RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/asking-the-biden-administration-to-provide-israel-with-the-weapons-it-needs/

Joe Biden has assured the world that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons “on my watch.” How much credence ought the people of Israel, who will be the ones most affected should Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, give to this assurance? None at all. Israelis cannot entrust their national survival to assurances from Joe Biden and the Bidenites, who have yet to say how they would prevent that acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons, by stating clearly that “we will use our military power to destroy all of Iran’s nuclear facilities” if Tehran enriches uranium beyond a certain point.

Israel is now preparing for an attack on Iran it hopes it will not ever have to launch. It hopes instead that the Supreme Leader and the rest of his regime will call a halt to their nuclear program before it reaches a stage which will require Israel to act.

Now 44 retired American generals and admirals have made public a letter to the President and to Congress, asking that Israel be supplied with advanced weapons for use in a possible attack on Iran. More on this letter’s contents can be found here: “To Prevent Nuclear Iran, US Should Arm Israel, Write 44 Retired Generals and Admirals,” JNS, March 21, 2023:

In a March 20 open letter issued by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), 44 retired U.S. generals and admirals asked the White House and Congress to “immediately provide Israel with the advanced weapons it needs to deter and prevent a nuclear Iran.”

“Iran is coming ever closer to crossing the nuclear threshold and, thereby, sparking a crisis in the Middle East,” according to the letter released by the Washington, D.C. nonprofit. It first appeared in The Hill on March 21.

The signatories added that Washington should apply lessons from the one-year-old conflict in Ukraine: “It’s vital to arm capable and willing partners facing regional threats, and best to do so before conflict erupts.”

“As retired American military leaders who devoted our lives to the defense of our nation, we prefer a diplomatic solution that would genuinely end the threat posed by Iran’s escalating nuclear program,” they wrote. “But no such deal is imminent, nor realistic.”

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/30/maga-right-knows-exactly-whats-up-in-israel/

JERUSALEM, Israel—What in the world is going on here? Political intrigue. A splintered conservative coalition. A fired minister. Soldiers disobeying orders to report for duty. “Day of Paralysis” protests with demonstrators shutting down traffic and a threatened general strike on the horizon. All of which is leading to a postponement, for now, of the government’s judicial reform proposal.

For the MAGA Right, it’s not hard at all to figure out what’s really happening. There’s no need at all to navigate the complex web of proposals, counter-proposals, cross-proposals, and compromise proposals on the issue.

We’ve seen it all before.

Start by substituting Israel’s with more familiar examples from our recent past. For example, substitute:

America’s practically self-parodying radical progressives and shrieking, harassing, and often-violent “Resistance” for Israel’s self-hating leftist parties and the protesters plaguing the land and storming police barricades outside the prime minister’s residence.
Card-carrying RINO members of the Washington uniparty for the Likud Members of the Knesset (MKs) deserting their party on its central issue, and White House staffers undermining the previous president for the Jewish State’s just- (and justly-) dismissed defense minister who led that charge.
Uncle Sam’s increasingly woke and limp military brass for the Israeli Defense Force members defying orders to report for duty—creating a “national security threat” cited by the defense minister in his waffle on reform.
An unaccountable U.S. Supreme Court taking on the role of super-legislature for Israel’s High Court of Justice—except that their judiciary has a lead role in appointing its own members, and its standard for overruling legislative enactments is even looser and more subjective, even as its role is more intrusive.
A rogue attorney general and Justice Department pursuing a two-tier justice system, and persecuting President Trump in particular on manufactured charges, for an Israeli counterpart similarly conjuring up crimes against that nation’s prime minister—except that this attorney is not even appointed by the government. Not to mention that rulings on the legitimacy of legislation by the government’s own “legal advisors” have the force of law.
And last but definitely not least, the beleaguered Donald Trump for the equally harassed, hounded, harried, hassled and hectored Benjamin Netanyahu—except that this assault has been prosecuted against the latter for the better part of two decades in and out of leadership.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/was-moshe-landau-a-fascist/

“[I]f the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made…the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers…”

Abraham Lincoln

Moshe Landau was President of Israel’s Supreme Court from 1980 to 1982. In 2000, he wrote of subsequent Supreme Court President Aharon Barak’s record of arrogating more and more power to the Court: “I think that… Barak has not, and does not, accept the rightful place that the court should have among the various authorities in our regime.… [Instead, he is seeking] to interject [into all areas of Israeli life] certain moral values as he deems appropriate. And this amounts to a kind of judicial dictatorship that I find completely inappropriate.”

Was Israel not a democracy during the four and a half decades before Barak’s ascent to the Supreme Court’s presidency and his choreographing what in short order became the court’s unlimited supremacy within Israel’s governmental system? Was Landau’s assessment completely wrong and his criticism of Barak an attempt to perpetuate prior anti-democratic governance? Was it only Barak’s establishing of judicial supremacy that rendered Israel finally a democracy?

This seems to be the conviction of the large numbers of Israelis who oppose judicial reform to rein in the power of the Supreme Court and who not only argue that reform will destroy Israel’s democracy (and not infrequently accuse its supporters of fascism), but who have demonstrated multiple times a week in the hundreds of thousands, closed down highways, blocked access to Ben-Gurion airport, vowed to refuse IDF reserve duty, sought to close the port of Haifa, picketed politicians’ homes and promoted mayhem in other ways, all in the service of blocking reform.

But, in fact, there is little in the Israeli Supreme Court’s present powers and prerogatives that resonates with the concept of democracy.

There is no precedent in Western democracies for a court to assert whatever authority it chooses over any aspect of a nation’s political life without any checks or balances.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-soars-to-fourth-place-in-world-happiness-index/

In the World Happiness Index, Israel has now soared from ninth to fourth place. It’s an astonishing result, given that Israelis must live with the daily threat of terrorism, the massive effort to delegitimize the state through endless UN resolutions, the relentless BDS campaign, and the threat from a state actor – Iran – that is working to acquire nuclear weapons that it intends to use on the Jewish state. More on Israel’s spectacular rise in the Happiness Index can be found here: “Israel soars to 4th place in global happiness list, highest since ranking started,” Times of Israel, March 20, 2023:

The UN-sponsored index, based on data from 2020-2022, predates the government’s divisive judicial overhaul plan. The list is again topped by Finland, with the US 15th, Britain 19th and France 21st.

Israelis are the happiest they’ve been in over a decade, the World Happiness rankings revealed on Monday, though the findings predated the widespread social upheaval over the government’s judicial overhaul program and therefore could not take it into account.

Israel’s 2023 fourth-place ranking, up from ninth last year, is its highest position since the UN-sponsored index began publication in 2012.

https://www.jns.org/whats-to-stop-the-next-government-from-reversing-judicial-reform/

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for a “timeout” on judicial reform to give dialogue a chance. He also promised his supporters that reform will get done. If negotiations fail, and the coalition pushes through reform anyway, the opposition has promised to reverse it once it’s at the helm.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid Party has repeatedly said, as he did in February at the Knesset, “On the day we return to power, all these changes will be canceled.… We will fight against all this insanity with all our strength.”

Two analysts JNS spoke with, despite holding opposite views about the reform, said that’s unlikely. Russell Shalev of the Kohelet Policy Forum, who supports the reform, and Amichai Cohen of the Israel Democracy Institute, who opposes it, agree that the opposition will not want to give up the reform’s benefits because the reform takes power away from judges and gives it to elected officials. Politicians would, therefore, have an incentive to uphold the new system.

“The basic idea behind all these reform proposals is democratic accountability—increasing the public’s ability to decide on the policies that influence our faith, our politics, our country,” Shalev told JNS. He noted that the most important proposal advanced so far, up until Netanyahu froze the legislative process on Monday, was a bill to change how judges are selected by nullifying judges’ control over the Judicial Selection Committee.

“The reform gives the public [through its elected officials] the ability to appoint judges. So I have a hard time believing that should this be passed in the future, a left-wing government will give up its newfound power to decide who will be the judges,” he said.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/28/israels-protesters-are-enemies-not-heroes-of-democracy/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu announced Monday night he was temporarily pausing his government’s judicial-reform efforts in the face of strikes by key industries, insubordination in some parts of the military and huge protests.

While many within the international community, as well as on the Israeli left, will attempt to portray the announcement as a triumph of democracy, it is anything but.

The reforms seek to introduce a modicum of checks and balances into Israel’s political system, where the “court” sits as a de facto unelected supreme legislative chamber that can exercise veto power over every single government action.

The assault on the proposals, apart from the telegenic protesters, was actually rooted in the state’s bureaucracy, which remains highly sympathetic to the judiciary.

For 25 years, Israel’s Supreme Court has operated entirely without democratic constraints.

Not only does the court remain unfettered by any written constitution when evaluating a law — it is guided by such nebulous principles as “human dignity” and “liberty” — it’s also seized the ability to block any government act it deems “unreasonable.”

Perhaps most confounding, judges exercise veto power over the selection of their successors, resulting in an ideologically homogenous judiciary.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/03/28/the-problem-with-israels-protests/

Many of those watching the footage of the massive angry protests that have been engulfing Israel since the start of the year are likely to feel inspired. It looks like a sizeable proportion of the Israeli public is demonstrating for democracy against a right-wing coalition government, which includes a significant far-right element.

These protests have developed in response to the government’s judicial-reform package. This includes the controversial override clause, piskat hahitgabrut, which gives the elected Knesset the right to override the powerful Supreme Court’s veto on legislation, with a simple parliamentary majority. Many opponents of the reforms accuse Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of wanting to overhaul the judiciary for dubious, personal reasons. He is currently standing trial on corruption charges, which he denies.

On Monday, the protests spiralled into a general strike, affecting airports, hospitals, schools and universities. And now, under intense pressure, Netanyahu has announced that he is to pause the legislation until the summer, in order to prevent a ‘rupture among our people’.

It might seem tempting to draw a parallel between the demonstrations in Israel and the recent protests in France against Emmanuel Macron’s pensions-reform package. In both cases, it seems that the public is on the streets protesting against unpopular measures imposed by an authoritarian leader. But such an impression of Israel’s protests would be misleading.

Aside from the obvious differences between Israel and France (no nearby militias or nations have pledged to destroy France, for one thing), the nature of both protest movements is very different. Above all, the protests in Israel are driven principally by the nation’s elites. These include reserve military pilots and senior intelligence officers, who play a prominent role in Israeli society. It also involves the heads of high-tech firms – the richest section of Israeli society.