An Analytical Look at Majority Rule (Column 553)

I'm about to make one small mistake and one less small mistake. The first mistake is that I’m going to address something completely marginal to the column, which appears in the first footnote. The second, much less small mistake, is that I’m going to compliment Michi. Not easy.
There is something in this confession of Michi’s (“I’ve borne him a grudge for about thirty years now”) that is so right, so “Lutheran,” and so speaks to both my mind and my heart. You come to attack someone’s position, and the main thrust of your words is directed at the issue itself, at the matter at hand. But you’re also a human being, and you have negative feelings toward him (at least in this case). What could be more right, more purifying, and more to the point than getting rid of that already at the outset, putting that point on the table, and then moving on? Wonderful! After all, Michi could easily have written a substantive column without telling us about the stirrings of his heart, etc., and we would not have known the first thing about his feelings, and yet he chose to do so (to tell us).
To my mind, that is the main point of the present column.
And there is not the slightest trace of cynicism or irony in what I’m saying.

🙂

(Liberal) democracy is ideally a social way of life based on human freedom, the equality of every person before the law, every person’s freedom to express an opinion and exert political influence, mutual consideration, and the participation of all citizens in improving society and building its values. The form of government is derived from the ideal.

Democracy is not majority rule, nor is it rule by “the people,” but rule by people—all the people, in the plural—meaning a system based on a multiplicity of opinions and on laws and mechanisms that protect every person’s basic freedoms, such that general agreements are reached through listening, argument, and discussion, all מתוך a positive view of society as a whole.

As for the claim about the minority’s “treasury,” etc.—it’s a bit like a man claiming that since he alone went out to work during the marriage, he owes his wife nothing. In Tel Aviv there is currently a severe shortage of “simple” labor, which admittedly pays less in taxes, but the public’s welfare depends on its existence. So I’m really not sure that the way to calculate the contribution and the “right” of each sector to express its position regarding a state decision really depends on the size of its GDP.
But all in all, the column is very interesting and thought-provoking. Thank you.

Obviously the assessment is not simple, and still, the economic plane can serve as an indication. Whoever is wealthier probably contributes more. The “full-on right-wing” government (yeah, right) would surely admit that. But I’m not getting into the details now. Let each person assess the relevant contributions and weights as he sees fit.

Your claim that the entire justification for the principle of majority decision is only that the minority agrees to it seems unreasonable to me. On this approach, a democratic majority could not obligate in any respect people (even a few) who believe in a monarchic, aristocratic, theocratic, or anarchistic worldview and who reject majority rule on principle. Likewise, the majority would have to grant autonomy or independence to any minority group that demanded it, however bizarre. Think, for example, of the people of Mea Shearim, who are in principle opposed to the “Zionist state,” do not see themselves as part of it, do not vote in elections, and even refrain from accepting government funding. Does it therefore follow that we are obligated to exempt them from obeying the laws of the state? And within the democratic system, should a minority have the right to veto every decision simply by claiming that it is “unwilling” to accept it? According to this, apparently it would also be impossible to punish criminals without their consent. All this is absurd.
The view that seems more correct to me is that, within every group, the majority has a natural right to make decisions that will also bind the minority. Nor can the minority always leave the group, since a person’s belonging to a particular group is—at least to some extent—a matter of fact, not a matter of decision or consent. Not every minority has a right to self-determination; that right depends on certain external criteria such as a defined geographic concentration, a different language, a different history, a different religion or culture, etc. In borderline cases, where in the minority’s view it has a right to self-determination and in the majority’s view it does not, there is really no democratic way to decide, and one must either compromise or fight (see, for example, the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel—though there the seceders were the majority; the Southern states in the U.S.; Kosovo and Serbia; Catalonia and Spain; the Kurds and Turkey; etc.).
The only moral limitation on the power of the majority is that it must make decisions sincerely for the good of the whole and not only for its own good, since democracy is not “rule of the majority” but “rule of the people,” and majority decision is merely a mechanism for determining the good of the people. Therefore, the majority has no right to harm the minority excessively. True, if in the minority’s view a certain harm to it is excessive, while in the majority’s view it is reasonable (under the circumstances), here too there is no way to decide in a manner that will be acceptable to all, and one must compromise or fight, as above.

Yosef,

You write, “the majority has a natural right.” What is a natural right?

Democracy is built on a worldview in which every person matters as an individual, and therefore his opinion matters. As a result, it can exist only on the basis of a general agreement among all citizens about basic rights for every person and equality of all citizens before the law—what in most democratic countries is called a constitution. The governmental system is a second story intended to sustain and advance society in accordance with the will of its citizens. But if the first story does not exist, or if many of the citizens are not interested in democracy, then this is a democracy that is not truly democratic, even if there are elections and decisions are made by majority rule. What powers the government has and what its limits are—these are things that are supposed to be defined in a constitution, which, as stated, is supposed to be accepted by all citizens. Democracy is not necessarily made up of one people—for example Britain, a democracy made up of four peoples. And even if it includes only one people, majority decision is not a mechanism for determining the good of the people, because what is good for the people is determined by prophets and sages, not by populist opinions. Rather, elections and majority decision are a way to improve and repair society in accordance with the wishes of the majority of its citizens, while safeguarding the basic rights of every citizen, which are supposed to be anchored in the constitution from the outset.

Yosef,
Of course. What difficulty did you see here?
That is of course on condition that this is a matter that is essential to the minority. Sometimes considerations of feasibility also come into play, and the majority uses its power to coerce the minority even though there is no substantive justification for it, so as not to harm itself.

Regarding the “minority that isn’t willing to play by the rules of the game”:
1. The consent was already given in the elections (and really, long before that). You can’t decide you’re not willing to play after you’ve lost. That’s how children behave when they lose a bet or a lottery.
2. Did you make the same claims regarding the disengagement and Oslo? The peace agreement with Egypt? And from the other side—annexation? It seems to me we couldn’t make any “hard” decisions, because in such decisions there will always be a minority for whom this strikes at the apple of its eye and that will not be willing to play the game.
3. Practically speaking—how can one give such power to a minority when you trust it to define what is “really hard for it”? Why wouldn’t it exploit this regarding every decision, or at least broaden it greatly? And if you don’t believe that will happen, you can see how the religious exploit the consideration shown to them, and today they are “offended” when a Jew drives on Shabbat or eats non-kosher food near them.

In addition,
4. Rotman and co.’s claim is that Barak carried out an even graver coup, and not even with a majority. So—
5. Following from 4, one of the proposals Rotman accepts (and proposed himself) is to return exactly to the rules that existed before Barak’s constitutional revolution. The minority is unwilling to accept even that. Does it seem reasonable to you that even a return to the reality that had previously been agreed upon should give the minority a veto right?

Regarding the minority’s significant contribution—
6. Those are not the rules of the game. In our democracy every citizen has an equal vote, and these rules are accepted by the current minority as well. They are simply using the power they have.
7. Who said contribution is measured only by relative share in GDP? The national-religious public has a significant share among combat officers in the IDF and in the relative number of those fallen in wars (in recent years). Maybe Ashkenazim who built the state should also have extra power over Mizrahim? This is going to open up yet another set of public arguments (as if we don’t have enough already).
8. In my view, the solution to the problem of a contributing minority groaning under the majority (and as a high-tech worker I certainly experience the difficulty) is that there should be constant tension between the majority and the minority, so that the majority will not be able to enslave the minority too much, because if that happens, the minority will emigrate to another country (this is already happening today, and therefore, in my opinion, they are not raising taxes). That is perfectly fair on the minority’s part—to threaten separation from the state. Though it’s not so fair toward the minority that wants to stay here for other reasons (family, language, culture, etc.).

More power to you for the full disclosure. And as a graduate of HaMidrasha, I’m bummed they didn’t accept your proposal 🙂

Credit to you, R. Michi, for putting analytic philosophy in its place. All the more so, by a fortiori reasoning, non-analytic philosophy is suspect, for compared to analytic philosophy it is but a driven leaf. In contrast to all these, you tend—rightly—to examine reality in light of more solidly grounded theories such as game theory and its sisters, social choice theory and decision theory, which, if you like, are branches of game theory.

A realistic, empirical, positive analysis ought to shake off verbal padding such as “the will of the people,” “rights,” and the like, which dissolve and evaporate when we come to analyze them. As you noted, when we come to define the will of a group (a people, a government, a court), we encounter enormous difficulties illustrated by Arrow’s impossibility theorem, which clearly shows that there is no way to aggregate individuals’ preferences into a social preference. Centuries before Arrow came Condorcet, who pointed to the internal contradictions of majority decision. Likewise, you will find many paradoxes pointing to the difficulty of treating a group as a single unit to which one can ascribe a will or a preference.

So too with the concept of a right, which popped up in modern times, but is really a deceptive concept whose nature should be examined intelligently. Ludovico rightly asked Yosef about his expression “natural right”—a vague and senseless concept.

It seems that any intelligent analysis of the structure of government and society ought to begin with one fundamental concept: power—or, more explicitly, the ability to act. In the modern regime structure, where we distinguish among three branches of government, only one branch has power, that is to say, instruments of action: the executive branch. It has tax collectors, and police, and guns, and soldiers, and an army of sycophantic bureaucrats. Max Weber taught us well that the state is a monopoly on violence. More precisely, the state’s violence—at least its well-organized violence—belongs only to the executive branch of the state.

The other two branches have nothing except the ability to speak. It is no accident that the legislature is called a parliament, from the Old French parler, meaning speech. Agnon nicely called it, in his book The State, “the House of Lips.” The same goes for the court, whose power lies only in its mouth, and as Alexander Hamilton determined, the judiciary has neither sword nor purse. Daniel Friedman did write a book called The Sword and the Purse, in which he argued that our Supreme Court has a sword and a purse, since it intervenes in policy. But anyone who hears this will laugh. For in the final analysis, the court has nothing but its speech and the writing that issues from its hand. (And what Friedman wrote is nothing but an expression of his very personal disappointment with the court.)

We thus learn that what appears to us as the court’s power is nothing but what the real power—that is, the executive branch—agrees to take upon itself. The same is true of the legislative branch, which seems to us to be the source of governmental power and to express the “will of the people,” which as we said does not exist at all; it too exists only by virtue of the power of the executive branch. Behold, here and now we see how the executive branch can limit the court. And if you wish, you can quite easily limit the legislative branch as well in a dozen different ways, and this too we have seen with our own eyes elsewhere.

If we seek images for the power of the executive branch, we may find them in Lurianic creation-theory, in which the Infinite contracts itself to make room for the world. So too the executive branch contracts itself and leaves spaces in which it does not intervene; moreover, it leaves the other two branches room to distinguish themselves. In those spaces vacated by the power of the executive branch grow the liberties of individuals that we call civil rights. Another, more everyday image is a father who allows his little son to ride on his back and make him gallop on all fours like a horse. Of course, this game is possible only until the father tires of it and throws his son to the ground.

It should further be said about the ability to act that it is not limited only to the executive branch. Every single individual has his own instruments of action. One can also distinguish among different groups in society whose ability to act is greater than that of other groups. But that ability is limited, because it is not organized and cohesive like that of the executive branch. Yet when individuals or groups do become organized, they can limit the power of the executive branch. And behold, we are witnessing the first stirrings of such organization here in the land of Canaan.

In sum, only power can limit power. Indeed, sometimes the power of the executive branch is limited by this very power itself. But when it does not do so sufficiently, other powers in society may arise to limit the power of the executive branch. This has nothing to do with minority rights, or the right of the majority, or the rest of such piffle, which cannot withstand intelligent analysis. Of course, one can always make use of external powers to limit the executive branch. Indeed, among us we find a recognizable minority (both in its purse and in its anger) appealing to other states to exert their influence on the local power. Naturally, the self-righteous condemnations of such acts come to protect the local power. Time will tell whose power will prevail.

Just regarding 5: when exactly was the Judicial Selection Committee ever under the coalition’s complete control? I’d be glad to get a link showing what you wrote in 5.

I understand and agree with the demand for agreement on the new rules of the game.
But in my opinion the argument applies equally to the other side. Supporters of the reform claim that the “old” rules of the game have changed incrementally over the past decades until they have reached a point where they are no longer willing to play.

What happens if they fail to reach agreement? Opponents of the reform are essentially claiming that if broad agreement cannot be achieved, the reform should not be implemented for the time being. That may be true—but only on condition that, at the same time, Aharon Barak’s creeping judicial revolution is also postponed until broad agreement is reached on it. Otherwise it is glaring unfairness.

1. Not true. The agreement was made even before the elections, but my claim is that sometimes the situation reveals that it was an agreement made in error. They did not agree under those terms.
2. This is not a question of what I claim but of what the protesting minority claims. There certainly was room to make this claim in other cases as well. Decisions that strike at the apple of a minority’s eye should not be made unless one is prepared to part from it. It is not true that every decision strikes at apples of the eye. That is demagoguery.
3. This is not a question of exploitation. Separation will come at a heavy cost to the minority as well, so it must weigh its steps seriously. If you get the impression that this is not really an apple of the eye and that they are being manipulative, then do not yield to them—but be prepared to bear the consequences.
4. So? What is your point? By all means, let them separate. By the way, the Knesset could at any moment have intervened and prevented Barak’s coups, but they preferred to howl about coups instead of acting. Incidentally, back then nobody would have gone out to protest as they do today.
5. Entirely reasonable. Admittedly, one can argue that the situation has changed and that the laws that prevailed in the past are no longer relevant and no longer agreed upon.
6. You are speaking in terms of formalism, and I am speaking in terms of ethics. Everyone has the same finger, but in discourse not everyone has the same weight.
7. I already explained that measuring who contributes more is left to each of us. By the way, you are talking about the contribution of Religious Zionism. What about the Haredim and Shas? I have my own position on the matter, but it is not important here.
8. Here you spilled all the water you had accumulated up to this point.

Your words are a fine expression of the shortcomings of analytic thinking. Not every concept needs to be, or can be, defined. But I have written about this at great length in several places. In general, I really do not accept these power-based analyses (as also in law and economics), and I definitely do speak of rights and desires. You can, of course, ignore basic facts just because they are hard for you to define, and thus be an analyticist mehadrin, whose drawbacks exceed his advantages.
In this column I tried to argue that power also has meanings on the plane of justice, but not because there is no such thing as justice and rights, only power. This was not a definition but a claim.

In principle you are right. But I think the supporters of the reform are crudely ignoring a blatant asymmetry between the need to balance the government and the need to balance the court, and I have already written about this. The government’s influence on our lives and the power entrusted to it are immeasurably greater than those entrusted to the court. The court’s influence on our lives is minor, whereas the government makes decisions every day that affect all of us dramatically. Therefore, to claim that the court’s breaking of the rules (which certainly did happen) justifies disconnecting from the state because these are new rules of the game sounds to me like disingenuousness for the sake of argument (whataboutism). My claim is that Rotman and Levin are firing a cannon at a fly. They are coming to solve a real but rather minor problem by means of a dramatic change in the rules of the game in a way that harms and will materially harm our lives.

On the other hand, the government is naturally balanced by its dependence on the composition of the coalition and by voter scrutiny once every four years—checks the court does not have.
In addition, one can debate the extent of the jurists’ influence on our lives. I think you underestimate it.

I am not an analytic philosopher. Quite the opposite. I am an empiricist. Everything I said is well grounded in observation of historical and current reality. One can of course become intoxicated on vague, metaphysical concepts that have no grip on reality whatsoever. That is the difference between one who reads reality from the study hall lectern and one who dirties his hands with blood, amniotic fluid, and placenta and sees clearly how things work.

In my book Two Carts (and also in Emet Velo Yatziv) I explained the connection between positivism and analyticity. Both deny synthetic a priori insights—that is, the validity of intuitions. It is true that theoreticians are prone to mistakes in application, but those who dirty their hands with amniotic fluid and placenta also sometimes fail to see what lies beyond them.

You wrote “basic facts.” Indeed, it is a fact that people talk about facts. But to call rights facts is stretching the thread of thought until it snaps.

Indeed, rights are facts. Not facts in the simple physical sense, but in the sense of what I previously called ‘ethical facts.’ This is not stretching the thread of thought but simply using threads of thought, which positivists do not really do.

Indeed, philosophers regarded as analytic denied the Kantian category of synthetic-analytic. (For example, Carnap in his well-known article.) Though truth be told, the use of the term “analytic philosophy” is itself completely vague. But using the psychological category “intuition” and comparing it to the Kantian metaphysical category is an affront to the dead Kant 🙂

True enough, everyone is liable to err: To err is human. But it seems to me that the errors of theoreticians are more numerous, though harder to detect because there is nothing tangible to them.

Perhaps these matters should be clarified face to face, as we once did. It could also be over a steaming cup of coffee.

Since I am not a philosopher, I cannot be a positivist; so I assume you do not mean me when you speak of a failure to use threads of thought. In any case, to attribute such a deficiency to me would be total disregard of well-proven facts 🙂

Oops, sorry. Synthetic a priori, of course.

A historical interlude.

Since everyone is discussing power, including Rabbi Abraham, and since there is a not insignificant possibility that the use of power will eventually lead to a civil war, or a war among citizens, it is worth examining its appearances beginning in the Bible.

True, the Bible has no real standing in Jewish culture, certainly not in its halakhic version, of which Rabbi Abraham is one of the most splendid blossoms. (How many times is the Bible mentioned on the pages of the blog? How many verses are quoted in the Mishnah?) But ever since biblical territorialism returned to the stage of history, the Bible too has resumed a central place. First in Zionist thought, which sought to skip over two thousand years of non-territorial halakhic Judaism, and afterwards in Religious Zionist thought, which tries to combine rabbinic-halakhic Judaism with biblical Judaism. This combination sometimes produces comic effects of anachronism and basic historical misunderstanding—for example when Smotrich and Gafni speak about King David. But that deserves separate treatment.

So then, there is nothing better than to begin with last week’s Torah portion.

26 And Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come unto me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. 27 And he said unto them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Put every man his sword upon his thigh, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.” 28 And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

If we extrapolate from this civil war from gate to gate to the war at our gates, and compare today’s population size with that of then, it follows that we may expect ten thousand fallen. Who will be the sons of Levi today? Perhaps those who respond to the call, “Whoever is for the Lord, come unto me”?

But of course the first civil war is that between Cain and Abel. Afterwards we find solutions that make it possible to avoid civil war: separations. That between Abraham and Lot (which begins with a quarrel), and that between Jacob and Esau (Genesis 36:6–8). Nor should one forget the bloody civil war in the story of the concubine in Gibeah. We shall skip over several more civil wars and arrive at the days of the monarchy after Solomon. There too, separation into two kingdoms is the solution that prevents (though not entirely) civil wars.

In the post-biblical period we find civil war, literally, in the waning days of the Hasmonean kingdom. Those wars eventually turned the Land of Israel into a Roman province. The Sages were not enthusiastic about that kingdom, and in any case, as far as I know, did not mention those wars. But the Sages did mention the civil wars at the end of the Second Temple period—those wars that mark the transition from territorial, Temple-centered biblical Judaism to the Judaism of the Sages, which replaced territory and Temple with spiritual and intellectual contents.

Together with the renewed territorialism of our own day have also returned a few civil wars, and rather unimpressive ones at that. What does the future hold for us?

Two questions, please:
1. Can the fact that a previous process of “changing the rules of the game” was done without consent and in a hidden way provide ethical justification for “turning the wheel back” even without consent?
2. Ultimately, it seems it is not hard to understand that there is an ethical duty on the majority (in various contexts) to harm the rights of the minority and to “abuse its power toward it.” I very much doubt that people who support/promote the reform are rubbing their hands with pleasure: “Yes, at last we can rob the minority of its individual rights!”
The more critical questions, in my opinion, are—whether there is in fact harm (a mostly empirical question, apparently), whether it is justified, and who gets to decide? In my view, it is the Supreme Court that harms the minority—the real minority, the one that may have a majority in the Knesset, but is quite absent from all the relevant elites (the Justice Ministry, the media, the courts, cultural channels, and more). The Court does not ask for my consent or that of many others like me.

I couldn’t understand anything here. What are you talking about? Whom are you asking? What is the question?

The rabbi writes that there is great reason to take into account the minority here that gives more to the state. But it seems to me that that is precisely the argument against—that the reason the left has more money or ability is that the institutions of education and power are in its hands, and that is exactly what the right wants to change.

The migo argument is only an extension of the substantive argument. After all, ethically speaking, a minority that tries to obtain more than its share (in the family analogy, a child trying to force his favorite game more than a third of the games) solely by virtue of the fact that it can disconnect would be considered extortionate. (It seems to me you tend to accuse the Haredim of that kind of behavior, though they do it by using the weight of their political power on issues important to them and not through violence. In this post there is some justification offered on their behalf.) That is of course its right, but then it should simply disconnect rather than extort the majority for more than its due share (that of the minority).

A claim raised by several commenters here which it does not seem you understood properly:
Given that the reform merely returns the situation to what it was before Barak’s revolution (that can of course be debated), the changes it includes do not constitute a change in the rules of the game. Therefore your claim about the majority’s lack of legitimacy to impose its opinion while changing the rules of the game collapses (because there is no change in the rules of the game), and one may rely on the agreement regarding the rules of the game that existed throughout the period of the classical court (pre-Shamgar and Barak). There is no need to disconnect; one can simply legislate.

I hope and assume you’re joking.

I have never accused the Haredim over their methods. The accusation is about the goals for which those methods are employed. Using political influence to achieve worthy goals is not problematic (within some limits). The problem is the goals for which Haredi extortion is employed: advancing a narrow interest at the public’s expense (including the Haredi public).
I answered that claim. If something doesn’t seem right to you, you need to spell it out.

Anyone who thought the ruling majority was wronging him could always lay out his claims before the High Court of Justice.
So even if the apple of one’s eye was truly harmed, or even if there was simply unjustified and disproportionate interference, there were learned and upright people in Jerusalem who could tell the government: you’ve gone too far, this is not acceptable.

Now that is being erased.
From now on, anyone who is wronged by the government (and there will be such wrongs; even the righteous make mistakes, all the more so people presumed to be…
and at the head of the gang is a defendant charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust) truly will have no one to cry out to over the injustice.

From now on, everything is expected, by the course of nature, to fall apart.

As best I can tell, two commenters raised against you the second argument I presented (that restoring the prior state is not a change in the rules of the game). To both of them you replied using the term “disengagement,” a term you used in your article to describe a case in which the minority abandons the democratic game after the majority harms the apple of its eye. In previous posts you noted that such an act on the minority’s part is acceptable only in extreme situations (otherwise it extorts more than its due share of the pie at the expense of the majority). My claim is that, given that the reform restores the previous situation, it does not involve a change in the rules of the game, for we all agreed to those rules up until Barak’s revolution. If the reader agrees up to this point, he must draw two conclusions:

Since the reform is not a change in the rules of the game, it may be legislated if it wins a majority in the Knesset (there is no need to threaten disengagement if it is not legislated, as I understood from your words; one can simply legislate it and that’s that).
It is difficult, morally, to accept the minority’s right to threaten disengagement in response to a move that merely restores the situation to its previously agreed state.

Presumably a considerable portion of the reform’s opponents would reject the claim that this is a restoration of the previous situation and therefore would not accept my conclusions, but it seemed that you did not understand the argument raised by Phil and Leonardo, and that is what I wanted to sharpen.

May I jump in? In what sense is the reform = restoring the prior situation? I’m genuinely asking: when, for example, was the Judicial Selection Committee controlled by the coalition? When, for example, were legal advisers positions of trust? When was there a broad override clause by a majority of 61?

If human beings die because of this problem, I don’t think it can be called minor…. I’ll remind you of the murder of the Hatuel family (the High Court refused to allow the demolition of a house that posed a danger to travelers on that route, and the shots were fired from that house). And that is only one example. Those killed in the alleys of Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield are a second example. In the next stage it will be a ban on firing missiles back into Lebanon and Gaza in response to massive missile fire from them (“harm to innocents”). The ban on the neighbor procedure, etc. The ban on demolishing the homes of terrorists’ families or refusal to revoke terrorists’ citizenship. I can go on like this all day. The story of the fine imposed on that cashier who refused to address a transgender person as a woman is simply madness. And it is only the first swallow. And it cannot be fixed because all the jurists are disciples of the doctrine of “purposive interpretation” of laws that is taught in academia, which is simply a practice of falsehood in order to achieve social goals (which is simply policymaking, really).

The damage to the minority’s “apple of the eye” is that for the first time it is really losing control of the state’s institutions, and for the first time after 40 years the majority is beginning to rule. The minority is control-sick, and that is its apple of the eye. In such a case it does not seem there is any need to take it into account. It needs to calm down and drink some water and not assume that the majority wants its harm. The only minority that may be “hurt” is perhaps the Arab public (which really is a fifth column, as we saw in Operation Guardian of the Walls), which perhaps will finally receive exactly in proportion to what it contributes and will not get all kinds of absurd rights like National Insurance that it would never in its life give us. And certainly not “affirmative” discrimination in academia and government institutions.

Because of the character of today’s judges, the only way to restore the situation to what it was is to appoint judges who were like those then—conservative from a legal standpoint. And therefore one must ensure a coalition majority on that committee. The judges never had any business being there.

“When, for example, were legal advisers positions of trust?” Well, you are probably very young. That was a High Court decision after Barak’s constitutional revolution. Maybe the word “adviser” is supposed to hint something to you. What is happening in that area today is simply terrible; it is a joke at the expense of the concept of “governance.”

The override clause is needed only temporarily, until the composition of the High Court changes to non-activist judges (judges one can trust), and that will take many years. Once that happens, the override clause can be repealed.

I did understand B fully, and I already answered that in my reply to Leonardo. It seems you couldn’t be bothered to read it, and you are repeating the same things again in the hope that something will change. See here:
https://mikyab.net/posts/80181#comment-71500
First of all, what is being proposed now is not a return to what was, but something much more radical. But I answered there the hypothetical question that was asked on the assumption (hypothetical and mistaken) that this was indeed the proposal on the table.
I wrote that sometimes, with changed circumstances, the old rules are no longer sufficient and returning to them is a change in the rules of the game. If today I were returned to the life of a shepherd with Abraham our father or Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, I am not sure that my signature on the agreement with the Holy One, blessed be He, by which I undertook to keep the Torah, would still remain valid. That is so even if I had lived continuously from then until now. A fair bit of sewage has flowed through the Yarkon since then. It doesn’t seem all that hard to understand.

You certainly may. In a state, people die because of many things. Far more people have died because of government blunders that were not corrected (by the court or otherwise) than because of judicial rulings. By that logic, the time has come to take decision-making away from the government and return it to the marketplace.
The important question is how much the rulings affect our lives compared to government decisions, and whom it is more important to balance. That is not determined by edge cases. Therefore the court’s influence is indeed plainly minor. Those killed in the alleys during Defensive Shield infuriated me as well, but that was not a court decision; it was a matter of the army’s and government’s morality (distorted, in my opinion). And of course also considerations (not necessarily distorted) of public diplomacy and defense against international law, in which I am less versed. What does that have to do with the court? It is most convenient for the government to act and then pin the failures on the court. That is what they have always done. They could have made such a decision with no problem at all, and no court would have stopped them in the middle of a military operation.
Only principled decisions like the neighbor procedure or citizenship for terrorists are really court decisions, and there is no evidence that this changed anything in terms of security. Firebrands in the Ben Gvir style are sure that a heavy hand will improve things. So far there seems to be no evidence for that whatsoever. And if there is, let the government and the Knesset honorably decide accordingly. Considerations of civil rights are very important, and your assumption that they should yield to every half-baked security speculation is unfounded. Legal order is very important, even if it entails wrongs and injustices. This is true of every legal system (including halakhah, as Maimonides also writes, that halakhah was stated in general terms).
In short, this is mere demagoguery. All these are minor influences, and a large part of them are not connected to the court. And the examples of the damage caused by the various governments are many and enormous—one thousand times greater—and even in some of the examples you brought, the harms are because of the government and not the court.

And I haven’t even asked you about the benefit of a strong court that has prevented government damage. A fair comparison should take those into account too, and only then strike a balance. You did not discuss how many distortions are to be expected in a situation in which there is no oversight at all over the government. A comparison that shows the harms of one side versus the benefits of the other is not exactly the most logical and fair methodology.

A fair comparison should take into account the chilling effect that exists throughout the governmental chain because of judicial activism (of the High Court, legal advisers, the prosecution), and not only the decisions the High Court actually made. One should also reckon with the accumulating frustration of citizens who feel there is a “glass ceiling” on implementing their ideology, while the ideology of their opponents receives a tailwind from unelected institutions.

Of course you are right that the government’s influence is greater, but that is obvious. Even if 5% of the activity of the government and the Knesset is affected by a chilling effect or by activist decisions, that is not little.

The benefit the High Court brings—and it is great—need not be lost, because a balanced reform would continue to allow almost the same benefit with far less damage. No one seriously proposed abolishing judicial review entirely. That is not going to happen.

Bottom line: the opposing side knows very well how to threaten to break the rules, but it finds it very easy to forget that the other side can do the same. Aside from a few righteous people in Sodom (like Albashan or Barak-Coren), no one even bothered to address things substantively. That’s how little they count us.

I definitely agree that protecting minority rights and taking its wishes into account, a system of checks and balances, separation of powers, decentralization of powers (the federal system), and limiting the powers of government are an integral part of stable modern democratic rule.

But although the principle of the supremacy of judicial review (see Marbury v. Madison) was accepted in the United States as early as 1803, to this day there are serious jurists who challenge that decision as a “grab of authority” that the (American) Supreme Court took for itself and that is not anchored in the Constitution.

In fact, according to the American Constitution, each branch (legislative, executive, judicial) owes its loyalty to act according to the Constitution as best it understands it, and in the case of disagreements between the president and the court or between the legislature and the judges, no one branch is superior to the others. The system was built from the outset on a method of gridlock in order to create difficulties and obstacles to the natural human tendency toward forcefulness and tyranny.

And indeed, in American history, President Abraham Lincoln interpreted the Constitution according to his own understanding, and when the Supreme Court strongly opposed his decision, he stood his ground and refused to bow to judicial review.
And that case should not be seen as a constitutional crisis; rather, that is how the system was built by the intention of the Founding Fathers.

In the end, opponents of the reform tell us that the High Court is the guardian that protects minority rights and stands just one step away from saving us from majority tyranny.

And against that I pose Plato’s ancient question: “Who will guard the guards?”

Opponents of the reform tell us at length about the tremendous restraint the High Court shows, about the few times it struck down laws (while ignoring the “chilling effect” of judicial activism—all the laws that died in committees or at the mere breath of one legal adviser or another).

The very fact that they pride themselves and boast in the fact that they display restraint teaches that in fact their power is unlimited; only thanks to their great morality do they not act according to the natural human tendency to forcefulness, and thanks to their exalted morality their (ultimate) power has not corrupted them (cf. Lord Acton’s saying).

One can dispute this apologetic interpretation of the legal/political history of the State of Israel, but let us assume it is true.
But who guarantees us that the future High Court judges will be men of substance, God-fearing, men of truth, hating unjust gain, champions of justice, restrained from lust for power?
The answer: no one!

I completely agree that serious checks are required against the legislative/executive branch that we have, and a reform that ignores that is dangerous.
But where are the checks on the judicial branch?
I am not satisfied with bakers patting their own restrained shoulders.

I agree with every word. Still, in my estimation there is no comparison between the importance of balancing the government and balancing the court (and the ratio between the degree of influence of the former and the latter). Here I only commented on the quality of the comparison.

I agree with every word. Still, the degree of need for checks on the executive branch cannot be compared to that on the judicial branch. In general, I have written here more than once that in my view a reform is essential—but not the reform (in the definite sense) currently being proposed.

You say that this is the “only way to restore the situation to what it was,” but who guarantees that it will be so? What is certain is that this does not restore the previous situation, because the situation was never like what the reform describes.
And I ask again: when were legal advisers positions of trust? Gideon Hausner was before Barak, as far as I recall, and he had already managed to quarrel with Ben-Gurion. So when?

I agree with most of what B wrote, except for the matter of positions of trust. I don’t know of such a High Court decision. There was a conclusion of the Agranat Commission that the adviser’s opinion is not binding, and a conclusion of the Shamgar Commission that allowed use of a private attorney in certain cases.
In addition, until 1953 Supreme Court judges were selected by the government!
The override clause is intended to balance the granting of the possibility of striking down laws, which did not exist before Barak’s revolution (except for the Kol Ha’am ruling, where the court apologizes for having to enter the legislature’s domain and suggests that it pass a “law bypassing the High Court” on that issue). Since one cannot plug all the loopholes without integrity on the part of the judges (see “unconstitutional constitutional amendment”—a rule invented by the High Court to allow it to strike down Basic Laws), there is no choice but to change the composition of the committee, especially when one adds to the court the power to strike down laws, which has been disputed to this day.

In your view, should the current reform be thrown out entirely and started over, should only a few corners be rounded off, or can it be salvaged with a serious overhaul?
If you have already written criticism of the minute details of the reform, alternatives, etc., and I missed it, I’d be happy for a link.

So you too are not claiming that the reform restores a prior situation. So I don’t understand why one would claim that at all.
As for the rest, forgive me, but that is killing the baby in order to wipe its behind. These things have been explained ad nauseam, and whoever does not see by now how bad this reform is will not see it anymore.

We do what we can. One cannot foresee the future and nothing is certain. The main problem is that today’s judges do with the law as they please (“purposive interpretation”), and this must be limited in every way if they cannot be fired. It is simply a breach of their office—it is really a breach of trust. Politicians have more integrity than those liars, if only because they have responsibility and because they must give an account to the voters.

Let them not be positions of trust. There is simply no need for them. Let their opinion not bind anyone. And regardless, there are always arguments between professionals and statesmen, and in the end the opinion of the latter determines; and if the professional doesn’t like it, let him resign. Truth be told, even now their opinion is not really binding. Once the court exceeded its authority, its words are void and there is no obligation to obey them.

Itai:
Once the adviser’s decisions are not binding, and after his role is split, the significance of his being in a position of trust is almost entirely technical (there are considerations against it, such as the ability of the various government ministries to speak in one voice before the court). Gideon Hausner clashed with Justice Minister Dov Yosef in connection with the role of attorney general that he held, not the advisory role under discussion in the reform (Dov Yosef wanted control over that too, in a rather horrifying way). The Agranat Commission, which dealt with this matter, explicitly determined that the adviser’s opinion is not binding.

https://hashiloach.org.il/%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9A-%D7%90%D7%99%D7%91%D7%93%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%94-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%96%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%92-%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%98%D7%99/

In any case, in practice the legal advisers did not actually clash with the government before that. And in any case, not everything that existed in the past was good. It was very bad. It is rule by bureaucrats who have no responsibility and answer to no one, even more than rule by the High Court.

That is theoretical. In practice, from the moment the judges (and jurists in general) began doing with the law as they pleased through their “purposive interpretation,” they simply breached the public trust. They are liars to the marrow of their bones, and also lacking in self-awareness. And in a situation where they have neither responsibility nor accountability, the politicians are more honest than they are. In such a situation the judicial system should be limited as much as possible until honest judges are appointed.

Rabbi Michael:
I most certainly did make the effort. It is hard to accuse me of a lack of understanding,
since in your response you asked, “What is your claim?” and suggested that they disconnect. Only afterwards did you raise arguments that could be interpreted as though you had understood the question, while framing them under the word “incidentally.”
To the point:
You surely know the rule that a governmental authority may not do anything not explicitly authorized by law. And because the police do not summon enough strength to fight crime, should a law therefore be enacted to prohibit it?
Barak’s revolution does not consist only in the authority to strike down laws, for which some find support in the law (far from self-evident). There is also the issue of the binding authority of the attorney general, “unconstitutional constitutional amendment,” and more—all of which are really departures from the law.

As for the demonstrations: similar to my previous claim, you do not need people to demonstrate against you in order for your violation of the law to count as criminality. In addition, some of the court’s coups did not make headlines at the time, and the public in general did not understand their possible implications (especially in light of the High Court’s practice of first publishing the innovation as an obiter—an incidental remark—and only in subsequent rulings making use of it; as in the Mizrahi decision and the discussion of invalidating Basic Law: Nation-State). How many people in the early 1990s knew that we had a constitution?
Likewise, there were demonstrations against the court. For example—the Haredi demonstration in 1999 (350,000 participants according to the police estimate).

As for the claim about the lapse of time: what changed in the last thirty years that causes what existed until then no longer to fit our state?

The link you attached does not say that until that High Court decision, the legal advisers were positions of trust, contrary to your claim above.

“Unconstitutional constitutional amendment”—that is quite an invention. They don’t even notice there is a logical contradiction in that expression. Both faithless and feeble-minded.

All I’m saying—and now both B and A agree with me—is that the reform does not restore a previous situation, because the situation after the reform did not exist before it: not with the override clause, not with appointing judges (at least not since 1953), and not with legal advisers as positions of trust. So you are claiming that the reform may indirectly restore the previous situation. Maybe, who knows? Anything is possible. Though it doesn’t convince me, at least.
But what is one hundred percent certain, and both of you agree with me on this too, is that right now that is not what the reform proposes, so why claim it is?

I wasn’t talking about the reform itself, only about this specific claim. Hope that’s clear now.

I don’t care whether they were positions of trust. Their opinion was not binding. I quote:
“‘In the Pinchasi ruling, signed by Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar and four additional judges, then-Deputy President Aharon Barak wrestled with the question whether Harish had exceeded his authority when he refused to represent the government. Barak’s conclusion was that this was not the right question: in his view, the question is not whether Harish is permitted to refuse to appear in court, but whether the law permits the prime minister to ignore the opinion of the legal adviser. Barak’s answer to this question was astonishing: he determined that in fact the legal adviser is not the government’s legal adviser, but rather its decisor in legal matters, and that the government is obliged to accept his decisions.[1]

‘Jurists hailed Barak’s determination as an important victory for the rule of law: for the first time the government was found by law to be subordinate to the authority of the legal adviser. Yet in many respects, this ruling merely gave official imprimatur to a far-reaching conceptual revolution wrought twenty-five years earlier by Meir Shamgar himself, when he served as attorney general. According to this revolutionary conception, the attorney general fills the role of a judge, not of a lawyer; and his role is not to facilitate government action, but to judge it.’”

No. The reform wants to achieve the degree of intervention by judges that existed then (and that barely existed at all—precisely because of the reasons of not standing again for election by the public, lack of responsibility, and lack of accountability to anyone) and the degree of integrity they had. That is the essence. Obviously the clauses of the reform, which are tools, must change because the judges changed and became egotistical and obtuse, and there is no way to limit them without new tools (especially replacing them with honest people). We explained how the clauses of the reform are supposed to achieve the reality that existed then.

Itai:
My claim was that according to the view of the one who raised this argument, it overrides Rabbi Michael’s argument about changing the rules of the game. Personally, I do not think the reform reproduces the previous situation exactly (mainly the change in the composition of the committee. A justified change in itself, though I would prefer proportional representation according to the Knesset rather than representation of the government. That change places us somewhere between the two methods of selection that were practiced in the past), but it is not different to a degree that justifies breaking the rules. I assume you understand that Barak’s revolution does not allow one to restore the previous situation exactly and expect it to remain that way. Judges who see themselves as entitled to strike down Basic Laws, with no basis whatsoever in the text of the law, will thumb their nose even at a return to the previous situation and nullify it. There is no escaping a broader move that will prevent the judges from canceling it at a stroke.

But that argument is invalid, so whoever raises that argument is mistaken or misleading—so why talk about that argument at all?

As for the rest of what you wrote, I completely disagree. In my opinion (and I know there are people who disagree with me about this), there must be judicial review of the government, and the reform as it stands today nullifies it. This will allow the government to do whatever it wants, and whoever suffers from that? Let him wait for the elections (assuming there will still be any).

Again, I’m not talking about some hypothetical reform (such as proportional representation on the committee, as you wrote above), but about the reform as proposed today. If you think (and again—I know not everyone thinks so) that there should be judicial review of the government, you have to oppose the reform as it is proposed.

B:
The principle of charity can place the expression “unconstitutional constitutional amendment” within the bounds of logic, even if not within the bounds of law.
One can interpret it as meaning that an amendment to the constitution contradicts other provisions of the constitution (or the Declaration of Independence, if one includes it in the constitution), and is therefore “unconstitutional.”

Hahahahaha. Anyone who calls the Supreme Court justices learned and upright people can be presumed not to know his right hand from his left (especially his left).

To argue that the reform changes the rules of the game in a way that justifies the minority’s breaking of the rules and denying the legitimacy of the majority’s move requires a more extreme change; otherwise every new law is a change in the rules of the game. Therefore the argument is valid, even if in a more refined version.
In practice, the state to which the court has deteriorated tips the scale in favor of the reform, even if there is a future hypothetical fear (slight, in my opinion). Proposals such as adding an elected house can count as good criticism of the Knesset, though one must examine the drawbacks in terms of complicating the system. Certainly in a country like ours, surrounded by enemies and obliged to make decisions immediately.

*hypothetical

An article on a Haredi site called Torah Forum
https://tora-forum.co.il/threads/%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%98%D7%99%D7%AA.42764/post-814785
https://tora-forum.co.il/threads/%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%98%D7%99%D7%AA.42764/post-813198

I didn’t write a critique of the details, nor do I see much value in that. I also don’t see a big difference among the alternatives you raised. This is not something very complex, so fixing it or rewriting it are not very different.

Well, of course you didn’t bother, but I think we’ve exhausted this.
Only regarding the changed reality: today they legislate personal Basic Laws in order to appoint criminals and offenders to senior positions and improve their material conditions in office. They abolish every sensible regulation and run completely wild with appointments and decisions, and display terrible irresponsibility toward the future of all of us. There are of course other clear changes, but that alone is enough to seek a new balance. That’s it.

There are entirely reasonable and intelligible interpretations of this (one need not necessarily agree with the claim, but to say it is self-contradictory is nonsense). But given the obstinacy here, I see no point in further discussion.

The case under discussion is not comparable to the evidence. Lots of people die in accidents, but to die because of someone else’s stupid and obtuse decisions when he bears no responsibility at all—that is plainly intolerable. The harms caused by the government, as you said, stem from blunders or mistakes. Fine—so one learns and improves and advances. Whoever does nothing makes no mistakes. But the High Court never changes its mind. How it affects reality never interests it. Therefore the sense of justice cries out a thousand times more because of the edge cases. Morality is a reciprocal matter, and whoever does not grant human rights to others (Arabs or terrorists) has no human rights. And this has nothing to do with security considerations; it is a crying injustice, and it weakens the hands of everyone who enlists or works here in the state. One can very well understand the Haredim’s non-participation in the state against this background (though that was not their original reason for it, but now it certainly is).

If the High Court’s effects are minor, why does an absolute majority of the Jewish people come out against it in furious anger?

It is difficult, and also not very useful, to talk to walls. So I’m stopping here.

From the moment they lost trust in the courts, the concept of criminal or offender already comes with an asterisk. And if the High Court runs wild, then one may “run wild” in order to stop its rampage. As for the rest—the appointments and irresponsibility toward the future—with all due respect, that is not a matter for court intervention but a legitimate political opinion that ought to find expression in the next elections. Better for a minister to appoint his own man who believes in him or in his policy than a left-wing professional who will fight the minister, threaten him, fail to implement the policy, and even try to sabotage the implementation of the minister’s policy by others. As far as I’m concerned, every minister today should fire everyone staffing his ministry and appoint a collection of yes-men, and that would already create possibilities to test some policy and learn from mistakes in the field. These bureaucrats do not allow the government to learn at all. Their job is to advise and carry out, and if they do not believe in the policy, then to resign. They think the ministers are their rubber stamp.

A,
An amendment to the constitution creates a new constitution that erases the previous one. So the contradiction between it and the previous one is meaningless, because the previous one has been annulled, and a judge cannot decide that the previous one is what represents the people’s will when the people have changed their will. There can be internal contradictions in the new constitution, but it’s not that parts of it are unconstitutional. In short, I laughed for an hour when I heard this bluff. The stupidity of these judges, who think they can feed us any nonsense that exists, surprises me anew each time. I have no principle of charity because it is clear to me that for them the constitution is just the human-rights law (which does not really exist; they conjured it out of “Human Dignity and Liberty”).

If this is a response to me, I don’t understand what you’re saying. That argument is invalid no matter how you twist it. The reform does not restore a previous situation, and those are simply the facts.

A future hypothetical fear? Why future—it's clear what this specific government wants to do. There is nothing hypothetical here. Examples abound: from an attack on environmental protection (or on nature in general), appointments of people manifestly unfit for senior positions (for example in the Transport Ministry or the Central Bureau of Statistics), turning the police political, the donations law (I wonder who that child “supported at his father’s table” is), the shamelessness of a prime minister with two homes demanding that we support his homes financially (the Accountant General is afraid to complain, as reported in Haaretz today), personal Basic Laws (!) intended to appoint one person (!) to a double ministerial post in a government with a record number of ministers for nothing, and more and more. What here is hypothetical? That they will revoke voting rights from citizens? All these things will happen very fast (immediately, after all Israel is surrounded by enemies), without judicial review.

All this seems to me a pretty justified fear. It may be that you support all these things, or it may be that you oppose them but also oppose judicial review in principle. If so, I have no argument with you; we simply live in parallel worlds.

Itai:
The argument is valid because it tries to deal with a claim that speaks about changing the rules of the game. Therefore there is no need for an exact restoration of the situation for it not to count as a change in the rules (on the assumption that not every change, even in the balance among the branches, is necessarily a change in the rules of the game that morally justifies a minority threat to disconnect).

As for the concerns: it seems to me we live in the same universe, though I am not content with judicial review so long as there is no constitutional court based on a political key. As for the examples you raised, with some I disagree, with some I agree, and some I did not know and will try to check. We can discuss it, but I’m not sure the site owner would like the discussion here to be diverted by the addition of many comments.

Precisely regarding your full disclosure—your concern lest your words be influenced by some grudge from your younger years—I really, really do not suspect you, and I do not believe this affected your views in the slightest. What do I suspect and not believe? That even you know that this explosive, unruly issue is almost entirely incapable of reaching any logical resolution; that one can give 150 arguments this way, and immediately afterwards give 150 arguments the other way, like clay in the hand of the potter—when he wishes, convincing this way, and when he wishes, convincing that way. If you manage to persuade even half a human being, I will fight for you to head the presidency, since you have succeeded where he failed.

To Chananel.
Think of one more possibility.
Perhaps he is simply one who reads the rulings, and on really important matters even studies the reasoning with serious investment.
Doesn’t agree with everything, but appreciates depth, seriousness, an impressive breadth of knowledge in many fields, even Torah knowledge, and above all integrity?
Could that be the case?

Dear friends.

Keep arguing about justice, about the minority and about the majority. Meanwhile power speaks. Not the power of the minority nor that of the majority, but of those massing beyond the border fences and beyond the Green Line. To understand Israel’s unreadiness for the next war, it is worth listening to Brik and internalizing. One may also listen to the leftist traitor Eisenkot, reminding us of the Yom Kippur War. So run to the stores to stock up on bottles of water, batteries, and canned food. In the next war there will not be much electricity, one will be able to forget about cell phones, and the roads too will be dangerous.

Within three months, a government run by criminals and lunatics has succeeded in proving Nasrallah’s spider-web theory. Now its leaders, ministers, and advisers cower in fear in the Kirya, while the one at its head—the man who has been deranging the regime for five years—sets out on pleasure trips abroad. As his wife said in the famous recording: “Let the country burn.” Indeed, prophecy was granted to her.

It is hard not to be struck by how detached from reality the theoretical discussions conducted here are. Wonderful material for historians.

Sorry. This is not an exact return to a previous situation, nor even a nearly exact return. The situation that will exist after the reform does not resemble any situation that existed before it.
I mentioned the concerns because you spoke of a future hypothetical concern. The concern is immediate and not hypothetical at all.

Agreed. It’s not only criminals and lunatics but also clowns and superficial people. And they are the ones who want to carry out a regime coup here.

The rabbi raises the argument of migo: if the minority is unwilling to participate in the game, the majority has no justification to impose it, and the very ability of the minority to dissolve the partnership already gives it the power to argue against the majority.
It seems more that this is not a migo argument but a claim of “if so, then let it return…” (i shatakt / lechi tahader), and the practical difference is that there are times when the majority could say to the minority: then go back…

And regarding our matter—does the majority’s need for the minority carry weight? The minority can always flex its muscles and claim “in any event I do not want this,” (of course, practically speaking, one cannot burn down the club over every decision, and only decisions that are truly significant in the eyes of the minority will lead to that), but in this way the minority effectively rules the majority and will force it to take it into account in every decision; and if the majority really yields, then the will of the majority will not be expressed. Should calculations of “then go back…” enter here, and should the level to which the majority must take the minority into account depend on the degree of need for it and on the majority’s unwillingness truly to break up the package? Or when the desires of the majority and minority stand in head-on contradiction, does the majority’s will always prevail?

Just noting that this was written by a different Itai 🙂

Pity the family’s decision problem. Should they fly to Berlin?

If they do not fly, they will prove to the whole world and to those seeking the country’s harm that its leadership is indeed in panic.

If they do fly, they may have nowhere to return to. You are invited to go back and listen to the famous recording. The historical documentation lies before us. The refusal to take it seriously is to our detriment. But the family can always request political asylum in Germany.

Of course, Itai. You are Ittai, and the other is “with me from Lebanon” [itti miLevanon], which is the matter on account of which the feeble-minded defense minister has shut himself up in the Kirya.

Aside from the personal Basic Laws (interesting that this did not bother the likes of you in the case of the attempt to prevent Netanyahu from running), all the things you mentioned are not matters for judicial review and are issues of successful policy or not, and what is supposed to decide them is elections. You are simply a dictator who wants to impose your policy by anti-democratic means. Environmental quality always comes at a cost, and one always needs discretion as to when one should or can pay the given price at the given time. There is no such thing as an unfit appointment. The “fit” people are simply leftists who will try to stonewall and sabotage the minister’s policy, while in their eyes he is just a rubber stamp for implementing their policy. In such a situation, I would appoint only my own relatives and hire private professionals for advice and execution.
The police are already political now. All the state institutions are political, and therefore they act against the elected government.
It is time for the majority in the state to be represented in those bodies.
And this very opinion only strengthens, in my view, the need for the reform and the sooner the better.

For someone at the head of his camp to have an empty clown like Lapid and a collection of completely empty people—media people whose bread and butter has always been externality and superficiality, people for whom truth has no place at all (postmodernists)—I would not dare speak about superficiality, certainly not clownishness.
Even Benny Gantz is hollow and empty. The left today is simply a joke. Even Miri Regev is more successful than Lapid. Simply a public of suits on coat hangers.
That is also the reason no one pays attention to your cries of “criminals,” etc. It is impossible to argue, because this is worse than merely false. It is simply undefined. An attempt to create reality through words—which is, of course, a derivative of the postmodern (anti-)conception.

As Churchill wrote:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

(Anyone who received state-religious education and speaks English like Smotrich is invited to use Google Translate).

B splendidly demonstrates the disadvantages of democracy. Imagine that sensible people like him have the right to vote. He also enjoys the right to express an opinion, of course, though the concept “opinion” must be stretched very far to apply it to him.

“Me’az u-medanan.” :):):)

Nothing like it has come as a fragrance since Mai Golan’s “homogeneity.”

That was not the discussion. The discussion was whether the court’s effects on our lives are minor or not. If their actions prevented real harms by the government, then it turns out again that their influence is not minor (for good). As I said, this discussion is theoretical at the moment because those sitting in the courts right now have no commitment to the language of the law and do with it as they please. Once honest judges sit there, who will not try to educate the people into their progressive agendas but simply judge between people, then one can talk about limits on the government. Personally, I don’t think the override clause will be needed in the future (only until Aharon Barak’s disciples are eradicated from the system), but rather proportional representation for the Knesset on the committee according to the balance of forces, and without even a single judge sitting on it.

Specifically, the law against an indicted candidate did bother me, and I thought it was a bad idea. Not because a personal law is not necessarily a good thing, but because I thought it would have very bad consequences for the sense of justice of a large part of the nation, who would feel, and perhaps justly, that they were being robbed of their right to vote and, in a certain sense, that the rules of the game were being changed in the middle of the game (even though this was about the next elections). I am in favor of such a law if it does not apply to Netanyahu, because we have seen where a prime minister under criminal indictment can lead.

There are unfit appointments; of course there are. For example, appointing me to head the Central Bureau of Statistics would be an unfit appointment.

If the option is someone who will lie and cheat and sabotage the finance minister’s policy in order to implement his own agenda, then I’ll hire even you.

I have no idea how that came out. I wanted to write “always.”

It is worth learning how a state works, what the basic conditions of existence are, and only afterwards everything beyond that.
When you understand that the foundations of existence in (almost) every field are sustained day by day, hour by hour, by a very specific group,
and that it now feels, on a matter of values, that the story no longer suits it, you will be very worried.
The complacency stems from not knowing: a. who holds up and sustains the basic existential construction here;
b. how deep the moral rupture is;
and it is doubtful whether they can be persuaded to continue bearing (sometimes at heavy personal cost) the burden of this entire people.

I hope I helped one who desires life in the literal sense.

Eli:
Your efforts to display your wisdom are worthy of appreciation. After all, most people are convinced they are smarter than average, so it is reasonable that you think so too. But please, allow those who wish to fix important things in our world to do so. That is, after all, one of democracy’s advantages. Everyone has the right to express a position regardless of IQ, in the hope that the better ideas will be accepted. One need not be a judge for that.

The camel does not see its own hump…
How can you even speak about an opinion? Do you know what that word points to at all? Does that word in your world (like any other word) point to anything in external reality at all? For generally speaking, the entire left is devoid of opinion—in every second sentence it contradicts itself. The overwhelming majority of it is made up of empty people. People who believe in nothing except democracy. Their god is a form of government. They worship procedures and not contents. They have no Torah, no Land of Israel, no people of Israel, no anything. Were it not for the hi-tech people, I would not want them to live here at all. They are anti-contributors—not merely non-contributors. Believe me, I have no desire to share any system of government with you. As far as I’m concerned, I wish you weren’t here and that I didn’t need to talk to you at all. People only need to be kept away from you.

Interesting: why did the hi-tech people get your permission to live here? What is so special about them?

Because they are people who contribute to the world (productive people; that is, they possess some sense of truth). My sister works in high-tech, among other things. In fact I support productive people because it means their core is good even if they are corrupted on the outside. All the rest—jurists, journalists, public operatives of various sorts, media people, third-rate artists, etc.—are anti-contributors. In fact, I do not recommend that any state in the world admit them into its midst. Let them live in Greenland.

That same specific group made sure in every generation that no one but it would “hold up and sustain the basic existential construction here,” precisely in order to go on ruling here and imposing its values (?) on others. It is also doubtful whether that same specific group believes in “this people” at all. (Unless the intention is the citizens of the state.)

Productive = possesses a sense of truth? That’s a new one.
And what exactly are they producing? Sites like Facebook and TikTok that have brought more bad into the world than good? Or those who build apps meant to solve problems we never knew were problems, with no clear business model, and still persuade investors to invest in them? (And then of course it turns out there is no demand for their product, their company collapses, and the banks with them? And taxpayers have to bail them out?)
Or alternatively they engage in algo-trading, that is, they make money from tiny differences in stock prices and in practice create nothing. Do they have a sense of truth?

I have nothing against hi-tech people, and certainly high-tech has contributed a great deal to the world (see how we are communicating), but give me a break.

And as for the people you mentioned as anti-contributors: artists like whom? Composers like Mati Caspi? Whom would you throw to Greenland?
There is no shortage of public operatives in the religious sector either.

In order to produce, there has to be some interaction with reality and receiving feedback from it. Something has to work.

In any case, Facebook and TikTok did not bring evil into the world; they merely exposed it. They are tools that have also brought good to the world. Any tool can bring good or evil to the world, depending on the intention with which it is used. According to your method, there is no such thing as productivity at all. Farmers don’t produce either, because they also feed wicked people.

I do indeed agree that the high-tech field is full of lies and inflation and marketing and image. That is true. I spoke in a general and principled sense. Algo-trading is idleness altogether (though perhaps they help stabilize stock values).

Operatives from any public who do harm can be sent to Greenland. But at least those from the religious public are not fighting the Jewish people. At least they are not harming it.
From my point of view, most of the creation of “artists” today strikes me as childish, so I am not very objective. There is no right-wing or left-wing artist whom I appreciate. But one who in addition puffs himself up and harms the Jewish people (“A person remains a person, don’t call me a nation,” for example—I have no problem with the song, but I do have a problem with the artist), as far as I’m concerned, can gladly go to Greenland. Including Mati Caspi. Sometimes their lack of self-awareness amazes me. They think the world revolves around them.

For your attention: I wrote this a day before the president laid out his naïve doctrine. So you can begin the race for the presidency—just remember: if in the end the whole thing falls apart, the one to blame and responsible in everyone’s opinion is our acquaintance Barak, on whom you heaped crowns for his great contribution to the legal system. What is this like? Like a man walking naked through the streets of Kaplan in Tel Aviv after investing all his money in a beautiful tie. Now perhaps the token is dropping for you as to why this monster is so hated? Such a colossal disaster that this reckless, deranged man brought upon us—all the maladies of the Chief Rabbinate, by your approach, are nullified in a billion compared to the disaster this villain brought upon the people dwelling in Zion. You once said you do not understand the point of studying ethical works. Well then, here is the saying of our Sages in Avot: envy, desire, and honor remove a man from the world. But the pride in this man’s heart removed the world from man.