Dr. Gadi Taub: “The Swan Song Of The Elite”

Yom Chamishee

Thursday

4 Shvat 5783

January 26 2023

 

 

The Photo of the Day

The war in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem.

Shooting attacks:

Two Palestinian terrorists were seriously wounded in a firefight with our soldiers in Ir David in Jerusalem.

Palestinian terrorists engaged in heavy firefights with IDF troops in Jenin this morning. Click here to see IDF reinforcements arriving in Jenin.

During an attack on our soldiers in the Shuafat neighborhood of Jerusalem, a Palestinian terrorist was shot and killed.

Stabbing attack:

A Palestinian terrorist arrived at the Kedumim Junction, got out of his car and tried to stab IDF soldiers on duty there. He was shot and killed.

Molotov, “rock”, and IED attacks:

Palestinian terrorists attacked Israelis between Einbus Square and Beito, between the Large Yitzhar Junction and Hatmar Shomron Square, on Road 458 near Al Muayyir, at Hawara, between Ariel and Tapuach, Marda, Singil, near the HaSela outpost, and at a dozen other locations.

Is there any harm the judicial reform would not cause?

The accusations being hurled at PM Netanyahu and Yariv Levin concerning the proposed judicial reforms have gone from the ridiculous to the absurd to the unbelievably more absurd.

In the last few days we have had:

The head of the Israel Bank hypothesizing on the economic damage that could be caused by the proposed reforms.

Various heads of Israeli academia preposterously suggesting that the Israeli educational system could be at risk.

A group of doctors declaring that the Israeli health system could be compromised.

And on and on with the “could be’s”.

We might add to this list:

The quality of Israeli cream cheese might be degraded.

The animals at the Ramat Gan Safari might suffer from lack of food.

Your humble servant is sure that you can think of other preposterous possibilities. The simple point is that the left will stop at nothing to maintain its maintain is grip on power via the Supreme Court.

TODAY’S BLOG

 Dr. Gadi Taub: “The Swan Song Of The Elite”

Speaking of the left stopping at nothing, Israel’s uber left-wing newspaper Haaretz has just fired one of its columnists, Dr. Gadi Taub. Haaretz, which is supposed to be a bastion of free speech could not tolerate Taub’s column several days ago, and said that the firing was done to “defend democracy.”

Here are some snippets from Taub’s column (bold mine) which is entitled:

How the Left and the High Court Judges Took Over the Regime in Israel

and Why It Must Be Corrected

“There is no doubt that most of the participants in the demonstrations against the reform of the judicial system believe that they are fighting “to save democracy”. This is what judges, academics, intellectuals and senior journalists told them. 

Under this ideological turmoil, it is not surprising that the possibility does not occur to them that they are not fighting to save democracy, but the opposite: to save the minority rule of the leftist elite from democracy.

There are those who buy the “saving democracy” bluff and there are those who create it. This does not mean that the creators are necessarily cynics. Many of them probably consider the deception that they are orchestrating a necessary move to save the unenlightened public from itself. 

But I have great doubt, whether professors like Barak Medina, Yaniv Roznai or Mordechai Kermanitzer, and Supreme Court Justices like Aharon Barak, Yitzhak Zamir or Esther Hayut – all senior members of the junta who testify to their complacency – are acting in good faith . . . After all, they are all distinct ideologues of the anti-democratic view that seeks to fortify sovereignty beyond the reach of the citizens. They have been calling the legal oligarchy “essential democracy” for years.

Their arguments against the reform, it must be said openly, are not only misleading but also incredibly shallow. And the first is what they seek to hide: Israel is the only “democracy” in the West where 15 judges hold sovereignty (plus a veto on the appointment of their members).

This is neither a voyage nor a metaphor; This is a fact from the field of political science. The final decision-making authority in Israel passed to the court, in any matter – any matter, including the drafting of an alleged constitution. This “constitution” was created by the words of the court which gave constitutional status to the basic laws on its own initiative and without authority. 

There is no action by the other authorities that the court does not claim the authority to intervene in, including – as it announced in May 2020 in response to petitions against the formation of the government by Binyamin Netanyahu – the power to cancel the election results. This rule of judges has no parallel in any reformed democracy . . .

But the most blatant of the lies of the propaganda machine to save the minority rule lies in the claim that in the absence of an all-powerful court, there will be only one, all-powerful authority in Israel, and that is the government, which controls, so we are told, the Knesset. Prof. Yitzhak Zamir invented an innovation in the description of the Israeli regime as a “coalition democracy”, and added that the government is controlled by its head, so we basically have a single government in Israel.

It is not clear to me where the owners of this strange theory lived in the last decades. Probably not in real Israel, because in real Israel, in front of the government and in front of the Knesset stands the biggest brake. It’s called elections. 

Not even that: if the owners of the innovative theory had looked at their own message pages from a month ago, they might have remembered that they claimed under every fresh tree that Netanyahu is weak and blackmailed, captive in the hands of a coalition, each of whose members is ripping off a piece of his rule. 

And maybe they didn’t notice that in our system the entire Knesset is full of obstacles in front of the government, since the coalition factions can – and they often do – overthrow governments, and sometimes even a single member of the Knesset can do it . . .

I will therefore conclude by calling on the Minister of Justice Yariv Levin: do not be impressed by the cry of the Cossacks being robbed. This is the swan song of an elite running amok in the face of the dying throbbing of its undemocratic rule. 

Act forcefully and return democratic sovereignty to its rightful owners: the citizens of Israel.“

You may read the full article here.