I did not make aliyah for this

A recent newspaper article reminded me that one of the issues in next week’s election will be the independence of the judiciary, an issue which, given my background, will always be of the upmost importance to me. For over 30 years I was a lawyer in the United States. A significant part of my practice involved protecting people’s rights, including women’s rights. Over and over again, I went into American courts opposing some government entity which had deprived someone of their civil rights. I even argued one civil rights case in the United States Supreme Court. For four years of hard work, my total fee was something like $500. You don’t get rich doing civil rights cases, but I have never been happier as a lawyer then the moment the jury returned the verdict in that case in our favor.

When I made Aliyah to Israel, I knew that I was coming to a country that prided itself on being a democracy. It never even crossed my mind that I was coming to a country that did not have an independent judiciary, something that is so basic in the United States. Then I found out that I had moved to a country that did not have one.

Even more amazing to me, here it was a political issue. Before the last election, I participated in protest after protest on this issue. Some of those protests attracted over 200,000 people in Tel Aviv alone. At one of those rallies I saw a woman carrying the sign pictured above. I could identify with that feeling. I did not make Aliyah for this either. Those protests only ended in 2023, when Israel’s most recent war with Hamas in Gaza began.

I realize that there are many issues that divide the various parties and the people who will vote in the upcoming election. An independent judiciary is only one of them. Still for me, the issue says a lot about what sort of country caused me proudly to make Aliyah in the first place, and in what sort of country I will live for the rest of my life.