Israeli Supreme Court overrules elected officials to retain unlimited power

ANIEL GREENFIELD

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The Supreme Court hears petitions, Sept. 28, 2023. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

Israel’s political system spent much of the year grappling with a long overdue effort to restore some checks and balances on the judiciary. After months of rioting, hysterical protests and attacks on the military, the only thing that passed was a law that prevented the Supreme Court from overruling laws passed by a democratically elected government because it thought them “unreasonable.”

Predictably, the Supreme Court rejected any limitations on its otherwise unlimited power and announced that it retains total power over the people.

So much for the “reasonableness.”

“The High Court of Justice on Monday struck down the basic law for repealing the reasonableness clause by a majority of 8 justices who opposed the law against 7 who supported it,” reported The Jerusalem Post.

The High Court also approved its own power to strike down basic laws as a general matter by a vote of 12-3.

How nice of it.

“Outgoing President of the High Court, Esther Hayut, was among the majority who struck [down] the law. In the draft of the verdict, Hayut wrote that ‘the Basic Law constitutes a significant deviation from “the evolving constitution” and therefore must be accepted with broad consensus and not by a narrow coalition majority,’” according to the Post.

There’s no constitution, evolving or otherwise, only the whims of leftists like Hayut and coalition governments depend on narrow coalition majorities. What Hayut is really saying is that elected officials can never pass a law limiting her power.

“Justice Ofer Grosskopf joined Hayut’s opinion and stated, ‘The demand to apply the law to those at the top of the pyramid is at the heart of our rules, no person is exempt from the rule of law,’” the report continues.

Except the Supreme Court. But by the rule of law, the justices mean their rule. Their whole point is that there is no rule of law, only judicial tyranny divorced from the constitution or anything democratic, legal or enduring.

That’s the whole point of justices being able to strike down laws based on a standard as vague as “meaningfulness.”

Some people would say that Israel has bigger problems right now. Perhaps. That was always true. But having a leftist judiciary in control of political decisions, and military ones, crippled Israel’s ability to fight Islamic terrorism for decades. The current coalition sacrificed a great deal to place the lightest limitation on the judicial jackboot, with the expected outcome.

The judiciary will maintain its totalitarian rule and cripple any response to Islamic terrorism. Especially any responses that depend on the legal system.

This is why Soros and his ilk have invested a lot of money in building up an empire of nonprofits that can wage constant lawfare.

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