The first steps for an Israeli victory in its long war of survival

By Adam Dalgliesh

In my previous posts  I have attempted to identify the nexus between Israel’s failure to take decisive steps against the terrorist aggressors constantly attacking it, its failure to respond to the constant false accusations against it by foreign governments, and by the foreign and part of Israel’s domestic media, and the domination of the Israeli government by an unelected, self-appointed coalition of judges, lawyers and bureaucrats who are not accountable to Israel’s elected politicians, or much the less,  the Israeli people. Whew! Even to construct a sentence that would identify all of these interconnected problems is almost impossible. All the harder will it be to untangle these problems and tackle them one by one in real life! I have put off my promise to our readers to present a long-term plan to remove these obstacles to peace, security, international legitimacy and permanence for Israel in order to first identify and explain the complex tangle of problems that need to be solved. But while there is much, much more that needs to be done to document these problems and lay them out in detail, I don’t think I can put off any longer outlining my proposed plan of attack on them.

• As I have proposed before, the biggest and toughest project must be a prolonged, intense campaign to dislodge the entrenched leftist elites that run Israel’s de facto government and Israeli society as a whole. The first step in this process will be to identify the self-perpetuating, largely unknown committees of judges, lawyers, bureaucrats and privileged private citizens who appoint the country’s actual rulers, identify the individuals who are members of these ruling committees, and of course identify the judges, lawyers and bureaucrats whom they appoint to high offices. The leftist backgrounds and connections to anti-Israel foreign governments and organizations of all of these hidden governors must all be documented and exposed as well.

In addition to being a practical necessity to change Israel’s defeatists, collaborationist, do-nothing response to the ongoing Arab aggression, such an intensive counter-propaganda and information campaign will have the virtue of galvanizing the Israeli public to demand change. Rightly or wrongly, nothing puts Jews in a fighting, combative mood than revelations that they have been “had” by their own leaders.

• The Israeli public has reacted with a yawn to the various “quick fix” solutions to Israel’s problems that have been proposed by well-intentioned patriotic writers, because they are aware that both foreign and entrenched domestic opposition mean that none of these proposed solutions are feasible. But the public has only a vague, very general awareness of who these entrenched domestic interests are.  However, our people’s bored indifference will be overcome once these entrenched domestic interests are fully identified , and the hidden institutional mechanisms by which they assert their power are at long last revealed to the public. Then the Israeli people will demand and clamor for a change in the do-nothing policy “on the ground” as well as demanding personnel changes.

• Of course, mere journalistic exposes will only be a necessary beginning to the campaign to change government policies and personnel. Mass demonstrations, not just in the “settlements” where they have heretofore taken place, but in the major urban centers, including the Sharon cities, where the Israeli public as a whole can’t ignore them, need to be undertaken. While violence of any sort is to be strictly avoided, patriotic demonstrators have to be more “in your face” than they have been in in recent years, with a return to the civil disobedience of the immediate post-Oslo period in the 1990s. The patriotic forces cannot allow themselves to be intimidated any longer than by the campaign by the left to blame them (falsely) for the Rabin assassination.

• The demonstrations should not be confined to such tactics as blocking major thoroughfares in major cities, although peaceful disruption of this sort should certainly be undertaken. There should also be numerous “in your face” demonstrations outside both the offices and private residences of the numerous individuals who have participated in one way or another, the government’s policy of appeasing the terrorists. High on the list should be every member of the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the prosecutors and senior police officers who have brought phony charges against senior politicians (including and especially Bibi Netanyahu, as well as his mainly apolitical wife), as a way of intimidating them into complying with the appeasement policies; the prosecutors and police who have imprisoned innocent settlers” for long periods of time without trial or due process of law, and who have often tortured these political prisoners as well; the senior police officers who directed the use of massive violence and brutality in order to break up peaceful protests by settlers; the journalists and publishers who have acted as shills for these collaborationist and appeaser public officials, libeling and slandering both the politicians and ordinary “settlers” with the courage to stand up to them. These people need to be made to feel accountable for their misdeeds in some way. Humiliating and ridiculing them with demonstrations calling them out by name in their offices and residences is the only way this can be accomplished, at least to some small extent, until patriots replace the present crop of judicial and bureaucratic office-holders.

• If, as is predictable, the police resort to brutality to break up these demonstrations and illegally beat demonstrators, it is very important that people be stationed in advance to video-record such outrages covertly, and that the resulting videos be given the widest possible circulation on the internet. The propaganda value of such videos, and videotaped interviews with the survivors of police brutality, is inestimable. It is certainly cruel to demand that peaceful citizens expose themselves to physical injury and emotional trauma. However, political warfare, like all other forms of warfare, compels its combatants to expose themselves to injury, even when they do everything within their power to avoid injuring others. Of course, a paramedical, first aid team to treat the injured should also accompany every demonstration.

• Strong action on the political and parliamentary fronts to bring about changes in government personnel, and above all in the personnel-selection and appointment processes, are also a necessary step to bring about these desperately needed changes. The “resistance” to Israel’s present appeasement regime must either form a new political party that makes these changes its central plane, or better still, if possible, take over an existing party such as Likud or Jewish Home by working through its conventions and primaries. Once having managed to win some seats in the Knesset, the “resistance “ should refuse to support any government that does not promise to implement these personnel and personnel-selection changes, and/or that fails to act swiftly to move these changes through parliament once it takes office. If necessary, if the government and/or parliament does not enact these measures, the MKs from the patriotic resistance should bring down the government and force immediate new elections.

• The actual legal mechanisms needed to insure the ouster of the lawyerarchy-cum-bureaucracy and its replacement with a patriot government will be changes in Israel’s Basic Laws—Israel’s equivalent of a constitution—should be along the following lines:

1. a) all future appointments to high-ranking and middle-ranking civilian and military offices shall be made by Cabinet members, subject to the confirmation of the full Knesset in public, transparent hearings. No unelected committees not responsible to the Cabinet and Knesset shall be allowed to play any role in the process. The existing ones must be disbanded, and the appointment of future committees for this purpose strictly prohibited.

1. b) The Supreme Court and the inferior courts shall be forbidden to hear appeals from individuals or organizations not directly and personally impacted by the government decisions they are appealing. On the other hand, they will be required to hear from all persons (such as “settlers”) affected or potentially affected by their decisions.

1. c) The civilian courts in Israel shall have no jurisdiction whatsoever over non-Israeli citizens areas subject to military government, but not fully subject to Israeli law (i.e., the citizens of the “State of Palestine” and Hamastan). Only Israeli citizens and corporate bodies incorporated in Israel by Israeli citizens shall be allowed to appeal government to the civilian civil and criminal courts. On the other hand, Israeli citizens cannot be denied this right of appeal.

1. d) Jordanian law, which the “Supremes” now use as the basis for administering the administered territories, will be declared totally illegal in all territories administered by Israel. All court decisions based on Jordanian law will be declared null and void.

1. e) the Knesset shall have the right to legislate for the administered territories.

1. f) The Barak Doctrine, which was proclaimed by former Chief Justice Aharon Barak, that the Supreme Court is empowered to make rulings not based on Israeli law, but on the basis of what it deems to be the ethical values of “the most enlightened members of society,” shall be declared null and void, and the court will be probibited from basing any ruling on it.

1. g) the Supreme Court and other courts shall have no authority to veto any law passed by the Knesset, except by a unanimous vote of the court. Only the Basic Laws of the state, not any other consideration, can serve as the basis for such a ruling. (This will prevent such absurd rulings as one recently made by the Supremes, vetoing a law on the grounds that the Knesset had not debated it sufficiently before adopting it). Even then, such a ruling will not come into effect for six months while the Knesset reconsiders it. If the Knesset votes to uphold the law in an additional reading during this six months period, the law stands.

1. h) The internal rules and parliamentary procedures adopted by the Knesset shall not be subject to judicial review (see the example above).

1. i) In order to enforce these basic laws, a Commission on Judicial Compliance, appointed by the Prime Minister subject to Knesset confirmation, will have to be established. (I hate such government committees. But I don’t see how one can be avoided in this instance). Cabinet officials and a certain number of Knesset members (let us say, ten in a signed petition) may appeal any court decision to this Commission on the grounds that it is outside the jurisdiction of the courts. If the commission upholds such an appeal, its ruling cannot be appealed to any other body. The Commission shall also have the power to recommend the dismissal of any judge or government attorney who issues orders contrary to the newly adopted Basic Laws. If it does make such a recommendation, the Knesset will then have the authority to remove the judge in question by majority vote.

These proposed activist campaigns and legislative proposals barely scratch the surface of the measures needed to create the conditions necessary for ultimate victory in Israel’s Long War for Survival, which has already gone on for one hundred years, and might continue for another hundred. But I have already used up more than enough words for one column. My next column will focus on practical measures, hopefully to be carried out one day by a future patriotic Israeli government, to combat the propaganda that has destroyed Israel’s standing and image among the nations, and the measures that private Israeli and diaspora Jewish citizens can undertake to advance these objectives in the meantime—which unfortunately, might prove to be a long time.