industryterm:religious law

Holocaust survivor and Palestinians’ rights lawyer Felicia Langer dies in exile at 87
Felicia Langer fought, first in Israel and then from Germany, for the enforcement of international law from which Israel excepted itself
Haaretz.com - Gideon Levy - Jun 24, 2018 2:42 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-death-of-an-exiled-conscience-1.6200232

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6200253.1529796913!/image/2021773195.JPG_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/2021773195.JPG

I never met her, only called her two or three times in her place of exile, but I well remember what she was for me and most of my generation in our brainwashed youth: a symbol of hatred for Israel, a public enemy, a reviled, outcast traitor. That’s how we were taught to regard her and a few other early dissidents, and we neither questioned nor cared why.

Now, at 87, she has died in exile; her image glows brightly in my eyes through the distance of time and space. Felicia Langer, who died in Germany Thursday, was a hero, a pioneer and a woman of conscience. She and a few of her allies never got the recognition here that they deserved; it’s not clear they ever will.

In a place where “alumni” of a murderous Jewish terror organization are welcomed — one a newspaper editor, another an expert on religious law — and where self-declared racists are accepted as legitimate participants in the arena of public debate as they are nowhere else, there is no room for courageous justice warriors who paid a high personal price for trying to lead a camp that never followed.

Langer was a Holocaust survivor from Poland who studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After the occupation, was the first to open a law office dedicated to defending its Palestinian victims. In this, she followed an illustrious tradition of Jews who fought injustice in South Africa, Latin America, Europe and the United States.

Here, her sense of justice brought her into conflict with her state. Occasionally she even succeeded: In 1979, in the wake of her petition, the High Court of Justice blocked an expulsion order against Nablus Mayor Bassam Shakaa. A year later, the Jewish underground attached a bomb to his car that destroyed his legs, and Israeli justice came to light.

Langer was a pioneer among Israeli lawyers of conscience who came out for the defense of the rights of the occupied population, but she was also the first to throw in the towel, closing her law office in 1990 and going into exile. In a 2012 interview with documentary filmmaker Eran Torbiner, she explained: “I left Israel because I could no longer help the Palestinian victims with the existing legal system and the disregard for international law that was supposed to protect the people whom I was defending. I couldn’t act. I was facing a hopeless situation.” She told The Washington Post she “couldn’t be a fig leaf for this system anymore.”

She said she didn’t switch battlefronts, only her place on the front, but the front is currently at its lowest point. The occupation is entrenched as never before and nearly all of its crimes have been legitimized.

Langer came to the conclusion that things were hopeless. Apparently she was right. The fight in the military courts was doomed to failure. It has no prospect of success because the military courts are only subject to the laws of the occupation and not to the laws of justice. The proceedings involve nothing more than hollow and false legal ritual.

Even the civil legal system, headed by the vaunted High Court of Justice, has never come down on the side of the victims and against the crimes of the occupation. Here and there restraining orders have been issued, here and there actions have been delayed. But in the annals of the occupation, Israel’s Supreme Court will be remembered as the primary legitimizer of the occupation and as an abject collaborator with the military. In such a state of affairs, perhaps there really was nothing for Langer to do here. That is a singularly depressing conclusion.

What did this brave and courageous woman fight against? Against torture by the Shin Bet security service at a time when we didn’t believe that such torture existed, yet it was at the peak of its cruelty. She fought against the expulsion of political activists, against false arrests, against home demolitions. Above all, she fought for the enforcement of international law from which Israel decided to except itself on unbelievable grounds. That’s what she fought and that is why she was considered a public enemy.

In her old age, her grandson told her that ultimately the Palestinians will win and will get a state of their own. “You won’t see it, but I will,” he promised his grandmother. In the end, the grandson will be disappointed, just as his distinguished grandmother was.

Why Jewish leaders rally behind a Palestinian-American Women’s March organizer -

Linda Sarsour makes no secret of her opposition to Israel and support of BDS, the women’s rights activist kept that rhetoric out of the event — to the relief of her Jewish allies.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.767407

NEW YORK — When online attacks against Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour started this week, progressive Jews were among the first people to back her on social media.
“Jews are some of my biggest supporters,” Sarsour told Haaretz in an interview. Sarsour, a born-and-bred Brooklynite whose parents are of Palestinian origin, directs the Arab American Association of New York, an advocacy and social services group, and is considered a rising star in city politics.
She has for several years worked closely with groups on the far-left edge of the Jewish community, like Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. Because Sarsour is an outspoken critic of Israel and backs boycotts, divestment and sanctions, mainstream Jewish groups have long held her at arms’ length.
But that is changing as mainstream players like Rabbi Sharon Brous of Los Angeles’ Ikar and the National Council of Jewish Women work with Sarsour on issues of shared concern, like the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., which attracted hundreds of thousands of participants on January 21. NCJW was one of dozens of partner organizations and helped ensure substantial Jewish involvement.
Sarsour was a Women’s March national co-chair. Early Monday, politically conservative publications and figures began publicly attacking her. Their charge? That she supports Hamas and favors sharia, or Islamic religious law, because she opposes municipalities and states banning it. That, say sources, is a dog-whistle way of suggesting that someone is an ISIS-type extremist, though in many respects sharia parallels halacha, the system of Jewish law.
First out was an article in online Front Page Mag, titled “The Anti-Semite Who Organized the ‘Women’s March on Washington,’ and the half-million lemmings who showed up in ‘solidarity.’” Front Page is part of hard-right conservative David Horowitz’s “Freedom Center School for Political Warfare,” a network that includes anti-Muslim websites “Jihad Watch” and “Truth Revolt.”

Backed by Sanders
That article’s allegations spurred others that quickly circulated online. But it also galvanized others to stand behind Sarsour.

From left: Carmen Perez, Gloria Steinem and Linda Sarsour onstage during the Women’s March on Washington on January 21, 2017Theo Wargo/AFP
Among those tweeting their support for Sarsour are former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders — for whom Sarsour spoke as a surrogate after his final debate with Hillary Clinton — and actor Mark Ruffalo.
So did Brous, who Sarsour invited to speak at the Women’s March in Washington D.C. They have known each other since starting as Senior Fellows at Auburn Seminary, an interfaith institution in New York, in 2015.

#Corruption Is as Bad in the US as in Developing Countries
▻http://billmoyers.com/2015/11/27/corruption-is-just-as-endemic-in-america-as-in-developing-countries

.. ordinary citizens live in fear of venal police forces that suck them dry by charging fees for services, throwing them in jail when they can’t pay arbitrary fines or selling their court “debts” to private companies. Sometimes the police just take people’s life savings leaving them with no recourse whatsoever. Sometimes they steal and deal drugs on the side. Meanwhile, the country’s infrastructure crumbles. Bridges collapse, or take a quarter-century to fix after a natural disaster, or (despite millions spent) turn out not to be fixed at all. Many citizens regard their government at all levels with a weary combination of cynicism and contempt. Fundamentalist groups respond by calling for a return to religious values and the imposition of religious law.

What country is this? Could it be Nigeria or some other kleptocratic developing state? Or post-invasion Afghanistan where Ahmed Wali Karzai, CIA asset and brother of the U.S.-installed president Hamid Karzai, made many millions on the opium trade (which the U.S. was ostensibly trying to suppress), while his brother Mahmoud raked in millions more from the fraud-ridden Bank of Kabul? Or could it be Mexico, where the actions of both the government and drug cartels have created perhaps the world’s first narco-terrorist state?

In fact, everything in this list happened (and much of it is still happening) in the United States, the world leader — or so we like to think — in clean government. These days, however, according to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International (TI), our country comes in only 17th in the least-corrupt sweepstakes, trailing European and Scandinavian countries as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In fact, TI considers us on a par with Caribbean island nations like Barbados and the Bahamas. In the U.S., TI says, “from fraud and embezzlement charges to the failure to uphold ethical standards, there are multiple cases of corruption at the federal, state and local level.”

And here’s a reasonable bet: it’s not going to get better any time soon and it could get a lot worse. When it comes to the growth of American corruption, one of TI’s key concerns is the how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the pay-to-play floodgates of the political system, allowing Super PACs to pour billions of private and corporate money into it, sometimes in complete secrecy. #Citizens_United undammed the wealth of the super-rich and their enablers, allowing big donors like casino capitalist — a description that couldn’t be more literal — Sheldon Adelson to use their millions to influence government policy.

#Etats-Unis #corruption_légale #leadership

Israel May Be Taking First Steps Toward Becoming a Halakhic State - Opinion - Haaretz -
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.679782

In haze of current security situation, Ministerial Committee for Legislation is slated to consider a bill that would inject elements of Jewish law into Israeli law.
Haaretz Editorial Oct 11, 2015 1:34 AM

In the haze of the current security situation, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation is slated to consider a bill Sunday that could herald the first step toward making Israel a country governed by Jewish religious law (halakha,) by injecting elements of Jewish law into Israeli law.

The sources of Israeli law were determined in the Foundations of Law Act, passed in 1980. According to the act, when a judge is required to decide a legal question that is not answered by law or prior court precedent, or by inference, he should turn to “the principles of liberty, justice, integrity and peace of the tradition of Israel [meaning Jewish tradition]” as a supplementary source.

Over the years, the court has interpreted this as a reference to the general principles of Jewish tradition and most judges have not accepted the view that it realizes the principles of Jewish law as written. In addition, because it has also been possible to find an answer to legal questions by inference, courts haven’t made much use of the provision of the 1980 act.

The sponsors of the new bill, led by Habayit Hayehudi Knesset member Nissan Slomiansky, take issue with the fact that the existing law does not obligate the courts to apply the principles of Jewish law, so they are seeking to amend the provision. The proposed legislation would require judges to look to Jewish legal principles (and it states so explicitly, unlike the current law,) as well as to principles of justice, integrity, peace, etc., prior to looking for answers by inference.

In the process, the bill would make Jewish law, sources of which include the Mishna, the Talmud and halakhic rulings, an integral part of Israeli law, without the filter of the current law. The legislation would oblige judges to apply such law, without allowing them to find answers according to the rules of inference.

It’s difficult to understand why the sponsors of the bill think it appropriate for a democratic country to adopt the principles of ancient religious law. Why should the entire Israeli population, a large portion of whom are not religious and some also not Jewish, be subject to Jewish religious law? And this with regard to a religious legal system that systematically discriminates against populations such as women and non-Jews. Secular judges and judges who are not Jewish will be required, according to the proposal, to rule accordsing to the principles of religious law. In order to “make things easier” for them, the proposed law provides for an official institute to “translate” Jewish law into modern language and make it accessible to all judges.

Beyond the message of extremism and coercion that the bill sends, it would strengthen questions about the legitimacy of Israel as a democratic country. The more evidence that Israel provides of its Jewish religious-state characteristics, particularly of the kind that imposes religious laws on residents who are not religious and not Jewish, the argument that Israel is a country that respects the rights of its citizens is substantially weakened.

« Va donc faire valoir tes droits civiques à l’étranger »… On Civil Rights Tourism
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/civil-rights-tourism

“Cyprus is close,” Lebanese Interior Minister Nohad al-Machnouk said in a recent televised interview, referring to the island that Lebanese citizens still have to seek out as a refuge in case they wish to marry under civil rather than religious law. Though legal in Lebanon now, the implementation of civil marriage is still being delayed by the Ministry of Interior for no publicly-stated reason. Instead, Mr. al-Machnouk asked the Lebanese people to obtain one of their simplest, most basic civil rights, the right to marriage, outside their own country.

This amounts to a public declaration of this country’s retarded state. Lebanon, as a sum of ruling bodies and resulting legislation, leading up to its current identity, must have missed the point of being a nation. The point is to facilitate a dignified infrastructure, not an obstacle race. I don’t understand how Mr. al-Machnouk found this “solution” reasonable enough to propose.

Israel’s War Against Gaza’s Women & Their Bodies
►http://muftah.org/israels-war-gazas-women-bodies

Promoting the Rape of Gaza and Its Women

On July 21, Israeli media reported that Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of the West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba, issued a religious edict on the rules of engagement during wartime, which he sent to the country’s Defense Minister. The edict stated that according to Jewish religious law, it is permissible to bomb innocent Palestinian civilians and “to exterminate the enemy.”

While Lior is held in high regard, he is also associated with religious Zionism’s “conservative wing.” By contrast, David Stav, Chief Rabbi of the town of Shoham is considered to be a leader of religious Zionism’s “liberal” stream. In an op-ed published the same day news of Lior’s edict broke, Stav characterized the assault on Gaza as a holy war, which is mandated by the Torah itself and must be merciless.

While these leading religious figures called for wars of extermination, some secular Israelis suggested carrying out attacks of a more perverse nature.

The day after Lior and Stav made headlines, news emerged that the City Council of Or Yehuda, located in Israel’s coastal region, printed out and hung a banner supporting Israeli soldiers. The display included language suggesting the rape of Palestinian women. The text of the banner read: “Israeli soldiers, the residents of Or Yehuda are with you! Pound ‘their mother and come back home safely to your mother.”

http://muftah.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/gaza-israel-women-2.jpg?fe293e

In the image, a woman labeled “Gaza,” wears conservative Muslim dress from the waist up and nearly nothing from the waist down, while striking an alluring pose and giving the viewer a come-hither glance. The accompanying Hebrew text reads: “Bibi, finish inside this time! Signed, citizens in favor of a ground assault.” Again, a double-entendre was used to promote war while referencing rape. In Hebrew, the colloquial meaning of “finish” is to ejaculate.

#villa_dans_la_jungle

En quoi est-on de gauche en Israël ? Au fond, c’est une bonne question qui se pose. L’avis d’Uri Avnery.

Ultimately, Israeli leftism is based on one’s view of the occupation - Opinion Israel News | Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.552576

I’ve been asked what the concept of the left means in Israel. I thought I could answer this question easily, then I realized it was a tough job.

It’s easy to say what the left isn’t. The left is the opposite of fascism — the doctrine that the nation is the most important thing and people are merely cells in the national body. The left is also the opposite of Orthodox Jewish religious law, which states that one does not save the life of a non-Jew on the Sabbath. The left is also the opposite of communism in its Soviet form, which turned people into cogs in a destructive machine.

The left is human. The left believes that human beings are the most important thing. The state is based on an agreement among all its citizens, and the state has no mystical, national or religious significance. To the left, nationality is a cultural and political setting that gives people a feeling of belonging, according to their own free will.

The difference between the left and the right is mainly the difference between spiritual and emotional, from which the practical differences stem. Leftism is a worldview that encompasses all areas of life.

In Israel, because of the special circumstances under which the state was established and exists, the difference between left and right isn’t the same as in other countries. In the broader world, the concepts of left and right are largely defined according to differences in social perception. In Israel they are defined first of all by one’s relation to peace and occupation. A person cannot be a leftist if he supports a regime of occupation and repression.

The left desires peace. It sees Israel’s second nation — the Palestinian Arab nation — as a brother nation. It utterly rejects the occupation, which is inhuman by its very nature. The left strives for Israeli-Palestinian peace. To it, peace isn’t merely a formal political framework but a profound process of reconciliation that requires each side to show respect for the culture, tradition, history and desires of the other side. This will be the rule in the comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace that follows.

Since the left believes in every nation’s right to freedom and independence, it strives for coexistence between Israel’s two nations, each in a state that expresses its political and cultural essence. To the left, the settlement movement is a moral and political disaster because its main goal is to take control of the entire country, prevent peace and carry out ethnic cleansing. The left believes that the border between the two states should be open, in the hope that relations between them will strengthen.

The left wants Israel to be a member of the family of nations, faithful to international law and a full partner in the fight for a world order that prevents war and civil war, saves the planet and ends disease, hunger, suffering and ignorance.

The left also supports social justice and mutual responsibility. Every person has the right to use his or her abilities to the fullest. Below is a safety net that ensures a respectable standard of living for the weak, the poor, the handicapped and the unfortunate.

A leftist society is based on equality between men and women, Jews and Arabs, Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, members of all religions and members of none, with no discrimination based on sexual preference. A leftist society ensures all children the possibility to live under equitable conditions; every child has the right to a modern, egalitarian education open to the world. A leftist society treats refugees and labor migrants compassionately, integrates them into the job market and allows them to live as human beings.

A leftist society is based on the complete separation of religion and state. It has civil marriage and divorce, with every person possessing the right to join or leave any religion. All men and women live according to their own faith. Every person who shares in the fulfillment of this ideal in spirit and action, every single day, belongs to the Israeli left.

Plus de détail sur ce projet de loi diabolique.

Dichter replaces ’Jewish identity’ bill with equally contentious draft law - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
▻http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/dichter-replaces-jewish-identity-bill-with-equally-contentious-draft-law-1.

On Monday, MK Avi Dichter (Kadima ) withdrew his controversial draft law that would subordinate democratic rule in Israel to the country’s role as a Jewish state. In its place he proposed a more moderate bill, which was met with harsh criticism.

The scrapped bill had called for Jewish religious law to serve as inspiration for new legislation and for Arabic to be dropped as an official language of the state - albeit while granting it “special status.” In addition, it required the state to actively pursue Jewish settlement of all areas and dropped any government obligation to build for other communities living in the state.

On Monday, Kadima, most of whose MKs signed off as sponsors of the original bill, forced Dichter to withdraw his draft law and imposed party discipline against the bill. After being criticized for allowing her party colleagues to introduce the proposal, Kadima chairwoman MK Tzipi Livni put all her political weight into thwarting it.

Had the bill gone to a vote in the Knesset plenum it might well have been passed: One-third of the Knesset’s 120 members, including most Kadima and Labor MKs, signed the first rendition of what became known as Dichter’s Law. Livni publicly announced her opposition to it a few weeks ago. In a rare move, the Knesset’s legal advisor, Eyal Yinon, called for broad public and parliamentary debate on the bill, citing its broad implications for Israel’s constitutional status.

After realizing that he could not bring the bill to a vote in its original form, Dichter introduced a toned-down iteration of his draft law, on Monday. The switch is expected to postpone the Knesset plenum vote by at least two months.

The new version still makes Israel’s definition as a democracy subordinate to to its role as the state of the Jewish nation. But instead of clearly spelling this out, it features an opaquely worded paragraph that ostensibly folds the Declaration of Independence into the new Basic Law, in accordance with that document’s explicit definition of Israel as the state of the Jewish nation.

In addition, the new bill describes Arabic as “a language of the state” rather than an official language, as it is today. Unlike Dichter’s original draft law, it does not include the reference to Arabic’s “special status.” The new version also makes no mention of Jewish religious law serving as the legislature’s inspiration.

After studying the new version of the bill, a former senior official in the Justice Ministry told Haaretz, “I really don’t understand the changes that were made. Dichter left in the controversial clauses, which refer to changes to the balance of the character of the State of Israel and the subordination of democratic rule to the Jewish nation. He replaced his original proposal with one that is incomprehensible even on the level of its linguistic construction. It’s a mishmash of ideas that might be even worse than the original wording.”

An official from Abraham Fund Initiatives, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing Jewish-Arab coexistence, said that even if the new bill is not as bad as the original, it too “violates the delicate balance between the Jewish component and the democratic component of the definition of the state and gives clear priority to the Jewish component.”

Language becomes a political weapon in Israel - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
►http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201182411924820532.html

Whenever a conflict between democracy and Jewish values arises, the new definition of Israel would allow courts and legislators to favour the latter. According to Haaretz, the proposed bill will also make halacha, Jewish religious law, “a source of inspiration to the legislature and the courts”. And, in the spirit of favouring the Jewish character of the state over a state for all its citizens, the legislation would also downgrade Arabic from an official language to one with “special status”.

Arabic is the mother tongue of 20 per cent of Israel’s citizens. It has been an official language of the land since 1924, when the British mandate set three: English, Hebrew, and Arabic.