We have been warning for many years that Israel's Supreme Court is a threat to Israeli democracy. The Court is dominated by leftist justices wedded to the anti-democratic doctrine of "judicial activism", which holds that non-elected justices have the right to impose their personal views on the electorate and on the elected representatives of the people, as long as their views make leftists and radical secularists happy.

In recent years, the Court has imposed a long series of rulings on the country that have no groundings whatsoever in the Law and are simply attempts by the imperious justices to act as judicial legislators - that is, judicial dictators. The Court is also increasingly politicized. As events serve to discredit Israel's Left from week to week, the Court has rushed forward to impose leftist and anti-religious views on the country. It has never criticized leftist attacks on free speech nor McCarthyist prosecution of anti-Oslo dissidents, while repeatedly placing Arab terrorists and murderers back onto the streets.

Things came to their crescendo this week. The Supreme Court of Israel has gone far beyond anything else it has done before. The Supreme Court, led by the anti-democratic Chief Justice Aharon Barak, ruled simply that Israel's parliament does not have the right to pass laws.

Really.

The background to this judicial jihad against Israeli democracy is the battle over freedom of expression, with the Israeli Supreme Court consistently opposed to such freedom. Specifically, the ruling has to do with the Arutz Sheva radio station. The Israeli Far Left exercises near-complete hegemony over Israel's media, including print and electronic. There has, however, been one important challenger to that hegemony and that is the Arutz Sheva radio
station. Arutz Sheva is described as a "pirate radio station", but that is only because the government has refused to allow it to buy a broadcasting franchise.

Arutz Sheva was first set up as a counterweight to the Far Left pirate radio station set up in 1973 by Far Leftist Abbie Natan. That station was based on the belief that broadcasting nonstop loud rock and roll music and occasional leftist posturing was the ideal recipe for bringing peace to the Middle East. Despite the fact that Natan's station was illegal, it was protected by the Labor Party establishment. Even the Likud governments feared challenging its operations lest they be accused of assaulting free expression. Eventually, Natan's station went bankrupt and he scuttled the ship smack in the middle of Israel's shipping lanes, creating a permanent hazard.

Years after Natan's station was set up, the Arutz Sheva station was established and - like Natan's - at first broadcast from an offshore boat. However, the moment that Arutz Sheva set up operations, the very same Left that had always defended Natan's illegal station suddenly demanded that "law and order" be applied and Arutz Sheva shut down.

Ever since then, the Left has sought means to shut down Arutz Sheva and protect its hegemony over all broadcasting. It has tried assorted legal tricks and suits. It has tried Knesset initiatives. It has tried boycotts. Yet, Arutz Sheva weathered it all. The Left even accused Arutz Sheva of having "inspired" the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, because it broadcast attacks on Rabin's policies. It tried to get the operators prosecuted for "incitement", that catchall crime dug up by Israel's leftist McCarthyists every time they wish to suppress free speech. A few years back, it looked like the Left was about to succeed in silencing Arutz Sheva, but then some Knesset Members passed a law that legalized Arutz Sheva. That should have been the end of the story, but not in post-democratic Israel. Some leftist groups and individuals filed a court petition to declare the Knesset Law illegal.

Now, let us put this in perspective. There are countries in which courts can declare legislative decisions to be illegal, on the basis of a Constitution. Israel, however, has no formal written constitution and so there is no constitutional basis upon which a court can override a Knesset law. Indeed, this is precisely the constitutional showdown precipitated by the Court?s ruling that Reform conversions in Israel must be accepted by the government and the Knesset law declaring that they are not acceptable. There exist several "Basic Laws" in Israel that are regarded as being somewhat more powerful than ordinary laws, thus serving as building blocks for a future constitution. However, the legal argument here is shaky. In reality, these Basic Laws are simply laws passed by one Knesset and there is no basis for claiming that a law from an old Knesset can be used to restrict legislative powers of a new Knesset. Moreover, there is nothing in any of these Basic Laws that really can be seen as serving as the basis for the more atrocious Supreme Court rulings. There is nothing in them that can used to justify the Court's ruling on conversions or this week's assault on Arutz Sheva. Indeed, Arutz Sheva could make a reasonable argument that its continued operation is protected under the Basic Law guaranteeing freedom of occupation.

The Supreme Court of Aharon Barak does not need any legal figleaf for its capricious, baseless rulings. It is sufficient that trendiness and "enlightened opinion" (meaning leftist secularist opinion) is served. The Supreme Court ruled that the law passed by the Knesset decriminalizing Arutz Sheva was itself illegal. In other words, the Supreme Court refuses to recognize the right of the Knesset to pass laws. Ultimate decisions regarding laws and legislating henceforth are the prerogative of the non-elected Supreme Court justices.

These of course are the same justices who put the murderers of Dani Katz back on the streets, who ruled that Israel has to pay indemnities to Palestinians hurt while attacking Jews and who have a long track record of other arbitrary, politicized abuses of their power. There is only one way to deal with these characters and here it is: Israel's Knesset must immediately pass a new law dismissing the current Supreme Court and firing Aharon Barak as Chief Justice, preferably taking away his pension rights as well. It must institute new rules under which Supreme Court justices and other judges may be dismissed by the Knesset or by popular ballot propositions.

In addition, the Knesset must not only legalize Arutz Sheva, it must turn over to Arutz Sheva the now bankrupt, but brand new, Channel 10 television station. It must privatize all the state-operated radio and television services and dismember the Israel Broadcasting Authority. The original logic behind having the IBA was so that Israel could express its own voice in its own defense, but the IBA has long been the voice of the PLO and the Far Left and there is no reason why taxpayers need to finance that when the EU and the New Israel Fund are so willing to finance anti-Israel propaganda on their own.
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Steven Plaut teaches economics at the University of Haifa.