Shaked: Zionism trumps “a universalistic system of individual rights”

Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked attacked Tuesday the High Court of Justice’s (HCJ) Monday decision—in which it ruled that illegal aliens refusing to be transferred to a third African country cannot be detained indefinitely—insisting that the principle of Zionsim will not be subordinated to ‘a universalistic system of individual rights.’  

By Gilad Morag and Tova Tzimuki, YNET

In a speech before the Israel Bar Association conference in Tel Aviv, Shaked addressed the hot-button issue of demographics and the Zionist goal of preserving a Jewish majority in Israel at the expense of human rights for asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise.

Ayelet Shaked confers with Chief Justice Miriam Naor (Photo: Yariv Katz) (Photo: Yariv Katz)

Ayelet Shaked confers with Chief Justice Miriam Naor (Photo: Yariv Katz)

Her speech was interrupted for several minutes by left-wing protestors who cried, “Thanks to Shaked it’s obvious Israel has apartheid.”

Despite the vitriolic protests of some in the crowds, Shaked promised that “Zionism will not continue bowing its head before a universalistic system of individual rights.”

 

“Israel of 2017 is a country that’s constitutionally made up of crisscrossing individual rights, without its Basic Laws referencing Israel being the nation state of the Jewish people,” Shaked lamented.

“Zionism has become a blind spot for the judiciary,” she continued. “Questions concerning it have become irrelevant. National challenges are a judicial blind spot, not at all to be considered in today’s climate, and certainly not to be ruled in favor of when faced with individual rights issues.

“The question of demographics and preserving the Jewish majority are classic examples,” she explained. “Israeli ruling doesn’t even deem them values worthy of consideration.”

Shaked went on to question whether the HCJ even considers maintaining the Jewish majority in Israel as a point of any import. “The question of the Jewish majority is never relevant. It’s irrelevant when the issue is African illegal aliens setting up camp in south Tel Aviv, effectively creating a city within a city while pushing out the original residents.

“The court’s response was striking down—and then striking down again—the law attempting to deal with this phenomenon,” she continued.

“The question of the Jewish majority is also irrelevant when a years’ long mission such as Jewish settling of the Galilee—which has been in place since the earliest days of Zionism—is abandoned in the Kaadan verdict, dubbed ‘post-Zionist’ by many even when it was first published, and all in the name of defending a system of individual rights.”

 Shaked speaking during the Israel Bar Association conference (Photo: Yariv Katz) (Photo: Yariv Katz)
Shaked speaking during the Israel Bar Association conference (Photo: Yariv Katz)

At the same time Shaked sought to make clear that she doesn’t make light of those individual rights, saying she considers the system maintaining them to be “almost sacred.”

“But not devoid of context,” she clarified. “Not detached from Israeli uniqueness, our national tasks and our very identity, history and Zionist challenges. Zionism should not—and will not—bow before a system of individual rights interpreted universally in a manner detaching it from the chronicles of the Knesset and the history of legislation we’re all familiar with.”

Shaked said the Israeli judicial branch operates as if in a “dream,” adopting a “utopian and universal worldview sanctifying individual rights to an extreme degree and ceasing taking part in the struggle for Israel’s very existence.”

At this point, she called for an overhaul of the system that enables individual rights to displace the importance of national identity. “Only a moral and political revolution of the magnitude of the revolution we saw in the 90s,” Shaked cautioned, “one reaffirming the accomplishments of Zionism and its unchanging positions, may turn this problematic tide.”

Shaked's speech was halted for several minutes by protestors (Photo: Yariv Katz) (Photo: Yariv Katz)

Shaked’s speech was halted for several minutes by protestors (Photo: Yariv Katz)

“Basic Law: Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people”, which Shaked says she intends to pass in the Knesset’s next session, does just that. “The law is a paradigm shift,” she explains. “It’s a moral and political revolution. It’s a new paradigm in regards to everything we’ve been through in the past 25 years. It isn’t about the finer points of the law. It’s a call to rouse from this dream. It’s an overall perception bringing back the principles of the founding fathers to the forefront of law. It moves Zionism and the deepest and most basic components of our identity from the blind spot it currently occupies in the judicial realm to its rightful place: under the spotlight.”

Shaked further elaborated on the law. “It creates a constitutional weave including—alongside individual rights—the fundamental national constitutional elements for Israel,” she said. “It fills the phrase ‘Jewish state’ with precisely the contents deprived of it by the judicial revolution.”

Furthermore, Shaked said she believes the law will “influence the very manner in which we comprehend rights.”

“Rights will again be a matter whose justification, breadth and proper interpretation may be gleaned”, she said, “by examining Knesset protocols and the protocol of our day.”

“Basic rights will once again become deeply rooted in our unique system,” she concluded. “The new constitutional framework will enable us to succeed—while safeguarding uncontestable basic rights—to also preserve the moral deposit of our national heritage.”

 

August 30, 2017 | 6 Comments »

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6 Comments / 6 Comments

  1. @ adamdalgliesh:

    I endorse everything you say, but I don’t think she has a law degree. Her vast intellectual understanding of our needs and the way she marshals the facts show that she actually doesn’t need a law degree, and if it could be allowed, she’d makes a wonderful Chief Justice, It would have to be a lifetime appointment, because a person of her capabilities comes along only once in a lifetime.

    As for her appearance that’s and extra plus-plus.

  2. Shaked should be Prime Minister, or better still, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. One of the very few Israeli politicians capable of thinking clearly. And what an absolutely gorgeous babe! She is definitely the world’s most beautiful minister of justice, as well as the best.

  3. Time is far overdue for the ISC to be made accountable to the Israeli people. They are NO G-D. The politicians and the elite will destroy the country of the Jews if given an opportunity. The only safe island on this planet.

  4. The hard left is not different from the Islamofascists or Nazi. That is why they have been allied in the past and now. Intolerance of others is their fundamental Unitarian core value.

  5. Africans can find asylum in a nearby African nation. Why travel an entire continent to live among strangers? These are mostly economic refugees. Our obligation as Jews to welcome the SOJOURNER (traveler or transient) but that’s not the same thing as letting them make themselves at home.

  6. The biggest problem with leftists, communists and islamists is that they use this minority/human rights narrative to support their own evil and oppressive agendas. Once they have power, and this can be demonstrated in a multitude of countries including the usual despots, all human rights are lost to everyone except a small group of leaders who will commit unbridled evil and abuse of their subjects (now slaves) to maintain their wealth and power.