Saturday, March 16, 2013
The Grunis Court
A few days ago it was the one-year anniversary of the appointment
of Asher Grunis as Israel's Chief Justice on its Supreme Court. At
the time it was expected that Grunis would reform the Court by
distancing it from the many years of dominance by leftist
anti-democratic "judicial activists."
The good news is that Grunis has been a far cry better than his
two predecessors on the job, Dorit Beinisch and Aharon Barak. The
late Robert Bork once described Barak as one of the worst Supreme
Court justices in the democratic world.
Grunis is clearly not a leftwing lunatic of the Beinisch-Barak
mold. He has also by and large resisted the temptation to try to
micro-manage defense and foreign policy in Israel. His two
predecessors were of the opinion that the Supreme Court should trump
the elected government of the people and dictate the tiniest
decisions, even very technical decisions, about how the military
should behave. Barak insisted that EVERYTHING in the country was
subject to his judicial review and veto.
Those two predecessors were also of the opinion that unelected
judges should have the power to overturn decisions taken by the
elected representatives of the people in the parliament. Grunis has
not behaved as a similar judicial tyrant. Grunis has made a few
sensible and wise decisions, like his refusal to pander to the Moonbat
Left and the Ivory Cartel, who demanded that Ariel University not be
recognized as a bona fide university. One of his BEST rulings was in
a recent case in which a nuisance suit had been filed by a radical
leftist group, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which was
ordered to pay a 45,000 NIS fine for having submitted the frivolous
court petition against a hospital for supposedly "mistreating the poor
who live in Ashdod." The fine should have been 450,000 NIS, but, as
it was, it was unprecedentedly large and has the Moonbat Left in
Israel now soiling itself.
Grunis has, however, been a serious disappointment. In a long
series of decisions, he has sided with the Left and imposed its
ideology on the country, even when the legal basis for doing so was
completely flimsy and dubious.
Perhaps the worst Grunis ruling to date was the decision to allow
the terrorist Hanin Zoabi to run for the Knesset even after the
Israeli elections commission had banned her from running, even after
her arrest for violently assaulting Israeli soldiers on the Gaza
Flotilla terrorist ship. Winston Churchill did not allow openly
pro-Nazi people to run for the parliament in the middle of World War
II, and in fact JAILED them, but Winnie did not have Grunis to deal
with. Israel is now the only country on the planet whose Supreme
Court insists that terrorists dedicated to the annihilation of the
country must be allowed to sit in the parliament of the country they
do not recognize.
Grunis has also opposed or overturned a series of attempts by the
Zionist majority in Israel to rein in the abuses of the anti-Israel
Left, such as demands for transparency in funding of anti-Israel
leftist NGOs, or a proposal that would allow victims of leftist
initiatives to boycott Israel or Israelis to sue the organizers of
those boycotts for damages. He has also opposed various measures
requiring gestures of loyalty from Israeli Arabs. He defended the
"right" of Zoabi's party to mock the national anthem in the last
election while REFUSING to overturn a series of decisions by the
election board to censor and ban "objectionable" ads and slogans by
Rightwing parties.
In other decisions, Grunis and his Court voted to remove two
Jewish settlements, Migran and Ulpana, in the "occupied territories."
The same Court has NOT ordered the removal of Palestinians squatting
on lands they illegally occupy in the West Bank nor Bedouins illegally
squatting on enormous tracts of the Negev.
Last week Grunis ordered the government to justify and
rationalize its policy of evicting illegal infiltrators from Eritrea
and Sudan. No other court on earth would order any other government
on earth to justify enforcement of restrictions on illegal
infiltration, well - except maybe judges appointed by Obama. Will the
court also demand that the government explain why it is spraying the
locusts who infiltrated the border? What about THEIR rights?
I guess the best thing that one can say about the Grunis Court so
far is that it could be worse and in fact was far worse under Beinisch
and Barak. However, Tzipi Livni is to be the new Minister of Justice
in the new Netanyahu government and can be expected to try to smack
the Court back to its earlier far-leftist orientation under those two
previous Chief "Justices." And Grunis is due to retire in less than
two years. He is likely to be replaced by yet another far-leftist
judicial activist, another Barak clone or groupie.
2. With no connection at all to the previous matter, if you always
wanted to know how to say "Facebook" in Talmudic Aramaic, it is Sifra
Di-anfin.
of Asher Grunis as Israel's Chief Justice on its Supreme Court. At
the time it was expected that Grunis would reform the Court by
distancing it from the many years of dominance by leftist
anti-democratic "judicial activists."
The good news is that Grunis has been a far cry better than his
two predecessors on the job, Dorit Beinisch and Aharon Barak. The
late Robert Bork once described Barak as one of the worst Supreme
Court justices in the democratic world.
Grunis is clearly not a leftwing lunatic of the Beinisch-Barak
mold. He has also by and large resisted the temptation to try to
micro-manage defense and foreign policy in Israel. His two
predecessors were of the opinion that the Supreme Court should trump
the elected government of the people and dictate the tiniest
decisions, even very technical decisions, about how the military
should behave. Barak insisted that EVERYTHING in the country was
subject to his judicial review and veto.
Those two predecessors were also of the opinion that unelected
judges should have the power to overturn decisions taken by the
elected representatives of the people in the parliament. Grunis has
not behaved as a similar judicial tyrant. Grunis has made a few
sensible and wise decisions, like his refusal to pander to the Moonbat
Left and the Ivory Cartel, who demanded that Ariel University not be
recognized as a bona fide university. One of his BEST rulings was in
a recent case in which a nuisance suit had been filed by a radical
leftist group, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which was
ordered to pay a 45,000 NIS fine for having submitted the frivolous
court petition against a hospital for supposedly "mistreating the poor
who live in Ashdod." The fine should have been 450,000 NIS, but, as
it was, it was unprecedentedly large and has the Moonbat Left in
Israel now soiling itself.
Grunis has, however, been a serious disappointment. In a long
series of decisions, he has sided with the Left and imposed its
ideology on the country, even when the legal basis for doing so was
completely flimsy and dubious.
Perhaps the worst Grunis ruling to date was the decision to allow
the terrorist Hanin Zoabi to run for the Knesset even after the
Israeli elections commission had banned her from running, even after
her arrest for violently assaulting Israeli soldiers on the Gaza
Flotilla terrorist ship. Winston Churchill did not allow openly
pro-Nazi people to run for the parliament in the middle of World War
II, and in fact JAILED them, but Winnie did not have Grunis to deal
with. Israel is now the only country on the planet whose Supreme
Court insists that terrorists dedicated to the annihilation of the
country must be allowed to sit in the parliament of the country they
do not recognize.
Grunis has also opposed or overturned a series of attempts by the
Zionist majority in Israel to rein in the abuses of the anti-Israel
Left, such as demands for transparency in funding of anti-Israel
leftist NGOs, or a proposal that would allow victims of leftist
initiatives to boycott Israel or Israelis to sue the organizers of
those boycotts for damages. He has also opposed various measures
requiring gestures of loyalty from Israeli Arabs. He defended the
"right" of Zoabi's party to mock the national anthem in the last
election while REFUSING to overturn a series of decisions by the
election board to censor and ban "objectionable" ads and slogans by
Rightwing parties.
In other decisions, Grunis and his Court voted to remove two
Jewish settlements, Migran and Ulpana, in the "occupied territories."
The same Court has NOT ordered the removal of Palestinians squatting
on lands they illegally occupy in the West Bank nor Bedouins illegally
squatting on enormous tracts of the Negev.
Last week Grunis ordered the government to justify and
rationalize its policy of evicting illegal infiltrators from Eritrea
and Sudan. No other court on earth would order any other government
on earth to justify enforcement of restrictions on illegal
infiltration, well - except maybe judges appointed by Obama. Will the
court also demand that the government explain why it is spraying the
locusts who infiltrated the border? What about THEIR rights?
I guess the best thing that one can say about the Grunis Court so
far is that it could be worse and in fact was far worse under Beinisch
and Barak. However, Tzipi Livni is to be the new Minister of Justice
in the new Netanyahu government and can be expected to try to smack
the Court back to its earlier far-leftist orientation under those two
previous Chief "Justices." And Grunis is due to retire in less than
two years. He is likely to be replaced by yet another far-leftist
judicial activist, another Barak clone or groupie.
2. With no connection at all to the previous matter, if you always
wanted to know how to say "Facebook" in Talmudic Aramaic, it is Sifra
Di-anfin.
# posted by Steven Plaut : 12:19 PM
