On video: the meeting of the committee for the selection of judges/Roni Knafo
What is the difference between the realization of the majority and the tyranny of the majority?
And when does failure to realize the majority already become the weakness of the majority?
The story of the judge of the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, Joya Scape Shapira, can perhaps illustrate for us.
Against the intoxication of the power of Justice Minister Yariv Levin in the nine months of 2023 leading up to the seven in October, there were only the huge protests and finally the High Court. This heroic chapter about the greatness of the Kaplan protesters will still be written in golden letters in the history of Israeli democracy. The same, Levin would give free rein to all his disturbed fantasies, centered on turning the Supreme Court into a political branch of the Likud.
Levin would fulfill the tyranny of the majority of his party and its allies in the most extreme way imaginable, if only he could.
Judge Joya Scapa-Shapira/Official website, .
Levin's actions created an incredible counter move.
An unprecedented number of voters showed up for the last elections for the head of the Bar Association.
In the bureau's polling stations, which in every election cycle looked quite deserted during the day, there were lines where lawyers stood for hours.
73 percent of the lawyers, an insane majority by all accounts, chose attorney Amit Bacher. More importantly, Bacher's faction received a majority in the council that did not require any coalition maneuvering. The main reason for the amazing voting percentages was the desire of the lawyers' public to ensure that the two representatives of the Bar Association on the committee For the election of judges, they will join the three judges and the representative of the opposition on the committee, thus forming a clear majority against the two ministers of the government and the additional member of the Knesset from the coalition. This was indeed the case - six against three.
According to the law, unlike the election of a judge for the Supreme Court, where a majority of seven out of nine committee members is needed (According to the amendment initiated by Gideon Sa'ar in 2008 - BK), judges in the lower courts can also be chosen by a simple majority of five to four.
That is, the three judges and the two lawyers on the committee are enough to transfer the appointment of any candidate for judgeship or promotion to the district court.
Together with the representative of the opposition, it is already an increased majority.
Levin understood this very well, and therefore all that was left for him was to use the power that was left in his hands, and that was the very convening of the committee, and indeed for more than a year he simply avoided convening the committee despite the outcry of the system, the plight of manpower, the injustice and the severe judicial torture inflicted on the citizens.
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Minister of Justice Yariv Levin/Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel
As a result of the threat of petitions to the High Court, Levin recently convened, in his great kindness, the committee, but he found a method of not losing control over the appointments. Instead of convening the committee once, it will sit for long hours in a row (as was the custom in the past), and fill in all the missing standards , he divided the yeshivas one by one into several yeshivas, with only a few judges elected in each of them. The idea is that if the representatives of the committee, the judges and the lawyers, hold a vote against his will at one of these meetings, he will refrain from calling the next yeshiva, thus jamming the system again
. Some of the appointments, mainly in the magistrates' courts, were agreed by the members of the committee. They were stuck on the issue of promoting the judges to the Jerusalem District Court. The reason, as we published in the last few days, is the reluctance of Levin and the two coalition members by his side, Yitzhak Kreuzer (Otzma Yehudit) and Orit Struck (Religious Zionism) ), to promote the judge of the Magistrate's Court in the capital, Joya Scapa-Shapira, who reluctantly became an annoying manifestation of the laxity of the majority, and here is the explanation.
Ben Gvir/Flash 90, Chaim Goldberg
Judge Scafa-Shapira is considered in the legal system to be a highly respected, diligent and suitable judge for promotion.
Since she is a justice of the peace, it is very difficult to assess whether her views are conservative or activist, since to date she has not dealt with complex constitutional issues.
What do we know about her?
Unfortunately for her, she had to sit through a long series of cases of a nationalist nature, including those centered on Arab suspects, and those centered on Jewish suspects.
Recently, the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gabir tweeted and condemned her rulings and decisions.
For example, he came out against the conviction of an MGB fighter, Orian Ben Khalifa, who committed unjustified violence against a Palestinian woman.
By the way, Ben Khalifa's conviction also met the appeal test in the district court. Likewise, various right-wing organizations also rebelled against the judge's decision to release From the arrest of two Palestinian gas station workers who published songs of praise for Hamas after the Shiva events in October. Those who follow Scafa-Shapira's rulings know that she avoids being a police rubber stamp for arrest requests. For example, in the past she released within minutes extreme right-wing activists who wanted to go up to the Temple Mount, and this To the dismay of the police officers. The Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir knows the case well, since he represented the suspects at the time.
However, Ben Gvir has a long account with Judge Scapa-Shapira also as a lawyer (the Blood Wedding case, the Benzi Gofstein case - B.K. ), but also as an accused.
This week we published that one of the dozens of indictments filed against Ben Gabir was filed by Scafa-Shapira in the previous decade, when she was still a lawyer in the Jerusalem district.
When I submitted a query to Ben Gvir's representative on the committee, Yitzhak Kreuzer, if Ben Gvir contacted him regarding Joya Shapira, and if Ben Gvir told him on that occasion that he had a personal interest in you, Kreuzer refused to comment.
He refused to comment on whether he knew that Ben Gvir had been convicted by Judge Scafa-Shapira.
MK Yitzhak Kreuzer/Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel
One way or another, no one in the committee showed that there was any flaw in the candidate, and all that showed Struck, Kreuzer and Levin, that she had to rule, mercifully, against Jews and in favor of Arabs.
Simply put, a cold racist cut that disqualifies her from promotion.
The two lawyers on the committee, Yonit Kalmanovich and Muhammad Naamana, as well as the representative of the opposition, MK Karin Elharer, were the first to come to their senses and realize that they will fight for Scafa-Shapira until the end. There is a strong argument with the judge, the three judges have also come to their senses, and as it appears at the moment they have no intention of giving up the promotion of the judge.
They may have come to their senses, but they did not go all the way. All six members of the majority in the Committee for the Selection of Judges believe that legally they can force a vote in a hearing, and that they They are not really subject to Levin's opponent in this matter. The practice is naturally that the chairman of the committee controls its agenda, but this (seemingly) logical practice is not enshrined in law.
The law states: "See the Minister of Justice that a judge is to be appointed, will announce this in the records and appoint the committee."
Oh and nothing else.
Well, the minister did recognize that there are six judges missing in the Jerusalem District Court, he summoned the committee and everyone who is legally allowed to propose candidates.
Nowhere in the law does it say that once the committee meets, only the minister can determine when a vote will take place.
Acting Supreme President Uzi Fogelman/Niv Aharonson
If it had been up to the representatives of the Chamber and Elharar, already in the last hearing they would have voted and approved Scafa-Shapira as a judge, mainly due to the fact that she is disqualified solely on the basis of nationalist-racist worldviews that have nothing in common with a trial.
On the other hand, the three judges on the committee headed by the President of the Supreme Court, Uzi Fogelman, are still trying to bring the matter to a compromise and prefer not to break the rules. There are two possible reasons for this: the first is that one of the three judges on the committee is Noam Solberg, and it is not impossible that Fogelman prefers not to challenge his excessively right-wing conservative views, that is, he prefers to keep him as much as possible in the three-judge bloc and not to transfer him to the other side in a hasty step. will refrain from convening the committee.
Well, with all due respect, High Court judges cannot consider such considerations.
The actual situation is that today it is impossible to fulfill six standards in the Jerusalem District Court, solely due to the fact that Scapa-Shapira ruled according to an order of her professional conscience, and as a prosecutor filed indictments (among other things against Ben Gabir) also according to an order of her conscience.
This is not a game that Fogelman, Solberg, and Dafna Barak Erez (the third judge on the committee) can participate in.
Furthermore, in any case, if this smearing continues, and the judges in Jerusalem are not appointed, either by not voting or by not convening the committee, the matter will reach the High Court. If so, instead of leaving it to their colleagues to decide, let them make the decision and at the first opportunity You are imposed on them without being ashamed and without being confused. True, on the one hand they are not majority tyrants like Levin's opponent. On the other hand, they also cannot turn themselves into a Roops majority, and submit to the standards imposed on them by Strock, Kreuzer and Levin.
More on the same topic:
Rival Levin
Itamar Ben Gabir
Orit Struck
Supreme Court
Uzi Fogelman
The Committee for the Selection of Judges