Judging by the front pages of every mainstream news outlet in Israel, the debate on Justice minister Yariv Levin’s judicial reform is entirely one-sided, meaning it is resisted by former judges and prosecutors, as well as hordes of economists, high-tech millionaires, IDF reservists, who all cram the streets with a passion to stop the “regime revolution” as they call it.
But since you and I know that in reality, the vast majority of Israeli Jews favor the right (the left won only 47 seats in the current Knesset – that’s 1,669,596 legal votes, compared with 2,304,964 right-wing votes). This means that those Israelis screaming against the “revolution” and the “illegal government” aren’t even close to standing for half the Jews in Israel.
Nevertheless, the right has been slow to react to this onslaught, possibly because as winners we felt magnanimous. We shouldn’t be. This one is a fight for the future of our country in the next generation.
Some 150 Israeli jurists, members of the Israel Bar Association, on Saturday night held in Givat Shmuel a conference supporting Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s judicial reform. The conference included retired judges and members of the IBA executive committee, all of whom were outraged by their professional guild dragging its right-wing due-paying members to endorse and support a distinctly left-wing agenda.
The conference was moderated by attorney Yael Dolev, chair of the Bar Association Labor Law Forum, and a partner at the firm Gross, Kleinhendler, Hodak, Halevy, Greenberg, Shenhav & Co., whose senior partner, Attorney David Hodak, was summoned to a police interrogation over his incitement to “use live fire” against the government over the reform.
Retired Judge Moshe Drori, who served as Vice President of the Jerusalem District Court, told the panel: “The bill changing the composition of the Committee to Select Judges is good and balanced. The public will not be harmed, because, in the future, judges will also be appointed by left-wing governments.”
Perhaps. In the meantime, there’s plenty of room for changes that favor the right in a court of 15 that has a single Mizrahi and a single Arab judge. Everyone else is good old Ashkenazi boys (and girls).
TV host and Likud member, Attorney Kinneret Brashi, said: “The politicians come to serve a public purpose and promote policy and they should choose a legal counsel who would help them promote their policy. We must end the mindset that condemns politicians in advance. And it’s certainly impossible for a legal counsel to do a checklist for their minister and approve everything they pursue.”
Nahum Rakover, professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University and a former Deputy Attorney General, “The totality of the articles of the reform requires healing a chronic condition. The Human Dignity legislation (Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty – DI) has been diverted 180 degrees from its original intent. A situation has arisen whereby the written law applies to everyone, except for the judges of the Supreme Court.”
Dr. Aviad Bakshi, head of the legal department at Forum Kohelet, said “no one in the world disputes the role of elected officials in the selection of judges. It cannot be that the map of values that guides the judiciary will be so far from the map of values that guides the public. The election ballots should guide the court’s map of values.”
Attorney Ilan Bombach, who serves on the bar association’s executive committee, said: “For the first time, there’s a government that intends to deliver on its promises, and the public is not used to it. We must hurry because whatever doesn’t happen in the first year won’t happen. Aharon Barak did not consult anyone when he made his judicial reform – but it’s good that we do things with an open and willing heart, and the bar association should be a bridge for this issue and not demonstrate against the government.”
