Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch's recent statement that she wants to turn the court system into a completely independent authority, with no administrative or financial dependence on the Justice Ministry, is a grave challenge to all those who want Israel to be a Jewish state in the full sense of the term.


The Supreme Court is a small, self-perpetuating oligarchy, unelected by the people and accountable to no one, that has arrogated to itself the right to be the final authority on all matters of state. It has done so by granting itself the right to reject any law,

The Supreme Court has decided which ideologies are allowed to compete for the public’s allegiance.

passed by the democratically elected Knesset, of which it disapproves. Now, Beinisch wants to make the court even less accountable, by making it financially independent of the other branches of government, so it can continue to issue its dictatorial decrees with no restraints at all.


Why should loyal Jews feel threatened by this? Because the Supreme Court is openly contemptuous of Judaism, gives short shrift to those who stand up for God, the Torah and the Covenant, and instead exalts man-made theories and foreign ideologies that are alien to our faith.


Chief among these alien ideologies is the golden idol of "human rights." The Torah has a very well-developed concept of justice, one that places more emphasis on responsibilities than on rights. But modern theories of human rights have little to do with Torah concepts. Human rights are, at best, a nebulous doctrine of enormous elasticity that can be used to justify almost any kind of human behavior, even that which Judaism explicitly forbids. Even more dangerously, it can also be used to protect evildoers from retribution. For example, the Supreme Court has issued many rulings that cripple the ability of the IDF to capture or kill terrorists, on the grounds that such actions could violate the "human rights" of Arab bystanders.


Strangely, though, when that court issued its rulings that allowed the destruction of the healthy and productive, yet religious, Jewish communities in Gaza, and the expulsion of 9,000 faithful Jews from their homes - with their lives and livelihoods destroyed, and themselves cast off as homeless refugees in their own country - the human rights of these brave and pioneering settlers did not seem to be of concern.


For a more recent example of the Supreme Court’s true intentions, we have only to look at its demanding of a harsher sentence for two minors who were convicted of blocking a highway with burning mattresses as part of an anti-expulsion protest. At the request of the government, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of a lower court that handed down lenient sentences and demanded that stiffer ones be imposed. Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein explained the decision thusly: “In this case, we tend to lean toward conviction specifically because these dangerous illegal actions were part of a political and ideological struggle - and this must be uprooted.”


But what about the court's ultra-lenient treatment of Arab Knesset members who openly support Israel's enemies? Are not these illegal actions also part of a political and ideological struggle? And what about the left-wing Jews who gather with their Arab allies every week to engage in violent rock-throwing attacks against IDF soldiers at the security fence construction site in Bil'in? Should not their ideological struggle also be uprooted by the court?


The message couldn’t be clearer. The Supreme Court has taken upon itself the right to decide which ideologies are allowed to compete for the public’s allegiance and which are not. And ideologies that are rooted in the tenets of our 4,000-year-old faith are among those not allowed to compete, while those that despise our faith are allowed to compete. In taking this stand, the court has transformed itself from an impartial judicial institution into a political advocacy organization - and an anti-Jewish one, at that. But a private political agenda is precisely what it must not have if it hopes to retain legitimacy and public trust as a dispenser of justice.


It is becoming increasingly clear that the Supreme Court's chief motivation is neither law nor justice, but the promotion of a political ideology that is alien to the very essence of Judaism; that this unelected and self perpetuating oligarchy is seeking to gain absolute hegemony over all other branches of government so it can carry out its agenda un

The Supreme Court's chief motivation is the promotion of a political ideology.

fettered; and that every new power it usurps is a direct attack on those who seek an authentically Jewish state.


So, what is to be done? The Knesset can pass laws that limit the court’s powers. It can change the way that new justices are selected. It can declare the overreaching of authority to be an impeachable offense. It can give support to the nascent Sanhedrin, in the hope that it grows into a viable alternative to the Supreme Court.


The situation is not simple, because an out-of-control Knesset can be just as dangerous, if not more so, than an out-of-control court system, and there do need to be some checks and balances. But the courts, and all state institutions, need to be put on notice that the aspirations of faithful Jews to live in accordance with our 4,000-year-old heritage can not be suppressed forever; and that those who seek to forcibly repress our heritage and replace it with modern forms of idol worship are on the wrong side of God, and the wrong side of history.