Friedman's appointment to the position of Minister of Justice - first step towards saving Israel from the Supreme Court's stranglehold
2007-02-08


The Israeli Supreme Court which unilaterally changed its own role from the judicial branch of government into the ruling branch of government, turned into a major obstacle for any serious attempt of saving the Jewish State a long time ago. Therefore by appointing Professor Daniel Friedman, a long time critic of the Supreme Court to the position of minister of justice - Olmert is opening the way for a change. If this change is indeed actualized, one can not exaggerate in describing its importance.

Since 1977 when the Israeli public overturned, after almost 40 years, the one party rule of the Israeli Labor party in a democratic election, the supreme court appointed itself to gradually become the guardian of the very political ideology that was overwhelmingly rejected by the People. Immediately after Likud and Menachem Begin's victory was announced on television, Yizchak Ben Aharon a mythological leader of the Labor movement and head of the mighty Israeli trade union (The Histadrut) called not to accept the voter's "verdict". The Israeli Supreme Court under the leadership of Aharon Barak with much sophistication, step after step, materialized Ben Aharon's vision.

The supreme court that was appointed a long time ago by the Labor party controls the committee of appointing judges which is in charge of selecting new Supreme Court judges. Naturally the new judges are, politically and ideologically, duplicates of those judges who appoint them.

Before 1977 no one paid much attention to the judges' political views. On the one hand they had to be Labor supprters, but on the other hand, at the times when the Labor party ruled Israel, The judges dealt only with making judicial decisions so the main concern was the intellectual qualifications of the judges. Their political views were less important. In order to approach the Supreme Court one had to pass a threshold of proving personal connection to the case, mainly personal damage inflicted by a decision or administrative act of government.

When Likud and Begin came to power and the Supreme Court decided to usurp power and actually expropriate sovereignty from the elected parliament and government, the method of performing this revolt was by abolishing the threshold and opening the gates of the Supreme Court to anyone who was unhappy with any decision of the government and parliament, allowing the Supreme Court which consists of people whose political views are very much tilted to the left, to overrule any decisions of the elected bodies..

Very soon organizations like "Peace Now" and Arab "Adallah" made a habit of regularly appealing to the Supreme Court against decisions of the elected organs of the Jewish state. The Supreme Court adopted many of those appeals at a timing and dosage of its own choice. Those were not decisions based on interpretation of the law, those where decisions based on the political and ideological views of the Judges. This explains exactly why the presentation of the conflict with the Supreme Court by the media, is misleading and Hypocritical.

The Supreme Court is trying to "eat its cake and have it too" in a very cynical way. On the one hand they raise the flag of professionalism and on the other hand they say everything is judicable. One can not grasp the stick at both ends, either the supreme court will again decide to refrain from dealing with political issues and deal only with judicial cases, in which case one can elect judges only on a professional basis, or they will insist that everything is judicable and the supreme court will go on dealing with political issues. In this case the Supreme Court must represent the political views of the public, so a major factor in electing judges will have to be their political and ideological convictions.

The big problem until now has been that the views and contentions also presented in this article were made by politicians, who became an immediate target for attacks and incitement on behalf of the media. Their past was immediately examined in order to find incriminating episodes, they were truthfully or falsely described as friends of criminals they attempt to protect. The question the media presented to the public in a demagogical way was: whom do you prefer, professor Aharon Barak or politicians like Yechiel Hazan etc' (unpopular indicted members of the Knesset) To dismiss professor Friedman, a well known jurist, with these methods will be much harder.. That's why the appointment of professor Friedman may be an opportunity Israel needs very much- an opportunity to return the sovereignty in Israel to the Knesset and the People.

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