The Blue Pushke At Stake

(Israelnationalnews.com) A constitutional crisis is shaping up in Israel over a fundamental issue of Jewish nationalism.

I imagine most readers of this blog grew up, as I did, with the little blue JNF pushke as part of their cultural baggage. Founded nearly 100 years ago, before the Jews created a state in the Middle East and the post-Zionists hijacked it, the JNF was established in order to buy land in the Eretz Yisrael, hold it in trust for the Jewish people, and settle Jews upon it.  To this day the JNF controls vast tracts of prime Israeli agricultural land and a significant proportion of the most valuable urban real estate in the country.

The State of Israel was established in 1948 and it, too, controls vast tracts of land.  The policy of the JNF became the policy of the State of Israel:  Public land was supposed to be used for Jewish settlement.  In 1961 the JNF and the Israel Lands Authority signed an agreement:  The Authority would manage the JNF's land as part of a national land policy.  The state committed itself to manage the JNF's land in accordance with the JNF's charter:  JNF land was to be used for Jewish settlement, and never sold, only leased.  After all, the JNF's land didn't belong to the State of Israel.  It was held in trust for the Jews.

In the 1990s the JNF set aside land for what is today the suburban settlement Katzir.  Like all JNF settlements, Katzir was supposed to be Jewish.  An Arab named Ka'adan decided (with the help of lots of well-financed and ideologically motivated friends) to buy a house in Katzir.  He took his case to Israel's Supreme Court, then dominated by the legendary Aharon Barak.  The court ruled that it was illegal for the Israel Lands Authority to enforce the JNF's charter, as it was committed to doing, and to refrain from leasing land to Ka'adan, even though he wasn't a Jew.  Today Ka'adan owns a house in Katzir.  At one blow, ninety years of Zionist policy and a key tenet of Zionism was struck down.  The court also struck a blow for a key principle of post-Zionism:  Jewish nationalism is discriminatory, if you will . . . racist.  Something we should all be ashamed of.

Barak hedged his Ka'adan decision with caveats, and the equivalent of a judicial smirk.  He wrote that the Ka'adan case was to be regarded as an individual case , not setting a general rule.  He well knew that the principle he was establishing—that Zionist land policy was discriminatory—could not long be confined to a single case.  Arab advocacy groups like Adala and Mussawa took the hint.  They soon mounted a legal challenge against the JNF's charter.  As we write, the JNF is knuckling under:  Under court order, its management is negotiating the surrender of its most valuable urban lands to the state, no longer to be reserved for Jewish settlement.  In return the State of Israel will pay the JNF money.

For four generations, tens of thousands of Jews around the world, in Polish slums and New York sweatshops, put their pennies in the blue pushke to redeem the Land of Israel for the Jewish people.  The JNF's land is held in trust for the Jews.  Selling it—which is what the JNF's management now proposes to do—is illegal under its charter.  What Israel's Supreme Court now proposes to mandate is, in my view, a form of judicially sanctioned theft.  And it's not theft of the wealthy or privileged, but of generations of Jewish poor, whose hopes and dreams, now so basely betrayed, created Zionism and a Jewish state.

Last month an interesting thing happened.  In defiance of the Supreme Court, the Knesset passed, on its first reading, a law meant to write the original JNF charter into Israeli law.  The vote was a landslide, 64-16.

The vote immediately produced judicial murmers offstage.  Israel's Attorney General, Menahem Mazuz, declared the law unconstitutional.  Israel has no constitution, and never had a law that authorizes the Supreme Court to strike down the Knesset legislation, but Israel's judges have never let trivial matters such as the legality of their own decisions hinder them in the past.

Today, however, things are different.  The prestige of Israel's judiciary has declined precipitously.  It is viewed now as it really is:  insular, inefficient, presumptuous in its grasp for powers the people never granted it, and intellectually unimpressive.  Also, there is a new undercurrent in Israel:  Olmert is still Prime Minister, but among the grassroots Jewish nationalism is making a comeback.  Five years ago, the Knesset would never have defied the Supreme Court.  Today is something else again.

The "JNF Law" still has to be reported out of the Knesset's Economics Committee—which seems a shoo-in—and pass a second and third reading.  A constitutional crisis is shaping up in Israel, pitting elected legislators against judges who appoint one another, with a fundamental issue of Jewish nationalism at stake.  Who will win?