Not only the Women of the Wall or the Pride Parade are at stake

On the Legal Front

The battle goes on. It is not just the Women of the Wall or the Pride Parade that are at stake. It’s the soul of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and that is why safeguarding the independence and the authority of the Supreme Court is so important in Israel, even if we do not always agree with its rulings.

30/06/2022 19:27

Tags: Legal Advocacy ·  Women of the Wall ·  Pride Parade

Legal Advocacy

Next week a hearing will be held in the Israeli Supreme Court of a petition that we are partner to, along with the Israel Religious Action Center, and Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, concerning the refusal to hire non-religious and non-Jewish teachers to teach in the Hemed educational institutions [the State operated public-Zionist religious education network]. The refusal includes barring their hire to teach general subjects such as mathematics, music and geography. This policy, the state argues, is necessary to maintain the religious purity of these educational institutions, which require educational models that can only be provided by [Jewish] Orthodox religious teachers. How ironic it is that an exposé series is currently being broadcast on Israel’s public television (Channel 11) in which sexual abuse at the Hemed girls seminaries is exposed: rape, sexual harassment, inappropriate remarks, etc., by rabbis, male and female teachers, and staff. In the second broadcast, yesterday, several former students were interviewed who are currently working to help victims of ongoing sexual assault in the seminaries. They spoke of the many calls they are now receiving from students at 17 seminaries for girls throughout the country [!] They described widespread severe abuse and silencing by institution heads and a sense of distress, stemming among other things from the fact that the educational institutions in which they studied did not provide sex education, which would have enabled them to cope with the situation and understand its significance.

Yesterday another chapter was written in Israeli constitutional law, in a case which is directly and indirectly related to religion and state disputes. Following the comments of the Supreme Court Justices, the police reversed their refusal to approve the route of the planned Gay Pride Parade in the city of Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev. The police had initially refused to approve the requested route of the parade due to opposition from a local yeshiva and the town’s mayor, who expressed strong anti LGBT sentiments. Following their outspoken attack, violent threats were made against the marchers. The petition was filed by the organizers of the Parade (planned to take place next week) together with the Be Free Israel organization

The judges' comments emphasized past rulings regarding the right to demonstrate. The first step, the judges said, should be for the police to examine whether they are able to deal with the threat. That's their job. Only if they feel that they are unable to do so is it possible to progress to the second tier of formulating a different balance. The state’s demand to change the route related to the usual route for demonstrations and marches in this small town, which in part is about 100 meters from the aforementioned yeshiva. The change of route was presented by the state as a compromise, but the judges did not see it this way, and questioned the state representative: “What kind of compromise is this? Those who are threatening are not asked to compromise about anything, only the subjects of the threat are required to back down.” Although it was not mentioned in the discussion, the American term Heckler’s Veto is very appropriate for the case in question.

Just a month ago, the police saw no problem in allowing the Flag Parade in Jerusalem, even though the march took place in the heart of the Muslim Quarter with thousands of young people (most of whom were right-wing Zionist Orthodox) who sang threatening and insulting songs and shouted demeaning messages against the Arab population.

This is just a case in point underlining some of the challenges facing the rule of law in Israel. Just a month ago, the police saw no problem in allowing the Flag Parade in Jerusalem, even though the march took place in the heart of the Muslim Quarter with thousands of young people (most of whom were right-wing Zionist Orthodox) who sang threatening and insulting songs and shouted demeaning messages against the Arab population. In contrast, the police attempted to prevent the gay Pride Parade from marching along the accepted route in the small town of Mitspe Ramon. They acquiesced to demands by the mayor, who is hostile to the LGBTQ community, and by Rabbi Tzvi Kustiner, the head of this state-funded yeshiva serving Zionist Orthodox youth that combine their military service with yeshiva studies. Kustiner, who is an anti-gay activist and who objected to the parade being held at all, declared in video footage shown on KAN public TV: “This is the battle that I tell everyone to fight... Be courageous. In your workplace say ‘LGBT people, go home!’ ‘gays, go home!’… Fight them on everything. It is our job everywhere not to be ashamed of our Judaism. This crazy government, this insanity, God willing it will fall.” Several students responded with “Amen.”

All too often the police and state authorities, prefer to give in to fundamentalist religious pressure and religious politicians at the expense of democratic values and the assurances of Israel’s Declaration of Independence to safeguard equality and freedom of religion. This is exactly what happened years ago, in response to demands by the Women of the Wall at the beginning of their struggle. The police announced that they would be unable to deal with the expected violence from ultra-Orthodox circles and therefore opposed allowing the Women of the Wall to pray as they requested, which included reading from a Torah scroll and conducting prayers while singing and reading aloud. Over the years since then, it has been clear that the police do not see it as their responsibility to protect the female worshipers, and this is made abundantly clear to anyone who watches the monthly videos of their service and is familiar with the degrading and violent routine that they encounter.

Clearly the battle goes on. It is not just the Women of the Wall or the Pride Parade that are at stake. It’s the soul of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and that is why safeguarding the independence and the authority of the Supreme Court is so important in Israel, even if we do not always agree with its rulings. This is why it is critically important to counter the hostile stacking of the Court’s panel by politicians who have no real regard for democratic values and civil liberties, and this is also why pursuing legal advocacy is such an important tool in our advocacy kit.