Israel cannot detain African migrants for up to three years without trial, High Court rules

9 Comments / 9 Comments

1. Human dignity? food & drink, warm clean clothing, shelter, privacy for personal hygene,human touch, a smiling face and listening ear. I use to manage a night school teaching English to immigrants [mostly illegal] and these is what I found people need. And often a stern repremand, it shows one cares.

2. dweller says:

   And how does the law define “human dignity”?

   That’s important, because if there’s no set definition for it, then it comes down to a purely subjective assessment — amounting to whatever a given Justice thinks about it.

   Then what happens when another Mme Justice comes along after Justice Arbel is gone

   — and the new one has a completely DIFFERENT take on “human dignity”

   Legal precedent based on existing basic laws. There would not be much wiggle room for future Justices once the precedents have been established.

   I think only new laws defining and limiting the purview of the court can stem the judicial dictatorship now in place and create a more balance of power in the branches of government. The court will fight to keep it’s hard won power and they have the most powerful allies in Israel.

3. Let There Be Law : This history of how one man created Judicial dictatorship in Israel and usurped the power of the knesset and the office of PM in Israel. http://legalaffairs.org/issues/May-June-2002/feature_bazelon_mayjun2002.msp

   Barak consistently pushed the court to assert its power in relation to the Knesset and the executive branch. He laid the intellectual groundwork for his “constitutional revolution” by arguing that the court could nullify government actions that it found inconsistent with “the rule of law.” After the 1992 Basic Laws passed, Barak said in a famous speech at the University of Haifa that even a grudging interpretation of the new laws gave them the power to trump “ordinary” legislation.

   Barak’s main point was not that the legislation proclaimed a broad new set of rights, although it did. Past supreme courts had already established that rights like free speech are inherent to democracy. The rights articulated in the 1992 Basic Laws are as basic as those previously recognized. But for Barak, the 1992 laws were most important because they changed the balance of power in Israel’s government. The rights to human dignity and freedom and to freedom of occupation—as interpreted by the court—came to “bind the Knesset itself.”

   Barak’s interpretation is far from obvious. Other Israeli justices had never adopted his earlier claim that the Basic Laws gave the court the power to strike down other legislation. But in 1995, Barak asserted his constitutional theory in a 139-page opinion in a case called Bank Mizrachi, holding that a law could be struck down for violating the right to private property included in the 1992 Basic Law providing for human dignity and freedom. The human rights described in the Basic Law “have turned into constitutional rights,” Barak wrote. When another statute does not meet those standards of law, it “bears a constitutional flaw.” As a result, “The Court can declare its invalidity.”

   Like Marbury v. Madison, the famous U. S. Supreme Court decision written by Chief Justice John Marshall, Bank Mizrachi gave the Israeli supreme court the power to declare, in Marbury’s words, “what the law is.” In the few earlier rulings that had similarly challenged the Knesset, the court masked the implications of its rulings with reassuring rhetoric about the Knesset’s supremacy. The best known rulings came in a 1953 case called Kol Ha’am, in which the court overturned a decision by the interior minister to suspend publication of two Communist newspapers that had denounced the government, and in a 1969 case called Bergman that increased access to campaign financing.

   In contrast to the deferential tone of these earlier decisions, Bank Mizrachi emphasized that the Basic Laws, not lawmakers, were paramount. As Barak later wrote: “The truth is that the Knesset was never sovereign. Sovereignty belongs to the people, not to their representatives.” While the Knesset had been considered supreme in its legislative power, the 1992 Basic Laws “clarified” that the “supremacy is that of our new Constitution.”

   Read more http://legalaffairs.org/issues/May-June-2002/feature_bazelon_mayjun2002.msp

4. The first criteria should be whether the Africans are Muslims or Christians.

   You are no better than a Nazi racist: Do you have any proof of your assumption that Muslim blacks pose a greater threat to Israelis than non Muslim Black Africans? Your assumption are based on pure racist prejudice. Christians are the greater threat if anything but they are all illegal and shold be shot or expelled back to Egypt where they infiltrated into Israel from.

   Black Christians – which I am sure would upset many Jews in Israel – are not as immediately dangerous as Sunni Blacks.

   Again you are a liar and cast aspersions without supportive data. I would add the ‘Black Heebs’ we have in Dimona to those to be booted out of here. I have long maintained that Israel has established the precedent of allowing illegal scum from around the world to settle here because of fear of the Goyim. That precedent will now be used against us with relationship to other illegal scum who managed to infiltrate our borders.

   The real national security threat is that besides illegals searching work and a better life we don’t know how many terrorists infiltrated along with them who have not been detected yet.

   I can just see the imagery were we to follow your suggestions. Lines of illegals and a Jew telling them: christians to the left and Muslims to the right. That’s called “SELECTION’

   You are a vile even for a christian.

5. Legal Forum Drafting New Amendment to Address Illegal Immigration Law

   The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to overturn a 2012 law aimed at fighting illegal entry to Israel severely undermines the principle of separation of power between the legislative, the judiciary and the executive, and seriously harms the Jewish identity of the State of Israel. There are approximately 70,000 illegal immigrants in Israel today, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan. Every 2 days a child is born to a Sudanese or Eritrean mother, and they represent 4% of the population in Tel Aviv. Furthermore, in 2012 the illegal immigrants were responsible for 40% of the crime there.

   As an organization acting to protect human rights, the Legal Forum cannot sit back while the residents of Tel Aviv are suffering from daily attacks and incidents of crime. There is also a serious demographic problem as most of the illegal infiltrators are Muslim, and in addition there is a significant security issue in light of the high levels of crime in these areas. The fact that the State of Israel has not been able to combat the situation further worsens the problem.

   The State has attempted to handle the situation in different ways, however it is too little too late. This week the Supreme Court caused a considerable setback in the handling of this matter. In a verdict issued on Monday, in answer to a petition brought by several anti-Zionist organizations, the Court cancelled the law passed in 2012. This law was aimed at discouraging illegal entry by allowing the state to jail illegal entrants who do not have “refugee” status pending their deportation, thus preventing them from settling in Israeli cities.

   The Supreme Court claimed that this law was unconstitutional.
   The Legal Forum strongly opposes this decision. Firstly it is further proof of the disproportionate power and influence of the judiciary. Secondly, the critical situation which Israel faces is very quickly becoming out of control. The Supreme Court is aware of the severity of the situation but chooses to favor the rights of the illegal immigrants over the right of Israeli citizens in south Tel Aviv to enjoy a sense of personal security in their Jewish state.

   As soon as the verdict was published, attorney Hila Cohen from the Forum drafted an amendment to the law that will meet the criteria set by the Supreme Court. The amendment allows the State to hold illegal immigrants for up to six months with a possibility to extend the period if they cannot be expelled. In this way the custody period is proportionate and provides the state with the ability to protect its citizens, as well as maintain the Jewish character of the State of Israel.
   The Legal Forum is actively working with MK’s in order to pass an immediate law that will handle this burning issue in the proper manner, protect human rights in Israel, and at the same time safeguard the interests of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.

   The Legal Forum wishes its friends and supporters a
   Chag Succot Sameach

6. “Justice Edna Arbel said Monday that detaining the African migrants rather than making a decision about whether they should be legally deported or granted asylum, ‘violated their fundamental constitutional rights to human dignity [that] is the basis for Israel’s values as a Jewish and democratic state’.”

   And how does the law define “human dignity”?

   That’s important, because if there’s no set definition for it, then it comes down to a purely subjective assessment — amounting to whatever a given Justice thinks about it.

   Then what happens when another Mme Justice comes along after Justice Arbel is gone

   — and the new one has a completely DIFFERENT take on “human dignity”?

7. The first criteria should be whether the Africans are Muslims or Christians.

   To many here, that seems ridiculous; but to a Jewish state I would think Muslim Africans are more of an immediate threat. Black Christians – which I am sure would upset many Jews in Israel – are not as immediately dangerous as Sunni Blacks.

8. I really don’t see the problem other than Israel’s hopeless obsession with it’s international image. They were maybe asylum seekers when they crossed over the border into Egypt but when they ventured further into Israel they clearly became illegal immigrants, economic infiltrators who can, should and must be sent back either to Egypt, which has the international law obligation to deal with their refugee status or to their country of origin. The Court is right in that the dilly dallying for THREE YEARS(?) is abusive and they should have been dealt with the very day they darkened our doorstep!

9. This is bad news. More proof that the legal system in Israel is nothing more than a ghetto institution.