Print
PDF FormatBut the critics of the Haredi demonstration did not stop there. A number of prominent public figures and institutions went beyond criticizing the demonstration, and actively worked to secure its cancellation. The Israel Democracy Institute, for instance, took out huge newspaper advertisements proclaiming that Israel was on “the verge of the abyss” and “at the threshold of losing all restraint,” and calling on the organizers of the demonstration to cancel it immediately.23 State Prosecutor Edna Arbel, while refraining from direct efforts to stop the demonstration, stated publicly that she “very much hoped the Haredi demonstration would be canceled,” since “the courts and the judges must remain outside of any public debate.”24 But it wasPresident Ezer Weizman who took the lead. Persuaded that the demonstration would “lead to bloodshed,” he engaged in a frantic round of shuttle diplomacy in an effort to get it called off.25 In doing so, he not only used the considerable prestige of his office to pressure the Haredim to refrain from exercising their right of free expression; he also implicitly libeled the Haredi community, the clear import of Weizman’s words being that they could not be trusted to assemble and conduct themselves peacefully.
Numerous other politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Yitzhak Levy, also appealed to Haredi leaders to cancel the demonstration, claiming that a public disagreement of this sort would be bad for national unity. Inherent in their position was the belief that national solidarity could not survive the public airing of differences. Levy expressed this view clearly in explaining why he had not gone to either rally: “If I had participated in a demonstration, it would be hard for me to stand before students and speak in favor of dialogue and unity.”26 This is a bizarre argument even taken at face value, since dialogue is impossible without first recognizing that differences of opinion exist. Trying to sweep one side’s grievances under the rug by preventing it from demonstrating is one of the most effective means conceivable of preventing dialogue. Yet even more worrisome is the fact that such a concept of unity—in which differences of opinion are suppressed to create the appearance of consensus—is generally associated with authoritarian regimes. In democracies, the norm is usually to encourage peaceful disagreement, and to view it as a sign of society’s health.
A novel justification for calling off the demonstrations also came from the two ex-generals who occupy the top positions in the newly formed Center Party. They argued that both the Haredi demonstration and the pro-court counter-demonstration should be canceled, since holding them would be counterproductive to democratic governance. The party’s prime ministerial candidate, former Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, complained that “these demonstrations should have been prevented, since this method will not get us anywhere.”27 His running mate, former IDF Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, declared: “Against any demonstration, a counter-demonstration will be organized. Therefore, it is impossible to run the country by demonstrations.”28 Such an argument, if taken seriously, would also eliminate Knesset debates, courtroom hearings and most other forms of public discourse—in which one side’s attempt to persuade usually is met by the other side’s parry.
The calls to cancel the Haredi demonstration failed to achieve their aim but nonetheless succeeded in having a chilling effect on the participants’ freedom of expression, creating a climate in which the organizers felt compelled to accept limitations. Prime Minister Netanyahu extracted a promise that there would be neither speeches nor signs, but only prayer, at the anti-Barak demonstration.29 Indeed, the only exception the organizers permitted to the no-speeches commitment was the reading of a summary declaration at the end of the demonstration, calling for an end to incitement against the Haredim and appealing to the court to stop intervening in religious affairs.30
No similar attempt was made to limit the 50,000-strong counter-rally in Sacher Park, held in support of the Supreme Court’s rulings. The counter-demonstration in fact featured highly charged speeches by many public figures.31 This double standard was even given legal expression, as Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein and Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander decided that civil servants could not legally participate in the Haredi demonstration, because it was “political,” but could participate in the counter-demonstration—despite the fact that it, too, was co-sponsored by a political party, and even featured speeches by politicians.32 Only after the organizers of the Haredi demonstration pledged to avoid speeches—and renamed the event as a rally for “the strengthening of Judaism”—did Rubinstein agree to permit civil servants to attend that one as well.33
The key institutions of civil society also adopted this double standard. The country’s major universities, which should have taken the lead in inculcating the value of free thought and dissent, instead chose to take sides and demand that their students and faculty follow the administration’s lead. Both Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University shut down classes the afternoon of the demonstrations, stating explicitly that the closure was meant to enable everyone to attend the counter-demonstration. The justification for this decision, as explained by Hebrew University’s leadership in a statement to the press, was that “the attacks on the judicial system threaten the basic democratic life of academic work, research and teaching.”34 Bar-Ilan University sponsored its own on-campus demonstration against the Haredi rally, and senior administration officials lectured the students that the criticism of the court “had crossed all red lines.”35
The national press, too, abandoned any pretense of objectivity. The major media routinely referred to the counter-demonstration as being “pro-democracy” or “defending democracy”—the latter being the term that Meretz used in its advertisements—with the clear implication that the Haredi demonstration was anti-democratic. By no means atypical was a news story in Ma’ariv, which described the counter-demonstration as “an impressive and powerful demonstration of unity on the part of secular and moderate-religious Israelis around the fundamental principles of democracy, the rule of law and defense of the Supreme Court and the judicial system.”36 Ha’aretz’s account referred to “the mass rally of the democratic camp.”37 The bias in these accounts is especially transparent given that organizers of both demonstrations claimed to be defending democracy—the main claim of the Haredim being that the court, by substituting its judgment for that of the people’s elected representatives, had been acting anti-democratically. Similarly, different criteria were used by media commentators in judging the rhetoric of the two sides. No one suggested, for example, that Meretz leader Yossi Sarid might be guilty of incitement for reportedly shouting “The Haredim understand only force!” to 50,000 people at the counter-demonstration.38 Likewise, little stir was created by posters at that rally depicting Shas spiritual leader R. Ovadia Yosef side by side with a picture of the Ayatollah Khomeini—a man responsible for murdering thousands of his own citizens—over the challenge: “Find the differences.”39
The message of the double standard transmitted by the legal establishment, the universities and the media alike is an extremely worrying one. The implication is that demonstrations—a tool meant to enable a minority to express the fact that it is suffering what it perceives as an injustice at the hands of the government—should be reserved for use only in causes favored by the majority. This is frighteningly close to the totalitarian view that demonstrations are permitted only for causes favored by the government—and it is far more dangerous to democracy than a peaceful demonstration on any subject could ever be.
But the assault on the Haredi demonstration did not stop even with the efforts to deprive the Haredim of the right to peaceful protest. Some public figures went even further, demanding that the Haredim be deprived of other basic rights because of their attacks on judicial activism.40 Uriel Procaccia, dean of the Hebrew University Law School, demanded that all state funding for Haredi institutions be canceled as a direct response to the demonstration and the accompanying verbal attacks on the court: “They have cut themselves off from the basic contract of Israeli society, so we should not give one cent to their institutions. Perhaps in this way, they can be brought to rethink their stance.”41 Sefi Rachlevsky, author of the anti-religious bestseller The Messiah’s Donkey, was given a platform in the national daily Ma’ariv for his demand that the government “dismantle the independent [Haredi] school systems.”42 The most chilling proposal, however, was offered by Ha’aretz columnist Zvi Bar’el. The Haredim, he wrote, want to create “a different democracy, one in which an enlightened majority permits a Dark Ages minority to rule,” and therefore a strong response was necessary:
In this situation, we might do worse than to adopt the democratic principles of a close friend: Turkey. The Turkish constitution prohibits all activity liable to harm national unity…. The state has identified two dangers to democracy: The Kurdish minority and the religious extremists. It is against them that the national unity article in the constitution is invoked. Religious parties may operate within a political cage with very clear bars. In contrast to Israel, where drafting Haredim has become the mantra of the secular population, the Turkish army throws out soldiers and officers who display overtly religious inclinations. In Turkey the religious groups and their supporters constitute about 30 percent of the population—a large minority that accepts the situation. In Israel, a tail of 20 percent is wagging the dog. Turkey is an Islamic state, but the permitted dosage of Islam is determined by the administration.43
What Bar’el is proposing, in essence, is that Israel retaliate against the Haredim the way that Turkey—a democracy in name only—treats its religious citizens: By stripping them of their fundamental religious freedoms. One of the hallmarks of democracy is its ability to tolerate disagreement. Meeting dissent with demands that the dissenters be deprived of basic human rights—and it is hard to imagine a more basic right than the right to practice one’s religion without the “dosage” being “determined by the administration”—is, again, a far greater threat to democracy than any peaceful demonstration could be.
