by law? Even the judges who did not reject the amendment on the grounds of reasonableness were happy to steal the role of the final arbiter. There is unity in the Supreme Court - the dictatorial instinct.
We are in a serious incident. The pessimists will say: We're gone. Optimists argue: a Pyrrhic victory. King Pyrrhus won the battle against the Romans, but lost so many soldiers that he realized that another such victory - and his army would be destroyed. This is a flawed comparison because the High Court camp has not weakened. He is ready for the next battles stronger than ever, more arrogant than ever and more resilient than ever. He is not Pyrrhus, but the Roman Empire.
Members of the right-wing government sentenced themselves to justice. Not only for reasons of focusing on the mission of war and maintaining the emergency government, but for Barak, Halutz, Yair Golan and their soldiers to set the streets on fire. There is no way to deal with such events in wartime. The left always has in its arsenal a sacred cannon to sink any occasional Altalena. And if there is no Altalena - the grounds of reasonableness or the committee for the selection of judges.
The government has no choice. But the time has come for the right-wing camp to get rid of any vestige of civil dignity for the Supreme Court. It does not deserve respect, it is not part of the living, breathing and fighting fabric of the people of Israel. The Supreme Court is a far-left party that has repudiated even the symbolic ritual of suspending disputes until after the end of the war. Hayut explained that the urgency stemmed from two sources of identical importance: first, "these are issues concerning the nuclear characteristics of Israel's identity as a Jewish and democratic state," and second, the date of her and Justice Anat Baron's retirement. For Hayut, her private opinion is the nuclear identity of the State of Israel.
In 2001, former Supreme Court President Moshe Landoy was interviewed by Nadav Shragai and criticized Aharon Barak's judicial – and regime – coup: "His way infuriates the court with broad publics, arouses hatred and causes a loss of faith in the neutrality of the judicial system. (...) We have been trained to judge. Do not control. There is a pretension here to place the judges above the Knesset. The Knesset is the sovereign, not us.
"When we rule on controversial public issues, we must be careful not to abandon neutrality, which ends up sliding into friction and quarrel with the public and its elected officials," Landoy said, warning: "The temptation is great, but it is a slope after which – who will survive." The judges could not resist the temptation, but in a quarrel with the public they would lose. The Roman Empire also fell. The nuclear identity of the State of Israel is many things. None of them is the megalomania of the High Court justices.
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