Alperovitch - Applying the laws of physics to democracy

Lior Alperovitch
Israel Hayom
01 December '11

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=935

One of British physicist-mathematician Isaac Newton's greatest achievements was his formulation of the three laws of motion, which constitute the foundation of classical mechanics. The significance of these laws is not limited to physics, they can also be applied to political, social, and legal trends.

Take for example Newton's third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, which basically means that when an object exerts force on another object, an equal force is exerted back on it. The same principle applies to the recent onslaught of legal activity in the Knesset. The force exerted by the legislative moves, initiated by the right-wing, is being exerted back by the left-wing outcry of an attack on democracy.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that a majority of Israelis hold right-leaning views. The extensive representation of the right in the current coalition, which by the rules of democracy should accurately represent the people's range of views, proves this claim.

But a strange thing happened in Israel: though the Right was voted into power, the media and many non-parliamentary bodies expect it to abide by the values of the Left. Why? Because they believe the Israeli public is not smart enough to make political decisions, or because, as opposed to the select few in the Left, they have not been blessed by the wonderful light of enlightenment. As far as they are concerned, the Right is qualified only to flounder around in the darkness of their popular religion or their chilling conservatism – certainly not to govern. The Left sees itself as a moral watchtower, whose aim it is to correct the public's views, by force if necessary, or by use of outside assistance in the form of European funding.



The roots of this distorted view – prevalent in some Israeli political and media circles - can be found in the judicial activism revolution, which upgraded the legal system's status from a separate, independent branch that protected minorities, to a kind of legislative branch that can prevent the Knesset from passing laws it considers too right-leaning or too nationalistic.

There are also those who would attribute this calamity to the words of left-wing politician and pioneer Yitzhak Ben-Aharon. His disappointment over what he saw as the invalid election of Menachem Begin in 1977 led him to declare that "if this is the people's will, then the people should be replaced."

Whether the culprit is judicial activism or Ben-Aharon, it is clear that not everyone is happy with the fact that democracy can also benefit your political opponents.

Democracy being defined as majority rule does not mean the majority has a right to abuse the minority. But it also does not mean that as a protected sector, the minority can use its immunity to rule over the majority. In Israel, the left-wing minority aims to rule over the right-wing majority.

That is the message of Newton's third law. The latest legal onslaught was not born of a political vacuum. It is a radical reaction to a reality in which one side pulled the rope too far in its own direction, prompting the other side to pull the rope just as hard just to restore balance.

In a proper democracy, it is the duty of the government to legislate laws that reflect the views of the majority that elected it, in the spirit of the prevailing political ideals. Legislating laws based on the majority's will is not a form of minority abuse, but rather simply the duty of an elected government. It is supposed to carry out the policies which it was elected to carry out, even if those policies are not to the liking of those who suddenly found themselves among the opposition.

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