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Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked

Shaked cites Alexander Hamilton’s essay on the power of the judiciary, where he claimed that the High Court was by far the weakest of the three branches. It did not, he said, have the “sword” of the executive, who is commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces, nor the “purse” of the legislature, which approves all the tax and spending measures of the national government. It had, according to Hamilton, “neither force nor will but merely judgment.”

Shaked essentially blames the High Court for usurping power without the responsibility that must accompany it, and this way also usurping the sword of the prime minister and the purse of the legislature, without being entitled to either. “Which purse pays the reparations the court set for Palestinians hurt during the intifada?” she asks. “And who will repair the public purse that was poked full of holes from the revoking of the gas deal?”

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Finally, Shaked offers her own version of the often misunderstood concept of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state. Rather than view Israel as the scene of a centuries old battle between secular and religious Jews, she proposes a return to the Biblical values that, in fact, served as the spiritual wellspring and inspiration for the forefathers of modern liberalism and of the American Constitution. Where did Thomas Jefferson get the idea that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness?” Shaked asks, and goes on to rediscover the concepts of separation of the branches of government, majority rule, the human right to self governance, the right to criticize a criminal king.

Astonishingly, Shaked relates how she discovered a wonderfully instructive text that deals clearly and accurately with the idea of a Jewish and Democratic state, and was written — get ready for this — by Chief Justice Aharon Barak, the man credited more than anyone else with the High Court’s usurping of powers to which it was not entitled. Barak wrote, quite brilliantly:

“A Jewish State is the state of the Jewish people. It is the natural right of the Jewish nation to be like all other nations, living on its own in its sovereign state — a state to which every Jew has the right to immigrate where the Ingathering of the exiles is a fundamental value.

“A Jewish State is a state whose history is intertwined with the history of the Jewish nation, whose language is Hebrew and whose main holidays reflect its national revival.

“A Jewish State is a state whose main concern is Jewish settlement in its fields, cities and villages.

“A Jewish State is a state that cultivates Jewish culture, Jewish education and love for the Jewish people.

“A Jewish State is the realization of the aspiration of generations for the redemption of Israel.

“A Jewish State is a state whose values are drawn from the religious tradition, whose most fundamental text is the Bible, and the foundation of its morality are the prophets of Israel.

“A Jewish State is a state where Jewish Law plays a vital role and marriages and divorces of Jews are decided according to Torah Law.

“A Jewish State is a state whose fundamental values are comprised of the values of the Torah of Israel, the values of Jewish Tradition, and the values of Jewish Halakha.”

Indeed, argues Shaked, the effort to deepen Israel’s democratic values must take us through a deepening of our Jewish values, just as prescribed by the most influential Chief Justice in Israel’s Supreme Court’s history.

Concluding with a citation from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863), Shaked stresses that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Now, that’s Prime Minister material!

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