Twice in recent days Israel’s High Court ordered a halt to construction of portions of the security fence on the grounds that it was inconveniencing Arab residents. The principle behind the court decision was morally wrong. Saving lives is more important than sparing people from inconvenience.
In the first decision, the court ordered the government to re-route twenty miles of the barrier, because its path would cause hardships for some Arab residents in the area. In a second ruling a day later, the court ordered a halt to construction of the fence around the southern edge of Jerusalem, after local Arabs complained that the fence would disrupt their lives.
Of course Israeli security measures disrupt lives. But they also save lives.
There is a reason that Israel is building the security fence, maintaining check points, setting up road blocks, and striking at weapons factories. The reason is that Israel is at war.
The Palestinian Arabs have been waging non-stop terrorism against Israel since September 2000, not to mention frequent terrorism all the way back to the 1920’s, before Israel even existed. If anyone has been disrupting lives, it has been the Palestinian Arabs who have been disrupting and ending the lives of Israelis.
Today, Israelis are afraid to go on buses or shop in open-air marketplaces. They are afraid to hitch-hike, much less take an ordinary nature hike through their own countryside. Every time an Israeli walks into a store, he or she has to submit to a personal inspection. Israelis cannot even have normal trash receptacles on street corners, because Arabs plant bombs in them.
So because the Arabs are waging war against Israel, a small number of Arabs have to undergo the inconvenience of having their bags examined at checkpoints, or losing very small amounts of farmland. That’s a lot less inconvenient than what Israelis suffer, that is, the inconvenience of their children being blown to pieces by suicide bombers or Kassam rockets.
Put simply, Palestinian Arab terrorism is the cause of the fence. If there were no terrorism, there would be no fence.
In the United States, it would be inconceivable for the Supreme Court to issue a ruling of this sort. The principle of Eminent Domain permits the government to, for example, knock down houses that are simply in the way of a road that is being built or some other public necessity for the greater good. It is a simple and logical concept that helping the entire public occasionally inconveniences a small minority.
In this case, moreover, it is more than small minority that is not exactly friendly to Israel. Polls have consistently shown that the overwhelming majority of Arabs in the territories are deeply hostile to Israel. In all likelihood, the Arabs whose inconvenience is considered paramount by the High Court are people who would like to see Israel destroyed; yet, it is their feelings which are being treated as more important than the lives of Israel’s citizens.
It is bitterly ironic that the same Israeli High Court that says the security fence is less important than the Arabs’ inconvenience has no objections to the far worse inconvenience that the Jewish residents of Gaza are about to face.
The plan for unilateral Israeli surrender of Gaza calls for the mass expulsion of over 8,000 Jewish men, women, and children from their homes. Children will be ripped away from their friends, families torn away from their neighborhoods, livelihoods will be destroyed, the farms that produce a very large percentage of Israel’s vegetables will be abandoned.
Being permanently kicked out of your homes, and having those homes destroyed or turned over to people who would like to kill you, is far more inconvenient than what the fence is causing to some Arabs. But for some reason, the humanitarian concerns of Jews do not seem to be a pressing matter for the justices of the Israeli High Court.
Can this double standard be due to political bias? Everyone has his or her political opinions, even High Court justices. But in order to preserve a fair and neutral legal system, the justices are supposed to suspend their personal judgment, set aside their biases, and issue rulings based on the law.
There is no law prohibiting the government from inconveniencing individuals in order to save lives. There is no law requiring the mass expulsion of Jews from Gaza. Israel’s High Court justices should be upholding the law, and upholding the highest principle of all – saving lives – rather than injecting their political views into their decisions.
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