Going wrong on rights

Thanksgiving is the secular Sukkot, as I have often noted here.

I mention it now only because it is the first of the many “gifts” Judaism gave to America — another subject I often write about, usually around July 4th, and whenever someone of consequence trumpets the “America was founded on Christian values” canard.

All the ideals we and our fellow Americans cherish began as Jewish ones. Freedom of speech, trial by a jury of one’s peers, the prohibition against self-incrimination (the Torah’s version makes all confessions inadmissible), equal justice under the law for all, regardless of anything, period, including social status — these are all Torah values.

Israel, being the Jewish state, obviously had no choice but to be founded on those values and many others. Tragically, however, its current government has begun to cast those values aside, to the great detriment of its own citizens. Much too often of late, this government has resorted to police intimidation in order to deny its own people their basic freedoms.

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Benjamin Netanyahu must bear the blame for that. Even as he proclaims, as he did last week in another context, that Israel is “a state that acts according to the law,” he allows these abuses to continue

Raising the alarm — either in words or deeds, or both — are people who have been loyal to Netanyahu through thick and thin over many decades.

Two individuals stand out in that crowd. The first is someone whose criticism is voiced by his silence. The other is a man of conscience who would not be swayed.

The silent critic is Ron Dermer, who was perhaps “the most consequential U.S. immigrant on the political scene since Golda Meir” and “one of Israel’s most influential figures over the last 15 years,” as the Jerusalem Post put it. Until earlier this month, Dermer was Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister.

Actually, he was more than that. Dermer grew up in a political home. Both his father and his brother served as mayors of Miami Beach. This was one of the things that made Dermer so important to Netanyahu. In the last two years, especially, Bibi leaned more heavily on Dermer than on anyone else in his inner circle. Dermer delivered every time.

That the two are so close quickly made Dermer’s resignation at such a critical time a matter of acute speculation. That speculation centers on Dermer’s reputation as an uncompromising advocate for democracy and on a single paragraph found in a 2004 book he co-authored with the famed former refusenik Natan Sharansky. It was titled “The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.”

The book quickly reached bestseller lists and was even hailed from the steps of the U.S. Capitol as the whole world tuned in. In his second inaugural address, President George W. Bush called it a “great book” that offered “a glimpse of how I think about foreign policy.” People should read it, he said, because it would “help explain a lot of the decisions” that he, as president, has to make.

The book’s importance can also be seen in the fact that, 21 years later, it remains in print.

A single paragraph, found on page 98, is considered to be the book’s “core concept” because it establishes a simple test by which to judge a government’s commitment to the principles of democracy. Here is that paragraph:

“A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town-square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it’s a fear society.”

Since his resignation, pundits have questioned whether the town-square test was the real reason Dermer resigned at a time when Netanyahu clearly needs him the most. (He insists he resigned because of a promise he made to his wife.) To my knowledge, he was asked at least once whether he still believes in the town-square test, and he said that he does. That answer is being taken as a tacit admission on Dermer’s part that he resigned because he could no longer remain a part of a government whose prime minister is turning Israel from a “free society” into a “fear society.”

That Israel was moving into the “fear” column can be seen in a number of high-profile incidents that have occurred in the last two years.

One such incident occurred at a Hebrew University graduation ceremony held at the beginning of November. Among those in attendance were a civics teacher named Alec Yefremov and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

When Yefremov saw Ben-Gvir, he began shouting epithets at him. He called the minister a “racist,” a fascist, and a “Kahanist,” and he accused him of being responsible for the deaths of both Israelis and Arabs.

What Yefremov did was inexcusable, but it was neither slanderous nor illegal. Ben-Gvir is all of those things. The IDF said so when it refused to allow him to do his compulsory military service when he turned 18. An Israeli court said so in 2007 when it convicted him of racist activities.

Yefremov committed no crime, yet Ben-Gvir ordered his police guard to arrest him. The civics teacher was handcuffed and taken to a local police station, where he was forced to undergo a totally baseless full body search and made to get on his knees while naked. He was humiliated in such ways for four hours, until someone had the brains to release him, since he hadn’t committed any crime. Ben-Gvir, though, had sent a message to all Israel: Freedom of speech is a thing of the past.

Israel’s version of Internal Affairs is now investigating that disgraceful affair.

In another high-profile case, a special ed teacher was arrested and charged with assault because she reproached a cabinet minister on a city street. No assault had been committed, but some reason was needed to arrest her.

On another front, there’s a growing scandal involving police illegally breaking into the phones of anti-Netanyahu political activists and ordinary protesters. The hacking lacks both the required judicial oversight and a legitimate criminal investigation to justify it.

Dermer’s town-square test was not rhetorical. It was meant as a standard by which to judge authoritarian regimes abroad but now casts a shadow over the very democracy he helped represent. By that standard, Israel is failing Dermer’s test. He may not speak out against the government he served — but the doctrine he helped write already has.

The other major alumnus of Netanyahu’s inner circle who has turned into a critic is Avichai Mandelblit. In July, he publicly stated that “Democracy is dying” in Israel under Netanyahu, in this case because of the prime minister’s continuing efforts to undermine the power of the Israeli legal system.

Mandelblit is arguably the most celebrated and most respected military advocate general in IDF history. He and Netanyahu were professional allies for over a decade since they met in 2009. In 2013, after Mandelblit completed his term as the IDF’s top lawyer and earned his Ph.D. in law, Netanyahu appointed him as his cabinet secretary. Three years later, Bibi nominated him to be Israel’s attorney general.

From that point on, their relationship was downhill all the way.

Bibi needed a loyalist, not a lawyer, in the A-G’s post, and he assumed that Mandelblit understood that. What Mandelblit understood, however, was that “Israel must aspire to be a liberal democracy and…the government must defer to the rule of law,” as he told a Tel Aviv University audience in 2020.

Putting loyalty over law is not something Mandelblit would ever do, not even for the prime minister who expected that of him.

From the moment Avichai Mandelblit became attorney general, his commitment to placing the law above loyalty was put to the test. He was quickly confronted with mounting evidence suggesting that Netanyahu and his wife Sara were operating as a two-person criminal enterprise. As someone who had long been considered a Netanyahu loyalist, Mandelblit now faced a stark transformation: he would have to become the prime minister’s most formidable legal opponent.

Not long after, he indicted Sara Netanyahu for misusing public funds. She eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge to avoid jail time. She was heavily fined, however.

Then, six years ago last Friday, on November 21, 2019, Mandelblit, with “a heavy heart, but with a whole heart,” became the first attorney general in Israel’s history to indict a sitting prime minister. Bibi was charged with three counts of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. His trial is currently ongoing.

Since last December, by the way, Sara has been the subject of a criminal investigation into whether she engaged in witness tampering during Bibi’s trial.

We gave Thanksgiving to America. We gave America some of this country’s most precious rights, rights that the Torah gave to us to give to the world by example.

How sad it is, then, that the Jewish state under Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and others is setting an example of a much un-Jewish kind.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.