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The Katzir Rule of the Israeli
High Court

Elyakim Haetzni

The Katzir Rule of the Israeli High Court

by Elyakim Haetzni


On the day the High Court of Justice rendered its decision in the Kaadan case, the sun shined on a new post-Zionist Israel, irrespective of a majority of Israelis who opt for a Zionist vocation over democracy whenever the two are placed in conflict. According to the polls, a mere 30% of the population qualify as "democrats" by contenting themselves with a simple majority for abandoning the Golan whereas a huge majority of 63% insists on a special majority. If a survey would be taken on the Kaadan Case issue, the percentage gap in favor of those who oppose the dismantlement of Zionist settlement by opening the gates to admit Arabs, would probably widen. The Kaadan ruling is no less than that.

Hence, the High Court of Justice coerced a set of values and concepts entertained by a small minority upon the vast majority of the people. If Rabbi Menahem Porush was to restage today his mass demonstration against the Supreme Court, hundreds of thousands of black-clad ultra Orthodox would have stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands attired in blue and white.

The Kaadan decision heralds a new ideological political alignment. Grouped together on the one hand are those who demand a special majority for abandoning the Golan, those who reject the poetry of Muhamed Darwish, those who condemn the Pope for erasing the Star of David from Yesha, Jerusalem and from the Israeli ambulance which accompanied him, those who oppose Jerusalem's partition at Abu-Dis, and those who demand legislation that will by-pass the Supreme Court in order to annul the consequences of the Kaadan decision which can usher in the demise of Israel as a Jewish State.

Arrayed against them will be the extreme left, together with the elites, with their quasi religious approach to democracy and blind imitation of every fashionable American notion. This realignment will relegate many people who are not "rightist", but for whom the concept of a universal rather than a Jewish state is anathema, to a state of limbo. It was not for the sake of a universal state that they immigrated to Israel incurring suffering and sacrifice. It is not for a universal state, that they wage a difficult war of existence and shed blood in actual wars.

Beilin, Sarid and Aharon Barak are sharpening old contrasts which we have learned to live with and are creating a total and harsh equation: Zionism equals the political right; democracy equals the political left. In this fashion they are injuring both Zionism and democracy. Is it sagacious to enforce a solution which blows up Jewish society from within, instead of seeking a modus vivendi, even if this modus vivendi is convoluted and chock-full of contradictions?

As for democracy itself, wasn't it democracy that established the principle of affirmative action? Formal equality between unequals constitutes a form of discrimination, and therefore the blacks in the United States are awarded preferential treatment. But the entire state of Israel is one giant piece of affirmative action recompense for thousands of years of discrimination to life, dignity, property, land and liberty at the hands of both Christians and Moslems. This includes the need to guarantee a minimal land reserve amidst the vast ocean of Arab lands for a people who survived the Holocaust, this too constitutes affirmative action. In America, which employs affirmative action on behalf of the Indians and awards them extra rights on their reservations, no court would even think of imposing the entry of whites into these reservations by invoking the principle of equality. It is a pity that one must remind His Honor, Justice Barak, that we Jews are the world's Indians and the Land of Israel is our reservation. If Barak had held his position in 1909, the "Ahuzat Bayit Company" would not have been permitted to establish Tel Aviv as the first Jewish city, because the Supreme Court would have ordered the immediate introduction of Arabs there.

Furthermore: there is no equality between those who are not equal. Upper Nazareth was established for the Jews as affirmative action, because the Arabs would not let them live in Lower Nazareth. Today, Arabs live in Upper Nazareth but in Arab Nazareth there are still no Jews. Any Jew attempting to live there will be expelled by force. It emerges that in the wake of the Kaadan postulate, only the Jewish community will become mixed and inequality will cry out to the heavens.

Unless the Jews decide to mete out similar treatment to Arabs who attempt to live in their midst. Therefore, the attempt to enforce an abstract principle totally divorced from reality, will induce citizens to take the law into their own hands. Just as the Prohibition Amendment in the United States led to extra consumption of alcohol, the flourishing of the Mafia, and a criminality that spread through every stratum of society necessitating the repeal of this amendment, the Zionist parties will similarly be called upon to participate in corrective legislation to circumvent the High Court's ruling in the Kaadan case. They will be faced with a clear choice: Either they can raise up the fallen Zionist tabernacle or they can renounce their Zionist past.



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Mr. Haetzni is an Israeli lawyer and former Knesset member who resides in Kiryat Arba.


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