Plato disparaged democracy - “rule by the people" - and assumed that the people’s passions would in fact create an “ochlocracy," or “rule by the masses," also known as “mob rule." In truth, even democracies struggle with majoritarian control over a helpless, outnumbered minority. In a comment attributed to Benjamin Franklin, he allegedly opined that pure “democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner."
The sentiment is real even if he didn’t say it. As such, the USA protected the rights of all citizens, especially the minority, by enacting the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the US Constitution, which prohibited the infringement of the people’s right to worship, assemble, free speech, bear arms, and others.
Israel’s besieged democracy has for years grappled with the effects of mob rule, where ironically the mobs that torment the citizenry are not majorities but distinct minorities. For example, many haredim have taken to the streets again, blocking roads, train tracks, clashing with police, disrupting lives, and generally disgracing Torah, all to avoid having to fulfill the mitzvot of defending Jewish life and protecting the land of Israel.
They merely borrowed the tactics - with, it should be noted, considerably less sympathy from the police, media, courts, and legal system - of the Israeli left, the so-called "Kaplanistim", who have protested the results of the last election for… well, since the day after the election of 2022. In fact, there have been leftists who have been protesting against PM Netanyahu since he started winning elections three decades ago. They, too, blocked highways, fought with police, damaged property, threatened to desert the military (no small factor, according to Hamas sources, in launching their invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023), and leave the country altogether, but only after they would wreck the economy.
Additionally, these leftists brought to Israel the phenomenon of loudly and violently protesting outside the homes and offices of politicians, bureaucrats, and government workers, harassing their children and families, and with complete immunity from prosecution because of their favored status in the media and legal system, including the current Attorney General who famously said that "there can be no effective protest without disturbing the public order." The haredim learned well, if not ethically or wisely, and recently attacked the home of a Supreme Court justice they dislike.
While the outcome of the haredi protests is speculative - they know how to play the political game as well as anyone. The Kaplanist mob has been inordinately successful, derailing judicial reform, trying to throttle every government initiative and appointment, and generally mucking up the wheels of government. This is mob rule at its best.
Of course, the Kaplanistim could not have succeeded without the protection of the most exalted mob of all - the unelected, self-appointed Supreme Court majority that runs roughshod over Israel’s elected government and legislature. The Court long ago abandoned any pretense of following the law as enacted by Israel’s elected legislature. Instead, it unilaterally carved out a set of guidelines that tolerates no review, criticism, or revision and that reflects the political priorities and value system of Israel’s far left.
Like those jurisdictions in the USA whose election laws foster unchecked and undetectable cheating, Israel’s Supreme Court has found the sweet spot in which it can trample on every other governmental or societal organ without constraint.
That it essentially still insists on the right to appoint its own successors - for the protection of “democracy," as it claims - and will tolerate no legislated limitations on its powers, at present cannot be stopped, and even new Knesset elections will not change that dynamic. Indeed, sometimes the mob rogues wear robes.
The legal establishment - with the fired-but-still-serving Attorney General at the head - constitutes still another mob. It too brooks no dissent, follows its own internal moral or immoral compass, and is not inhibited by any laws. It is assisted by such organizations as the ironically named “Movement for Quality Government in Israel," for which the only requisite “quality" is avid allegiance to a secular, leftist, anti-religious, and anti-conservative view of government, Israel, and the world. This organization benefits from the Supreme Court’s universal open-ended standing for all litigants - and is exhibit one why the right to file a lawsuit needs to be restricted to those whose personal interests or rights are affected by a particular government action and not simply because one has chosen to be a national nudnik.
It is true that the AG stumbled recently in trying to obstruct the appointment of several key government officials - whose appointments do not require her approval at all. Perhaps the Court allowed these confirmations because there was simply no basis in law to stop them, no remotely credible way even to fabricate a new ruling to delay them, or to postpone to some future date the inevitable moment when the majority of Israelis will rise up and cease following the dictates of this mob. That moment will be a real constitutional crisis - when the people reassert the rule of law from one of the mobs that usurped it. Certainly, we should pray that calamity never comes.
What all these mobs have in common is that each purport to represent the people and reflect their will:
-The haredi mob claims to speak for all of “Torah Jewry," obviously false because many haredim and almost all non-haredi religious Jews recoil from their tactics and goals.
-The Kaplanist mob claims to represent the “gatekeepers," those people who know what is best for the State of Israel and its citizens, who resent the intrusion of all these uncouth, uncultured immigrants who have stolen their state from them and must learn their proper place in the social hierarchy, even learn it the hard way.
-The legal mob, likewise, represents the “enlightened citizenry," in Aharon Barak’s own choice phrase, and is obligated to impose its liberal, refined vision on the backwards rubes who unfortunately, as they see it, comprise a majority of Israelis and consistently vote for conservative and religious parties.
The goals of each mob are different - but their tactics are roughly identical. It is to irritate, aggravate, and infuriate as many innocent people as possible, not to convince them of the rightness of their views but simply to compel acquiescence to their demands so that normal life can be restored. The mobs do not want to influence - they will never achieve a majority - as much as they want to wear down those whom they perceive as obstacles to the fulfillment of their vision.
The leftist mobs have certainly been more successful than the haredi mob, if only because their numbers are greater and they retain a near monopoly on positive media coverage. The media mob is also quite potent. But the haredi mobs are also technically successful, as the repeated riots undermine the effort to pass any draft legislation, just as future riots would prevent the implementation of any law that was passed. In Israel, it is better to be the mob than to be the king, or the prime minister, or the governing coalition. This is only because we have come to tolerate mob rule.
As election season nears, we can expect the sundry mobs to become even more active. One explicit goal of the left is to create enough havoc in society so that the conservative voters stay home, deducing that elections don’t matter. But, in fact, elections do matter. Paradoxically, the only curb on the mob is the voter. If the mob rules, then individual rights will suffer, the religious complexion of the state will be diluted, the peace fantasies of the left will be revived - and the Court will support every outrage and every repression.
We should note well how the mob operates during elections. Anything that can be construed even remotely as religious, conservative, or pro-government will be deemed a “threat to democracy," a hackneyed phrase that has been so overused by the left in several countries in the last few decades that it usually means the opposite.
In reality, anyone who applies the phrase “threat to democracy" to others is usually the greatest, and perhaps only, threat to democracy in Israel. It is they who have the most contempt for the people. It is they who fear most the ballot. It is they who are likeliest to contest the vote and try to smother the voice of the people.
Those whose instinct it is to take to the streets and rampage when they do not get their way - those whom the Torah describes (Shemot 32:25) as “faru’a," unrestrained, unbridled, broken loose - are the very last people who should be handed the levers of power. They would never tolerate the same right to protest and riot in their opponents that they assume for themselves.
The power to stop the mobs of all sorts is in our hands.