Op-Ed: A country ruled by its judiciary cannot win the fight against terror
Israel was not established to be a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural liberal democracy. It was established to be the state of the Jewish people.
Israel was not established to be a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural liberal democracy. It was established to be the state of the Jewish people. As stated in the Declaration of Independence: to give expression to the “natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate… in their own sovereign state.” Israel will not remain Jewish if it does not retain its status as the nation-state of Jews, with the exclusive source of sovereignty being the Jewish people — a Jewish state where minorities live with equal rights.
Many feel there is a lack of leadership in Israel to deal effectively with issues that endanger public security. The Israeli government is often blamed, but in many aspects of security it does not have the authority.
The justices of the Supreme Court and the attorney general are the real leaders in Israel. They can subvert government authority, and often do.
In Israel, the legislature is not sovereign to legislate, and the executive lacks actual control to execute the instructions of the legislature. The Supreme Court has seized the government’s power to enforce border controls, and to determine policies on commercial matters, consumer protection, education, health, incarceration, etc. It has also seized the Israel Lands Authority’s power to determine policies for allotting state lands.
The Supreme Court is not only a super-legislature, but it arrogates to itself the power to prescribe the morality, security and the military defense of the Jewish people!
The Supreme Court controls the Israel Defense Force (the IDF) and has seized the IDF’s power to make operational decisions. It recognizes legal standing for practically every claimant against the IDF, no matter how remote. Its rulings constitute a severe limitation on what the military could do and how to do it: countermand military orders, devise rules of engagement, decide military policy, rule on military tactics and ethics, rule on the appointment and promotion of officers, etc.
The Supreme Court’s post-Zionist and socialist position dominates every aspect of governance and legislation, accomplished through the attorney general and his army of legal advisers in every government ministry, national authority and the military.
The attorney general has significant power over the government and has repeatedly terminated the prime minister’s preferred appointments to top security positions.
The attorney general prevents the government from determining national policy. He stops the government from appointing senior officials and prevents the government from adopting policies that he does not like. He has repeatedly blocked the government from implementing sentencing guidelines for rock-throwers, knife-stabbers and shooters. So, the government is unable to deal effectively with issues that endanger public security.
In 2015, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked the then attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, to pursue “aggressively” legal avenues to close Arab stalls on Hagai Street in Jerusalem’s Old City. The street was the scene of several attacks; one in which two people were murdered, and the wife of one of the deceased, Adelle Banita-Bennett, and their two-year-old son were also injured. As Banita-Bennett attempted to escape after the stabbing began, she got no help from Arabs in the area. Due to video camera coverage in Jerusalem’s Old City, the identities of the Arabs who laughed, kicked, and hit her as she staggered through the streets are known to authorities. They should have been brought to trial for incitement, failing to offer assistance, and accomplices in an attempted murder.
Weinstein was not about supporting the government’s position on security issues, or allowing the government to determine national policy. He made it clear to the IDF and the Israel Police that he was their real leader. He could refuse to defend high-ranking security officers if the officers were challenged before the Supreme Court.
In 2011, Weinstein forced the government to cancel Major-General Yoav Galant’s appointment to serve as IDF Chief of General Staff by refusing to defend the appointment before the Supreme Court when challenged by an environmental group. In 2015, he terminated Brigadier-General Hirsch’s appointment as inspector-general of Israeli Police.
For the past several years, the IDF’s General Staff has refused to support the government’s position on many security issues: Iran, Gaza, current terrorist attacks, etc.
Netanyahu wanted the IDF to attack Iran’s nuclear sites but the General Staff refused, claiming that ties to the United States are more important than preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Netanyahu cannot deploy troops by himself. He needs the General Staff for its implementation. Besides, he cannot appoint the generals he wants to the General Staff without the consent of the attorney general.
The IDF’s General Staff convened immediately after Operation Protective Edge ended and begun contemplating plans on how to rebuild Gaza, under the false notion that it has the ability to influence Palestinians and make them useful partners for peace.
Since the cease-fire came into force, Hamas has diverted the assistance it received from Israel and from abroad to rebuild its military capacity to harm Israel.
Israel’s generals have been in dispute with elected leaders on the nature of the current terrorist attacks. The dispute was revealed when the generals used military reporters to criticize Netanyahu for blaming Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for the violence.
The generals insist that Abbas is blameless. They argued that he tried to calm the situation, and Israel should support him. This could be the reason for Netanyahu’s barring government ministers and members of the Knesset from visiting the Temple Mount.
This indicated that Netanyahu accepted Abbas’s premise that it is wrong for Jews to exercise their right to visit Judaism’s holiest site.
The generals’ rationale for defending Abbas could be due to their continued cooperation in the Territories with Palestinian security forces under Abbas’s control, even during the current wave of Palestinian terror. Abbas’s forces cooperate with the IDF in capturing terrorists from Hamas and other groups that are not subordinate to Abbas.
The generals are ignoring that Abbas is duplicitous. On the one hand, he orders his forces to cooperate with IDF officers when they fight terrorist cells from Hamas and other groups not loyal to him. While on the other hand, he works with those same terrorist forces, incites them to attack, and rewards them for doing so.
In October 2015, a stabbing attack in Petah Tikvah that injured one person could have been deadlier were it not for the courageous actions of Renaddi Kasau, who tackled the knife-wielding attacker without any thought for his own safety. The victim of the stabbing had been sitting next to Kasau at a bus stop outside the city’s mall, when the attacker ran towards them with a knife drawn, screaming “Allahu Akbar!” After first running away from the attacker, Kasau turned around and pursued him — as the attacker plunged his knife into his victim. People from the mall helped Kasau to catch the attacker.
In these situations around the world, how you act in the first few moments generally determines the outcome. You have to move fast before a terrorist takes control, before he has figured out the landscape and how to make good his escape. Some have called for Israelis to be more vigilant, and for those that can lawfully carry guns to do so. Some actions are more likely than others to end the terror sooner, with less bloodshed. It is right to promote such actions.
The current attacks are not merely criminal acts and are not about individual rights, or lack thereof. They are about collective rights. The collective right of Jews to national sovereignty is under assault by the rival collective right of Arabs. If the Jews do not prevail in that struggle, they will lose their right to self-determination as a collective, as well as the individual rights of all the inhabitants of Israel, Jews and non-Jews alike.
Israel was not established to be a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural liberal democracy. It was established to be the state of the Jewish people. As stated in the Declaration of Independence: to give expression to the “natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate… in their own sovereign state.” Israel will not remain Jewish if it does not retain its status as the nation-state of Jews, with the exclusive source of sovereignty being the Jewish people — a Jewish state where minorities live with equal rights.
The attackers are using violence and intimidation in the pursuit of a political aim: Israel’s destruction. The full extent of the law should be applied to them. Terrorists do not have “democratic” rights to homes, free university education, priority medical care, etc. Concessions awarded to terrorists tend to increase the frequency of terrorist attacks. Arab Members of Knesset also do not have a “democratic” right to fraternize with the enemy, much less to call for Israeli Arabs to rise against their state or its citizens.
In February 2016, Avichai Mandelblit was appointed Attorney General of Israel. The Knesset should publicly commit the courts and the new attorney general to help fight terrorism and to uphold the principles of the founding of the State of Israel. Furthermore, the rules of engagement of the security forces should not be prescribed by the Supreme Court. The rules should be devised by the government, per the instructions of the Knesset.
The knife-stabbers and shooters are terrorists: They want to wipe Israel off the map. Those that engage in terrorism, encourage it or support it should have no place in Israel.
Dr. Sheyin-Stevens is a Registered Patent Attorney based in Florida, USA. He earned his Doctorate in Law from the University of Miami.
Yaalon wants to pretend to be the victim of incitement rather than the perpetrator of incitement… the one who upholds law rather than the criminal obstructing justice, however:
How can the AG and justice minister ignore the obvious crimes committed at the top, more dangerous to the democracy and the state than Olmert or Katsav? How can a Minister be allowed to commit crimes in front of the public and remain free to serially repeat his crimes? The man behaves as if he is a King, so arrogant as to keep repeating his crimes without shame…. and why not…. no one demands his arrest… crimes in full view of everyone…. but no action by the Justice Ministry or the AG. So pathetic that the criminal keeps pointing at his victims.
hasnt this man already proved more inciting and dangerous than Ettinger?????
WHY HASN’T SALAH BEEN PLACED IN ADMININSTRATIVE DETENTION in order to prevent his further inflaming of violence against Jews.
Where is BB, where is Yaalon, where is shin Bet, where is AG???? Surely this is the prime candidate intended for admin detention….. or is it only dissenting jews to get it?
OR deport his to gaza or area A… or best to syria.
UNBELEIVABLE!
See how this article completely avoids the criminal and inciting behavior of Yaalon and turns it into a political debate? Sorry Margalit but your ludicrous and dishonest attempts to cover up the obvious crimes and make this a political debate are transparent. IMO, Yaalon committed specific crimes of obstructing due process and incitement at Duma and with the soldier and Margalit is part of the cover up which seeks to pretend that no crimes took place by not mentioning those crimes.
What a slimy crook… “a rough political debate”
Margalit….. what about Yaalons crimes, you dont mention them, you pretend it is mere talking…. but now you want to talk incitement because folks are noticing the serial criminal inciting behavior
Notice also how Margalit equated military success with “not fanning the flames” exposing the canard of not upsetting the pals and the foreigners as being the prime agenda of BB.
When will any israeli media examine Yaalons actions against criminal law? They all wish to keep the issue as a political debate rather than specific violations of law.
How ludicrous, this is what they want all to beleive, that Israels fate is dependent on this hatchetman.
The real reason is that Yaalon is BB’s hathchetman executing BB’s agenda and BB suffers politically when his appointees are exposed… that is why he likes to keep a distance from his appointees actions and declarations…. they are his lightning rod and canary in the coal mine.
Notice how Yaalons incitement, and criminal behavior, against settlers at Duma and the soldier are being covered up with more phony allegations.
Is it incitement in Israel to point out a political leaders criminality, incitement and immorality? Yaalon and shin bet would have us beleive that and forget about his crimes. This is an intentional distraction from his crimes which beg due process of law.
Yaalon seeks to make it a crime to point out his criminal incitement, his criminal obstruction of Justice, his criminal giving of illegal orders to find the soldier guilty using a public declaration so as to achieve plausible deniability…. just as he did at Duma where he created a Jewish dissenters incarceration law and used the shin bet as his vehicle to torture dissenters legally he now again uses them to distract from his own criminal incitement and behavior.
There is no more criminal incitement than what Yaalon did at Duma when his false declarations sparked the revenge burnings and stabbings of Jews.
There is no more criminal corruption of justice than when Yaalon publicly and illegally declared a guilty verdict on the soldier before the investigation began.
There is no more greater immorality that Yaalon using his position to incarcerate Jews without evidence and denying the soldier his due process of law.
the question is whether Israelis will continue to accept this immoral corruption of law by political leadership or whether they will demand an investigation of his crimes and an indictment.
I am sure that if I were in Israel I would already be in administrative detention for calling attention to Yaalons crimes as I see it. It looks like shin bet is getting ready to pursue those who do the same in Israel.
Its time to end this circus parade of charging IDF soldiers for killing terrorists… the soldiers need the proper license to kill terrorists and support from their leaders to kill terrorists without worry. The current leadership is worthless and pandering to foreigner who fund the arab orgs killing Jews, they are weakening the morale of the soldiers.
I may very well be wrong but this looks to me like debka political disinformation which attempts to put distance between the Yaalon criminal declarations and Netanyahu. I dont believe it for a few reasons:
1-Yaalon is BB appointee who does everthing BB says but Yaalon is becoming unpopular and BB covert agenda becoming exposed. Hence, Yaalon can be the lightning rod to take the blame.
2-the notion of yaalon being to the right of BB seems absurd to me when he is the flag bearer and stalker against everything right wing: nationalists, settlers, religious Jews…. one can see that he hates them. His vendetta against the soldier was probably the result of the soldier shaking Baruh Mazel’s hand.
so how are these to the right of Netanyahu?
it makes no sense that those seeking to oust BB for a more right wing gov would seek Yaalon the anti right for their leader.
What a strange morality and set of values this Yaalon has: Yaalon beleives it is legal, ethical, moral for him to declare prior to investigation the guilt of the soldier in public in order to claim plausible deniability that he de facto interfered with due process and is obstructing the basic rights of the soldier to a fair trial. In this way he can deny that he gave orders to his military investigators and prosecutors to find the soldier guilty by declaring it publicly and making sure they get the message by his continued repeating of his guilty verdict even to high school students. He manages to avoid giving illegal orders to convict by making a public declaration instead.
Hitler declared the jews guilty in public and the street came up with kriystallnacht… is Yaalon pretending that he is not aware of the effect his declarations have on the soldiers future? HMMM, he did the exact same thing at Duma by declaring with no evidence that Jews burned a baby instead of advocating patience and faith in due process…. Yaalon declared the jews burned a baby and since then Jews were daily burned and stabbed in revenge…. an arab mini krystalnaccht courtesy of Yaalons criminal behavior.
Yaalon should be indicted for abuse of authority, corruption of justice, obstruction of due process of law, giving de facto illegal orders, incitement of jew killing at Duma….. where is the AG and the Justice Minister? Under US law he would also be indicted under RICOH for a serial conspiracy.
Eifo my 2 comments on M. Kahlon?
A Brilliant presentation that exposes what the actual threat to Israeli democracy is and where it comes from. i wanted to quote this column in full to the comments section of an article posted earlier on Israpundit that claimed that the main threat to democracy came from rightists rightists who proposed legislation requiring politically active lobbying groups that receivinreceive major funding from foreign governments (legislation similar to the U.S. Foreign agents Registration Act, which has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court). But the prompt republication of Mr. Sheyin-Stevens brilliant piece in Israpundit, within days after its appearance in Arutz Sheva, makes this unnecessary.
Mr. Shayin-Stevins is one of the most brilliant and incisive commentator on the abuse of power by non-elected, non-accountable officials in both Israel and America. I hope Israpundit will publish all of his columns on this vital subject.
Power is taken. Israel does not have a constitution with a clear separation of powers.
The supreme court has taken power.