Asher Grunis, newly-confirmed president of the Israeli Supreme Court
When Israel’s conservative Supreme Court judge Asher Grunis wrote the majority opinion in the Citizenship Law case a few weeks ago, he quickly became the mascot for a particularly naked kind of discrimination, one that proudly subordinates human rights and equality to racism and nationalism. “Human rights are not a prescription for national suicide,” Grunis wrote in the decision upholding the law that prevents Palestinians who marry Israelis from living with their spouses.
Well, now it looks like Grunis is getting a promotion. Earlier today, he was confirmed as the new president of Israel’s Supreme Court, an institution which, even under the most “liberal” of judges, has been eyeball-deep in the discrimination business.
Grunis’s path to the chief judgeship was recently cleared with the help of the “Grunis bill,” a handy bit of legislative intervention that did away with the rule preventing judges with less than three years until retirement from being appointed chief justice. Under the old law, Grunis, who has less than three years until he retires, would be ineligible. But Grunis had strong backers among National Union types like Yaakov Katz, who were only too eager to massage the process and secure the top judicial spot for a fellow conservative traveler with a long record of judicial passivity. As a former Supreme Court justice told Haaretz, “It is no secret that Grunis holds rigidly to the idea of reducing the powers of the Supreme Court, and that is why ‘wild weeds’ on the right want him as president. He is their ‘favorite son.'”
With Grunis’s ascent, Israel’s Supreme Court officially ends its so-called “liberal-democratic” phase (though, truth be told, it was neither liberal or democratic) and enters what might be called its radical-fanatical right-wing phase. Just last month, the court got its first settler-judge, Judge Noam Sohlberg — that’s right, a man who regularly violates international law is now a member of the highest court in the land, as Eyal Clyne pointed out — and Grunis will have vast authority over future judicial appointments.
As a prominent lawyer told Haaretz:
“He will wield the greatest influence on the Judicial Appointments Committee, whose members already include right-wing MKs and the justice minister, and they are fighting tooth and nail to do what they did in the army: to introduce religiously observant settlers into the middle ranks of the courts,” the lawyer says. “Not only in the district courts but in the Supreme Court as well. They expect Grunis to help them. I am not sure they can count on that – let’s hope he will surprise us. He is not a great hero and not one for doing battle. He is certainly not brave.”
Make no mistake: even during its “liberal-Democratic” heyday, the Israeli Supreme Court, to say nothing of the lower courts was not terribly brave. It upheld occupation, settlement, siege, torture and a host of other moral outrages. So in some ways, the rise of Grunis represents little more than the stripping down, or disrobing, if you will, of the myth of the robust Israeli justice system. On the other hand, it is a distinct shift and with it, another critical moment in Israel’s long moral suicide.
Just as liberal Zionist has long been an oxymoron so has become the notion of a Democratic Israel.
Amazing that bigots and racists like Grunis can openly say that human rights equate with ‘national suicide’. So democracy for all means ‘national suicide’. Perhaps the propagandists could refrain from claiming that Israel has anything to be proud of in respect of human rights or democracy? A democracy also requires, of course, that a country’s legal system is independent of its political system, and treats all citizens equally under the law. But not in the Alice in Wonderland world of Israeli ‘democracy’, where democracy means what you want it to mean. And you put the Mad Hatter in charge of the Supreme Court.
“Human rights are not a prescription for national suicide,” Grunis wrote in the decision upholding the law that prevents Palestinians who marry Israelis from living with their spouses.
Obviously, a horrible law. But there’s also the hypocrisy. Because American Jews would certainly argue against this type of law here on the grounds of universal human rights. But where’s the anger and outcry from the American Jewish community’s leadership when a draconian law such as this is passed in the country of their “passionate attachment” (and to which they redirect 80 percent of our foreign aid)? Where’s the attempt to use leverage (say, our foreign aid) to get them to change the law?
It’s looking to me as if a significant percentage of the Jewish leadership worldwide is behaving in a tribal way–while at the same time convincing non-Jews around them to adopt rules and regulations which they themselves, apparently, really wouldn’t want pushed on them. Hypocrisy. And aggressive hypocrisy, at that. Not only suggesting to others to do what you wouldn’t want done to yourself, but actively pushing it on others via heavily Jewish funded legal and lobbying organizations (here I’m thinking about the SPLC and its denunciations of “nativists”).
One more thing (and then I really have to get back to work): Okay, when I put my thinking cap on and attempt to see things from a Zionist perspective, here’s what I come up with:
1. The Jews need Israel to be a Jewish state because they were persecuted elsewhere for many centuries; safety justifies this action.
2. Because of this exceptional situation Jews find themselves in, taking steps to ensure a Jewish-dominated state, particularly among hostile neighbors, might lead to some actions Jews wouldn’t typically advocate for other countries, and, in fact, might even oppose.
So, from this perspective (assuming one is a true believers in this perspective), hypocrisy isn’t the right way to describe what’s happening. It wouldn’t be hypocritical because that’s comparing apples to apples but this is apples to oranges–again, the Jewish situation just would be different and to that extent incomparable.
Okay, okay. But could it be the case that when people see themselves as unique and exceptional and then decide that the rules are suspended for the sake of safety–could it be the case that this type of behavior creates at least some of the persecution which they seek to avoid?
If one is too quick to declare oneself an exception to the rules . . . this is a formula for ethnic/religious tension if there ever was one.
isn’t there a level of self imposed separation wrt some interpretations of judaism anyway?
Have a look at this article, annie. It appears there are three systems or ‘camps’, the Sadducean, the Pharisaic, and the Essenes who emphasized small collectivist communities as the means to fulfill the percepts of the Torah.
The New Jewish Public: Reinventing World Jewry: How to Design the World Jewish Polity by Daniel J. Elazar
http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles3/rwj5.htm