by Ezequiel Doiny, ISRAEL UNWIRED
On September 1, 2022 Arutz 7 reported “In the heart of Samaria, near the Karnei Shomron industrial zone, massive development works are underway within Areas C on both state and privately owned Jewish land, including the development of lots, construction of buildings, breaking and paving of new roads, and setting up connections to infrastructure.
“Work began around six months ago, at which point the Regavim organization contacted the relevant authorities in the hope that they would enforce the law. When no response was received and construction work continued, Regavim submitted a petition to the courts.
“The petition details the extensive scope of construction work near the Karnei Shomron industrial zone and the village of Lekef that is being carried out illegally, without permits, on state lands and also on private land including tracts belonging to the “Har Veguy” company owned by the Zer family. Over the past few months, Regavim has repeatedly appealed to the authorities with the demand that they cease the work, with an emphasis on the privately owned area, but responses have been few and inadequate despite the significance – and meanwhile, construction continues apace. “Binyamin Council head in US to meet with members of Congress Regavim points out that in similar cases such as Amona, Migron, and Netiv Ha’avot, the courts have not hesitated to rule against construction taking place on privately owned land, and have made the issues a priority for the authorities to address.
“The Palestinian Authority is taking advantage of the ineptness of the authorities and is in effect promoting a strategic plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state in Area C,” said Moshe Shmueli, Regavim’s coordinator of Judea and Samaria.
“Before our very eyes we see how day by day, illegal construction is taking over huge areas of state land and private land of Jews. Only recently we documented another new building and planting of trees. We’re not talking about a lone house – what we’re seeing is the construction of infrastructure including roads, water, and electricity. Meanwhile, the authorities are doing nothing and the Jewish landowners are left to stand helplessly by.
“The situation is simply outrageous.” The head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, added, “The government is systematically abandoning Area C and now also private lands that were purchased by Jews. If this were about private lands belonging to Arabs, everyone would be up in arms. Selective enforcement is reaching a peak we have never seen before. We demand that the relevant authorities and the government immediately put a stop to the construction and takeover of Area C, on both private and state lands, assets belonging to the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”
The article says “The Palestinian Authority is taking advantage of the ineptness of the authorities…” but the Israeli authories are not inept, they are complicit. They are giving away Area C because they want that land to become part of a Palestinian State. Israeli authorities are not only failing to apply sovereignty they are actually surrendering the land.
The current Israeli government is surrendering Area C and (shockingly) even if Netanyahu returns to power this process will not be reversed as I explained in my Article below.
There is no true democracy in Israel, there is a tyranny of the Supreme Court. The current government is complicit with it and Netanyahu did nothing (or could do nothing) to confront it or weaken it while he was PM.
An example of how the judicial activism of the supreme court interferes in Israel’s democracy was recently displayed in Israel’s Supreme Court ban on Otzma Yehudit members Baruch Marzel and Bentzi Gopstein from running in the elections. On August 26, 2019 Ido Ben Porat reported in Arutz 7 “The Supreme Court on Sunday evening disqualified Otzma Yehudit members Baruch Marzel and Bentzi Gopstein, preventing them from running in the September 17 elections to the 22nd Knesset…
Gopstein said in response to the ruling, “The Supreme Court again proves to be a branch of Meretz. [Arab] MK [Heba] Yazbak who wrote that Samir Kuntar is a fighter and a Shaheed and said that she misses Nasser is not disqualified. According to the Supreme Court, calling for the murder of soldiers is fine, but fighting assimilation is unacceptable.”
Last March Michael Ben Ari was also banned from running in the elections despite being approved by the Knesset’s Central Elections Committee. On March 18, 2019 JNS reported “Israel’s Supreme Court banned Otzma Yehudit candidate Michael Ben-Ari from running in the upcoming national elections—the first time Israel’s highest court has ever prevented a single individual from running in an Israeli election—in opposition to a decision by the Central Elections Committee.
In an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court voted in favor of a petition to disqualify Ben-Ari due to anti-Arab beliefs and incitement. The court’s decision had been urged by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and represents the first time that the Supreme Court barred an individual, rather than a faction or party, from running.
…Ben-Ari has insisted that his remarks were taken intentionally out of context, and that he is not a racist.
Otzma blasted the decision, with Ben-Ari calling the Supreme Court a “judicial junta that seeks to take over our lives.”
On September 18, 2017 Evelyn Gordon reported in Commentary Magazine “When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, he’ll undoubtedly devote part of his speech to the need to fight terrorist organizations. What he probably won’t mention is that in Israel, the fight is often hamstrung by the Supreme Court’s out-of-control judicial activism, as evidenced by last week’s mind-boggling ruling denying the government the right to revoke the Israeli residency of people serving in the Palestinian legislature or cabinet on behalf of Hamas.
In 2006, three Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem were elected to the Palestinian parliament on behalf of the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform party, while a fourth was appointed to the Palestinian cabinet on behalf of that party. Israel responded by revoking their Israeli residency rights.
To most people, this would sound like a no-brainer. Many democracies view serving in a foreign government as grounds for revocation of citizenship because holding a policy-level position in one country’s government is considered to require a level of commitment to that country, which conflicts with one’s loyalty to the other country. Indeed, both America and Israel have such rules for their own citizens in policy-level positions; that’s why, for instance, when Michael Oren became ambassador to the U.S., he had to forfeit his American citizenship, despite the fact that America and Israel are close allies.
But these four Palestinians weren’t just serving in a foreign government; they were doing so on behalf of Hamas – a terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction. This, as the Israeli government correctly argued in court, constituted a massive “breach of trust” toward Israel.Yet the court, in a 6-3 ruling, decided otherwise…
Ostensibly, the case at least has limited application. After all, how many East Jerusalem Palestinians are going to become Hamas legislators of cabinet members? But in reality, the implications are broad, because if even swearing allegiance to a foreign government on behalf of a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction isn’t enough to make a Palestinian lose his Israeli residency and its attendant benefits, what on earth would be? Nothing I can think of. Thus, Hamas supporters in Jerusalem will now be emboldened to step up all kinds of activity on the organization’s behalf, secure in the knowledge that they need not fear expulsion from the country as a consequence.
The court’s judicial activism impedes the government’s ability to set policy in almost every walk of life…”
Here is another example of how the court’s judicial activism impedes the government’s ability to set policy replacing the rule of the people with the rule of the left. On December 5, 2016 Evelyn Gordon wrote in Mosaic “In 2015, following lengthy negotiations, President Barack Obama concluded an executive agreement marking the accomplishment of a cherished policy goal: the nuclear deal with Iran known as the JCPOA. Also in 2015, after similarly lengthy negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded an agreement realizing a long-cherished policy goal of his own: a deal enabling development of Israel’s largest natural-gas field by a private American company and its Israeli partner. Both agreements included a commitment by the respective governments to refrain from adverse legislative action over the next ten to fifteen years: in Obama’s case, action to reinstate nuclear sanctions against Iran; in Netanyahu’s case, action to alter the regulatory regime for natural gas to the disadvantage of the private energy companies.
As it happens, neither country’s executive branch has the authority to bind the legislature without the latter’s consent. But this didn’t trouble either the Iranians or the energy companies; they took it for granted that both executives would use all of the considerable power at their disposal to prevent such legislation, and that sufficed.But what about the role of the third branch of democratic government, namely, the judiciary? That is where the two stories diverge. The Iran deal was never challenged in an American court. But in Israel, two left-wing opposition parties (Zionist Union and Meretz) and two nongovernmental organizations, alarmed by the encroaching specter of capitalist development, immediately petitioned the country’s supreme court (also known for some purposes as the High Court of Justice) over the gas deal—and won. The court struck down the agreement, saying the government either had to procure legislation enacting the prime minister’s commitment to regulatory stability or renegotiate the deal to exclude the commitment altogether.
A week later, speaking at a conference of the Israeli bar association, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked accused the court of wielding its power “irresponsibly” by intervening in “political and macroeconomic questions” that were better left to the elected branches. She also reiterated a longstanding pledge, in her role as head of the judicial-appointments committee, to seek the appointment of justices to the court who would respect the government’s “authority to act on political matters that don’t violate human rights.” For this effrontery, opposition members of the Knesset promptly accused her of undermining democracy and demanded her dismissal. MK Shelly Yachimovich of the Zionist Union, for instance, charged Shaked with “trying to destroy the legal system’s independence, intimidate judges, and threaten them,” adding that if this sort of behavior continued, “Netanyahu would no longer be able to boast that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.”
This was hardly the first time in recent years that domestic critics of Israel’s government have accused it of “anti-democratic” behavior that wasn’t actually anti-democratic at all. But such accusations have served to obscure the real anti-democratic revolution that has occurred in Israel over the last few decades: the judiciary’s steady usurpation of policy-making powers that were once reserved—as they still are in other democracies—for Israel’s executive and legislative branches…”
Jerusalem’s Orthodox Jews do not want to be ruled anymore by Tel Aviv’s secular left wing activists that control the Supreme Court.
The divide between secular and religious Jews in Israel is too deep. Many secular Jews hate religious Jews and consider them a burden, unproductive individuals who do not contribute to the modern, high-tech State they envision.
Religious Jews see Israel as a holy spiritual land and see that it is their service to God that blesses Israel with prosperity. In a Christian country Monks and Nuns are respected for their devotion but in Israel Religious Jews are treated as “parasites”.
Since the secular/religious divide is so wide why not separate religious Jerusalem from secular Tel Aviv? The majority of Jerusalem’s population was Jewish until 1948 when the Jordanian Arab Legion expelled all the Jews and destroyed all the synagogues in the Old City.
There should be a referendum asking whether residents of Jerusalem would prefer independence from Israel’s supreme court tyranny by declaring an independent nation: The Jewish Kingdom of Jerusalem
There is no democracy in Israel there is a tyranny of the left imposed by the Supreme Court through judicial activism. To end the Supreme Court tyranny there should be a referendum asking whether residents of Jerusalem would prefer independence from Israel’s supreme court tyranny by declaring an independent nation: The Jewish Kingdom of Jerusalem.Israel’s left controls the supreme court and wants to withdraw from Eastern Jerusalem. Again and again we see left wing organizations such as Betselem, Peace Now, JStreet, Ifnotnow calling to “end the occupation”. Obama’s 2016 UNSC 2334 calls Judea, Samaria, Eastern Jerusalem (including the Old City, Temple Mount, the Western Wall) “occupied Palestinian Territories”. To comply with UNSC 2334 and avoid the criminalization of Israel and its government officials, the Israeli Government may decide to withdraw from Jerusalem’s Old City. Why should left wing Jews who hate religion have the power to decide whether religious Jews can have access to pray at the Western Wall?
Jews were not allowed to pray in the Western Wall during Jordanian rule. Since the left does not want Eastern Jerusalem anyway, Orthodox Jerusalem’s residents must take their fate in their own hands and declare independence from Israel through a referendum.
On March 29, 1993 the New York Times reported that there was a referendum to turn Brazil into a Monarchy “…Cut short after 67 years by an army coup in 1889, the New World’s only successful monarchy may be on the road to restoration. Republic or Kingdom? On April 21, after a century long ban on monarchist politics, Brazilians are to vote in a national plebiscite to decide whether Latin America’s largest country should continue as a republic or should revert to an ancient title, the Kingdom of Brazil. The 1988 Constitution provided for a plebiscite this year to allow Brazilians to choose what system of Government they want…”
If the Brazilians had a national plebiscite to choose what system of government they wanted why can’t Israel? There are several Islamic Monarchies among the 57 members of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, why can’t there be a Jewish Monarchy?
Quebeq had a referendum to separate from Canada, Catalunia had a referendum to separate from Spain, Jerusalem can have a referendum to separate from Israel or Palestine (if Israel decides to abandon it). If through a referendum Catalunia can separate from Spain and Quebec from Canada, there should be a referendum to separate Jerusalem from Israel. The Muslims have Mecca and Medina as their holiest cities ruled by the King of Saudi Arabia who is also their religious leader. Catholics have Vatican City, ruled by the Pope. There should be a referendum asking the inhabitants of Jerusalem whether they want to secede from Israel and become an independent country, the Jewish Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Most inhabitants of Jerusalem are religious orthodox Jews and their self-determination must be respected: Jerusalem should become Judaism’s Holy City, the Vatican City of Judaism. Instead of abandoning Jerusalem’s Old City to the Arabs there should be a referendum calling to create an independent Jewish Kingdom in Jerusalem (including Area C), the international community will have to respect the self-determination of Jerusalem’s citizens.
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