Agudath Israel Knesset Member Rabbi Israel Eichler responded in his remarks at the Knesset plenum on Wednesday to a demand by the Supreme Court for his party to show cause within 60 days why it refuses to include women in its list of Knesset candidates.
“I ask why there is no general election, on election day, to the courts,” said Eichler. “If the Supreme Court justices want to set rules and limit the rights of Knesset factions and political parties, then why can’t citizens have the same rights to limit the intervention of the courts?”
Eichler pointed out that the state could not “restrict the right of pensioners to form a party for the elderly, and religious [Jews] to set up a religious party, [or] the Arabs to establish an Arab party.”
Eichler called the idea that Supreme Court judges would attempt to invalidate the right of Agudath Israel to determine the composition of its party list, based “on what the Torah sages have instructed,” to be a “declaration of war against democracy, and against hareidi-religious citizens in particular.”
