Opinion: Israel’s Supreme Court cruel to the kind in politically charged decision

Israel’s Supreme Court appears to be on a mission to erase any doubts within the Israeli public that it has been corrupted by politics.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

In less than three weeks, Israel’s Supreme Court went from bleeding hearts to hard-hearted. After refusing to destroy the home of a confessed Arab terrorist, the High Court ruled on the destruction of 56 homes of innocent, law-abiding Jews.

Israel’s Supreme Court appears to be on a mission to erase any doubts within the Israeli public that it has been corrupted by politics. Not being lawyers, we won’t parse the rulings in too great detail, partly because it’s not necessary. The contrast is so stark.

In the first case, the court ruled that the home of a terrorist should not be destroyed (a punitive measure adopted by the IDF) because his wife and eight children live there and had nothing to do with the crime. In June, the terrorist had dropped a rock from a height, killing an IDF soldier.

Justice Manni Mazuz wrote, “The serious harm done to innocent family members cannot be ignored — those to whom no involvement in the attack is attributed.” Justice George Kara agreed: “Justice will come to the attacker when he gets his punishment. But the consequences of his actions should not be cast on those who have not sinned.”

Jump ahead, and in under two and a half weeks, the court is arguing that 56 Jewish homes in Mitzpe Kramim, a Jewish settlement in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, have got to go.

One would have expected, if consistency has any part in justice, to hear from the court that “the serious harm done to innocent family members cannot be ignored – those to whom no involvement in the decision to move there is attributed.” And, “the consequences of the actions should not be cast on those who have not sinned.”

Instead, the justices, in this case Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut and Deputy Chief Justice Hanan Melcer, appeared to go out of their way to find the justification to destroy those homes. First, they overturned a Jerusalem District Court ruling allowing them to stay. Then they decided they knew what was in the heart of some unnamed clerk in 1999 – the year the Jews were allowed to move there – who allegedly made the decision with malice aforethought and purposefully ignored the evidence, not that there appeared to have been any hard evidence, that the ownership of the land was in question.

The justices needed to attribute nefarious purposes to someone. Israel has adopted an old Jordanian law in Judea and Samaria that has a “good faith” clause. In other words, if there’s an irregularity in property ownership, as long as the deal was made in “good faith,” with no intention to harm, the situation stands. The Jews who moved to Mitzpe Kramim certainly did it in good faith. The government told them to go there. They figured the government had the right to the land.

If malice lies anywhere, it’s with the judges, who are suddenly Detective Columbos, rummaging through old maps, reading into peoples’ minds and their intentions 20 years ago and spinning out whodunits all so they can smash a Jewish settlement. No appeal to humanity here. No call for mercy on the innocent. That’s reserved for terrorists’ homes.

The court has offered a concrete example of the old Jewish adage: “He who is kind to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the kind.”

Israeli Justice SystemIsraeli Supreme CourtSettlements