1.
"More and more I meet people, mostly young people who do not want to continue living here, who feel that what is happening here is foreign to them and forcibly makes them strangers in their country. Israel, as it is today, is no longer their home, and to avoid suffering the feeling of alienation, they go into a sort of internal exile" (The author David Grossman, at a demonstration against the judicial reform). Who did you meet David Grossman? What do you know about alienation, internal exile, and the glass ceiling?
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2.
The only institution to hold elections is the Knesset. And it is only there that the people have a voice. One ballot slip that contains their hopes and values, their understanding and views as to the identity of the people and its future. The directions that it thinks the state should aspire to. It is only at this institution that the oppressed masses can turn the tables and take the helm of the Zionist ship.
But then, Mr. Grossman, you invented a mechanism to control the ignorant masses who "had no democratic culture." After years in which the debate on the country's values took place in the Knesset, you moved the decision-making arena on the deepest of questions to the Supreme Court. Aharon Barak became your Messiah. With his great talent, he built a vast legal articulation hanging from nothing more than a thread and forged this into a constitution. What the founding fathers of the state failed to do, he managed to do through a quiet revolution. And so thus, he stole the influence of the majority by arguing for the rights of the minority, "essential democracy," "reasonability" and the expansion of "locus standi" (the right to bring a legal action to a court of law) to include those who have not been directly wronged by but hold political and ideological reservations against the elected government.
This judicial imperialism left our elected representatives with responsibility but without real authority to realize the will of the electorate. On the other hand, Barak gave the courts the authority to run the state de facto, but without having to take any responsibility for the consequences of their rulings. If, for example, the courts have allowed illegal migrants to remain in the country and as a result, a wave of migrants floods the country, then that is the government's problem. But the government has been left without the ability to solve the problem because the courts blocked almost any solution. And the same goes for defense, the economy, transport, religion and state, and more questions of values, in which the courts have no authority and no intellectual advantage over the public to decide what is good for it. But the right of the public to decide on its future was stolen from it.
3.
You dare speak of internal exile? I belong to a generation that grew up with its mouth covered with tape. While you and your friends broadcasted on Israel Radio and made yourselves heard and gave a voice primarily to the right and the righteous people in Israel, we searched desperately for a voice that would make our opinions heard. The few journalists with a right-wing persuasion hid their worldview and actually were forced to live as the Converso Jews of Spain many hundreds of years ago. And the same goes for academia – where this remains true to this day! How is it that most of the lecturers and professors in academia belong to the opposition camp? Did wisdom die with you? Academic freedom is something that belongs only to one side. For three years I taught at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. I was the only one there who was not left-wing, and I published my views on the opinion pages of Israel Hayom. In the staff room, none of the other lecturers would talk to me. When the head of my department tried to support and spoke about the importance of pluralism and differing views, one of my fellow lecturers replied: "On the planet of Auschwitz, would we have allowed an SS officer to lecture about poetry?!" That fool's remarks are not what matters, it is the silence of all the other lecturers that does.
The courts for you are a tower of justice, but it would appear that this value, too, is conditional on holding out against the barbarians on the right. Incidentally, why are there almost no Supreme Court justices of Mizrahi origin? How is it that you do not protest, that you have not made your voice heard against this moral injustice whereby there is just one consolation seat on the Supreme Court for a Mizrahi judge? What do the other justices know that those of Mizrahi origin do not know? Ah. "he's not made from the right material," to quote the disgraceful words of the Supreme Court justices about justice Elron. Journalist Naomi Levitsky revealed that Barak had instructed that all files pertaining to petitions on the disengagement be handed over to him. "The thought that one of these petitions could have fallen into the hands of Justice Edmond Levi made him lose sleep." Perhaps Levi too was not "forged from the right material." One thought that comes to mind, from one exile to another, is how do you think Justice Levi felt among "the family of judges"? And Justice Elron?
Where were you Mr. Grossman, in the time of the Disengagement, when the judicial system collaborated with the disgrace of trampling the values of democracy and the rights of minorities and prevented protests against the demolition of communities in Gaza, an act of destruction that was a massive political and security failure? There the matter in question was no less than the deportation of Jews from blooming communities that in one fell swoop became hot houses of terror.
4.
In the world of literature and art, you are an important author but ask yourself, would you have reached the status of Prophet had you not belonged to the righteous camp? The Israeli world of culture and art has developed two mechanisms that are relevant to other institutions as well (academia, the judicial system, and more): exclusion and glorification; the exclusion of talented artists or writers because of their political views and ideologies and the glorification of mediocre (and even less) artists and writers who adhere to the codes of the camp and serve its ideas. In another world, where truth is not a lie and war is not peace, and democracy is the expression of the will of the people, you would be speaking at a different demonstration: one in favor of the masses of slaves who have finally decided to shake off their shackles and demand their freedom back.
Your colleagues shamelessly gave the example of Rosa Parks as an example of their privileged struggle. Quite the contrary, Rosa Parks is an exemplary figure for the masses of Jews from the east and their descendants, who for decades have been asking you and your colleagues to move aside a little in order to give them, too, a place in the national institutions where there are no democratic elections, but just a glass ceiling of appointment and acceptance committees – a well-known ruse to maintain power in the hands of the right people.
5.
Liberty, Mr. Grossman is the real issue of the judicial reform. Liberty from the oligarchy that you demonstrated in favor of. Liberty! Because this is the truth: No judge has any advantage over us in choosing the path the state should walk down; judges do not have extraordinary intellectual powers or supernatural powers, or powers of prophecy that give them the authority to prioritize their point of view over that of the people. Courts should not judge on questions of values that are the subject of public debate. For that, we have representatives in the Knesset.
Your speech, Mr. Grossman was heard by those who have become used to being only around people like them in their local cafe. Now suddenly, others have broken in, uninvited, to the sanctuary. That, you say, causes you to feel alienated and in exile. Incredible. My condolences. Rest at ease, we, the millions of free citizens know how to filter out the propaganda fed to us daily. We will support the judicial reform and we will demand that the government we elected carries it out. As I said, this is a battle for liberty and liberty has no price. For years you gave us the role of second fiddle in the Zionist project. Now it's time to get used to a changing of the guard. Now it is our time.
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