The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday convened for a case against a law that defines the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people, marking the beginning of a landmark challenge against legislation that opponents say discriminates against minorities.
The Supreme Court convened to rule on the law’s legitimacy, the first time it has discussed striking down a Basic Law. Israel’s fourteen Basic Laws have constitutional status in the Israeli legal system and no Basic Law has ever been struck down.
Critics say the law further downgrades the status of Israel’s Arab minority, which makes up around 20% of the country’s population. Proponents claim the legislation merely enshrined Israel’s existing Jewish character into law.
The 15 petitions filed by Arab rights groups and other civil society organizations seek to have the country’s Supreme Court strike down the law. The petitions pose a major challenge to the 2018 law and are being heard by a panel of 11 justices, the court’s largest possible configuration.
Activists from the Zionist NGO Im Tirtzu protested outside the Supreme Court as the court convened, displaying a sign of the judges wearing Islamic headgear next to boxes of bananas, as they chanted that Israel is not a banana republic of the Supreme Court.
Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin (Likud) sent a letter to Supreme Court President Justice Esther Hayut on Tuesday, stating that a Supreme Court ruling on the Nation-State Law will not be legally binding since the “Supreme Court derives its authority from the Knesset and not the reverse.”
“The very fact that a hearing is taking place in the Supreme Court on matters of Basic Laws is a contravention of the most basic democratic principles of the sovereign power of the people and the separation between powers,” Levin wrote.
Levin continued by stating that any decision reached by the Court “in the workings of the Knesset will lack all authority and all validity. This is an attempt to impose the worldview of the Supreme Court justices as if they were the ones running the country.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)
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3 Responses
Israel is a Zionist State, not a Jewish State.
The Zionists and their State, Israel, do not represent Jews, only Zionist citizens of their State.
Regardless, Israel is, of course, a dysfunctional banana republic, and the modern Sedom, too, as is plain to all.
I am a member of the Jewish people but my Nation State is the United States of America.
Hakatan – The State of Israel sees itself as the Jewish State and the vast, overwhelming majority of Am Yisrael, both in Israel and throughout the world, agree. Yes, there are some small, sad, bitter, fringe groups of Jews who exclude themselves from the klal and who want nothing to do with the State of Israel. But they certainly don’t get to decide for Am Yisrael (or for the State of Israel) that the State of Israel is not the Jewish State.