"Crises" on the horizon

IDF Draft controversy renews pressure to muzzle the Supreme Court

As many who follow Israel's political life know, cries of "wolf, wolf!" foretelling of the government’s imminent collapse are common. Two such crises are on the horizon now.

19/06/2018 05:31

Tags: Supreme Court ·  draft bill ·  conversion bill

IDF soldier at prayer, Source: Wikipedia

As many who follow Israel's political life know, cries of "wolf, wolf!" foretelling of the government’s imminent collapse are common. Most of these are averted at the last minute either by the coalition government surrendering to the demands of those who hold a gun to their temples; by use of delay tactics (usually by the appointment of a committee to study the issue at hand); or by reaching a creative compromise. Two such crises are on the horizon now.

One involves the conversion bill, which we addressed just recently. This week, the Supreme Court has handed Netanyahu some relief by agreeing to a six month postponement of the date the State is required to submit its response to pending petitions involving non-Orthodox conversions. These pending petitions and the anticipated ruling in support of these converts prompted the ultimatum from the Shas party, demanding that a conversion law be passed to preempt this court ruling.

In the first round, Netanyhu pressured the non-Orthodox movements to freeze their petitions for six months in order to negotiate a solution. They surrendered, and both the Court procedure and the legislative initiative were halted. As is often the case, Netanyahu didn't really mean "six months," and recently (a year later!) Moshe Nissim submitted his recommendations, which failed to achieve the goal of squaring the circle. Key players in the Haredi and non-Orthodox camps rejected his proposal, and Shas demanded that its original conversion bill be put back on the docket for expedited legislation. Having exhausted the "committee route" and recognizing the serious ramifications of surrendering to Shas, Netanyahu turned back to the "delay" avenue, asking the Court for an additional six months for the State to “study” the Nissim report. The Court acquiesced; for the time being, this crisis has been averted.

The second crisis involves the draft bill. Much like "Who is a Jew," drafting Haredi yeshiva students is an ages-old controversy, which is reignited every few years, stirring up the political arena. In recent years, it was the 2013-2015 government coalition under pressure from the Yesh Atid party, which legislated a new draft bill, causing upheaval. It was summarily undone once the 2015 coalition was in place due to the Haredi parties' demands. Every sanction and move towards religious freedom and equality advanced by the previous government were obliterated. The new government met the Haredi demands that no yeshiva student who refused to enlist would be forced to do so, and that no real sanctions would be applied any time soon to either the individuals or the yeshivas that dodged the draft.

The new challenge that emerged, as was the case in the past, came from the Supreme Court. It accepted petitions to nullify the new draft bill on constitutional grounds for presenting too serious a breach of the principle of equality. The Court declared the new law to be null and void, setting a date for a year henceforth for its ruling to take effect. That year ends in September 2018, and the race was on to find a new solution.

On June 11, the Minister of Defense presented a new proposed amendment to the draft law, worked out by senior officials and officers in the Ministry of Defense and the IDF. Having reviewed it, we at Hiddush are convinced it fails (as expected!) at this impossible task of squaring the circle. There is just no way that both the core principle of equality, the notion of a universal mandatory draft, and the demands of the Haredi parties will all be satisfied.

And so, with delay tactics having been exhausted, with no plausible creative compromise on the horizon, and with the realization that even extremely willing political operators would not be able to withstand constitutional-judicial review, came the ominous initiative to castrate the Supreme Court.

And so, with delay tactics having been exhausted, with no plausible creative compromise on the horizon, and with the realization that even extremely willing political operators would not be able to withstand constitutional-judicial review, came the ominous initiative to castrate the Supreme Court, as we alluded. From the Haredi perspective, the Supreme Court is the culprit and the only obstacle standing in the way of fully attaining their extortionist demands. Their mindset happens to coincide with parallel frustrations on the part of some extreme right-wing political circles; the two have joined forces to bring the Supreme Court to its knees. This was the genesis of the “override clause” initiative, aimed at enabling political machinations to override Supreme Court rulings via counter-legislation. As expected, this is now back on the table.

The head of United Torah Judaism faction in the Knesset (the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi party), MK Mozes stated this week that "The Council of the Great [Ones] of the Torah of Agudat Yisrael has decided unequivocally not to allow the [new] bill to pass. If it does, we will leave the government and the coalition... If there was the 'override clause' we wouldn't be in this situation... [we should] return to our original bill and add the override clause to it... the IDF does not decide how many students will enlist from one high school or another so I don't understand the claim that the IDF should be the one to decide how many [yeshiva students] will enlist, rather than the rabbis. Since when are the yeshivas tasked with providing soldiers for the IDF?"

While Mozes dismisses any responsibility on the part of the yeshiva world for actual participation in Israel's military defense, significant groups in the Haredi community express an even more ominous assault against the State of Israel. A co-leader of the "Jerusalem Faction" yeshivish Lithuanian camp, Rabbi Friedman, declared, "We need to teach by the path of the Torah and instruct children from the beginning that a secular Jew is like a gentile, and we should fear nobody. This State would have better not come into being at all. The army is impure and not sacred. We don't need their money..."

While many still entertain a nostalgic approach to Judaism and perceive Jewish authenticity to be measured by the length of a rabbi's beard and the darkness of his garb, it is high time to recognize that this can be seen as a partial parallel to the concept of the "Clash of Civilizations." What is at stake is a deep-seated theological rejection of the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the Zionist ideology that gave birth to it. What further exacerbates the clash is the fact that it is waged in a setting wherein the Zionist state and its taxpayers are the ones funding those aiming at their destruction. All effective measures are legitimate and necessary in the eyes of the latter. Political extortion is the least of these measures, which is now threatening the backbone of democracy - namely, the independence and authority of Israel's top civil judiciary.

Hiddush will once again raise the demand that state funding be withdrawn from such yeshivas and educational institutions, which actively undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel and/or refuse to teach the required core curricular studies. However, a much greater awareness among the Israeli public and among world Jewry is necessary to appreciate the extent of the threat to Israel's survival as a Jewish and democratic state. It was Israel's first President Haim Weizmann who foresaw the ensuing existential battle over the unholy alliance of religion and politics.

Weizmann wrote in 1947: “There are powerful religious communities in Palestine that now, under a democratic regime, will rightly demand to assert themselves. I think it is our duty to make it clear to them from the beginning that whereas the state will treat the true religious feelings of the community with the highest respect, it cannot turn the clock back to making religion the cardinal principle in the conduct of the state... it shall not control the ministries of state.... There will be a great struggle... I foresee something which will be perhaps reminiscent of the Kulturkampf in Germany, but we must be firm if we are to survive.”