Time to end the Judicial war

In a Jerusalem Post Op-Ed on March 5, 2013, Daniel Tauber raises the question, “Is this Democracy? He was, of cause referring to Israel. His introduction, “If a lawmaker doesn’t face the public before whom he and his opponents can present initiatives, defend their records and be judged, then there is no bond between them.”

Question – in all the talk about electoral reform and why it is necessary, one element has been sorely missing, despite all the many rights Israeli citizens enjoy. However, the first defense of the people’s rights and their interests is not a bill of rights.

A bill of rights in a democracy is the last line of defense [short of violence or law breaking] for some of the people against the rest of the people, as the majority’s will is expressed in laws and regulations made pursuant to those laws.

“In Israel, the vast majority of MKs will only have achieved and retained their positions by virtue of their party or party leader.” If the present day Likud government were to concentrate on revising electoral voting rights as a commencement issue, they would bring unity to the country. How shameful that Daniel Tauber is among so few Jewish leaders to promote the matter of voter empowerment.

Closer to the present, on June 30, 2022, Times of Israel posted Benyamin Moalem’s “How to fix Israel’s broken electoral system.” From this, we find in the body of the paper, “The slow transition from voting for a party representing an ideology that happens to be led by an individual to voting for an individual who happens to lead a party has exposed a significant flaw in the Israeli political system.” The balance of Moalem’s article essentially supports the government’s proposal for judiciary reform.

August 12, 2023 brought us, “Who will say no more to the current madness”, by the esteemed Dr. Victor Davis Hanson. He commences with, “Britain slept in the 1930s, as an inevitable war with Hitler loomed.” Winston Churchill had few courageous partners to oppose the appeasement and incompetence of his conservative colleague Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Leo Amery, a polymath and conservative Member of Parliament reacted in the hours after Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and it was doubtful whether Chamberlain would declare war on Germany. Arthur Greenwood spoke up on behalf of his ill party leader Clement Attlee. Immediately Amery shouted out, “Speak for England Arthur.”

Following the Chamberlain loss of a winnable Norway campaign to Germany, an exercised Amery resorted to quoting Oliver Cromwell’s hallmark 1653 order to the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of G-d, go.”

Hanson is of the opinion that we need a voice like Amery’s. Like Britain from 1939 to1940, America is in existential danger.

“The Biden administration has utterly destroyed the southern border – and immigration law with it. Biden green lighted 7 million illegal aliens swarming into the United States without legal sanction or rudimentary audit.”

Victor Davis Hanson lists all of Biden’s failures accompanied by recommendations for improvement.

Martin Sherman’s, “Distorting the Declaration” [JNS –August 13, 2023] undoubtedly adds weight to the given subject. At commencement, he states, “The focus of Israel’s Declaration of Independence is overwhelmingly on Jewish Sovereignty and political independence, not liberal democracy.

Listening to the impassioned tirades of the anti-government agitators, one is left to wonder whether they have actually read the Declaration or are hoping that their audience has not.”

Sherman asserts, “A vocal opponent of judicial reform, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz, wrote accurately but misleadingly”, ‘Our Declaration of Independence promises that the State of Israel will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.’

Apparently, Yair Lapid “With his usual superficial mindlessness, proposed that a way out of the judicial reform impasse would be to compose a constitution, something that has eluded Israeli leaders for almost 8 decades. This prospective constitution he said should commence with The Declaration of Independence, which according to him, ‘expressed the moral heart of the nation.’

Sherman concludes, “The Declaration is replete with references to the historical birthplace of the Jewish people, their connection to the land, their tradition and heritage and the Bible. Indeed the leaders of the opposition would do well to study the fables of Aesop, who warned, ‘Be careful what you wish for, lest it comes true.’”