Israel pushes back against Biden; moves to rein in 'activist' judges

Israel's Knesset (parliament) gave initial approval Monday to a law that will, for the first time, strip unelected judges and Bar Association representatives of the power to choose new judges and to overrule legislative decisions. 

Biden ignored, for now

The bill now goes back to committee for possible revisions.  The bill will then go back to the Knesset for a second and third vote after which it will become law over the objection of Joe Biden, who claimed that stopping the law is necessary to protect an “independent judiciary.”

The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary. Building consensus for fundamental changes is really important to ensure that the people buy into them so they can be sustained. [Emphases added].

Biden did not explain how allowing Leftist judges to overrule the will of Israeli voters makes the judiciary “independent”. He also failed to demonstrate how watering down the judicial reform plans supported by the majority of elected Knesset members, in an attempt to obtain the “consensus” of Leftist opposition members, would further democracy. His administration nonetheless hopes to derail the reform before its final approval.

Don't do as I do

When it comes to his own administration, Biden has had no problem enacting laws without the consensus of the opposition party, using his vice-president's tie-breaking vote to overrule half the Senate 26 times in just over two years, more than any administration since Vice President John Calhoun's 31 tie-breaking votes over two full terms from 1825-1832. 

Biden also did not explain why he opposes the move to have the executive and legislative branches of Israel choose judges when he himself, as the head of the executive branch, chooses judges, often without consensus, as in the case of Ketanji Brown Jackson. That Supreme Court justice, who received just 3 Republican votes, was nominated by Biden despite her controversial practice of consistently sentencing child pornography defendants below the sentencing guidelines and even apologizing to one such defendant for the sentence she did give him.

Self-perpetuating cycle of “Israel Last” judges

Judges in Israel are chosen by a nine member committee that has, till now, been dominated by three Supreme Court justices and two representatives from the Israel Bar Association. Those justices and Bar Association leaders have been invariably Leftist since the founding of the State of Israel, far removed from the traditional, religious and so called ultra-orthodox voters who provided the current ruling coalition with a majority in national elections last November.

The judges handpicked by other judges and the Bar Association have consistently protected enemies of the State of Israel, imposing light sentences on Marxist terrorists and blocking the demolition of abandoned buildings from which terrorists have shot at Israeli vehicles, putting abandoned property above the right to life. A pregnant woman and all four of her young children were murdered in an attack from one of those abandoned buildings after the army was blocked from destroying it. Israel National News reports:

What is both staggering and infuriating about this appalling tragedy is that the army had intended to demolish the buildings, which afforded cover to the murderers, because they had been used previously by terrorists to kill both Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers. However, the demolition was prevented by order of the Supreme Court . . .

At the same time, the High Court has trampled the rights of the religious public, preventing them from having one radio station to compete with Leftist public radio stations, as described by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed:

The Arutz Sheva radio station was established so that the voice of the Jews who respect Torah and Jewish tradition, who volunteer and dedicate their time for the sake of accepting new immigrants, settling Judea and Samaria, and enlisting in the army, would be heard.

In order to uphold the law by broadcasting outside the territorial waters of the State of Israel, Arutz Sheva invested a huge fortune in purchasing and maintaining a ship . . .

In order to regulate the legality of Arutz Sheva broadcasts and stations from the Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] sector, the Knesset passed a law. However, the Supreme Court, without legal authority, annulled the law. Instead of preferring the basic right of freedom of speech, it preferred the right of the owners of the regional stations, thus continuing the left’s control of the media.

Similarly, Rabbi Melamed explains how Israel's Supreme Court has attacked the rights of religious minorities.

The judicial system also did not protect the religious rights of soldiers made in good faith, who were forced by the military system to violate their religious customs by participating in mixed-gender units, and to hear women’s singing.

In relation to male and female singers who requested to perform before gender separated audiences, the judicial system was the tyrant itself that denied the minority its rights, and added to its perversity by presenting the minority as discriminatory.

Perhaps most egregious, Israel's radical Supreme Court President Esther Hayut approved a clearly false confession of a religious youth that was extracted through extreme torture. That's the same chief justice who insists on maintaining control of judicial selection in order to protect human rights. In the words of legal aid organization Honenu:

Hayut, like all her friends who proclaim themselves protectors of human rights, has made a mockery of the human rights of all the downtrodden of society with her support of torture when it is used to force those being interrogated to confess to crimes — just like in a third world country.

Precisely now, when everyone is talking about the Court as the 'protector of human rights,' Hayut has reminded us of the lies and deceit behind these fine words. When it comes to a Jew with a beard and peyot [sidelocks], the Court despises his human rights and tramples upon them.

Reform

The new law would redistribute the power on the Judicial Selection Committee.

Removing two representatives from the Israel Bar Association, the legislation divides the panel’s nine seats equally between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches, but gives the coalition control of five votes of the nine, and requires only five votes for an appointment.

A second bill that is moving ahead separately as part of the judicial reform package would create “preemptive immunity” for certain laws, blocking the High Court from cancelling them.

Hysteria

Israel's Left has been battling the judicial reform package since the new government came to power with campaign promises to enact just that. They have staged protests, attempted to block Knesset members from voting on the legislation, threatened to organize mass resignations from the Knesset in an attempt to disrupt the body from operating and have run non-stop stories in the mainstream press claiming that the Israeli economy will suffer terribly from reigning in the judges' powers. 

The media has not, though, addressed whether revenues from Israel's tourism and business investment could be expected to increase and whether its defense budgets could decrease if a more politically balanced High Court allowed the army to crack down on terrorism. 

What's really going on?

According to one member of the Knesset, the real issue is not the economy but control, claiming that the nation's overwhelmingly Ashkenazi secular elite has maintained control over the more traditional populations (the majority of whom are people of color) through its control of the Supreme Court. Addressing the chief justice, he said,

If you were a decent woman, you would suggest to the committee for selecting judges that there be some Sephardic, ultra-Orthodox and Ethiopian judges.