I was raised in the United States which has a governmental principle very foreign to the Israeli system. It’s called “Balance of Power-Checks & Balances,” and in theory at least there must always be agreement between two out of the three branches of the government:
- Executive
- Judiciary
- Legislative
OK, I know that recently the US President Barack Hussein Obama has used something called “Executive Privilege” to dictate policies without going through normal governmental processes, but I’m not getting into that right now. When I learned how the government works a half a century ago, there was no such thing taught to us in Social Studies class.
One Thing I’m pretty sure still exists is that the judges are supposed to decide according to law, and when lawyers and judges explain cases to a jury they are supposed to make sure that the jury understands the law and not decides just according to personal whim and ideology.
In Israel, we have a very serious dual problem with the Judicial branch of government in that not only do the judges choose judges, but they have a strong Leftist ideology and believe that their job is to enforce their ideology on the country:
Supreme Court President Miriam Naor responded on Sunday, accusing Erdan of encroaching on the independence of Israel’s judicial branch while attempting to violate “the principle of a judge’s personal independence, which is a central tenet of a democratic regime*.” (Jerusalem Post) (*emphasis mine)
I find Naor’s statement totally outrageous. There is no such principle as “personal independence” for judges’ decisions in the concept of democracy. That’s anarchy when a judge judges according to his/her personal opinion and ideology, rather than law. The job of a judge is to enforce the law through the courts, not make law according to arbitrary individual/personal opinions.
Democracy is the rule of the people who elect legislators who are in charge of making laws. And there were just recently elections in Israel. One of the issues that brought votes to the Likud and Bayit Yehudi was just that problem, the Leftist hold on the Judiciary here in Israel. The people, the voters, the citizens of the State of Israel do not want judges who override the law and go against the democratically legislature aka the Knesset. What’s anti-democratic in Israel is the way the judges make decisions, like Supreme Court President Miriam Naor.