May the Best (Wo)Man Win
By Sherwin Pomerantz

The Republican party’s primaries in Iowa earlier this week provided the world, once more, with an example of the strength of the democratic system in the United States. There were, of course, far too many candidates although this early in the presidential race that is generally the norm. Given the results, with the winner claiming victory by just 8 votes, no one can logically say that the decision of the electorate there pointed to a clear leader. Rather the message was that the voters really were undecided and couldn’t identify solidly with any one candidate over another.

But the strength of the system manifests itself in the fact that the election was fair, the results are not being contested and no one is suggesting that they be retroactively cancelled.

Not so in Israel. Take the case of the process for selecting judges for Israel’s supreme court. The panel of legal eagles composing the group that makes recommendations for the supreme court has traditionally included two representatives of the Israel Bar Association. Those representatives are voted upon by the bar’s membership at large at the same time that they vote for a new president of the association. The last time this occurred was in 2011 at which time the membership chose their two representatives to this important panel.

Now along comes the Minister of Justice, Yaakov Ne’eman, a Netanyahu appointee who is not a member of the Knesset of Israel, and decides that the two people selected by the bar association are not to his liking, not from his party and do not espouse his political views. To address this problem he proposes legislation to make it mandatory that the two representatives from the bar be one from the party in power and one from opposition which, if enacted, would then give his party the majority on the current selection committee. In principle, of course, this is an obvious example of gross political meddling in the judicial selection process.

But the proposed law went even further. Unhappy with waiting until the next time the bar has its elections, the Minister of Justice added conditions to the proposed law that, if enacted, would nullify the earlier elections of the bar and force them to be rescheduled in order to meet his particular political agenda.

As one might expect there was a major uproar in the land about this obviously biased and unfair piece of legislation which, until yesterday, was supported as well by the prime minister. But, surprisingly, there were a significant number of senior people in the prime minister’s own party who recognized this as a potential act in violation of the democratic principles on which Israel was founded. Even the attorney general opined that when the law would be challenged in court, as it surely would have been, he would not be able to defend it. Under that kind of pressure the prime minister had no recourse but to withdraw his support for the bill, even though it had already passed its first reading, virtually eliminating is potential for passage.

But no one here is applauding the prime minister for this action. He could have received well-deserved accolades had he refrained from supporting the bill in the first place purely on moral grounds. To withdraw his support in the face of public and party pressure, while laudable for its result, rather than at the point when the legislation was introduced, speaks to the moral bankruptcy of the government in power.

In an earlier blog I mentioned that from this writer’s perspective the country is on a slippery slope away from democracy. While many people agreed with me there were some who criticized me for being overly influenced by the left of center press here. But I do not accept that criticism. Slowly but surely the very flimsy separation of powers here, which is not nearly as well defined as it is in the US, are becoming less and less sharp. The danger of such slippage is a move away from democracy and the situation described here is just one example.

Edmund Burke was correct when he said “whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.” Those who seek to separate the two imperil the future of the nation.