Following last Tuesday’s jihadist massacre of four rabbis and a police officer at the Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered law enforcement bodies to act immediately to destroy the homes of the two terrorist murderers who carried out that attack. He also directed them to destroy the homes of the terrorists who carried out the three other recent attacks in Jerusalem.
The following day, police destroyed the home of one terrorist murderer. Two more homes were supposed to be destroyed in short order.
But then the EU-funded radical leftist NGO Hamoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual petitioned the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, opposing the orders.
Wednesday the court issued an injunction prohibiting state authorities from carrying out the house demolition orders.
In directing law enforcement officials to carry out the home demolitions, Netanyahu argued that the move serves as a deterrent to future would-be terrorists. Whether or not he is correct is a matter of debate. But certainly the Supreme Court can’t determine the effectiveness of the move better than the IDF can. And the IDF’s official position is that destroying the homes of terrorists deters potential terrorists from attacking.
And yet, rather than recognize the limitations of their own wisdom, Supreme Court justices acted on the behalf of an EU-funded radical organization that represents no significant constituency in Israel, and overruled the democratically elected government, curtailing its power to take the measures it deems necessary to protect the public.
This of course was just the latest move by the court to arrogate to itself the powers duly conferred on the public’s elected representatives in the government and the Knesset.