Q&A: We Hereby Declare….
We Hereby Declare….
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Last night I watched the High Court hearing on abolishing the reasonableness standard.
Most of the arguments by all sides, including the justices, were fairly tedious and pretty predictable in advance. There was nothing especially new there.
(Aside from the amusement of Rothman’s speech, in which he pointed out inaccuracies and really embarrassing mistakes by the justices,
like the a fortiori ratio between an ordinary law and a Basic Law, and so on.)
But the thing that did interest me was the discussion that came up there about the authority of the Declaration of Independence.
For many people, for some reason, it serves as a kind of Zionist Bible,
and apparently for the justices too. But rather ridiculously, despite their astonished expressions,
the justices there didn’t really manage to explain why this is in fact such a binding text.
Attorney Bombach argued that a declaration by 37 people, written in haste, should not tie our hands,
and the justices rebuked him, saying that several laws (such as the Nation-State Law) relied on the Declaration of Independence.
Or as Justice Alex Stein told him—that the very authority of the Knesset to legislate at all rests on the Declaration of Independence.
Justice Solberg, by contrast, said that we also need to be faithful to history, and it was not Ben-Gurion’s intention
that laws would one day be struck down on the basis of the Declaration of Independence.
I would be glad to hear what the Rabbi thinks about the Declaration of Independence in general, and specifically what authority it has to bind us, if any.
Thank you very much,
and happy new year.
Answer
Indeed, it is hard for people to live without sacred texts, and so this document has become a secular Bible. Now secular people too have holy scriptures (like the Constitution for Americans). But this declaration certainly does reflect the spirit of things among a broad public, and in that sense it is certainly appropriate to take it into account. I do not know how to say anything more definite than that.
I’m with you 😐
Suppose they stitched up a case against a certain ❌
(a mistake in the prosecutor’s judgment, the judge’s view, or there wasn’t even any basis to file an indictment,
and you want to interpret that as:
‘framing someone’ 🧐…
fine, we won’t argue about that *right now*)
*What has to happen for that to work*?
Stage 1.
The police investigate unjustly and unfairly…
(theoretically possible if the government is corrupt; there is a minister over the police, they’re in a sense subordinate to him)
Stage 2.
The State Attorney’s Office has to decide that it has enough material meeting the criterion of a ‘reasonable chance of conviction’…
and then turn that into an indictment and submit it to the court,
and it too will do this unjustly and unfairly…
(theoretically possible if the government is corrupt; there is a minister over the prosecution, they’re in a sense subordinate to him)
*Up to this point it’s possible because the systems so far are subordinate to the whims of the government,*
and if the government is corrupt (or crazed with wild and dangerous messianic-redemption fantasies) and decides to eliminate ❌,
all the stages up to the court are in its hands—and rightly so; it holds the purse and the sword, it has to run the state.
Now comes the decisive stage:
Stage 3.
*Judging.*
If this is an independent system protected from the whims of the government,
not appointed by it, not fired by it, and not subordinate to it,
then the judge can hear the cry of ❌,
that a false accusation was pinned on him,
and acquit him.
He can even criticize the government if they acted deliberately, or even by mistake; he freely allows himself to rebuke them.
The judge does not fear the government,
and his agenda (judging justly) is not supposed to move even a millimeter because of the wishes of a corrupt government.
That is the situation up to now:
D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y
Now those in power are plotting for judging too to be on behalf of the government…
It will appoint and it will fire judges,
so in such a situation it really would be possible to throw a person into prison maliciously and unjustly,
and he would have no one to cry out to about his innocence…
And who would save him?
The judge? But he’s not really a judge; he’s basically just a little clerk of the government…
Now do you understand part of the danger of the regime change…
This is part of the plan to become a corrupt and decaying third-world state,
which does not suit a people that is somehow supposed, at some point, to be ‘a light unto the nations.’
Therefore you should join in protesting the injustices that the government is plotting against the holy people:
‘And the remnant of Israel shall not do wrong.’