Israel’s “courts have lost their way, which is exactly why judicial reform is so badly needed.”
By Brooke Goldstein
The scenes from Yom Kippur in Israel, where misguided “protesters” attacked Jewish people attempting to worship according to their faith, breaks my heart. Let’s take a step back and analyze what’s happening.
There are two core problems here. First, Israeli courts are enacting discriminatory measures against Jewish people while treating other faiths differently. Second, protestors find it appropriate to use Yom Kippur to harass and attack Jews praying — in the one and only Jewish state.
In any other country, if Jews were attacked, praying on the highest of holy days, according to the precepts of their religion, we would rightly condemn this as antisemitism. Yet somehow, we have come to the point that, in the Jewish state, law abiding Jews can’t pray freely without being spat on. Screamed at. Harassed. Are they trying to incite a civil war? And the biggest tragedy is that this is “Jew on Jew violence.”
Or is it? Who is funding these lawfare attacks against Jewish worshipers? Who is funding these so-called protests against Jews praying on Yom Kippur? In my experience, fighting against the Lawfare attacks on the Jewish state, it’s usually foreign funded NGOs.
I’m declaring a state of emergency and appealing to Israeli lawmakers to launch an investigation into foreign funding of lawsuits aimed at de-Judaizing our one and only homeland. I’ve seen these lawfare attacks before, for example against the Israeli Defense Forces, lawsuits forcing them to serve leavened bread during the seven days of Passover (as though there is some sort of human right to stuff your face with bread). Similar legal attacks against Jewish hospitals forcing them to provide non-kosher foods during holidays, making the hospitals unwelcome for observant Jews.
The greatest threat to Jewish sovereignty and our homeland is foreign-funded Lawfare. That’s undeniable.
On the other hand, there are no demands to put up gender separators at non-orthodox services, no one is proposing laws to prohibit mixed services in public spaces, yet some think they can enforce their militant secularism on Jewish worshippers. Only Orthodox Jews are being targeted in the Jewish state. Where does that leave us?
Almost my entire family, who identified as Orthodox Jews in Europe, were wiped out by Nazi forces, who viewed it as their mission to de-Judaize the world. Who would have thought that I would live to see the day that the Jewish state was discriminating against Jewish people worshiping on Yom Kippur.
It’s plain to see that Israeli courts are being used as a tool to persecute observant Jews, as they have effectively made a law saying that orthodox prayer in public spaces is illegal in Tel Aviv. What has resulted is the situation where Orthodox Jews are no longer welcome in public spaces on Tel Aviv during prayer. This is unacceptable to me, and this should be unacceptable to everybody who is reading this thread.
If these are the kinds of decisions that the Israeli Supreme Court is making — no wonder people think the Supreme Court is ridiculous. Debasing itself really.
In 2023, Israeli courts issued verdicts protecting Muslims, and their rights to public prayer (every day, I hear the Muslim call to prayer in public places in Israel). Islamist terrorists, who have murdered innocent Jewish children, once detained, receive more protections in Israel than in any other democracy. The fact that precedent is no value here, that there is a total absence of checks and balances and that courts rule differently for one faith than they do for others, means that the rule of law is absent, and in its place, blatant discrimination against practicing Jews.
And of course, non-Muslims are forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount by judicial decree.
The courts have lost their way ,which is exactly why judicial reform is so badly needed.
Attorney Brooke Goldstein is the executive director of The Lawfare Project, which provides pro bono legal services to protect the civil and human rights of the Jewish people worldwide. She is also author of “End Jew Hatred: A Manual for Mobilization.” This article was published by the author on Twitter, Sept. 27, 2023.