On Sunday Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz drove yet another stake into the country's political discourse. Last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that despite his resignation and the fact that elections have been called for February 10, he intends to renew negotiations with Syria...Olmert's plan to compel a future government to accept such a commitment - which is opposed by a large majority of Israelis - caused an uproar. Opposition leaders and even members of Olmert's own Kadima party claimed that as the head of a transition government, Olmert has no legal right to make such a commitment.
After all they noted, just a few weeks ago Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch announced that the transition government has no legal right to appoint new judges. Beinisch claimed that as a transition government, Olmert and his colleagues had no legal right to make decisions that will have a long-term impact on Israeli democracy and since appointing judges would have such a long term impact, they are legally barred from appointing them. If the government is barred from appointing judges, certainly it must be barred from surrendering the strategically vital Golan Heights.
But Mazuz thinks differently. Appointing judges, he asserted, is a legal action. Surrendering the Golan Heights, in contrast, is a political action, he claimed. So while the transition government may not be allowed to appoint judges, it is allowed to give Syria control over the country's water supply.
By claiming that appointing judges is a legal act and surrendering vital lands is a political act, Mazuz made a mockery of both the law and of politics. And he did so without blushing because from his perspective, both the rule of law and the powers of politicians can only be determined in light of their impact on the rule of the Left. Actions are permissible, democratic and legal when they advance the rule of the Left. They are impermissible, anti-democratic and illegal when they detract from the rule of the Left.
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In 1999, the Supreme Court placed a temporary injunction against then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's order to close the PLO's diplomatic mission in Jerusalem at the Orient House. The court's move was a legal scandal since Netanyahu's decision was clearly legal. Israeli law bars the PLO from conducting official business of any sort in Jerusalem...The Supreme Court's decision on the Orient House was revealing. It showed that the court was more interested in advancing the political interests of the Left than in upholding the rule of law.
Indeed, it showed that the court had willfully co-opted the language of law and democratic norms to advance its ideological interests.
When a transition government advances the Left's political interests by offering the Golan Heights to Syria, its actions are legal and democratic. When a transition government advances the Right's political interests by curtailing PLO activities in Jerusalem, its actions are illegal and anti-democratic...
All of this demonstrates a disturbing state of affairs. Whether they are politicians like Olmert or jurists like Mazuz and Beinisch, the Left uses the rhetoric of democracy not to advance liberal norms and the rule of law in society but to destroy them both in the interest of advancing the Left's political interests.
THE LEFT's co-optation of the language of law and democracy is not limited to geopolitics. It extends to issues of cultural politics as well.
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