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ISRAEL INSIGHT THE PEOPLE AND THE LAND

David M. Weinberg

Curb the Imperious

Israeli Supreme Court

srael’s Supreme Court has gone The Court has found it “unreasonable” Court refused to intervene in that
beyond the limits of “reasonable” that religious Jews be allowed to pray on matter.)
Iintervention in Israeli political and the Temple Mount because this would
public life with its ever-expanding scope disturb the Arabs and require a mas- So it may be when the Court rules on
of super-subjective decision-making. sive police presence. On the other hand, the historic Jewish Nation-State law of
the Court has found it “reasonable” to 2018, which was passed as a “Basic Law”
Going back 25 years to the term of then- allow the Women of the Wall to pray in – meaning that it was meant as supra-
Court President (Chief Justice) Aharon a manner offensive to most worshippers Court constitutional legislation. The
Barak, the Court effectively stripped at the Western Wall despite the distur- Court has no right to touch this. Nev-
Israeli law of any inherent meaning and bance involved and the massive police ertheless, current Chief Justice Esther
created complete legal mayhem. Barak presence required to make it feasible. Hayut has convened an 11-justice panel
and his colleagues developed a series of to judge the law’s “reasonableness.”
mumbo-jumbo, infinitely pliant con- It was found “unreasonable” that Reli-
cepts that allow High Court justices to gious Zionist Jews operate “acceptance So it may be when the Court rules soon
on a petition from a group of extremist
apply their own sensibilities to issues committees” to maintain distinctly professors to terminate all government
before the Court; to socially re-engineer homogenous small communities even funding for gender-separate Haredi col-
Israeli society – in their enlightened though is this basic libertarianism, not lege programs. Accepting the petition
image, of course. discrimination. But it is “reasonable”
for Bedouins and Arabs to operate would be a disaster for the slow but
“Reasonableness” is a term that runs “acceptance committees,” because they measurable movement of Haredi men
like a computer virus through the are considered “distinct” and apparently and women into the workforce – which
High Court’s decisions over the past more kosher communities by the Court. is crucial for the Israeli economy and
two decades. It is authoritarian jargon It was “reasonable” for the Central Elec- the future of our society.
which means the Court elastically can tions Committee to ban the right-wing What is next? Well, would a decision
go any way it pleases; as are the Court’s and anti-Arab “Otzma Le-Yisrael” party by the government to extend Israeli law
“broad interpretations” of law to fit its from running in the three last election to security zones and all settlements in
own perceptions of “values,” “balance,” campaigns, said the High Court. But Judea and Samaria be a “reasonable”
and “equality.” it was “unreasonable” to disallow the decision? How about the opposite
anti-Israel Joint Arab List from running, decision – to dismantle all settlements?
Given the longstanding makeup of including some of its openly pro-ter-
the Court, decisions that employ such rorist candidates like Heba Yazbak and Which of these decisions would be “rea-
sonable” and which not? The imperious
supple and flexible principles invariably Hanin Zoabi. High Court justices will decide, not the
are skewed in favor of the liberal side of electorate – unless the Knesset legis-
the political spectrum. So it was again this year when the High lates limits on the High Court’s reach,
Court of Justice struck down the 2017
And thus, the Court has ruled in recent Settlements Regularization Law as or at least enacts an override provision.
years with a liberal fist on the allocation “unconstitutional,” because it impinges
of JNF land, Palestinian residency rights on the land rights of absentee Palestin-
in Israel, rights of foreign converts to ians and mere cash compensation isn’t
citizenship, Haredi draft deferments sufficient. But it was okay to crush the David M. Weinberg is vice president of
and stipends to yeshiva students, com- rights of Israeli Jews and expel them the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and
merce and road closings on Shabbat, from their homes in Gush Katif with Security, jiss.org.il. His personal site is
and more. a few pennies of compensation. (The davidmweinberg.com.

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