by Peter A. Belmont / 2012-01-12
© 2012 Peter Belmont

RSS Recent Essays (All Topics)

•(12/23) How did we get to October 7th?

•(11/23) Our Political Habits Are Ending The Human Race

•(10/23) Sketch of Israel-Palestine History

•(10/23) Whoever controls the discourse controls emotional reactions to reality

•(08/23) Russia On Trial

•(01/23) The Purpose of "Conservatism"

•(10/22) The project of returning the earth to the cockroaches couldn't be in better hands!

•(05/22) Abortion, The Constitution, And The Supreme Court

•(03/22) The Problem of Climate Change Framing or Discourse or Understanding

•(06/21) Israel-Palestine: If not apartheid, then what?

Some things happening in Israel these days may suggest what might be called “defects” in democracy. For example, Israelis may bring their foreign-but-non-Arab spouses to Israel as residents, but may not do the same with Arab spouses.[1] As we read at 972mag.com,

Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi famously said that “Israel is indeed a Jewish-democratic state: it is democratic for Jews and Jewish for all the rest.”

This rings truer than ever after Israel’s High Court of Justice rejected yesterday (again) the petitions against the Citizenship Law, one of the first measures to make racial discrimination against the Arab minority not just common practice, but part of Israel’s legal codex.

The High Court rejected the petitions against the Citizenship Law in a split, 6-5 decision. The incoming head of the High Court, Justice Asher Grunis, wrote in the decision that “human rights shouldn’t be a recipe for national suicide.”

You can read the full verdict here [Hebrew, PDF]. Justice Edmond Levy, a religious and somewhat conservative judge, harshly criticized Grunis for his language, claiming he misled the public as to the nature of the citizenship law.

Throughout all these years, Katzover and his fellow settlers declared their loyalty to democracy. They angrily rejected any assertion that they were opposed to democracy or seeking to harm it. But not anymore. This week – as it happens, on exactly the same day when the Justices decided to take settler Noam Solberg to their bosom - Katzover made his position crystal clear: “I would say that today, Israeli democracy has one central mission, and that is to disappear. Israeli democracy has finished its historical role, and it must be dismantled and bow down before Judaism. All the events nowadays are leading to the realization that there is no other way except putting the Jewish issue before any other issue, that that is the answer to all the situation and the threats.” In other words: For forty years and more, democracy gave most generously to us settlers - abundant funds and lands expropriated from Palestinians and military protection at every step we took. We ate our fill and blessed democracy for all these nice gifts, and now that we’re big and strong enough, we do not need democracy anymore.

The lawsuit was filed, and Noam Sohlberg was named as the presiding judge. One of the learned friends hastened to advise me: “Demand that he recuse himself. The woman attacked you because of things you wrote about the settlers. Sohlberg is a settler. He will rip you to shreds.”

I straightened my back proudly, like a Polish officer on his horse, and declared: “I won’t disqualify a person because of his place of residence.”

So he ripped me to shreds.

The ruling ranged from strange to absurd. It was an attempt to alter the facts to suit the outcome. I read, laughed and appealed. Sohlberg’s ruling was overturned very quickly, Hatzofeh was required to apologize, and I once again learned the truth of the proverb that where you stand depends on where you sit (or settle ).

A great deal has been written about that ruling. But instead of rehashing it to reinforce my joy at Sohlberg’s appointment to the Supreme Court, I would like to give the floor over to German playwright Bertolt Brecht. As the Weimar Republic was coming to an end, he wrote a play called “The Exception and the Rule,” about a wealthy merchant from the ruling class who murders a poverty-stricken porter. The merchant is brought before a judge and claims, of course, that he felt threatened.

The judge turns to the accused and says: “You want to say that you assumed, and rightly so, that the coolie must have something against you. In this case you really did kill an innocent man, but only because you had no way of knowing that he was innocent.” Then the judge acquits the accused.

It’s as though Brecht, a prophet in his rotting homeland, foresaw Sohlberg’s ruling and summed up its logic in a sharp, penetrating and accurate satirical play.

And the State of Israel no longer deserves a Supreme Court without Sohlberg. It deserves a court in its own image. Someone “representative,” as the MK Zeev Elkin types are loudly demanding. We should do as they wish. Because from now on, the court really is far more representative of the State of Israel. It suits the state far better.

And Sohlberg - along with his rulings and the land on which he lives (which on June 5, 1969, was seized for “military purposes” ) - will also make it somewhat more difficult for the High Court of Justice to continue to boast of statesmanlike behavior and to hide behind judicial robes, as it seeks to free itself of the threat of intervention from a foreign court.

And all of that is good and right and worthy, because evil - just like justice - must be seen, not just done.

      gnjnkkbxvu
      1234567890