The Israelis rise as one

Julio Ribeiro

My two-and-a-half-year-old great granddaughter caught a cold and developed a fever on the very evening her parents were to depart for Israel with a group of 100 young entrepreneurs and their respective spouses. Her parents cancelled their trip. Just as well! Two hundred young Indians arrived in Tel Aviv only to be stranded as all Israeli airports shut down the very next day in protest against the right-wing coalition government’s plan to clip the wings of Israel’s judiciary.

Both right-wing and left-wing leaders want pliant judges to support their policies, even unpopular ones. Thinking people will always opt for an independent judiciary.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had just sacked his defence minister for publicly opposing his plan. The country of 9 million souls erupted as one. All life in Israel was brought to a standstill. Even its embassies and consulates abroad went on a strike in response to a call to stop work by the government employees’ union. It was clear to all that the people of Israel did not want a ‘committed’ judiciary. Both right-wing and left-wing leaders want pliant judges to support their policies, even unpopular ones. Thinking people will always opt for an independent judiciary.

The Israeli PM wanted to change the rules so that the executive had the final say in the appointment of judges. Moreover, the PM wanted to bar the judges from examining the laws enacted by Parliament as the judiciary had declared many such laws as ultra vires of the country’s basic law. The people of Israel, or at least a substantial portion of the country’s population, thought otherwise.

The people forced the hands of the ruling coalition. Netanyahu had to ‘postpone’ the proposed legislation. The airports resumed their functions, enabling the 200 Indians to return home, but not before facing harrowing moments of anxiety and uncertainty.

Back home, Kiren Rijiju and his seniors in the ruling party need to ponder. They may say that one should not compare Israel’s population of

9 million to India’s 1.4 billion. Mere mortals know next to nothing about the Almighty’s choices and how they are made, but what they do know is that a functioning democracy must tolerate different views and voices.

Rijiju is a young man. He had done a good job in the ministries that were allotted to him earlier in his career. He was trotting along quite steadily. But suddenly, he decided to gallop. The chance of falling off a horse is greater when galloping.

After picking on the Collegium system of selecting judges for the High Courts and the Supreme Court, Rijiju diverted his attention to a group of retired judges. Their views are obviously anathema to the Minister of Law and Justice. He accused them of trying to replace the Opposition in the space being vacated by it. He reminded them of the might of the law and warned them in clear words that they would not be spared!

What exactly is he going to do to them? Is he going to set the ED, the CBI and the taxmen on them? They were respected judges who were paid fixed salaries deposited directly into their bank accounts. They could not have dodged paying tax! What crime does he plan to accuse them of?

About demolishing the Opposition, if the government wants a Congress-mukt, and now, an Opposition-mukt polity, it should expect the vacuum to be filled by spirited members of the civil society. No vacuum remains unfilled even where extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing governments are in power. Right-wing leader Rodrigo Duterte, who ruled the Philippines until he was ousted by the son of a former dictator, jailed a Nobel Peace Prize winner — journalist Maria Ressa — for speaking truth to power.

Not every country can spontaneously react to injustice in the same way as the Israelis did. Israel’s people are all educated. They think for themselves. A party with a leader who can sway the crowds and a well-oiled propaganda machine which decides what the people should believe or not believe is certainly going to enjoy an advantage in the public space.

The leaders of such a party should remember that debate and dissent are of the essence in a democracy. You cannot boast that India is the ‘Mother of Democracy’ unless there is a credible Opposition in place. Dissenting voices, but bereft of violence in any form, are the sine qua non of a healthy and functioning democracy. Rijiju should stop threatening retired judges and other critics of government policies. He should remember that even the farm laws, which were not basically bad, had to be abandoned because they had not been explained and sold to the intended beneficiaries.

Last week, Rahul Gandhi faced the full brunt of vengeance and hate. He was convicted of criminal defamation for a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ remark about his bête noir, Narendra Modi. Such remarks are often made by politicians during electioneering. No one takes any notice! But in Rahul’s case, a politician in Surat, Gujarat, with the surname Modi, took offence and filed a case of criminal defamation for a remark made in another state.

It was suggested that all Modis were defamed and categorised as thieves. And all Modis were OBCs, which incidentally is not true. The two Modis mentioned by Rahul, along with the PM, are not OBCs by any stretch of the imagination. But clubbing them under the OBC banner is electorally helpful.

Rahul was sentenced to two years in jail, the maximum sentence for such criminal defamation. The next day, the Speaker disqualified his membership of the Lok Sabha and its Secretariat ordered him to vacate the bungalow allotted to him as an MP!

The undue haste in which all these actions were taken against Rahul smacks suspiciously of vengeance and personal dislike of an extreme order. It was obvious that the government was picking on him. Signs of adverse reactions to such vengefulness are presently visible.