There are moments in life when a person or an institution will do something that causes jaws to drop and provokes mass headshaking in disbelief.
Such an event recently occurred when Israel’s Supreme Court, its self-proclaimed bastion of democracy, took it upon itself to aggressively worry about the conditions of Hamas prisoners, including the Nuhkba sadistic murderers of October 7, 2023, now incarcerated in Israeli prisons.
In case you had to read this over a few times, yes, that is what they are doing. Because Internal Security Minister Itamar ben Gvir made it a priority to de-luxuriate the prison conditions of Hamas and other political prisoners in Israeli jails, he unleashed a torrent of petitions of left-wing organizations.
Interestingly, when the conditions for such prisoners was akin to summer camp, the Court was untroubled. Segregated quarters, conjugal visits, cell phones, courses, tolerated sexual harassment of female Israeli guards – all of this was acceptable.
It was only after Ben Gvir clamped down that the outrage ensued.
At that point, the Court became like Santa Claus, sitting on its big chair waiting for various left wing NGOs to sit on its lap in order to ask what they wanted for Christmas.
Of course, the Court is claiming that the current conditions are human rights violations. They forced radical changes to be made to the Sde Teiman prison, requiring the State to build a new detention facility so as to placate the Court’s concerns as to crowding.
Most recently Justice Ruth Ronen even went to the trouble of visiting the prisons themselves in order to ascertain the acceptability of conditions. This seems rather disingenuous since no prison is comfortable, and it is questionable as to how much of a relative sense any Justice has concerning prison conditions.
Instead, Justices have wrapped themselves in the mantle of moral sanctimony to declare that Israel must provide more liberal conditions (that in all likelihood have never been provided by any warring country to its enemies and are certainly not provided in the prisoners' place of origin) regardless of the cost or the diversion of resources and manpower,
The fact that our existential enemy is completely untroubled by its torturing our hostages, military and civilian, is of no matter to the justices. We have to be more Catholic than the Pope.
Not surprisingly, the average Israeli looks at this with the disbelief I referenced above. Does the Court not know that we are fighting with an enemy that seeks our complete annihilation, that spits on humanity as well as human rights, and is all too happy to have its acolytes manipulate the heartstrings of the completely confused, yet thoroughly self-righteous elements of Israeli society?
The Supreme Court is at best tone deaf to the implications of what it is espousing, and at worst, is showing itself to be morally obtuse. Tone deafness would be the Israeli equivalent of the late unlamented presidents of elite American universities invoking the “context” in order to call an anti-Semitic spade a spade.
Here the Court is missing the context of the larger picture in which these prisoners are here and why their prisons are necessarily becoming increasingly overcrowded,
However, sadly, I think it is more egregious than this. I think the Justices believe that come what may, we must adhere to their standards, so as to be able to be morally undisturbed.
The Court is forgetting the enshrined Jewish wisdom and law that says that if someone is coming to kill you then you need to kill them first.
The prisoners are Hamas murderers. They are not carjackers, drug pushers nor check kiters. Their mission is to kill as many Jews as possible.
Sadly for them, their mission went awry and they were captured. Given half a chance, as Yahya Sinwar clearly demonstrated when he was freed in the Gilad Shalit prisoner release, they would return to try murdering Jews again.
Israel is not in turn murdering these killers. Nor are we torturing them, But by what moral compass are we obligated to make their sojourn in our prisons anything approaching comfortable?
Here are two proof texts of my assertion that regular people look at the Court’s conduct with revulsion and disgust. The first concerns Im Tirtzu’s bus stop poster campaign, in which some 100 posters were placed around Tel Aviv with the pictures of four Supreme Court Justices and the caption: “At a time when our hostages are in Gaza, the Supreme Court worries about terrorists. The Court is opposing Israel.”
The entire cost of the campaign was paid for in full by the grassroots support of some 700 Israeli donors who provided the funding in about a week’s time. To my way of thinking, this was an outcry, a putting of one’s money where his convictions are.
The second proof is that the Supreme Court, through its spokesman, publicly chided Im Tirtzu for “incitement,” and said that it would be undaunted in its efforts. This is classic “protesteth too much.”
When the Supreme Court, which I had naively assumed was an overarching arbiter of justice and law, unconcerned with the rantings of mere mortals, deigns to cry foul, then I know that we hit a nerve.
The Court is right to cry out, as their conduct has just provided the citizens of Israel with glaring truth as to the intentional removal of the Court from the concerns, values and mindset of the overwhelming majority of Israelis.
Sadly, but tellingly, Israel’s Supreme Court has just indicted itself for violating care and concern for the citizens of Israel.
Douglas Altabefis the Chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu and a Director of the Israel Independence Fund.