Pursue Justice

Justice, justice you shall follow, so that you may live, and inherit the land which the LORD your G-d gives you. (From this week's Torah portion, Shoftim, Deuteronomy 16:20)

The preservation of our lives and existence in this land do not depend upon "the rule of law." They depend upon the rule of justice.

"And what about the rule of law?" the Ha'aretz reporter asked me.

'"The rule of law" is an abhorrent concept,' I answered. 'I strive for the rule of justice.'

The law is the escape hatch of the greatest scoundrels.
A small time criminal commits his crime against the law.
A medium criminal circumvents the law.
A big time criminal commits his crime by means of the law.

When Vice Premier and Minister for Strategic Matters Moshe Ya'alon spoke this week of returning to Homesh, he was actually demanding justice. But Netanyahu's answer was: "We will work to enforce the law."

The law is nothing more than a tool in the service of justice. When the tool becomes the goal, it turns into fascism, a dangerous version of idolatry. In no time, it is adopted by base forces and destruction will necessarily follow.

After last year's Likud primaries, Netanyahu enlisted Attorney Yaakov Ne'eman to "legally" (by means of the Supreme Court, of course) reframe the results of the primaries and to demote me to an unrealistic slot on the Likud roster. It is no coincidence that Netanyahu chose a religious figure beloved by Religious Zionism to fight Feiglin. Ne'eman gave the Supreme Court justices the small fig leaf that they needed so that they would not feel totally exposed in the face of what everybody in Israel – including the political commentators – fully understood.

Now Netanyahu and Ne'eman, in his new role as Minister of Justice, are using the same tactics – not within the Likud – but on the national front. Ne'eman is currently pushing hard for the election of an extreme leftist who was particularly cruel to opponents of the Expulsion – Sefi Alon – as the new Supreme Court justice. This despite the fact that for the first time ever, the Right holds the majority on the Committee for Selection of Judges. Netanyahu assumes that the faith-based public will ignore this spit in the face because Alon is from a famous Religious Zionist family. But his election as justice on the Supreme Court will effectively maintain and even strengthen the leftist hegemony in the justice system.

The beautiful harmony between Ne'eman and Chief Justice Beinish has made the pursuit of justice in Israel a joke. The minister that is supposed to represent the will and values of the PM's electorate and to reign in the "rule of law gang" that elects itself chose the easy way out. He betrayed the majority in whose name he received his position and subjugated himself to the very same gang. At this point, Israel is painfully far from the pursuit of justice.

Shabbat Shalom,

Moshe Feiglin
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The Golden Rule and Democratic Process

By Moshe Feiglin
15 Av 5769



The main excuse that the soldiers who expelled their brothers from their homes in Gush Katif used to justify their actions was that if they would not carry out their orders, Israel's democracy would collapse, it would be impossible for the government to govern and the state would essentially crumble away. So it made no difference whether the soldier agreed with his expulsion orders or not. He was brainwashed to believe that not carrying them out would guarantee destruction on an even greater scale.

Obviously, the factor that completely destroyed public faith in Israel's democratic process was the political unscrupulousness that paved the way for the destruction of the Land. Entire books can be written about the callous scorn for the law and democratic process emblematic of the way that the Oslo Accords became law in Israel. Yossi Beilin, Shimon Peres, Prof. Hirschfeld, Dr. Pundak and the entire Oslo pack deserve to be behind bars for many years to come.

There used to be a basic law in Israel that prohibited a prime minister from appointing more than 18 ministers to his government. But a short while after Oslo (in the elections of 1999), Ehud Barak was elected and revised the law to fit his political needs. "That is the price of peace," his spin doctors explained. "If we want to see progress in the peace process, we have to pay the price of more ministers for all the parties in the coalition." The media – democracy's "watchdog" – went along with the farce. After all, proper democratic process and public faith in Israel's democratic political system may be important – but for destruction of the Land ("peace") those values can surely be sacrificed.

Sharon followed in Barak's footsteps. His government also boasted more than 18 ministers. He destroyed Gush Katif with all sorts of blatant manipulations. The Eviction Compensation Law that passed the Knesset would not have made it past the average student council. It entirely contradicts all the civil rights that former Chief Justice Aharon Barak worked so hard to legislate. But there is one golden rule that overrides all others: It is permissible to change the law as necessary as long as it promotes the Left's agenda. That rule triumphed in Gush Katif.

It is obvious that no self-respecting court would have authorized Netanyahu to change the rules of the game in the middle of the Likud primaries. But the Golden Rule prevailed. Netanyahu needed to rid himself of the Feiglin trouble and to pave the way to destroy the Land of Israel by means of the votes of the Right. When Netanyahu had me demoted to the 36th slot and Michael Ratzon appealed to the Supreme Court against the move (that also demoted him to an unrealistic slot on the roster), the Supreme Court could not manage to comprehend what the District court and the citizens of Israel clearly understood. The Supreme Court rejected Ratzon's appeal. The general rule is that the Supreme Court will only change the decision of the District Court in extreme cases. It seems that the fact that Moshe Feiglin was legally elected to a high place on the Likud roster was just such an extreme case.

Netanyahu has gotten used to manipulating the law and the democratic process for his political purposes. His latest breach of democratic process is the Mofaz Law, which makes it easier to split Knesset factions and is a prelude to the defection of Kadimah MKs to the Likud and the eventual destruction of settlements, G-d forbid. The leftist opposition MKs put on a good show of being shocked by the rude violation of democratic process that this law exemplifies. But in truth, it was no more than a show. The Golden Rule concept was born to feed the insatiable Oslo monster. Changing the law to foster the destruction of settlements and settlers is an old leftist trick.

No matter. Everybody knows that the hilltop youth and the settlers are the real danger to democracy.
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The British Decide That Israeli Law Is 'Unacceptable'

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
04 August 09

Reaction to the evictions of Arab families from where they were living in the Sheikh Jarrah district of east Jerusalem has universally given the impression that the Israelis threw out Palestinian families from their homes in order to colonise a traditionally Arab area for further ‘illegal’ Jewish ‘settlement’ (see for example reports by the BBC and the Times).

The response by the British government was particularly aggressive. The British consulate said:

We are appalled by the evictions in East Jerusalem. Israel’s claim that the imposition of extremist Jewish settlers into this ancient Arab neighbourhood is a matter for the courts or the municipality is unacceptable. Their actions are incompatible with Israel’s desire for peace. We urge Israel not to allow extremists to set the agenda.

The US and the UN also condemned the evictions:

State Department spokeswoman Megan Mattson said such actions in east Jerusalem constitute violations of Israel’s obligations under US-backed ‘road map’ peace plan. ...Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, called Sunday’s evictions ‘totally unacceptable.’

The hysteria has unleashed yet more vile anti-Israel bigotry – and not just on the left. On Conservative Home’s Centre Right blog, this post featuring video coverage of the evictions provoked vicious attacks on Israel in the readers’ thread, including calls for Israel to be ‘dismantled’, suggestions that Israelis were less than human and comparing their treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazis.

Yet the belief that Israel has turfed out the rightful Arab inhabitants of Sheikh Jarrah could not be further from the truth. What actually happened here was that, after a protracted series of legal battles over a long disputed claim to properties in this area, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the titles properly belonged to Jewish families and that the Arabs living there were illegal squatters. Moreover, although the Arabs claimed the Jewish families had forged their ownership documents, the Supreme Court ruled that it was in fact the Arab documents which had been forged while the Jewish deeds were legitimate. The Jews who moved in were not ‘illegal settlers’. They were finally reclaiming property that was legally theirs, but which had been effectively stolen from them during the illegal annexation of this area by Jordan between 1948 and 1967.
(Full article)

Related: The Sheikh Jarrah-Shimon HaTzadik Neighborhood by Nadav Shragai
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