Calling a Spade a Spade
My previous article, “Judicial Despotism," takes its point of departure from a fine article of Caroline Glick, “Migron’s alarming message" (Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2012). Ms. Glick rightly observes that the residents of Migron “will not be dispossessed because they unlawfully squatted on someone else’s property." No, they “will be tossed from their homes on the order of the Supreme Court – because Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein and his associates believe they are above the law. And due to this opinion, Weinstein and his associates refuse to recognize the sovereign authority of Israel’s government or to act in accordance with its lawful decisions.”
Glick rightly calls the Migron expulsion a “legal atrocity." The same legal atrocity, on a larger scale, was sanctified by Israel's Supreme Court when, contrary to Basic Law Human Dignity and Freedom, legalized the expulsion of 8,000 Jews from their lawfully-own homes in Gush Katif. This atrocity was perpetrated by the Sharon government in August 2005.
Two months earlier, on June 21, and in anticipation of that impending legal atrocity, the intrepid Ms. Glick wrote an article in the Post entitled “A Coward for a Prime Minister."
In as much as Benjamin Netanyahu, a minister in the Sharon government," supported the expulsion of the 8,000 Jews from Gush Katif, he too may be said to have supported that impending “legal atrocity.” And since he has done nothing to prevent the expulsion of Jews from Migron, it follows, a fortiori, that Ms. Glick’s unflattering reference to Prime Minister Sharon on June 21, 2005 may also apply to Israel’s current Prime Minister. But this touches only the surface of the problem.
Ms. Glick rightly said that the expulsion of Jews from their homes in Migron violates the rule of law because they possess legal title to their homes. This may also be said of the homes 330,000 Jews possess in Judea and Samaria, but whose possession is threatened by Mr. Netanyahu’s endorsement of a Palestinian state. Since the rule of law is a fundamental principle of democracy, it follows that the “legal atrocities” perpetrated and projected by Israel’s government indicate that Israel is not a democracy, or that it has nothing more than the veneer of democracy—periodic, multi-party elections.
It may be “politically correct,” to say—as some commentators are fond of saying—that Israel is an “imperfect” democracy. This may be said of any democracy, and it will be said by demagogues who use the mantra of democracy to legitimate their autocratic and unjust behavior. Let us probe a little deeper.
A government that systematically violates the rule of law is fascist, even if it comes to power via a democratic election. If the government’s violation of the rule of law is not systematic, but involves the expulsion of hundreds and even thousands of Jews from their homes, surely it would be more accurate (and more civic minded) to call this government a semi-fascist democracy than an “imperfect democracy."
If further proof is wanted, recall that Likud Prime Minister Sharon adopted Labor’s policy of “unilateral disengagement” from Gaza even though that policy was rejected by no less than 70 percent of the voters in the 2003 election. Sharon nullified that election; and the Knesset, the vast majority of whose 120 members campaigned against disengagement, genuflected to Sharon’s fascist-like act by voting for the Gaza expulsion law. By so doing they betrayed their constituents, indeed, their pledge to the nation.
This was more than a “legal atrocity." It may arguably be called an act of treason, and hovers over the nation like a sword of Damocles.◙
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