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A Real

Human Rights,

Civil Rights,

and Legal Aid Society

"by HASHKEM Your New Jewish Agency"

We say a real HUMAN RIGHTS, CIVIL LIBERTIES AND LEGAL AID SOCIETY because Israel does not have a real one. All of the existing ones use the notion of human rights as a political weapon but are not really interested in human rights at all. They are interested in selective enforcement of the law for political ends. There is one exception, but it operates with volunteer lawyers and does as much as volunteer lawyers can do in Israel. They give free advice to people who are arrested or harassed but do not have the staying power to see a case through without the lawyers getting paid.

We want to see to it, for example, that laws that are enforced against one sector of the society are also enforced against the others. In Israel, like in Europe, we speak of "rule of law". In America, the issue is called "equal protection of the laws". Avigdor Lieberman was in police interrogation inside of 4 hours for insulting the police. In glaring contrast, as Lieberman pointed out, Yeshayahu Leibovitz was selected for the Israel Prize after calling them and the army "Judeo Nazis" for occupying the Palestinians. The Israeli Supreme Court has had opportunities to rule that selective enforcement nullifies a law; that a law that is openly and notoriously violated by one sector of the society and not enforced against them cannot be enforced against anyone. The court has consistently refused to accept the doctrine. The result is that laws are ignored for some and enforced on others for political reasons.

The fundamental notion behind law of human rights and civil liberties is quite simple: what the government does to “them” today, it will do to us tomorrow. (The category “Us” includes you.) In all criminal cases, the state has the burden of proving two things, not one. It must prove the guilt of the accused, of course. It must also prove the innocence of the criminal justice system. This burden is also born by the court. That is the reason trials are open to the public and the press. That is the reason the Supreme Court of the USA has required that the accused be informed of his rights at the time of arrest and that the accused be represented by competent counsel, even during interrogation. That is the reason that that the US Supreme Court has excluded evidence obtained illegally by the police from use in court. Nothing resembling the Inquisition can credibly declare the guilt of the accused. The system must be seen to be innocent. And yet, even with all those protections, the case of Jonathan Pollard stands as one blaring proof (and there are many more) that the system in America is not always innocent. All those protections do not exist in Israel. It was not the English Common Law that Israel inherited but British martial law and not only martial law but martial law in a state of emergency.

There should be no illusion that we can really win a general, global victory in the courts of law, self-perpetuating bastion that they are of extreme “post-Zionist” ideology. It is only a holding action in which one can nevertheless win in specific issues and, beyond that, the system can provide a forum for fighting the case in the "court of public opinion" through allied media relations organizations.

The most important function for such an organization is that it serve as a legal defense fund, to defend the people who will be charged with serious crimes for standing up to the system. One need mention only Moshe Feiglin and Shmuel Sacket of "Zo Artzeinu", who were sentenced to prison for blocking traffic in protest demonstrations. The court called it sedition, no less, because the goal was to bring the government down (not to overthrow the system: just to bring down the ruling coalition.) When the same thing was done by the Histadrut, acting as a “labor union”, or by the farmers of the Jordan Valley or by university students (whose leaders later turned up as Barak campaign organizers on campus), for the purpose of bringing down the Likud-led government, it was called “civil disobedience” and was subject to negotiation in the settlement of the strike.

Now we have the psychopath squads which were unleashed to brutalize unarmed and unresisting protesters at Amona and to savage demonstrators elsewhere and then complain that they were attacked by the demonstrators and this is upheld by the courts. We have 14-year-old girls held in prison pending completion of trial over the objection of the prosecution because it is illegal and the judge then berating the girl’s father for not honoring the “sanctity of the law.” We have courts decreeing draconian sentences because the crime is “ideological.” Can there be an “ideological crime” in a democracy?

Abuse of power is rampant in the criminal justice system. Criminal investigations and the attendant threat to the person’s freedom can go on endlessly. The prosecution has no time limit to either prosecute or close the file. [Read "President Katsav in the Dock"]. The Attorney General and the State Prosecutor have arrogated to themselves the power to veto appointments to the cabinet and to control decisions and policy or force the resignation of sitting officials by means of criminal investigations, frivolous indictments and character assassination. There is no grand jury to judge whether the prosecution has a case worthy of presentation at trial. There is no trial by jury. There is no court stenographer who records every word spoken at trial. What happened at trial is what the judge writes in the protocol. The judge is the judge, the jury and the creator of the trial record.

Forcing people to defend themselves in court without clear justification is oppressive because most citizens cannot bear the cost of the defense of their basic rights on their own. Most of us are priced out of the legal system. That makes it possible for the rich and powerful (which, in Israel, means the Socialists) and especially the government to turn the legal system into an instrument of oppression and they do, without compunction. They are the ones who claim, sanctimoniously, to be the advocates of democracy and the rule of law but surely this is the ultimate perversion of both. The courts are fully aware and do nothing to prevent it or to remedy the situation. Likewise the Knesset. A legal aid society is therefore most essential, to extend the rule of law to ordinary citizens.

Something exists in Israel, which has the title “legal aid” but is not worthy of mention. Besides, it bears mentioning again and emphasizing that we must not depend on someone else to do the job, certainly not the government.

The importance of such an organization should be apparent to anyone who remembers the repression that was used by the Rabin-Peres government, replete with manipulation of the media, disinformation, use of agents provocateurs, arbitrary arrest and detention without charges, police brutality, show trials on trumped-up charges supported by police perjury, politicization of the police and the army, and public calumnies and incitement by members of the government against sectors of the population which opposed government policy. The same segments of the population who perpetrated that repressive period now want a constitution to protect the prerogatives of a legal system and Supreme Court dominated by “post-Zionists,” all in the name of “rule of law,” of course. It is important to have another organization, with the power to insist on a different image of the role of the government and the courts.