Can the Likud Survive without the ‘Feinschmeckers’?
Latest update: December 20th, 2012
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Likud MK Benny Begin did not make it to the top 20 spots on the Knesset list.
Photo Credit: Miriam Alster/FLASH90
Eitan was also not very active politically until after the elections for the Central Committee in January 2011. It was then that he proposed cancelling primaries in favor having a Central-Committee-like body choose the Likud’s list and announced his candidacy for the presidency of the Likud’s ‘Convention’ (that election, in which Eitan, Danon and Netanyahu were to compete has still never been held). The proposal to cancel primaries alone should be reason enough for Likud members to punish him at the polls. Why should they vote for someone who wants to strip them of their right to vote?
In the previous primaries, both Eitan and Meridor barely made it into the Knesset. They were 16 and 17 on the list, which was at the edge of the national portion of the list, before the demographic and district spots, which began at number 20.
They were also the only Likud faction members to publicly endorse Palestinian statehood aside from the Prime Minister. It’s one thing for the Prime Minister and Party Chairman, who was facing tremendous pressure from the United States, to endorse Palestinian statehood and get a free pass, it’s another for politically inactive MKs, who were not that popular to begin with.
Even if their backing of Palestinian statehood were the reason they lost, that wouldn’t be a case of the Likud shifting rightward, but of the Likud refusing to shift leftward. But again, political inactivity, a lack of sustained campaigning, is more likely the reason for their failure.
But what about the other five Likud MKs who were part of the current faction and the fact that they won’t appear in the next Knesset? What about those Kadima MKs who joined the Likud but did not succeed? What conclusions be drawn about their absence? That will be the subject of tomorrow’s entry.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Daniel Tauber is a frequent contributor to various prominent publications, including the Jewish Press, Arutz Sheva, Americanthinker.com, the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz. Daniel is also an attorney admitted to practice law in Israel and New York and received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law. You can follow him on facebook and twitter.
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" adopting the Leftist position about the supremacy of the Supreme Court,".
What is the problem with this? An independent judiciary is essential to a free society, as our sages wrote quite clearly and as Alexander Hamilton wrote more recently in the Federalist Papers. One of the first acts of tyrants from Lenin to Hitler to Morsi is to eliminate an independent judiciary. Remember that Germany, with parliamentary supremacy, voted Hitler dictatorial powers!
Correction: German voters did not vote Hitler dictatorial powers: It was the Reichstag, Germany's parliament. This is is the kind of disaster that unchecked parliamentary supremacy can produce.
The problem is a extreme left anti – religious majority of supreme court judges!
The other problem here is that the Court basically appoints itself, so you end up with a bit of a legal monoculture
The Beit Din Hagadol in talmudic times also appointed itself. I guess the people who designed Israel's court system relied exclusively on Jewish sources and not on external influences such as the US Constitution.
Problem is that the Chief Justice tends to appoint people who agree with him (her), and that continues over time
The country is shifting hard to the Right, so a left-wing court is not a terrible thing. But in normal times, the appointment process is too skewed. The fact that Aharon Barak prevented Ruth Gavison from being appointed is illuminating.
The judiciary should be independent in its rulings. When political philosophers talk about an independent judiciary they don't mean a court that chooses itself. The US for instance has an independent judiciary, but its members are chosen by the political branches. The process of judicial selection in Israel was not based on Jewish sources. At the time the political system was so bias towards the Left that even Menachem Begin/Herut wanted the current system. Also, the first court has a range of judges including a religious judge and one who was considered a Herut sympathizer. Overtime the selection process has led a very bias make up of the Supreme Court.
In any case, the judiciary is supposed to apply the law. If the legal situation changes after the judiciary rules, then the judiciary follows the new legal situation. That doesn't mean the judiciary is not independent, it means that parliament is supreme.
Even then one could argue that the Supreme Court could overturn laws that are so fundamentally anti-democratic, but that's not the situation that was being debated regarding "hok hasdarah" – the debate (or part of it at least) was whether parliament could pass a law after a Supreme Court ruling that would mean what the Court originally ordered would not be done. Legally and democratically, the answer is yes, because the parliament would not be overriding the court, but changing the legal situation and hence the court would change its opinion. Let's look at it from another angle: what if in the US, the Supreme Court overruled ObamaCare – would it be appropriate for the Congress to change the language of the ObamaCare legislation such that it would work and be constitutional – of course it could and that would be fine from a democratic-legal standpoint.
In Federalist #78, Alexander Hamilton makes a convincing case that an independent judiciary with the power to void acts of the legislature was essential to a free society with limited government. Would that more US states had listened to him; judicial elections have tarnished the judiciary all over the US.
If the people don't trust the judges, there is no point in having judges.