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The Override Law

November 18, 2022 By Bella Davidov Leave a Comment

God’s kingdom is not a democracy. He is the Supreme Judge and we must abide by His rules and law. We affirm, “the world is filled with His glory.” We appropriate the concept of His divine sovereignty. Until Lord Yeshua returns and establishes His Kingdom on earth, ungodly dictatorships rule many nations. Although there are democracies elected by the people, these are also ungodly, but at least they are not dictatorships.

In a democracy, there must be a separation of powers, in which the essential tasks of governance are divided among the three branches of government in accordance with the perceived strengths of each.

  1. The coalition: the Legislative branch, which in almost every democracy is the main, most important power. It is first because it is elected by the people, and represents most of the people.
  2. The second is the Executive branch, ensuring the state is doing what it legislated. This is equally important.
  3. The third ruling power is the Judicial branch, which is appointed (not elected) to oversee that the government acts according to the law it legislated.

In every democracy, the Judicial branch is independent of the other branches. They cannot force the judges in their rulings.

According to Israel’s state law, only the law is above any judge. The Judicial branch is the lesser of the three branches since it is not elected by the people. Its authority is not from the people, who are sovereign in a democracy. This was the condition of the ruling powers in Israel until the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s.

Early in the 80s, a gradual change in the balance of powers occurred when the Judicial branch slowly became the most important branch imposing its power on the other two branches.

How did it happen?

In all democracies, the Judicial branch is the third in power. Even when it supervises the actions of the government according to its authority, it is limited in the scope of supervision it allows itself over the Executive branch, and especially the Legislative branch, which in Israel is the Knesset. The Judicial branch must restrain itself as the law permits since it is not an elected body. Judicial doctrines were developed to give substance to that restraint.

Judicial Restraints Removed

The first doctrine is the separation between the elected government, the ruling power, from the appointed Judicial branch.

This separation discourages courts from intervening in political questions best left to more representative branches of government. The Supreme Court’s role is to safeguard the rule of law and protect individual rights, ensuring that government action violates no explicit law while reviewing the activities of the Executive and Legislative branches. The Judicial branch has no right to abolish government laws or make up new laws that were not voted on and approved by the government. However, such is the case now in Israel wherein exists a sort of Supreme Court dictatorship.

In recent years, the State of Israel has undergone a constitutional revolution, especially with the 1992 passage of the Basic Law: ‘Human Dignity and Liberty.’ This law has only 6 conditions, not including freedom of speech or the right for the Supreme Court to abolish or add laws.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court gave itself rights and the power to abolish Knesset legislation that in the Supreme Court’s opinion violates normative human rights guarantees.

The result is that today virtually every controversy in Israeli public life ends up, sooner or later, in a courtroom.

Justice Aharon Barak

The Supreme Court’s unprecedented power to shape the ideological debate in Israel started and is now dependent on Aharon Barak’s judicial worldview, which is mainly left-wing progressive liberal, with the excuse that the views serve the values of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state.

Aharon Barak – photo from Wiki

A brilliant and accomplished lawyer and judge, Aharon Barak was Attorney-General in 1975, and in 1995 became the Supreme Court president, a post he held until he retired in 2006.

Barak’s legal philosophy is that the law always has its say, on everything, and that every human behavior is subject to a legal norm, including politics, by keeping the actions of the government under his view of the law.

However, in a democracy, the court’s capacity to protect the rule of law is limited by the judge’s inherently passive role in politics. No matter how much a government action may offend his sensibilities, a judge can only review a case that comes before him in court, and even then only if the plaintiff has a sufficiently direct interest in the case, and if the issue at hand is of the kind that courts are allowed to adjudicate.

There are principles that limit the power of the judges:

The principle of “standing” dictates that only a party or someone who has suffered an injury to a right or personal interest can be heard (stand before a judge.) This restriction is important for courts to protect themselves from being overwhelmed by what the legal literature calls “unnecessary” litigation cases that do not require a judicial remedy, whose adjudication only distracts the court from properly being used. In other countries, there are laws concerning the principle of standing and the desired scope of limitation. The higher the level of limitations, the less involvement of judges in the ruling of government cases. So, the first thing that Aharon Barak did was to eliminate this requirement for the right of standing from the Israeli Judicial system. Now everyone can petition the Supreme Court in any case and matter, and the government has to be subject to the Judicial branch, meaning his view of the law.

The second principle Aharon Barak canceled was the principle of non-judgment or “justifiability;” determining which issue the court will hear. Because it is the third branch, subject to the other two elected branches, the court should exclude itself from being involved in political matters such as the conduct of foreign affairs best left in the hands of the Executive or Legislative Branches. 

However, now, the Supreme Court can rule in any case and matter presented, without exception, especially in political matters.

Aharon Barak cannot stand the prospect of restricting the Supreme Court, therefore it must intervene even in government, which is an elected legislative power that in a democracy must stay separated from the appointed judiciary power.

Thirdly, Aharon Barak added to the Supreme Court the principle of reasonableness. The Supreme Court decides what is reasonable and what isn’t. Now the Supreme Court can cancel any decision made by the government without exception just because it isn’t reasonable in the judges’ opinion.

Therefore, from now on the name should be: “The Supreme Court of Reasonableness” – the “authority” without authority the Supreme Court gave itself to cancel and add laws.

These are some of the foundations Aharon Barak formed that made the Supreme Court the supreme and only ruler in the State of Israel, not in order to enforce the law, but to make the Supreme Court the ruler of law enforcement, which is contrary to real law enforcement.

The Supreme Court is now the body that decides in any matter, big or small.

Just two examples: 

1. Lately, opposing the office of finances’ opinion, the Supreme Court ordered that loose tobacco be taxed.

2. When Netanyahu was PM last time and legally held several portfolios, the Supreme Court ordered Netanyahu to give up some of them.

To get rid of, not the original Supreme Court, but this Supreme Court dictatorship, there needs to be a Basic Law that will be called, “the law of separation of the ruling powers”, separating the authority of the courts in public law enforcement. This Basic Law will destroy the foundations of the Supreme Court dictatorship formed by Aharon Barak by re-establishing the laws that the Supreme Court abolished without authority. The Supreme Court would be once again the way it is supposed to be.

In recent years, former Supreme Court President Barak and his fellow justices have overruled a number of governmental decisions and actions.

Today any government official in Israel can be brought before the Supreme Court. Indeed, a sizeable number of government moves have already been stopped by the Supreme Court with the excuse of enforcement of the “rule of law.” It has become an ever-expanding empire ruled by judges. As a result, there are serious difficulties for Israel’s democratic political system, and society as a whole. The new government intends to do something about it.

Filed Under: From the Newsletter, Israel, Politics, SideBarStoryWidget-second

August 5-7, 2022: Israel Under Attack

August 22, 2022 By Bella Davidov Leave a Comment

On August 1st, Israel arrested the senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Judea and Samaria; his name is Bassam al-Saadi.

Israel then learned from its intelligence agency that the PIJ in the Gaza Strip was planning a retaliatory terror attack with anti-tank (AT) missiles and snipers against Israeli civilians near the Gaza border.

Thousands of Israeli residents who live near the Gaza Strip border were instructed to stay in their homes and remain close to secure rooms. Social gatherings were canceled and roads and railways were closed for fear of rocket attacks. Two crossings that allow civilians and goods to enter the Gaza Strip were also closed by Israel.

On August 3rd, Khaled al-Batsh, head of the political wing of the PIJ in Gaza said: “We have every right to bomb Israel with our most advanced weapons and make the occupier (meaning Israel) pay a heavy price. We will not settle for [only] attacking around Gaza, but we will bomb the center of the so-called State of Israel.”

The PIJ claims to be the indigenous people of the land of Israel that they call Palestine and aims to continue the “armed struggle” until Israel’s defeat. They do not accept the “Two State Solution,” and refuse to accept the existence of the state of Israel under any conditions. (Click here to read more about the PIJ) 

Operation Breaking Dawn – Surgical Strikes

Thanks to precise intelligence, the Israeli Defense Air Force (IAF) launched a surprise operation named “Operation Breaking Dawn” on the afternoon of August 5th to eliminate the threat against Israeli citizens.

Rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel (Photo: AFP)

In a surgical strike on August 5th, the IAF killed Tayseer Jabari, the PIJ northern Gaza division commanding officer who initiated the AT attack. Al Jabari was staying in a hideout apartment along with his anti-tank missile expert and the PIJ head of observation posts.

These three senior officers who posed a clear and immediate danger of terrorism were eliminated by the surgical strike of the IAF. No other resident of the building was killed or injured.

On August 6th, the PIJ commander of Gaza’s Southern area, Khaled Mansour, was also targeted and killed by an IDF strike.

At the same time, the IAF destroyed PIJ military infrastructure, bombing terrorist posts, manufacturing facilities, tunnels, and weapon stashes.

In response, the PIJ began rocket fire into Israel, beginning with the villages and city closest to the Gaza Strip, called Gaza Envelope, and then to the cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, and around the Tel Aviv area.

The PIJ even attacked the Jerusalem vicinity. The Iron Dome intercepted three rockets while thousands of Jews were permitted to enter the Temple Mount compound for the 9th of Av observance of Tisha B’Av (9th of Av.)

The Israeli army, “Israel Defense Force” (IDF) is the only army that has the word Defense in its name since it repeatedly faces deadly enemies all about, therefore must defend itself constantly to survive.

Hamas and the PIJ have a long history of hiding behind civilians while firing missiles indiscriminately from Gazan residences at Israeli civilians. Hence, they use their civilians as human shields knowing that Israel avoids killing the innocent as much as possible.

To this effect, the IAF practices “roof knocking” which is dropping non-explosive warning shots onto the rooftops of Gaza residential buildings so uninvolved residents can flee before the bombing begins.

Ironically, two hundred PIJ rockets (about 15%) aimed at Israel fell inside the Gaza Strip or into the sea. Sadly for innocent Gazans, one such rocket, fired from within the civilian population, fell short on a home in the center of northern Gaza city, killing 4 children. The Palestinian media immediately blamed Israel, but the Israeli army quickly issued a video providing proof that this was not an Israeli strike.

Throughout that weekend, Israel also arrested 20 Palestinians in the West Bank, 19 of whom were members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

1,175 Missiles from Gaza

After a 3-day barrage consisting of 1,175 missiles fired by the PIJ at Israeli civilians (96% were intercepted by the Iron Dome aerial defense system, thereby no Israeli was killed. Some were injured and there was some property damage.) Egypt brokered a ceasefire that went into effect at 11:30 pm on Sunday, August 7th.

Although Hamas’ military and security capabilities are superior to those of the PIJ, Hamas did not participate in this operation to prevent escalation.

Hamas is still in the process of renewing its capabilities after last year’s war. Hamas did, however, issue some statements in support of the PIJ and encouraged the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, including Israeli Arabs to take part in the resistance.

Yet, even while negotiations were ongoing for a ceasefire, fighting between the two sides continued. The PIJ even increased rocket firing at nearby Israeli residents, and Israel continued aerial strikes at PIJ targets.

On August 7th at 23:30, The PIJ announced a ceasefire. Within 10 minutes, Israel agreed and stopped the attacks, while PIJ continued firing rockets. Israel did not retaliate. Currently, the ceasefire is holding without violations from either side.

Demands and Threats

On its website, on August 8th, 2022, the PIJ announced that it reserved the right to respond to every act of “Zionist aggression.” The PIJ claims that the ceasefire is conditional upon Israel releasing prisoners from Israeli jails soon and that Egypt guarantees this claim.

Additionally, according to the PIJ, a certain prisoner on a hunger strike was to be released to a hospital on August 8th, 2022, and from there sent home. Egypt requested the date be left open, and they agreed.

The PIJ announced that it considers the ceasefire agreement as null and void and will renew attacks should “The Enemy” –Israel – not meet their demands.

According to Israel, the release of prisoners was not part of the agreement.

Restrictions Lifted

Since the implementation of the ceasefire, all security restrictions on Israeli residents in the Gaza Envelope have been lifted and roads have been reopened.

The Gaza crossings have reopened, resuming the entry of goods to Gaza and the exit of about 14,000 Gazans who hold permits to work in Israel.

For now, life in Israel is back to “normal.” 
The question is, “How long?”

Please pray …

Filed Under: AntiSemitism, Conflict, From the Newsletter, SideBarStoryWidget-second Tagged With: antisemitism, Attacks, Palestinians, Terrorism

Judea & Samaria – Known as the West Bank

February 28, 2020 By Bella Davidov 1 Comment

Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
Welcome to Judea and Samaria (from Bella’s recent trip.)

Moses led the Hebrew nation out of Egypt about 1,300 BC. Muhammad originated Islam about 600 AD, about 1,900 years later. The offspring of Jacob, the Jews, predate the Muslims everywhere in the Middle East. The land of Judea was the Jewish nation before the Roman occupiers expelled and killed a large portion of the population during the Jewish wars of the first century and renamed it Palestina in an effort to blot out every connection of the Jewish people to the land. Palestina was the name of the small part of the land that was occupied by the Philistines along the southern coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. [Read more in the article: “The Origin of Palestine”.]

Judea and Samaria.

Before the Muslim conquest in the 7th century CE, the land was occupied by both Christians and Jews. The population remained essentially unchanged from the days of the Byzantine occupation (324 CE – 640 CE), and the majority of the population consisted of Greek Orthodox Christians and two minorities – Jews and Samaritans. The number of Arabs settled in Palestine was negligible. Most of the Arabs who now declare themselves Palestinians immigrated to the area between the 19th and 20th centuries, during the Ottoman rule (1516 – 1918) and the British Mandate period (1918 –1948).

Proof that Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people are cities that the Oslo Accord gave to the Palestinians –Jericho, conquered by Joshua; Hebron, where Abraham bought the burial place for his wife Sarah and where Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Rebecca, and Leah are buried; Bethlehem – where Rachel is buried nearby and where Yeshua (Jesus) was born to Jewish parents; East Jerusalem with the Temple Mount, the City of David, and Golgotha, where Jesus the Jewish Messiah died, was buried and was resurrected.

There has never ever been a Palestinian state nor a political entity that belonged to the self-proclaimed Palestinians. Through all the international agreements from 1917 until 1947, the land designated Palestine was divided into three entities: Jordan, east of the Jordan River, and the suggested Jewish and Arab future states to be shared in the land west of the Jordan River. While the Jews reluctantly accepted this painful partition as better than nothing, an area much smaller than originally allocated to the Jewish state, the Arabs refused anything less than everything and launched a war of aggression against the new Jewish state of Israel in 1948. As a result of Israel’s victory, it gained additional land but was unable to hold Judea and Samaria or East Jerusalem which fell to the Jordanians who immediately occupied and annexed the areas, a violation of international law. At the same time, the Jordanians expelled Jews from their homes in East Jerusalem creating Jewish refugees.

During the Jordanian rule of Judea and Samaria, Arabs who were kept in refugee camps never claimed to establish a Palestinian state in that area. Rather, they adamantly refused to share the land with the Jews–land they previously refused and consequently lost in the 1948 war. Until today, the Arabs who now call themselves Palestinians want to replace the land of Israel with what they still call Palestine. [See the article “The Origin of Palestine”.] In the1949 cease-fire, the Arabs refused to accept Israel’s victory and claimed that the borders drawn had no legal significance.

What is the Legal Status of Judea and Samaria

As of 1967, the territory legally belonged to no one, since the annexation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan was considered illegal. The British vacated in 1948 at the end of their mandate whereupon the War of Independence began. In 1949 at the end of the war, armistice boundary lines were drawn up but the Arabs refused to recognize them, insisting that the boundaries had no legal significance.

Therefore, according to international law, the land cannot be considered “occupied” but is considered “Disputed Territories”, a term used when there are territorial disputes.

In 1964 Arabs in those areas formed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (the PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, in order to reclaim Israel as their land of “Palestine.” It had nothing to do with the territory of the West Bank. They only began demanding rights to the West Bank once it too was in Israeli hands.

UNSC Resolution 242 doesn’t call for a complete and total withdrawal from ‘ALL captured territories’ nor does it call for a unilateral withdrawal only on the Israeli side, but just calls for a withdrawal from ‘captured territories’. The language of the resolution states that withdrawal must be made towards ‘Secure and Recognized Boundaries’ or defensible borders. Judea and Samaria is a special case because it was never part of a Palestinian state. Israel, Judea and Samaria and Gaza were all part of British-ruled Palestine, and Britain previously promised a national home for the Jewish people in the area, without specifying boundaries. On that basis, Israel maintains it has the right to extend sovereignty over the territories with a simple Cabinet vote, a position backed by the Trump administration.

However, most of the international community refuses to accept these facts and insists on referring to annexed east Jerusalem and the so-called West Bank as “occupied territory” because, they claim, the area was seized in war.

Israel insists that the Palestinian’s demand for Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 boundaries is absolutely not secure and safe borders. For years, Palestinian propaganda has claimed falsely that Israel is occupying their land, resulting in a new generation that does not know the facts of history. They believe the Palestinians are being ruled by Israel which has taken land that rightfully belongs to them.

According to all agreements with the Palestinians, beginning with the Oslo Accords of 1993, a permanent status solution of Judea and Samaria should be determined solely through negotiations, which have never taken place. According to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, Israel has agreed to give parts of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, but only in return for recognition as a Jewish state and guaranteed security, which has also never occurred.

Previous Prime Ministers of Israel, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert agreed to negotiate the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in Gaza and in parts of Judea and Samaria. They offered both Arafat and Abbas respectively almost all of Judea and Samaria in exchange for real peace and security and mutual recognition.

Not only did the Palestinians refuse Barak’s peace offer to Arafat in the 2000 Camp David talks, but they began massive terror attacks as well as a campaign war of political propaganda to delegitimize Israel. In 2007, the propaganda intensified after Abbas refused another peace offer from Olmert’s offer in Annapolis.

  • Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
    Judea and Samaria.
  • More Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
    Judea and Samaria.
  • More Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
    Judea and Samaria.
  • More Views of Judea and Samaria from Bella's recent trip.
    Views neighborhoods of Judea and Samaria.
Judea and Samaria. The Biblical Heartland of Israel.

Filed Under: History, Politics, SideBarStoryWidget-second Tagged With: History, Judea and Samaria, West Bank

Out of the Ashes

January 23, 2020 By Bella Davidov Leave a Comment

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when this city will be rebuilt for Me…The whole valley where dead bodies and ashes are thrown, and all the terraces out to the Kidron Valley (near Jerusalem) on the east as far as the corner of the Horse Gate, will be holy to the Lord. The city will never again be uprooted or demolished.” 

 In many prophecies, the Lord God of Israel has promised to bring back His people, the Jewish people, from the diaspora back to the Land of Promise.

For 2000 years, the Jews were scattered around the world, at the mercy of the nations, hated, despised and persecuted. Their homeland, the Land of Israel, was devastated and overtaken by strangers. During the Holocaust in WWII, the German Nazis finally came up with the plan of their “Final Solution” to annihilate all the Jews. They were gathered from every European country into concentration camps to be murdered in gas showers and then cremated in gas. They were shot and tortured in ghettos. Six million Jews were murdered in the worst racial genocide the world has ever known. But out of the ashes of the dead bodies, the Jewish nation and the land of Israel was reborn.

Today, seventy-two years later, Israel is considered a miracle that could only have happened by the hand of God according to His prophecies in the Bible.

The Royalty, Presidents, Dignitaries who came to the Fifth Forum in Jerusalem this week.

“Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children.” (Isaiah 66:8)

Most of the surviving, Jewish remnant was on the brink of starvation and Gentiles possessed their homes. Most were homeless and penniless. They were gathered by the Jewish Agency into refugee camps, waiting and hoping that Israel, which was changed to Palestine, would once again be the Land of the Jews.

For centuries the Jews were victims of pogroms, blood libels, forced conversions, expulsions and other forms of religious persecution. A small remnant, the holocaust survivors, reached the lowest point of human dignity.

The prophet Ezekiel prophesied of a time when the people of Israel would say: “Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!” Yet God assured them that He would “cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.” (Ezekiel 37:11-12)

In May 1948, just three years after the end of the Holocaust, the Jewish people rose from the ashes, and in one day a nation was born – the Nation of Israel. The resurrection power of God did this miracle.

God promised He would fight for His people Israel, and He did. When Israel’s leader David Ben-Gurion declared independence on May 14, 1948, the Jewish state was immediately attacked by five neighboring Arab armies. These large trained armies were well-armed, while the new nation of Israel hardly had an army or weapons. Frail Holocaust survivors arriving in Israel by sea were given guns upon stepping down from the ships without even shoes on their feet. Arab leaders who had vowed to “drive the Jews into the sea” were sure they would win, but against all odds, Israel won.

Jews are the only people who were uprooted from their homeland, scattered among the nations, speaking their languages, and then after two thousand years have returned to that same land to re-establish their national sovereignty while reviving their ancient language. Yet, anyone who reads the Bible can see it was foretold in His word. One prophecy that repeats itself more than any other, by nearly all the prophets in the Bible, is God promising to gather His people Israel from all the corners of the world and bring them back to the Land of Israel as He promised their forefathers.

The Jewish people clung to God’s Word and promises in the Bible, which kept them together as a people even in all those nations where they were scattered. They never lost hope that one day God will fulfill His promises and they will come back to the Promised Land. In their prayers they said confidently: “Next year in Jerusalem!”

God’s ultimate purpose for the ingathering of Israel to the Land physically is Israel’s ingathering to Himself spiritually. His love for Israel is everlasting: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. 4 I will build you up again, and you, Virgin Israel, will be rebuilt.” Jeremiah 31:3-4

God is faithful to His Word both physically and spiritually. His faithfulness to His people Israel is expressed by Paul the apostle in Roman 11:15, when he writes about Israel (the Jewish people) who temporarily were “set aside” after rejecting the Gospel, which led to many gentiles coming to God. “what will their acceptance be? life the dead.”  Roman 11:15  “and so all Israel shall be saved.”  Roman 11:26

Filed Under: AntiSemitism, History, Our People, SideBarStoryWidget-second Tagged With: Anti-Semitism, History

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Protest Demonstrations in Israel

Unrest in Israel

The battle rages in Israel between the left that lost the elections and the new right-wing government. Thousands of Israelis took to the streets last Saturday evening to protest plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government whose opponents say threaten democracy and freedoms. The protesters gathered in the central city of Tel Aviv days […]

The Override Law

November 18, 2022

God’s kingdom is not a democracy. He is the Supreme Judge and we must abide by His rules and law. We affirm, "the world is filled with His glory." We … [Read More...] about The Override Law

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