1.
Now that the dust has settled and the protests have somewhat subsided, we must continue driving home the message that has become our overarching theme: The High Court of Justice assumed powers it had never been given and invented a constitutional revolution to take away the only thing the masses have: Their right to be heard at the ballot box. That is how the balance between the branches of government was violated; this is what made the judiciary into a "governing branch".
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2.
The outrageous conduct of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara only underscores this further. She is a living example of how the courts have used their rulings to empower the attorneys general and legal advisors, turning them into the judiciary's representatives in the government. Today, the High Court of Justice has the final say on any government or administrative measure. If it decides to withhold judgment on some issue, it is only because it had chosen so rather than because of some legal constraint. While the Knesset and the government have legal restrictions on their activity, the court does not. The judicial reform seeks to right this wrong.
3.
The ongoing debate has brought to the surface the grievances of an enormous section of the public who have viewed with astonishment at how the protesters have cast them as second-class, freeloader Israelis who are on the "other side of history."
The heads of Israel's security establishment failed to come out against the uniformed officers who had disgracefully called to refuse call-up notices. This helped lay the groundwork for future disobedience in the military if another Oslo Accords government rises to power. Just imagine what could have happened in the 2005 uprooting of settlements from Gush Katif if this was the prevailing sentiment in the military.
4.
Apart from the political and legal debates, the key question is this: What is the degree of legitimacy to navigate the Zionist ship? The political camp that the demonstrators hail from has never recognized the legitimacy of the electorate that empowered this government to pursue the controversial legal reform. Ze'ev Jabotinsky called for a "proud, generous and ruthless" people, referring in the latter adjective to the willingness to fight for the realization of the ideas we are pursuing. To our shame, we have failed to learn how to do this.
5.
An old-guard elite has used the symbolic and physical capital it had accumulated in order to oppress its brethren. The masses that elected the current Coalition got a lesson in "substantive democracy": It may well have the right to vote, but it is others – whose votes are apparently worth more – who get to control the main power foci that they have fortified for themselves. These are the courts, the State Attorney's Office, academia, the elite military units, and the financial sector. These are almost-exclusive clubs that won't let into their ranks – to varying degrees – those who are religious, settlers, ultra-Orthodox, right-wingers, and of course of Mizrahi descent. Even the media outdid itself when it comes to its usual bias, openly spearheading the fight against judicial reform.
6.
What others see as a grave threat to Israel's existence and potential civil war, I see as teething troubles for a long-overdue introspection after 100 years of sweeping the issue of who we are under the rug.
7.
To the thinkers in our camp, I say this: It is a great honor to be of the people, by the people, and for the people. Let's recall what King David told Michal the daughter of King Saul and the representative of the old establishment, that looked down on his affiliation with the masses and simpletons: "And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight: and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honor" (II Samuel 6:22). It is a great honor to serve in our voices and our writings the real maidservants – the Likud voters, the Israelis in the geographic and socioeconomic periphery, the settlers, the national religious camp, the Haredim – all those whose dignity has been trampled on by a privileged elite. Of them shall I be had in honor, not with the protesters in red robes from the "Handmaid's Tale". The account is not over; it has just started.
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