Isabel Kershner writes about the current controversy over Israeli’s judicial system in Friends’ Clash Reflects Battle Over Israeli Court

In recent days, Aharon Barak, the internationally esteemed jurist and retired chief justice of Israel, has broken a self-imposed silence and spoken publicly against an old friend, Daniel Friedmann, Israel’s minister of justice.The struggle between the men is part of an intense battle playing out across Israel’s political and legal landscape. As Mr. Barak described it last Friday, it is “a struggle over the country’s soul,” specifically over the independence of the court, the separation of powers and the fundamental question of who is in charge.

Both sides fervently believe that Israeli democracy is at stake. Mr. Friedmann, an eminent law professor who came into office in February, contends that the Supreme Court has become a law unto itself, extending its powers into the purviews of the other branches of government and trying to make itself immune from legislative oversight.

In a recent interview, Mr. Friedmann, 71, said he wanted “to restore the balance between the various branches of government,” which had been “completely upset in recent years.” He has argued that unelected judges are waging an antidemocratic revolution.

In case you don’t know which side Kershner is sympathetic to, note the description “internationally esteemed jurist.” “Eminent” doesn’t quite measure up.

After partially describing Judge Barak’s revolution in jurisprudence, Kershner writes:

The Supreme Court has used these powers very sparingly. Still, Mr. Friedmann wants them curbed.His allies include legislators as well as other sectors of Israeli society who want to see the legal establishment restrained, among them politicians and business figures who have been investigated or indicted, and the religious and nationalist camps, which eschew the Supreme Court’s liberal approach.

American conservatives have also weighed in. Robert H. Bork, a key theorist of the American legal right, has complained that Mr. Barak’s ideas are “a textbook for judicial activists” and that Mr. Barak has established “a world record for judicial hubris.”

Richard A. Posner, a senior American appeals court judge, called Mr. Barak “a legal buccaneer.”

Posner doesn’t easily fit into categories, but notice the opposition is characterized as being from “conservatives” and those who have an interest in restraining the court.

That someone could have reason to be disturbed with the Israeli Court’s reach and not have a selfish or political interest isn’t considered.

While she mentions in passing that Friedmann wants to open up the process of appointing judges, the focus of the article is on personalities and politics rather than substance. Others, in analyzing the Israeli judicial system, put more emphasis on the court’s notion of perpetuating (and imposing) its beliefs.

Jonathan Rosenblum, who, admittedly, has an issue with the courts - religiously he’s Chareidi, politically he’s conservative - wrote about one of the problems that Kershner ignores:

Israel, by contrast, has developed one of the most efficient judicial selection procedures in the world: the Chief Justice and Justice Minister sit down together and pick new justices, whose selection is then rubber-stamped by the remaining seven members of the judicial selection committee.In practice, Chief Justice Barak dominates the process. Over the last decade, he has played a decisive role in the selection of not only every Supreme Court justice but also in appointments to Israel’s lower courts. Israeli newspapers routinely describe new judicial appointments as “Barak’s picks.”

Before Americans embrace the efficiency of this system – the judicial equivalent of Mussolini’s getting the trains to run on time – however, they should consider the system’s drawbacks. As one would expect, it has resulted in a Court remarkable in its ideological uniformity. The titanic struggles between rival judicial philosophies that characterize American Supreme Court history – e.g., Hugo Black vs. Felix Frankfurter – are absent from Israel. There is not one justice on the Israeli Supreme Court who serves as a mediating influence on Justice Barak’s jurisprudence, and it is rare for a decision of major impact in Israel to be decided by a narrowly divided Court.

Barak’s dominance of the judicial selection process chills dissent throughout the legal system. Any lower court judge, academic, or attorney-general who aspires to judicial advancement knows that his or her fate is in Barak’s hands.

Prof. Ruth Gavison, who’s no rightist, also objects the Barak court’s overreaching. Unfortunately, Kershner didn’t see fit to interview her. However, back in 1999, Ha’aretz reporter Ari Shavit did interview her. This is how she summarized the problem of the Israeli Supreme Court (or to translate the Hebrew more precisely - the High Court of Justice)

“In Germany, Italy and South Africa there are constitutional courts that have far-reaching powers. But those courts are subject to a clear constitution and were established especially to fulfill that function; accordingly, their members are chosen by the political branches and are appointed for a limited period. In the United States there is a Supreme Court that has taken on itself the power to overturn laws, but it does this in a lengthy process and on the basis of a crystallized constitution, and its justices are appointed in a political process.“In Israel, by contrast, there is no crystallized constitution, there is no lengthy process and there are no justices who represent the entire society or who serve for a limited period. The result is a situation in which one court, which effectively appoints itself, creates the constitution by means of its interpretation of the basic laws. And this occurs without any of the control mechanisms that exist in the United States. So from this point of view our situation is quite distinctive. The combination of judicial criticism of Knesset legislation, in a state where there is as yet no crystallized constitution, by a court whose justices are not elected but are appointed for life by the judicial system itself, creates a very problematic situation, in my opinion. From the point of view of democracy and the democratic decision-making process, there is a not inconsiderable problem.

“What is equally serious is that this process is not accompanied by public discussion worthy of the name. In the United States, where there are activist courts, there is an ongoing, lively debate. Opinions are voiced on both sides of a question. Whereas in Israel, some sort of rhetoric is generated that creates the feeling that anyone who is critical of the court is the enemy of the rule of law. I do not accept that. I think the very opposite is true. I think that within the judicial community there are deep disputes today over all the questions on the public agenda: over a constitution, the basic laws, the status of the court, the Or commission reforms [referring to a panel headed by Supreme Court Justice Theodor Or to revamp the structure of the courts system]. All these questions are in dispute, but generate no public reverberation because of the attempt to close ranks and create a front of homogeneity toward the outside.

The one substantive issue that Kershner deals with is

It abolished the principle of standing, meaning that petitioners need not have a direct stake in the outcome of a case they bring. This opened the court up to civil rights groups and a flood of public petitions. Because of a historic anomaly dating from the British Mandate, petitioners appeal directly to the Supreme Court, without the filter of a lower court.The Supreme Court also broadened the rules to the point where practically every government decision is open to review.

Well yes it has. And it can reasonably be asked if this is a good thing. Certainly there are quite a few results that liberals cheer that occur because of this. But should the Supreme Court be second guessing the military when it comes to routing the security fence? I don’t think so, but it has.

Kershner covered an important topic, unfortunately she paid attention mostly to the personalities and politics involved in the controversy over Israel’s courts. The substance of the issue was left largely untouched.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Part of the Israeli attack on Syria included first taking out—via old-fashioned bombing—a critical radar station. And the U.S. helped.

The first event in the raid involved Israel’s strike aircraft flying into Syria without alerting Syrian air defenses. The ultimate target was a suspected nuclear reactor being developed at Dayr az-Zawr. But the main attack was preceded by an engagement with a single Syrian radar site at Tall al-Abuad near the Turkish border.

The radar site was struck with a combination of electronic attack and precision bombs to allow the Israeli force to enter and exit Syrian airspace unobserved. Subsequently all of Syria’s air-defense radar system went off the air for a period of time that encompassed the raid, U.S. intelligence analysts told Aviation Week.

However, there was “no U.S. active engagement other than consulting on potential target vulnerabilities,” a U.S. electronic warfare specialist says.

Israel has been making sure to stay on the cutting edge of defense. Considering she is surrounded by enemy nations, that makes a whole heck of a lot of sense.

These observations provide evidence that a sophisticated network attack and electronic hacking capability is an operational part of the Israeli Defense Force’s arsenal of digital weapons.

Despite being hobbled by the restrictions of secrecy and diplomacy, Israeli military and government officials also confirm that network invasion, information warfare and electronic attack are part of Israel’s defense capabilities.

These tools have been embraced operationally by key military units, but their development, use and the techniques employed are still a mystery even to other defense and government organizations. It remains “a shadowy world,” an Israeli Air Force general confirms.

Read the whole article.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I have a great job, I’m on my way to financial security, my family is all healthy, I have great friends, Tig and Gracie are happy and healthy (albeit always a bit neurotic), I’m working my way through the DVD of Heroes that Lynn gave me, the weather here in Richmond is in the 70s, my house is still pretty darned clean from the bat mitzvah, and, well, life is good.

This time last year, Gracie was three pounds underweight and recovering slowly from IBD, barely able to walk up the stairs without making me cringe at her skinniness and hesitation. She just zipped past me through the open patio door, because the wind kicked up and blew leaves around and frightened her. Tig’s outside sitting in the sun, ruler of all he surveys.

By this time next year, I should be in my own home. And who knows what else the next year will bring?

It’s been a long, hard slog since I started this weblog in the spring of 2001. But things are going very, very well now. I’ve been giving thanks privately for a while. Time for some public thanks.

What have you got to be thankful for?

The original episodes of Sesame Street have been issued on DVD. But our children better not watch them. It wouldn’t be right.

Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Virgina Heffernan explains in Sweeping the Clouds away:

Live-action cows also charge the 1969 screen — cows eating common grass, not grain improved with hormones. Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time. Elsewhere, two brothers risk concussion while whaling on each other with allergenic feather pillows. Overweight layabouts, lacking touch-screen iPods and headphones, jockey for airtime with their deafening transistor radios. And one of those radios plays a late-’60s news report — something about a “senior American official” and “two billion in credit over the next five years” — that conjures a bleak economic climate, with war debt and stagflation in the offing.The old “Sesame Street” is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for softies born since 1998, when the chipper “Elmo’s World” started. Anyone who considers bull markets normal, extracurricular activities sacrosanct and New York a tidy, governable place — well, the original “Sesame Street” might hurt your feelings.

What?

Well for one thing, there was Cookie Monster doing his Allistair Cooke impersontation:

I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Cookie Monster? wrong behavior?

As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.

No we wouldn’t want our children to follow his example.

Unfortunately one of the examples does strike as a reason to be careful.

Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.

Some of the reasons why Sesame Street isn’t fit for children sound like warmed over political correctness. The last one mentioned here, though, reflects the our society’s loss of innocence. At the same time that our society has become overprotective of children in silly ways, in other ways new hazards have appeared that we must protect them from.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll adds:

Forty years from now, when the current season of Sesame Street is being assembled for release on whatever the successor format to the successor format of DVD is, how much of it will have to be reshot to comply with how much further the nanny state is sure to have expanded further?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.