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Israel's high court kills democracy
The Blaze ^ | January 1, 2024 | Mark Levin

Posted on 01/02/2024 6:44:12 AM PST by Twotone

Let's look at the latest garbage about Israel from Politico, as it is illustrative of the “reporting” by the corrupt, know-nothing media and their surrogates.

First, read Politico’s headline and the attack on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his judicial reform effort: “Israel’s Supreme Court overturns a key component of Netanyahu’s polarizing judicial overhaul.”

If you know nothing about this subject, the headline alone suggests Netanyahu is undermining Israel's judiciary. “Polarizing”? The truth is that since the 1990s, Israel’s Supreme Court has been seizing power from the elected parts of Israel's government — their Knesset and the prime minister — without any legal authority. That’s polarizing.

Israel does not have a constitution. Therefore, in this void, over time an all-powerful judicial oligarchy or politburo, if you will, has been born. As you can imagine, this judicial politburo is populated with left-wing lawyers.

In fact, so undemocratic and incestuous is this judicial politburo that it has majority control over the appointment authority for its own court, thereby ensuring that the leftists on the court are always in control and can never be displaced with a conservative or even non-leftist majority.

Israel’s judicial tyranny is as bad and pernicious as any other form of governmental tyranny.

So powerful has the judicial politburo become that standing is not even required for any party — person, group, or whatever — to raise any issue. In other words, a party is a legitimate petitioner even if it has no substantive, personal connection to any facts or events in the matter being raised with the court. Nowhere else in the Western world is such a practice permitted because it allows a court to delve into areas of governance where it does not belong.

But for Israel's judicial politburo, this is purposeful because it enables these left-wing judges to pick and choose among tens of thousands of matters brought before it to legislate on any matter they wish. And the people who bring cases to judicial politburo know it.

The only limitation is the judicial politburo's own discretion. In a hilariously absurd justification for its tyranny, the judicial politburo calls this “the reasonableness test.” And they've gotten away with it for the last 25 years or so.

This judicial politburo is so antithetical to enlightened democratic government and republicanism that it has been condemned by several top legal and judicial scholars, including in our country. It is a judicial tyranny as bad and pernicious as any other form of governmental tyranny. In fact, our own hideous Woodrow Wilson wrote often about controlling and lording over the will of the people and the popularly elected parts of our government through the judiciary by secreting like-minded ideologues into judgeships.

After years of tolerating the increasing authoritarianism of the court, and its constant intervention in and overruling of the Knesset, in matters as wide-ranging as national security and military decisions, religious practices, and anything one might imagine, the Likud Party and smaller conservative parties ran, in part, on an agenda of reforming the most egregious abuses of the judicial politburo.

Having won a significant majority in the election, and after much discussion and negotiation, Prime Minister Netanyahu ultimately endorsed a fairly moderate reform plan that looked much closer to the judicial system in our country. It passed the Knesset but was taken up for review by — you guessed it — the judicial politburo.

Throughout this process, Israel's hard left, supported by groups not only in Israel but in the United States and Europe, worked against any judicial reforms. And they raised millions of dollars, including dark money from overseas, to kill it. They held huge, organized protests, supported by Israel's notoriously leftist and anti-Netanyahu media, and enlisted all parts of Israel's society. In fact, certain military and intelligence groups were urged to participate in the opposition and asked to defy any orders given by Netanyahu as an act of defiance.

The judicial politburo is the only way Israel's hard left can control governance because it represents roughly 25% of the voters. Hence, it brought Israel to a near civil war to protect judicial corruption. And, of course, it positions itself as defending democracy!

The same sort of propaganda is used in our country when Joe Biden and his regime issue dictatorial fiats or a rogue court abuses its power — for example, denying Donald Trump a ballot position or depriving him of attorney-client privilege.

The campaign in Israel has been led, in part, by the likes of Ehud Barak, an unpopular and discredited former prime minister who had negotiated the horrendous deal with Yasser Arafat to surrender nearly 100% of Judea and Samaria, the ancestral Jewish homeland, as well as significant parts of the Jewish capital of Jerusalem, to the PLO.

But for Arafat pulling out, Israel would not be modern-day Israel. It would be a besieged nation with undefendable borders, among other things. Barak is celebrated in American, Israeli, and European media, as well as by Democratic Party politicians (Biden among them) and operatives, as some kind of defender of democracy and judicial independence. At the same time, Netanyahu is smeared as a dictator and an opponent of the people.

Thus, Israel’s judicial politburo, in a monumental act of judicial autocracy — and in the middle of a war for Israel's survival, no less! — has done more to destroy Israel's democracy than any other foe. No wonder it's being celebrated by Israel’s hard left, their media, our hard left, our media (like Politico), and other societal and cultural entities that hate Israel and America.


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Israel; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: israel; lox; marklevin
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1 posted on 01/02/2024 6:44:12 AM PST by Twotone
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
2 posted on 01/02/2024 6:58:45 AM PST by SJackson (In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.)
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To: Twotone

Israel has no constitution?


3 posted on 01/02/2024 7:07:24 AM PST by Bayard
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To: Twotone

Rule by judiciary is about as ideal as rule by mullahss.

—fJRoberts-!


4 posted on 01/02/2024 7:09:02 AM PST by A strike (Words can have gender, humans cannot.)
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To: Bayard

If they have no constitution then they should just ignore the judges.


5 posted on 01/02/2024 7:34:34 AM PST by nhbob1
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To: nhbob1

Or just appoint anyone they want to be judges, call them the new court.


6 posted on 01/02/2024 7:36:29 AM PST by Bayard
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To: Twotone

I have long been completely and thoroughly disgusted by Israel’s judicial system, most especially the fact that it appoints its own successors. What Netanyahu was trying to do was to move it more in the direction of our judiciary, in which a popularly elected, and therefore accountable, body would nominate new judges as the old ones retired or died off. Evidently, Israel’s judiciary likes their present system, which is little different from kings and dictators naming their own successors.

The fact that Israel has no constitution, and therefore no limitations upon the powers of any branch of government, is a very big problem, and should serve as a lesson to everyone in the world that actually cares about individual liberties and limiting government power. Israel’s judiciary is, indeed, a dictatorship.


7 posted on 01/02/2024 7:40:23 AM PST by Ancesthntr (“The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.” ― A.E. Van Vogt, The Weapons Shops of Isher)
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To: Twotone

Psalm 2 comes to mind...

1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

7 I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.


8 posted on 01/02/2024 7:44:16 AM PST by .30Carbine
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To: Twotone
Let them enforce it
9 posted on 01/02/2024 7:46:04 AM PST by ComputerGuy (Heavily-medicated for your protection)
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To: SJackson

Just like Marbury Vs Madison did here.


10 posted on 01/02/2024 7:48:25 AM PST by Republican in occupied CA (We had enough government in 1789)
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To: Twotone

Only if Netanyahu continues to be afraid of the rioting left.


11 posted on 01/02/2024 7:48:57 AM PST by Socon-Econ (adi)
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To: Twotone

Sounds like they need to impeach the judges.


12 posted on 01/02/2024 7:55:27 AM PST by MeanWestTexan (Sometimes There Is No Lesser Of Two Evils)
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To: nhbob1

Correct. Judge ignore them.


13 posted on 01/02/2024 7:56:03 AM PST by MeanWestTexan (Sometimes There Is No Lesser Of Two Evils)
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To: MeanWestTexan

Just.


14 posted on 01/02/2024 7:56:15 AM PST by MeanWestTexan (Sometimes There Is No Lesser Of Two Evils)
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To: Twotone

Israel is a parliamentary republic. There really aren’t any democracies in the world. We must remember, a democracy has no elected officials at all. Democracy is just we the people voting on everything. None exists, anywhere in the world.


15 posted on 01/02/2024 8:02:05 AM PST by exnavy (Grow your faith, and have the courage to use it.)
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To: Twotone

Marking.


16 posted on 01/02/2024 8:07:22 AM PST by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.)
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To: Twotone

The high court in Israel has basically ruled that it is the ultimate authority over everything and ruled that the Knesset has no power to to tell it what it can and cannot do.


17 posted on 01/02/2024 9:10:44 AM PST by Blood of Tyrants ( "It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled."- Mark Twain)
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To: SJackson

Amazing that all the leftards in Israel were demonstrating and protesting the loss of the judiciary branch’s ability to f@#$ with everyone, without regard to the other branches. Guess why? In the name of Democracy, of course.


18 posted on 01/02/2024 9:21:26 AM PST by Eleutheria5 (Every Goliath has his David. Child in need of a CGM system. https://gofund.me/6452dbf1. )
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To: Twotone

I’m very pro-Israel. But their system of government doesn’t seem very good.


19 posted on 01/02/2024 9:22:46 AM PST by gitmo (If your theology doesn't match your biography, what good is it?)
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To: Blood of Tyrants
The high court in Israel has basically ruled that it is the ultimate authority over everything and ruled that the Knesset has no power to to tell it what it can and cannot do.

It sounds like they need remedial education about how the "power of the purse" works. A judiciary with no pay, staff, security, or building won't be very effective or influential.

20 posted on 01/02/2024 9:39:13 AM PST by Brass Lamp
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