Israel: the power of judges – seen-from-this-angle

A big debate revolves around the formation of Netanyahu's government and his intention to pass an amendment to restore to elected leaders the minimum parliamentary immunity to run the country according to the will of the people, stripped from elected officials in 92. However, since 77, we have witnessed judicial activism which removes from power those who disturb the judges or who make them walk in step. one does not preclude the other, however, and we will see how, from Rabin to Sharon, leaders are disqualified before entering the ranks. Will Netanyahu stand up to this avalanche of cases purposely made against him?

Variable responsiveness of the judicial system

On June 3, 74, Rabin replaced Golda Meir as head of government in the Eighth Knesset. He becomes the fifth Prime Minister of the State of Israel and establishes the seventeenth government. Then, following a motion of censure tabled on Dec. 14, and the abstention opted for by the ministers of the National Religious Party, Rabin decided to consider them as resigning. Consequently, on the 76th, he presented his own resignation to the president. But he keeps his post advantageously, because he directs a transitional government, until May 20, 17, which puts him parliamentaryly protected from a new vote of disapproval. Then Rabin defeats Peres a second time as leader of the Labor Party and finds himself in a good position to extend his term following the upcoming Ninth Knesset elections.

But the editorial staff of the famous Haaretz does not hear it that way. In the edition of March 15, 77, the journalist Dan Margalit, who is not yet this well-known dinosaur of the profession, reveals the affair of the accounts in dollars. The Rabin couple (Yitzhak and Léa) have an account in the USA with a credit of $30. Foreign currency control law prohibits it. Treasury Minister Yeochua Rabinovitz believes Rabin should pay a fine, which will spare him an indictment.

But the Government's Legal Adviser believes that the case falls within the competence of the Public Prosecutor's Office. Let's remember his name: Aaron Barak. When the latter learns that Rabin intends to give up his post as Prime Minister, he minimizes the affair and is content to indict his wife (which automatically saves the eligibility of the previous one) not without subjecting the husband to the payment of a fine. Rabin publicly announced his resignation on television on April 7, 77. Who replaced him? Easy: Peres. In his autobiographical book, “Carnet de service” published in 79, Rabin gave him the nickname that would not let him go: “the indefatigable subversive”.

[Incidentally, Rabin would give him another nickname, "the serpent", during the last two months of his life, a period which was described as a "honeymoon" between the two politicians. He will answer journalist Meir Flavski's question: "How is the snake doing": "It always bites".]

It is not useless to specify that the business of the dollars did not stop on the simple person of Rabin. Another personality on the political scene, and not the least, has also opened a dollar account abroad. Aba Eban holds the sum of $300,000 to his advantage. Rabin sees correctly as to the zero risk that Eban incurs: “They will leave him alone, he is one of them”. We should also specify that Rabin, in the dichotomy between doves and hawks, before there were only real ones left, was at that time considered the hard wing of the Ma'arakh (Labour Party).

 This is to say if he was not in the small papers of his legal adviser.

We find Rabin, Defense Minister, in the coalition government under Shamir. Faced with the resurgence of Arab violence against Israel, it was he who would say to the most harmful rioters, in 87, that it was necessary to "break their hands and feet". Concerning the expulsion to Lebanon of 400 terrorists in 92, he responded to the appeal filed by the "Union for Citizens' Rights", describing it as the "Union for the Rights of Hamas". He will camp on his reluctance, and will never like the PLO terrorists. "We'll take a pill against vomiting," he answered in 93 when asked about his predisposition to shake Arafat's hand. The infamous retransmissions show that Rabin did not do it lightheartedly, unlike his almost ecstatic rival. Then he will say, in 94, about the limitation of the prerogatives of Arab autonomy in the land of Israel: "If we grant Arafat a state of his own, he will quickly take ours in passing."

Rabin seemed to rely on the rivalry between the terrorist factions of the PLO and Hamas, when he declared in March 94 that the police of this first organization: "would deal with the terrorists of Hamas without a Supreme Court and without Betselem" . When Mubarak, the Egyptian, obtained good results against terrorism, which he prided himself on saying that he razed their houses to the ground, which probably implies that he was doing it in whole neighborhoods, Rabin had retorted that he had to deal neither with "Bestselem nor [with the] Supreme Court".

Did he plunge into this incredible political adventure of the interim or Oslo agreements out of resignation, strongly alluding to the institution that truly holds the reins of the country, an institution that hinders the freedom of movement and action of elected against the enemies of the country, as he had personally experienced in 77[1]?

Aaron Barack

Be that as it may, whether or not Rabin felt compelled to bring the PLO, Fatah and other dangerous products into Israel, Israeli voters were largely cured of their dream of: "It's with his enemies let's make peace”. What may seem curious is that, despite the principle that the same errors lead to the same results, the average voter did not take into account the precedent of Chamberlain and the Munich agreements, at the end of September 38. C Yet this was indeed an agreement "with his enemies", with all the "very" painful concessions which are necessary, which he had signed with Germany, and, just as the fate of Czechoslovakia was then sold off, the Interim agreements in the Middle East provided at least some precariousness for the Jewish inhabitants of Judea and Samaria. Unless the average voter didn't know about the Munich agreements!?!

In any case, the terrifying reality of the chaos resulting from the sweet dream of peace would henceforth make it less obvious the continuation of the imposition of this political complacency towards terrorist organizations through the ballot box. The feeling of intransigence towards the Jewish inhabitants of the regions liberated following the Six-Day War was no longer going to be so easily won over to the cause of voluntary territorial withdrawal. The leaders who had dangled a strange peace to the people in 92 were no longer going to be able to count on the ways of democracy to maintain their power.

Indeed, media activism failed to elect Peres in the elections for the fourteenth Knesset on May 29, 96. religious groups to organize themselves into collectives to negotiate and implore his indulgence in exchange for their support – which then provoked the courageous reaction of Chief Rabbi Mazouz, a luminary close to Rav Ovadia Yossef, who then declared that it was a prohibition of the Torah than to vote for Peres – but without success.

Aaron Barak, for his part, did not sit idly by. It is as if he anticipated the end of the credibility of the fantasy of an exchange between peace and soil. In 95, he obtained the post of President of the Supreme Court, which he held until 2006. The appointments of judges under his leadership provoked numerous protests, the selection criteria being governed, according to many observers, by the method of “one friend brings another”.

Another ministerial resignation is to the credit of his team. Judge of the Supreme Court from 78, Barak takes part in the State Commission of Inquiry[2] whose conclusions were published in February 83 on the incidents of Sabra and Chatila, following the bloody exactions of the Lebanese forces against the said localities. Although opinion makers abroad draw a shortcut between this affair and Sharon, who is blamed for not having prevented and prevented this massacre, it was not international pressure that caused him to resign. , but the conclusions of the said commission. Sharon then held the post of Minister of Defence. Some will say that this dismissal will see him return to power as Prime Minister (Ouri Dan, one of his relatives, had declared then, about twenty years earlier: "He who does not want him as Minister of Defense will have him as Prime Minister”) but never mind, he will be expected at the turn, and will turn, like Rabin, to the extreme left.

For Barak, everything is justiciable – March 17, 92: the turning point

Barak considers the Knesset subordinate to him. The legislature is accountable to the judiciary. The judiciary is not responsible for seeking justice in the name of the state but against the state[3]. Only, his power is not wide enough to allow him to put his principle into practice. It was in 92 that he began to work more intensely for the extension of the powers of judges. He understands that he must pass two fundamental laws: the dignity of the citizen and the free right of business.

From Klinghoffer to Rubinstein, the constitutional revolution nipped in the bud thirty years earlier is essential

It is not appropriate to see in these lines an interpretation or a value judgment against Aaron Barak, because it is a fight that he personally claims: "The Constitutional Revolution" (המהפכה החוקתית). But it was in 95, since he became President of the Supreme Court, that he could concretely get down to work and give free rein to his judicial activism. It is no longer a question of contenting oneself with giving a meaning to the law, but of defining it, of modeling it in the image of his conceptions, even if it means invalidating laws which, according to him, would be incompatible with the fundamental laws. It competes with the Knesset.

In order to materialize this aspiration, Barak obtains from it the vote of two new fundamental laws. The maneuver may seem trivial at first sight. The first law is therefore entitled: "The dignity of man and his freedom", the second: "Freedom of business".

The 92 attempt is not a new idea. Already, in January 64, the member of the Knesset Yitzhak Hans Klinghoffer, of the Freedom Bloc of the liberals (גח”ל = גוש חרות ליברלים), but above all a professor of law at the Hebrew University, had considered proposing these laws fundamental, which were not to the liking of the legislative authority, although its initiator was reassuring in his speech:

“Nor do I think there can be any law that stands above the 'usual legislator'. There are not two legislators. We have only one parliament, and, in my opinion, it is impossible, by means of an act of the Knesset, to limit its right to legislate, and, if there were a paragraph to that effect, the Knesset would be entitled, I think, to decide on the basis of a simple majority to cancel this paragraph which would limit its right”.

It's almost thirty years later that the idea reappears, with the difference that, this time, it's the right one. The revolution marks its territory.

During the mandate of the tenth Knesset, parliamentarian Amnon Rubinstein takes up Klinghoffer's bill, without putting on gloves: “This bill also aims to restrict parliament. It also comes to defend the citizen from legislation that violates his basic rights, and this is the idea behind the term constitution. The very meaning of the term constitution means the limitation and blocking of the all-powerful sovereignty of the Knesset as a law-making institution.”

His proposal is rejected, but he is not discouraged. He addressed himself to minister Dan Meridor, who dealt with his request within the legislative committee of the twelfth Knesset (88-92). The two fundamental laws are debated under the direction of the president of the commission, Ouriel Line who, in the end, passes this fundamental amendment on March 17, 92 in second and third readings, by 32 votes for and 21 votes against.

It will have this antiphrase, which expresses the opposite of what it implies: “We do not renounce the preponderance [of the legislative power] in favor of the high court. It is not a question of setting up a tribunal capable of invalidating laws.

Yet it is this approach that will allow the court to consider Knesset laws as unreasonable. Already in 90, Aaron Barak, then a simple judge of the High Court, however in the minority in the 142/89 case dealt with by the Supreme Court, affirmed that nothing would prevent the court from questioning the laws of the Knesset, even without this being explicitly provided for by law :

“In principle, in a democratic society, the court can pronounce the invalidity of a law, if it is essentially in contradiction with the fundamental principles of the system”.

But from 92, it is then enough, according to the approach of Barak and his school, that a law voted by the Knesset is considered as coming into contradiction with one of these two fundamental laws so that the vote loses all relevance. This revolution makes it possible to double the Knesset, the legislative power, as well as the government, the executive power. However, Barak's activism was not unanimous among the judges: Moshe Landau, president of the High Court, Menahem Alon, the vice-president, and Professor Ruth Gabison challenged this method.

Aaron Barak or the constitution

The intensification of the power of the judges materialized at the time of the “decree of the Mizrahi bank case”. While it is a question at the start of a dispute which opposes this bank to the farmers' union, the magistrates seize the opportunity to develop the whole new meaning of their power. We are still in 92, after the introduction of the two aforementioned fundamental laws.

On the sidelines of judgment[4], the judges defined, by 7 votes to two, the general meaning of the fundamental laws in two points:

1. Constitution: It has been established that the State of Israel has a constitution: these are the fundamental laws. They take precedence over and are superior to the current laws of the Knesset.
2. Legal challenge: the court arrogated to itself the right to challenge Knesset laws and declare them invalid if they conflict with a basic law.[5]

Appointment of judges

In addition, new judges are appointed by a commission considered by many observers to be the stronghold of the left. The composition of this commission (the Minister of Justice, who chairs the commission, a second minister appointed by the government, two parliamentarians, one from the coalition the other from the opposition, two members of the bar appointed by secret ballot , the president of the high court as well as two other judges of this institution), concretely means that six to eight of its representatives are committed to the cause of the president of the court. We will see it during the appointment of the controversial Edna Arbel, approved by 7 votes against 2 (the Minister of Justice and the parliamentarian Benyamin Alon).

As for the assumption of duties of the President of the Court, it is the oldest member who takes the place of the previous one at the time of his retirement.[6] The heir to the throne is not the son of the previous one but his disciple. This is undoubtedly the reason why we did not feel a great change when Barak withdrew from the legal-judicial scene in favor of Dorith Beinich, then of Gronis, Naor, Hayot.

Risky counter-revolution, or perilous attempts at counter-revolution

In 96, Netanyahu began his career as Prime Minister. It immediately displeases Aaron Barak who has just, as mentioned above, acceded to the post of President of the Supreme Court. The legal adviser, Michael Ben-Yaïr, is far from being won over to the government's cause and is obstructing the smooth running of the latter. The Minister of Justice is entitled to dispose of it. Ya'acov Neeman therefore undertakes to dismiss him. But the situation is reversed and it is the adviser who takes over: he concocts a charge that forces him to resign. By the time the minister is exonerated, the situation is irreversible. He will not return to his post. And Tsahi Hanegbi (the son of the famous Guéoula Cohen) who takes over, will not dare to oppose the magistracy.

Likewise, Reuben Rivlin (the current president of Israel), is disqualified when he has to take the place of Minister of Justice in the first Sharon government. Meir Shitrit will replace him, but he won't make waves.

In 2006, the Olmert government had as Minister of Justice Haim Ramon. He is keen to counter the constitutional revolution that took hold more than ten years earlier. His first step is to require the proper drafting of minutes of the commission for the appointment of judges. He also considers that he is perfectly entitled to appoint the next president of the Supreme Court. Those who have understood the principle are already beginning to feel a strange feeling and to fear for his person. Sensation immediately confirmed. An IDF officer complains that she was kissed by the minister against her will. It is the shattering media affair of the “French kiss”. Wiretaps reveal a conversation between General Shemani and the complainant's commanding officer, during which the latter recounts that Divisionaire Miri Golan, who convinced the officer to lodge a complaint, told him: "And this man would designate the President of the High Court? Ramon will argue in court that it's a set-up. The court will answer him that the argument is worthy of the attitude of a highwayman.

Ministers of Justice are not the only ones to be removed from power. The court cleans up its own ranks. In 96, Deror Hoter-Ychai is president of the bar (an institution independent of the court, but aligned with the positions of the latter). He is also a member of the judicial appointments committee. In November, he was interviewed by the Orthodox newspaper Yated Neeman. He criticizes judicial activism and Barak's position that everything can be judged. It doesn't take long for a tax fraud case to be opened against our lawyer. He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 50 Nis. He will appeal and be cleared of all suspicion. Of course, he will not return to the commission.

Neeman et Hoter-Ychai denounced the militancy of the judges and their feeling of omnipotence over the affairs of the country, questioning in particular the method: "A friend brings another". Aaron Barak got rid the same year (96) of two dissident members against him.

Another justice minister gave the court a hard time. Daniel Friedman holds this position under Prime Minister Olmert. Is Daniel Friedman an incorruptible? Isn't there a way to accuse him of some crime, even if he is later cleared? Friedman, who, in his book "The Wallet and the Sword" (הארנק והחרב), establishes the observation of a strong disapproval of parliamentarians vis-à-vis the stranglehold of the court on the Knesset, which remains silent because they fear sue, will be removed from office in an indirect way! Government legal adviser Moshe Lador keeps the file against Olmert open in the Bank Leumi case, despite police recommending that it be dismissed, November 07. Lador will close it the day after the resignation of Olmert.

Arm wrestling Aaron Barak / Ariel Sharon

We saw above that Barak had removed Sharon from political life, based on the circumstances of Operation Peace in Galilee. It was only a postponement. In February 2003, the Israeli people voted for him with almost 70% of the votes, and suddenly a wind of deliverance blew over the country. The disaster of the agreements concluded with the Arab terrorist factions and their introduction into the very heart of the country will soon, it seems, only be a bad memory. No more concessions to the enemy, no more humiliation...

Its beginnings are grandiose. In 2002, with Operation Rampart, Sharon de facto erased the borders of zone A, drawn by the agreements, which contained all the strongholds of the terrorists and which ensured them peace in their preparations of bombs and the establishment of any logistics ranging from planning to fanatical detonator by the Muslim cult-inspired promise of a famed paradise.

One of Obama's multiple pressures on Netanyahu thereafter would be to try to coerce him into giving up field operations, which Netanyahu resisted, arguing that the security of his citizens depended on it. No government in ten years had put an end to this situation of chaos before Sharon. I remember a reserve period, when Ehud Barak was Prime Minister. We had repeatedly narrowly missed capturing terrorists. We were only allowed to pursue them to the edge of Area A.

But the prosecution and the court are not idle. The fruit is juicy, soon all that will be left to do is pick it. The biggest case is that of the Greek island, leaked to the press in March 2001 (these leaked prima facie disclosures are obviously illegal). Sharon is suspected of having received bribes from businessman David Appel, disguised as very large salaries paid to his son Gilad. The government's legal adviser will exonerate him in June 2004, but it will be too late. Cases are piling up. Sharon reportedly obtained funding for his internal Likud campaign in a dubious way: Austrian businessman Martin Schlaf reportedly covered it financially, while the politician presented the money as an advanced loan by Cyril Keren, former comrade in arms of Sharon.

Omri Sharon, also the son of the person concerned, is accused of having created a fictitious company to launder money which had been used illegally to cover campaign expenses within the Likud, and of having given false testimony while violating the law on the financing of political parties. When Omri is sentenced (to finish on 15 Nov. 05), following a plea bargain, to seven months in prison, a conditioned public disavows Sharon the father and maintains that he would have sacrificed his son to escape interrogation and a possible disqualification from the direction of public affairs.

Sharon surrenders

Sharon changes course. At the Herzliya conference in 2003, he announced his intention to initiate “disengagement”. The expulsion and annihilation of Judaism from Gaza and the consequent free field left to terrorist organizations, went against the ideology for which he had fought throughout his political career. However, shortly before this metamorphosis, he still often repeated: “The case of Netzarim is the same as that of Tel Aviv”; that is to say, the locality of Netzarim, in the Gaza Strip, which its opponents considered movable, because of the difficulty of defending it since it was relatively isolated, was entitled to the same consideration as the metropolis from Tel Aviv. Instead of this protection, it is through the bombardments that these two localities ended up resembling each other.

But the Likud was not prepared to endure this betrayal of its foundations and ideals. Sharon opposes a referendum, but he must obtain the approval of party members. Public opinion is mobilizing to contact these members, support them and prevent them from flinching. “Letters to Likud members” are written and sent via the Internet or distributed door to door. On May 2, 2004, the Likud's answer was clear and definitive: no.

Sharon multiplies the maneuvers, dismisses his opponents, integrates Peres into his government, and achieves his ends by having the voluntary surrender approved by the latter, then by the Knesset. The Supreme Court finds nothing to complain about and approves of all the shenanigans. All these contradictions did not prevent him from going as far as the realization of the unthinkable national catastrophe. The haste, the race against the clock, enabled him to achieve this. It was only when it was necessary to stop that it was no longer possible to remain decently and logically at the head of the Likud, and that Sharon founded another party that was as unifying as it was ephemeral: Kadima.

The Supreme Court game: “The depth of the withdrawal will be equal to the depth of the investigation”

The extreme leftist agenda of the Supreme Court is the only plausible explanation for the silence of the judges. The expulsion was made legal in the Knesset chamber. From Rabin's resignation to his interim agreements with terrorist factions, and from Sharon's extraordinary combativeness against Israel's enemies to the damage to his mind, political leaders are tamed and tamed by legal power. They make friends with the judges.

Yossi Sarid had suggested to Zwi Händel, a Knesset member who lived in the Gaza Strip, regarding Sharon's reversal, the following formula: “The depth of the withdrawal will be equal to the depth of the investigation”.

Because how is it possible that the Supreme Court, so eager for justice, did not oppose Sharon: “You were elected claiming the charter of greater Israel? Now you are looking to do the opposite?! So resign and run as a candidate on the basis of expulsion; what do you make of the voter's opinion'?

Dr. Yitzhak Cytrin, professor of history at the University Center of the Western Galilee, Haifa, and chair of the chair of history at Cha'anan Religious University of Haifa, published[7] in 2015 a book, “The Unilateral Disengagement Program”, on the effects of expulsion on adolescents and children.

“The government failed to rebuild them. The trauma has led to a crisis in the family unit, parental authority has been almost totally destroyed, young people view the adult world with mistrust, they are weakened and no longer trust state institutions. Cytrin explains that the young people born in Gaza felt an integral part of the place, and that the uprooting was all the more difficult and traumatic.

Where has the principle so dear to the Supreme Court gone, which requires that the fundamental laws of civic dignity be able to invalidate laws passed by the Knesset? To put an entire population on the straw, to destroy their homes, their hideouts and their schools, their farms, to expel them without water or food, at least initially, without any replacement framework having been provided for and prepared, does it not contradict the principle for which the judges fought?

It is because the criticism of the laws voted by the legislator is a privilege which belongs exclusively to the judges, and that the rights of the citizen, as well as his right to business, such as growing mangoes or cherry tomatoes, are not absolute: they are subject to the goodwill of this caste. It may be that your dignity, your work, is not worth the judges mobilizing on your behalf.

Netanyahu

When the charges against a politician multiply, the conditioned will say, "Oh, how corrupt that man is!" but observers who have lost none of their acumen or their critical spirit will say: "This man has alienated a leadership that does not like to have its flowerbeds encroached on."

Yet, one after the other, Netanyahu has shown himself to be docile and very wise when the Supreme Court has decreed that such and such a Jewish locality should be obliterated. The three houses of Migron and the thirty apartments in the Oulpena district, in Bet-El, dismantled and destroyed under the orders of its minister Ehud Barak; the buildings of the Dreinof district, still in Bet-El, destroyed by huge shovels under the orders of his minister Ya'alon; the village of Amona, erased after a decree issued by General Rony Nouma, under the orders of his minister Liebermann…

In all these cases, he could have invoked the risk of disruption of public order, the permanent state of war which would risk giving the enemy the impression that our government is scuttling the country for him. He could have agreed with the judges without putting their decision into practice because it was unrealizable.

It's that Netanyahu locks them in their own trap. They demand respect for what they define as the law. Netanyahu acts as if he considers them to be sincere and complies with the requirements of said law. The judges can only chomping at the bit. For it is clear that there is not a question of law here, but of political struggle as to the future of Judea and Samaria, as a province of Israel or the umpteenth Arab country. Each time, Netanyahu rebuilds the destroyed locality a little further, but always in Judea and Samaria.

Today, Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival. He must not only set up his government, but also give back to the Knesset its letters of nobility.

Ayeleth Shaked

Ayeleth Shaked is the outgoing Minister of Justice, taking office on 14 May 15. Did she suffer the same fate as Daniel Friedman, quoted above, who was forced to step down because his employer Prime Minister stopped working? 'having power? She, in turn, tried to reform the judicial system, and her greatest victory consisted in the introduction, in February 2017, of judges who do not consider that everything can or must be judged, like this new judge of the Supreme Court, Alex Stein[8], also a favorite of Shaked, which formally recognizes the freedom of movement of elected officials in matters of legislation. Amit Segal[9], a legal affairs commentator, among other journalists from the second channel, hails a certain victory for Shaked, which partially manages to bring Miryam Naor or Esther Hayouth to heel, the second having replaced the first in 2017 at the head of the Supreme Court. Others consider his work to be window dressing[10].

In four years of ministry, Ayeleth Shaked has done a dazzling job. But we must take into account the precariousness of democratic power. Tactical errors forced Shaked out of the Knesset chamber. What are Shaked's 4 years in government worth, compared to the 30 activist career of a Barak comfortably and durably installed at the head of the Tribunal, who leaves behind him heirs of his side appointed automatically?

Yeochoua Sultan ©

[1]  Why did Aaron Barak give up pursuing Rabin? He then explained the reason for his abstention: “I assumed that Rabin had already suffered a sufficiently heavy sanction by having been forced to resign from his post. There was no need to punish him again”. (Excerpt from the chapter "Rabin's turn has come", from the book of Master Yossi Dar, in his book: Aaron Barak and the joys of the power of the law).

[2] The Cohen Commission, named after then-President of the Supreme Court Isaac Cohen. Menachem Begin, then Prime Minister, accepts the establishment of this commission, which opens on Nov. 1, 82. The members of the commission are the president of the aforementioned Court, the former legal adviser and currently judge of the said Court , Aaron Barak, and Reserve General Yona Ephrat. Those responsible for collecting testimonies are not just anyone. Two of them are none other than Dorith Beinich and Edna Arbel, the first of whom will replace Aaron Barak who will step down as president in 2006, and will head the Supreme Court from 2006 to 2012, not without going through the box State Prosecutor (from 89 to 95); and the second will be part of this very closed caste of the said Court from 2004 to 2014 (and also State Prosecutor from 96 to 04).

The work of this commission lacks rigor and professionalism, despite its members: the two women judges want to go to Beirut to collect direct testimony, in Sabra and Shatila. Amir Drori, commander of the northern region, accompanies them. But a roadblock of the army of Lebanon blocks their passage: no testimonies of the main interested parties. We try to content ourselves with more distant witnesses, by contacting the Red Cross: idem. She refuses to send her staff there, but she still agrees to provide certain documents. He remains the correspondent of the New York Times, but it is all the same: the newspaper fears a precedent which would oblige its special envoys to testify in other places. However, we manage to interrogate the leader of the Phalanges. The conclusion of the report published on 7 Feb. 83 makes it impossible to implicate the direct responsibility of the IDF, but it is believed that some of its officers knew what was going on without getting involved in separating the belligerents. Well worth a little resignation.

[3] It is not rare to hear in the televised or radio news the turn: “The State must return its answer to the Supreme Court”.

[4] הערת אגב in Hebrew.

[5]  Wikipedia: The Constitutional Revolution. Mizrahi Bank case.

[6] Wikipedia: The Judicial Appointments Commission. הוועדה לבחירת שופטים. . See also: President of the Supreme Court. נשיא בית המשפט העליון

[7] https://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/282355

[8]  The democratic revolution of Alex Stein, on the internet media Mida, by Zéev Lec, Dec. 24, 18

[9] https://www.makorrishon.co.il/nrg/online/1/ART2/865/905.html Of Shaked's victory over the court.

[10] Article by journalist Moshe Ifergan: The revolution that didn't happen: Ayeleth Shaked is laughing at you all.