Israel is the Nation in Need of a Constitution

 

Israel is not going to change all that soon as the thirty to fifty people who run the nation are quite happy to fiddle while things slowly burn down. Part of the problem, and it is a large share, is that over half of those who run the government are not elected but all but self-appointed. There are the Justices who sit on the Supreme Court and the Attorney General, The Supreme Court selection for replacing a retiring Justice is one of, if not the, item which should top the list of systems which require change. Currently the Supreme Court Justices are chosen by a committee consisting of nine members. These are the Justice Minister who acts as the Chairman, a Cabinet Member chosen by the Cabinet, a Pair of Knesset Ministers usually one from the coalition and one from the opposition, two members of the Bar Association and finally the Chief Justice and two other Supreme Court Justices who are often chosen due to seniority. This starts to look like a conspiracy to continue the same policies with no real ability to alter the path when one additionally looks at the committee for selection of the Attorney General which consists of five members; a retired Supreme Court Judge, a former Justice Minister or Attorney General, a Knesset Minister tapped by the Constitutional Affairs committee of the Knesset, an attorney chosen by the Israeli Bar Association, and one legal expert chosen in the subjects of civil and criminal law chosen by the heads of the university law schools in Israel. When all it takes to select a Supreme Court Judge is five votes and three are cast by current Justices, one vote from the current Attorney General who is themselves appointed on the advice partly of a retired Supreme Court Judge, a former Justice Minister and an attorney from the Bar Association and you have what can be conveniently called an echo chamber and it becomes sufficiently evident why the Supreme Court votes almost to the Justice exactly the same as the Supreme Court has since its inception. Add to that the interpretation of the law such that the Justices operate under the auspices of the concept that everything and anything may be brought before the Supreme Court for a final decision.

 

One interesting thing is the Israeli Supreme Court consists of fifteen Justices where one could fairly say that the majority, vast majority, are left leaning or so far left the middle ground cannot be seen through the fog and rose colored glasses. The Supreme Court may appoint any number of judges to hear cases often with as few as three to as many as all fifteen for the most serious of cases brought to the court. Further, for the decade from 2000 through 2010 the Israeli Supreme court heard over 11,000 cases each year. The Israeli Supreme Court can be petitioned directly to hear a case without having it first heard in a lower court. This process is abused by NGOs, often NGOs registered in Israel but primarily funded by foreign governments. Quite often if an NGO states as its aim to serve the support and importance of human rights and/or the rights of minority and oppressed peoples, then you can bet that NGO is financed by the European Union, European governments and foreign NGOs so as to conceal their actual financiers. In any other Western Democratic or Republic such NGOs are required by law to be registered as foreign agents and are not granted official standing as an NGO representing that nation. Israel has twice passed such legislation only to have these very same NGOs bring suit in the Supreme Court where the laws were shot down and nullified. One need keep in mind that the Knesset input in selecting Supreme Court Judges is minimal when one remembers that should the opposition Knesset Minister vote with the Chief Justice and two other Supreme Court Justices and any one of the Bar Association lawyers that makes five votes and the judge has been appointed. The Prime Minister gets no real input and the Knesset does not need to ratify the choice, or simply put, the people have little if any influence on the Justices sitting on a court which has ruled that it can strike down any law, rewrite any law and all but, and possibly including, write laws they feel are necessary or would further empower the Judiciary over the remainder of the government and the people. We have also seen instances where the heads of the Police forces have banned people from visiting areas of the country including the currently extended ban forbidding Ministers of the Knesset from ascending to the Temple Mount. There was a recent case where the Security Shin Bet under the guise of investigating a crime rounded up teens and young men as young as twelve and held them without legal counsel at a secretive location refusing to allow their parents information about their child and used what in many nations would be considered at the least coercive measures and at the extreme torture to try a force confessions from youths they knew were innocent but whose suspected political leanings were not to the head of the Shin Bet’s liking.

 

One young man was held for almost ten months, refused to be permitted to attend his first son’s birth, ritual bris (circumcision), and whose major crime was supporting the Hilltop Youth, a group of youths who support nationalist and Zionist policies and desire a return to Davidic Rule, have never committed an act against the government, most serious offense they commit is camping out and building rudimentary outposts on hilltops overlooking trouble spots which are less dangerous when being surveyed by these youths. The young man in question though had committed a grievous crime, Meir Ettinger committed the crime of being the grandson of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a Zionist and Nationalist Rabbi who argued for his causes and predicted the future extremely accurately before being struck down in New York City after giving a talk. His murderer was acquitted as his act of assassination was seen by the Jury as justifiable as the Rabbi had “extremist views” deserving of being shot. These “extremist views” were best expressed as “Am Yisroel Chai” (עם ישראל חי) , the People of Israel Are Alive, and he also continued the cry of “Never Again” which is a chanting that means the Jews will not go silently to their deaths ever again and murdering Jews will have a price. As was known by even the average Israeli who pays attention to anything political, Meir Ettinger and his friends in the Hilltop Youth were innocent of any wrongdoing and they were hauled in, denied council, denied parental access, held in a secretive location, arranged orders to allow stressful interrogation and extreme interrogation techniques and were sleep deprived for up to three days until their bodies shut down from exhaustion, placed in uncomfortable position, stripped of clothing and made to sit in metal chairs and even denied to have showers or change of undergarments. This was beyond anything used on actual terrorists who when denying and refusing to cooperate have been released for lack of evidence while here their evidence was they knew these kids were guilty of something even if it was not what was being investigated.

 

Another problem are the Basic Laws, laws passed by a simple majority just as any other legislation but deemed special and thus take their place as part of an ever growing excuse for a Constitution. Most of the Basic Laws were passed from 1948 through the early 1960s when Israel was an agricultural socialist society with many Israelis residing on communal farms. These Basic Laws have their place but as they can be amended, refuted, and new ones passed should the Knesset decide any law passed belongs incorporated into the Basic Laws such that they tend to lose their importance and meaning as they can be rescinded by a simple majority vote. Then there is the problem that the Supreme Court can also decide which ones can be amended, removed, added, deleted, twisted, beaded, braded, twisted, spindled and mutilated at will by a majority vote of the Knesset or orders from the Supreme Court. This again placed the judges of the Supreme Court as the ultimate rulers of the land and the Supreme Court had granted the Supreme Court absolute authority over all parts of everyday life including silencing us if they so choose to do so as it was Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak (August 13, 1995 to September 14, 2006) stated that all things are in his writings some of the following:

 

Aharon Barak, “Judicial Philosophy,” pp. 477 and 485

In my eyes, the world is filled with law. Every human behavior is subject to a legal norm. Even when a certain type of activity-such as friendship or subjective thoughts-is ruled by the autonomy of the individual will, this autonomy exists, because it is recognized by the law…. Wherever there are living human beings, law is there. There are no areas in life which are outside of law.

 

Barak, “The Constitutional Revolution,” p. 30

The basic values of Judaism are the basic values of the state. I mean the values of love of man, the sanctity of life, social justice, doing what is good and just, protecting human dignity, the rule of law over the legislator and the like, values which Judaism bequeathed to the whole world. Reference to those values is on their universal level of abstraction, which suits Israel’s democratic character, thus one should not identify the values of the state of Israel as a Jewish state with the traditional Jewish civil law. It should not be forgotten that in Israel there is a considerable non-Jewish minority. Indeed, the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish state are those universal values common to members of democratic society, which grew from Jewish tradition and history.

 

Barak, “Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation,” p. 208

When the attempt fails, and the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish state cannot be reconciled with its values as a democratic state, there is no escape from the need to decide. This decision must be made, in my opinion, according to the views of the enlightened community in Israel. This is an objective test, which refers the judge to the full set of values which shape the character of the modern Israeli.

 

Barak, “The Constitutional Revolution,” p. 34

If up until now judges were given “conventional weapons” to deal with legislation by way of interpretation and the creation of Israeli common law, now judges have been given “nonconventional weapons,” which allow nullification of legislation which does not observe the Basic Laws’ criteria.

 

This was a definitive part of Aharon Barak’s judicial philosophy which devolved, not developed, as his tenure on the courts and in practice where he gained contempt for the Zionistic, nationalist conservative swing the people of Israel took over his lifetime. The gaining of a distinct and traditional Jewish, and in many cases Israelite, determination and movement from secularist to a religious Zionistic populace where he saw the only way to salvage the utopian leftist dream was for ultimate power to be vested in the Judges which by their manner of selection remained stuck in 1958 Israel with its collectivist society and socialist governance could be maintained even if that required the judges to decide on each law if it should stand or be struck down or even rewrote to the judicial review standards which precluded change. His view of such is further described as we continue.

 

United Mizrahi Bank, p. 352

With legislation of [the new Basic Laws] a substantial change occurred in the status of human rights in Israel. They have turned into constitutional rights. They have been given supra-legal constitutional status. A “regular” law of the Knesset cannot change them. Regular legislation cannot infringe a protected human right unless the demands set out in the Basic Laws are met. Nonobservance of the constitutional demands turns the regular statute into an unconstitutional statute. This is a statute which bears a constitutional flaw. The court can declare its invalidity.

 

There is this infamous quote often attributed to Barak is that “everything is adjudicable,” which was often presumably the motivation and empowering ideal through which the meaning was taken that the High Court should be able to rule on any matter, including cases involving Israeli military activity in Judea and Samaria and breaches of civil liberties, and not just on issues relating to national laws. Even if Aharon Barak had not stated such, the courts in Israel today, and especially the Supreme Court, are acting as such and seldom refuse a case where they are the sole practitioner of whether legislation passed duly by the representatives of the people who instructed the members of the Knesset with their support to produce legislation as an unwritten contract bound in the ballot box now sits beneath the raised gavel which determines whether or not the people and their elected officials are capable of self-governing or are they merely children who have no right to address the issues of the day as they see fit. This is why it is long past time for the Knesset to appoint a select committee, they may wish to make sure the Supreme Court does not get wind of this as they would strike down the committee as a threat to the state and its omnipotent judiciary, and direct them to draft a Constitution based on the theories of limiting the power for a King such that he collects no amassed wealth and must serve the people faithfully and beyond their best abilities. A solid Constitution which places all before the people’s elected officials to decide and limits judges except in the most drastic and obvious of errant departures into forbidden grounds protected by the constitution and not the will of the adjudicator, are left to apply the law faithfully and with the intents of the people. A Constitution which places the police, military and secret services under civilian control and where any officers or enlistee speaks out defaming the state or its elected and appointed individuals which are empowered by the people is punished under codes of proper conduct for military personnel in uniform or representing the State. The Knesset should remain as the house which appoints the Prime Minister but the second half of the legislature should be directly elected by the people. The nation of Israel could be divided into proper districts. These Israeli Voting Precincts for Upper House might be considered as the Negev, Jerusalem & Area, Coastal Plain & Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, Sharon Valley, Western Galilee & Mt. Carmel, Sea of Galilee & Valleys, and Upper Galilee & Golan with each receiving with Five Seats Each for forty seats plus, Three Super Districts; The North (Western Galilee & Mt. Carmel, Sea of Galilee & Valleys, and Upper Galilee & Golan), Central (Jerusalem, Sharon Valley and Tel Aviv), and the South (, Coastal Plain & Dead Sea with the Negev) with Five Seats Each for a Total of Fifty Five.

 

Israeli Voting Precincts for Upper House Totaling Fifty-Five

 

The Upper House described above, let’s call it the New Sanhedrin, will ratify appointments to the cabinet and senior appellate judges including the Supreme Court. The Knesset (lower House) as stated will appoint the Prime Minister. This method allows the Parties to make their coalition and the Knesset would run exactly as it does now with elections when their term ends after four years while the New Sanhedrin terms will not be dissolved should the Knesset coalition crash and burn, they will serve three year terms with the vote being taken every three years on a set date on the Hebrew Calendar. With the Prime Minister who was appointed as the leader of the coalition and was initially tapped by the President, who will remain being chosen as they are now, after all, we would not want to end the good old party people never change ever and the same problem people show up just in a different Cabinet Ministerial location so that the incompetence gets spread through all of the government. That is why the small adjustment where the Cabinet Ministerial position first have to be validated by both houses thus there will be less if any invent a cabinet post to make this one feel important and receive additional pay while preening around. Then the people placed in these positions must be approved by the New Sanhedrin upper legislature. Hopefully this will lead to placing people from outside the Knesset body into Cabinet posts such that the person responsible for an area of the government actually knows something about the work the department actually performs.

 

The shuffling of the deck chairs on the HMS Knestitanic sailing the icy-waters of incompetent Ministerial appointments will come to an abrupt end. One example is the leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman, who during his career thus far he has held Minister of National Infrastructure, Minister of Transport, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Strategic Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and currently is Minister of Defense. Either Avigdor Lieberman is one of the most intelligent and diversely capable or he had to be ill-prepared in at least one of his positions. Ehud Barak is another regular Minister having been elected not only to hold many varied positions but also served in cooperation or as a member of a number of parties. Israeli politics can confuse even those familiar with parliamentary systems as politicians make new parties, merge parties and change parties sometimes like they change socks. Tzipi Livni has headed two parties while serving in four, where one was a merged pair of parties. Her Career began and appeared steady and content with Likud but then Ms. Livni got the idea that she was destined for greater things and saw her opportunity with Ariel Sharon and his breakaway party from Likud forming Kadima which has a mixture of numerous Ministers from other parties across the political spectrum from Likud to Labor. Kadima started to fail after Ariel Sharon fell into a coma eventually passing. Rather than bite the bullet and join a party Tzipi Livni founded her very own party with some of the remnants from Kadima and a few others who believed there was opportunity as the signs were right, well, almost. Her party was called Hatnuah, meaning “The Movement.” Then she saw this party sinking fast and she made herself an opportunity to share the Prime Minister position with Labor Leader Isaac Herzog. Then problems began as it was noted she was not bringing the numbers of voters hoped and the Labor rank and file felt they were sacrificing too much to gain too little and the Zionist Union, the merger of Labor and Hatnua which the media wanted to defeat Likud that there found Zionist Union defeating Likud going into election day by a margin of 24 to 21 on average. The election result was slightly different with Likud garnering 30 seats while Zionist Union did receive their 24 but obviously insufficient to lead a coalition. This bode poorly for Livni who if she desires a future may have to simply swallow hard and join Labor and hope to rank sufficiently well enough to gain a seat in the Knesset. Tzipi Livni has been Leader of the Opposition for which she is eminently qualified as she has spent much time opposing everything while sitting in the opposition or in the government. Her other positions is a list of many positions including Minister of Regional Cooperation, Minister Without Portfolio (for which she is eminently qualified), Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Immigrant Absorption, Minister of Housing and Construction, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Justice. She must be a very capable person. The advantage of having a bicameral legislature which divides responsibilities and a Constitution which defines every branch of government with specific capabilities, responsibilities and limitations, and it is the limitations which often are the most important. The described government arrangement for Israel with a bicameral legislature with the Knesset remaining as currently configured but with the courts made at least indirectly controlled by the people rather than controlling the people and everything else it desires while all but replacing its Judges all but by themselves without any limiting factor within the control of the people. The arrangement was just an idea for the sake of offering and starting the discussion and not a serious suggestion unless the Israelis, my fellow Israelis, read and decide that the framework described has potential as an idea with which to start a national conversation. The described system also would encourage the Prime Minister to find some ministers from outside the government or assure that those chosen from within the government actually are competent and not just blindly pretending to manage something they actually do not understand. The real reason for this discussion is to limit the judges, especially the Supreme Court which even cancelled the financial agreement made on order to start production of the offshore gas fields demanding that the profits be invested in welfare and other socialist, virtually communist, programs because the people who invested in the drilling and took all the chances and took the risks should not reap benefit from their venture, not when foreign funded HGOs can petition the Supreme Court to spread the wealth making sure they get a share with which to further attempt to destroy Israel. That should have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Cancelling of Israel

 

The Leftists of the World have united with a fair number amongst their ranks and strewn widely within their leadership including well paid traitors in Israel itself. Their operations have led to the demolitions of Jewish residences across Judea and Samaria. Making matters worse, they have succeeded in removing any claims to Jerusalem by bending governments to make all babies born in any part of Jerusalem to be denied having the nation of their birth as Israel, even should they have been born in Western Jerusalem well inside the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line which it was Yasser Arafat’s wildest dream to alter that truce line and move it inexorably westward starting with Jerusalem and its surrounding area. Arafat knew that without Jerusalem, and particularly the Temple Mount, the Jews would have no claim to any of the lands known as Israel. This concept of a free zone in Israel within the Green Line a child can be born and if on their birth certificate it states legally and honestly that they were born in Jerusalem, Israel they cannot get passports from the United States or now from Brazil. This is presumably uncontested lands which have been a part of Israel since its founding and at all times after the Armistice Lines had been defined. But that is no longer sufficient and we can bet as sure as this has become the policy by the Brazilian government and the United States government thanks to some fancy footwork by none other than the Arabist, Islamist, Communist infested Department of State that it will soon sweep across Europe including the European Union as well as the individual national governments until the entirety of the West will no longer recognize Western Jerusalem or any part of Jerusalem to be used officially as part of Israel. Thus far there has not been any child born in Eastern Jerusalem to apply for a passport from either Brazil or the United States requesting their place of birth be Jerusalem, Palestine. I am even willing to bet they could have been born in West Jerusalem in the Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and received passports stating place of birth as Jerusalem, Palestine; but not Israel.

 

The plan is very simply, if the property in question is east of the Green Line all any leftist NGO needs to do is find an Arab who is willing to claim that the lands in question were a part of his or her family’s lands and sign a petition claiming the lands belonged to their family and then the NGO need not show deeds or any other document beyond that claim and the land becomes contested. The Arab claimant need never appear in court, produce any further documentation for the court and the NGO only need to sue the court with the document recognized formally by the courts and the Jews on that land are forced from their residences and even should they produce actual deeds and receipt for payment of the lands they will still have an uphill battle and often the destruction order is carried out before they are able to churn the wheels of justice. Once the property had been razed of any buildings and the residents or businesses have been relocated, even if the relocation is to storage containers, the courts then consider the matter closed as they have carried out their legal standings in these fraudulent proceedings. This has been the procedure followed in Beit El where small sections are stolen through the courts and the structures on them torn down.

 

This is currently occurring in the community the Givat Ze’ev where their Synagogue is currently scheduled for destruction in just under a week on August 17 unless the court can be convinced that the deed and sale of the land was procured legally and from the person currently petitioning or their family or the actual legal owner. This is a Synagogue which has served the community of Givat Ze’ev for the past twenty years. The court order screams of scandal as the community has a deed and bill of sale and only after an intervention by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was the demolition put off for a week and prevented from being carried out before the community can produce their presumed legal bill of sale and other accompanying documents they may have showing legal ownership. Meanwhile, the current state of affairs can be viewed below depicting the preparations for the destruction of their Synagogue of twenty years. Such an act tears the heart from a community and renders a major bonding element torn asunder and destroyed. One can only pray for their petition to be honored by the court otherwise their removal of the Torah scrolls this week may be the sign that the community’s heart will be destroyed and finding a proper place at which to build its replacement will start immediately. The presumed owner for whom the petition was filed has refused a generous monetary offer to buy the lands from them as well as having bought the land from another presumed owner who actually possessed and produced the deed for the land over twenty years ago. This petition was not filed for the presumed Arab owner of the lands to use it for any purpose; the sole reason is to destroy the Synagogue and hopefully the community’s disintegration will follow. This is an act of wanton destruction and not of justice. {One need view the video in full-screen setting to see the entirety of events.}

 

 

 

 

This has been the modus operandi used by NGOs which either are rooted in Europe to operate as the agent of the government in many instances or as the legal arm of a European NGO. Even the registered Israeli NGOs which are engaged in filing such petitions receive the majority, even the vast majority or complete funding, from European and North American donors almost exclusively. Many of these NGOs attempting to operate in any other nation would be required to register as what they truly are, foreign agents, and thus be limited in their legal ability to use the courts as has been done in too many instances in Israel. The aim of this legal offensive is not to restore land to rightful owners and not even to destroy Jewish ownership of these lands as some times Jewish ownership was restored after long struggles in the courts where actual deeds are required to prove ownership. But what actual good does it do if your Synagogue, your home, your place of business even if it is your entire business is destroyed. Who had the ready monies to rebuild their lost structures that the courts, particularly the Supreme Court which, unlike nearly all other nations, can hear any complaint and there is no requirement that the petitioner go through the lower courts to be heard before the Supreme Court which can and often will issue destruction orders without any evidence of actual ownership as that is only required in the lower courts where the actual ownership will subsequently be determined.

 

The battle to erase the Jewish presence centimeter by centimeter continues apace with no defense being provided by the government to require these cases be heard in a lower court where deeds and other ‘insignificant’ ideas such as actual ownership and holder of a legal deed and bill of sale which names the price and from whom the lands were purchased. The reason the Supreme Court intervenes in this manner is based on the fact that should a bill of sale be produced that whomever sold the lands might be tried for such a blasphemous act against the people and imagined state of Palestine and once found guilty, that takes about two minutes, hung from a crane in the middle of town for all to witness and heed the warning, The Supreme Court hearing the case removes the potential possibility that the person selling the lands originally does not have their name appear on the order for destruction and remains anonymous and unstated in the destruction order thus protected from the courts in Ramallah. For the presumed safety of a person who would face trial and capital punishment for selling their lands legally to another who was Jewish allows the very left leaning Supreme Court to adjudicate the matters directly and order the destruction without naming any names of who may have originally legally or as a scam sold the lands to Jews.

 

An entire community will have their Synagogue of twenty years torn asunder will need to find a place and the funding to build for them a new Synagogue and restore the heart of their community and like any transplant surgeon will attest, the new organ, the new Synagogue will never quite have the same feel as their old Synagogue even though they will soon learn to love the new one once it gets built. All of this destruction may only be the beginning as very possibly the rest of their community, including their residences of twenty years and more in many cases, in groups or twos and threes or even entire sections as once a single piece of the community’s lands, or any community’s lands, have been used to set the precedent, the procedure is repeated with new or the same petitioner making the claims and the Supreme Court following their precedent set in place which, if attempted to be struck down by the Knesset, the Supreme Court simply ignores the pronouncement declaring the Knesset irrelevant in changing this procedure as the Supreme Court is operating under the presumption that whichever Arab originally sold lands to Jews are threatened by their semi-autonomous government’s own laws and courts which will provide them with a very quick trial before hanging them from a crane, ala Iran, and let them serve as a proper cautionary threat as the personification of the threat for selling lands to the Jews.

 

Such disasters have almost become commonplace and often smaller destructions of a single home or two or possibly as many as four or five appears to make a tripping point where the news travels outside the community and makes its way into the Zionist, Nationalist and some of the balanced media. The reason likely has to do more with the numbers of protesters any such destruction draws. An example which we covered of a destruction ordered by the courts in Beit El even before the structures were even completed was in an article titled Beit El a Case of Promises Against Facts contains much information with pictures, a video and a link to further coverage by Arutz Sheva. Those buildings were to be apartments for Israelis, potentially Jews or Arabs, bordering on frantic and desperate to locate an affordable residence within half hour to hour commute into Tel Aviv and its expanded work environment. Despite the facts detailing Beit El as a sufficiently large metropolis where there are ample jobs within the community, though not sufficient to employ everybody, the loss of these buildings will impact the community and leave many living under the roof of the family leaving everything cramped and uncomfortable and which was intended to be temporary. This misfortune has played out over and over most significantly after the Disengagement from Gaza and Northern Samaria ordered by the government under Prime Minister Sharon which included amongst other demolitions the destructions of Gush Katif. This was a bloc of twenty-one Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip which also served as the prevention and defense from rockets being fired into Israel and the development of larger and more destructive rockets being designed and built as these communities permitted the IDF a base for operations within Gaza which also ended with the disengagement.

 

Temple Institute concept for what building the Third Temple in modern day Jerusalem would appear like from a distance with modern buildings of Jerusalem in the background. May their vision and this concept figure become fact and fulfill our desires for unity and a single Temple and House for Hashem in our midst. May this dream be fulfilled before the next Ninth of Av so our lament will be lessened.

 

 

These orders are made by Judges and brought before them by NGOs all of which have the same interpretation of the situation where they agree with the Europeans’ and leftist Israelis’ view that if only Israel would return to within the Green Line and gave into the demands of Mahmoud Abbas and the Arabs then peace would break out and the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea would be greeted the very next morning after the signing ceremony on the White House lawn with flowers and rose pedals falling from the sky and soothing and joyous music on the soft and warm winds. If such were possible every last Israeli would be engaged in providing the refugees from beyond the Green Line into our homes in the name of peace, but that is not what will occur and we know this from history and from the words which come from Abbas and the rest of the Fatah leadership’s mouths. The reality is the Israelis could expect within a few weeks, months at the most, that Mahmoud Abbas would be begging Israel to grant him asylum as Hamas or ISIS will have taken control of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and were planning on putting him on trial for treason for signing the agreement and thus basically selling land to the Jews. The United Nations, the European Union, the Vatican, the United States (especially the State Department) and countless others from NGOs to human rights groups to University Professors and celebrities when approached to give him a place to settle down where he might feel safe, all these entities would suddenly go mum. At the same moment any Jew found at the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) would be shot and the entirety of the lands beyond the line in Jerusalem would be a no man’s land for Jews. Within days anybody living with windows facing any hill in East Jerusalem would need to relocate, as snipers with .50 caliber heavy-machineguns would be placing bullets through the rooms and hallway almost making it out the far wall, placing anybody living in the house endangered. How can we predict this? This was exactly the case up until June 8th or 9th 1967 as the Jordanians insisted on sharing the spoils of war as the radio reported the Egyptian and Syrian troops were swarming across Israel and for two days were at most three hours from taking Tel Aviv. The Israelis begged Jordan to heed the warning that the Egyptian and Syrian communications were false and they were being readily defeated. The rest will make the history but as of yet it is still being written. May it be written that the foolish and the brave both found peace with each other as well as with Hashem for without Hashem Israel has no heart.

 

Beyond the Cusp

I Can’t Believe They Gave a Righteous Ruling

We often hear Americans complaining about the liberal leanings of their judicial system, especially the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals, sometimes referred to as the Ninth Circus. Israel knows the problem of liberal judges and courts, especially the Supreme Court under former Presidents of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak and Dorit Beinisch. But there are those blessed exceptions and we had a ruling providing example of such over the weekend. A Jerusalem Court heard a case against a young man who had been charged with attacking an Arab and for praying on the Temple Mount. You would never guess which was considered the more serious of crimes by the police; it was a Jew having the audacity to pray on the holiest place in all of Israel at the center of the Israeli capital city of Jerusalem. The judge heard the youth’s version of events which included that he simply defended himself by kicking the Arab youth who had kicked him repeatedly and returned to prayer as soon as the other youth retreated. The Judge dismissed the assault charges, reprimanded the police for their handling of the case in such an untimely manner so as to intentionally keep the young man locked up over the Sabbath and then made a ruling which is only the second of its kind and may be the first signs of the application of sanity at least in the Jerusalem Courts. The police had ordered the youth be banned from the Temple Mount for fifteen days and were seeking for the court to further ban him from entering the Old City areas of Jerusalem for sixty days which would have placed even the Kotel and Western Wall as off limits. The court’s ruling stated that although Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount was a thorny political issue that requires deep study, it was certainly not a crime thus preventing Jews from praying there was a restriction of their freedom to worship, guaranteed in Israel’s Declaration of Independence and the Knesset’s Basic Laws, echoing a similar ruling regarding Jewish prayer on the Mount was made several months ago.

 

The Honenu Organization provided the young man with legal counsel as they often will provide for Jews falsely accused of crimes in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria especially in matters concerning the rights of Jews which police and enforcement personnel often use arrest as a means of denying full exercise of these rights by Jews presumably for their protection and to avoid raising the ire of resident Arabs. The court commented as part of their ruling that the police had not made similar arrests of Arab women who had caused a riot on the Temple Mount recently, nor had they sought to have them banned from the Old City for sixty days and that this man was entitled to similar treatment under the law. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Honenu attorney who represented the youth, was quoted declaring that this was a good decision and “a very important one, and I hope police will study it carefully and internalize it. The right to pray in this country is not just for Women of the Wall, but also for Jews who would like to see the Temple rebuilt. The upshot of this decision is that it is not a crime to pray on the Temple Mount, and police attempts to stop prayers is what is against the law.” May his words become truth in the land.

 

This will probably not be the last we will hear of such cases and it is very likely that there will be more such cases of Jews being intimidated by the police on the Temple Mount in an all-out effort to appease the Waqf and the Muslims who claim the entirety of the Temple Mount is theirs and only their holy site and that Jews should not even be permitted to enter the area they call the courtyard of the Al-Aksa Mosque. It is usually the case that any religious Jews, or even Jews who wear a Kippah, attempt to enter the Temple Mount they are made to pass through an almost humiliating body search and are escorted by Israeli police and a Waqf representative to assure that they do not pray or act in any manner emotionally thus soiling Muslim holy grounds. Yet visitors to the Temple Mount will regularly witness Arabs playing soccer, holding picnics, and performing a variety of irreligious activities on the presumably ever so holy Muslim grounds. The entire litany of claims put forward by the Muslim Waqf is solely intended to restrict to the point of forbidding Jews access to the holiest site in all of Judaism and not simply out of respect for their Mosque. We can expect that at some point, probably immediately after Arab rioting on the Temple Mount in claimed response to Jewish desecrations committed by their presence, and even worse their praying, near the Muslim holy places which they often claim is an attempt by the Israelis to destroy these buildings. This is often used by Mahmoud Abbas as an instant disturbance which detracts from anything else pushing it from being front page news. Abbas’s next rallying cry to have all good Muslims come and protect their precious al-Aqsa Mosque from Jewish criminal acts aimed at its destruction will produce the same rioting replete with rock and Molotov cocktails being hurled at police and sometimes at worshippers below the Temple Mount at the Kotel. This will be used by political allies on the left to complain and demand that order be restored and the evil and nefarious religious Jews be prevented from inflaming Arab sensitivities with their dangerous insistence on visiting the Temple Mount and, G0d forbid, even insisting on praying there. Then politicians looking to calm the uproar will pass some temporary restriction on visitation to the Temple Mount to be placed solely on Jews, the Arabs would not dream of any action which would prevent tourists from visiting the Temple Mount to whom the Arab merchants sell trinkets. In a short time after this action is taken there will be a challenge made to repeal the edict and before it makes its way into the courts, the edict is rescinded and visitations are resumed until the next false protestation is manufactured and reported on as being of a grass-roots and spontaneous origins.

 

Hopefully, once the next generation of leadership takes the reins of power all of this nonsense will be dispensed with. Fortunately the next generation in Israel is not as tepid towards all things religiously Jewish and are willing to stand against the world. They appear to have much of the spark of those who stood against the British and then held on to the precious lands against all odds in the miracle that was the Jewish survival and even victories in 1948-9. This was the same spark that was at the heart of the 1967 Six Day War and the Entebbe Operation freeing the hostages. These too were modern miracles for which we owe the credit to both the men who were the instruments of the miracles and the L0rd for working His miracles through these events. But there appears to be a crisis of faith within the halls of the Israeli government which came about as if there were an infection weakening the resolve of men. Some would call this virus by a name, and that name would be Oslo. That is the same virus which caused the needless deaths of over two thousand innocents. If forced to identify the point where this infection was injected into the Israeli leadership, it would have to be the decision by Moshe Dayan to surrender the control over the Temple Mount to the Muslim Waqf simply in order to placate the Jordanians and the Muslim World rather than declaring, as he very well should have, that the Temple Mount has returned to its proper and original owners, to the rule of those who had built it more than two thousand years ago. This is the sin which infects the leadership in Israel today and what must be eradicated before it does additional harm. It was this idea and viewpoint which was recently celebrated as an intricate part of a gala birthday party. It is this infection which has yet to blemish the next generation, may they come to power before succumbing to this deadly virus.

 

Beyond the Cusp