organization:ministerial committee for legislation

Israeli plan to jail anyone filming soldiers in the West Bank hits legal wall
Attorney general says new legislation that outlaws documenting soldiers is unconstitutional; government to vote on bill anyway

Jonathan LisSendSend me email alerts
Jun 17, 2018 12:51 PM

▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-plan-to-jail-anyone-filming-soldiers-hit-legal-wall-1.6179262

The present version of the proposed law to ban the filming of Israeli soldiers carrying out their duties is problematic from a constitutional standpoint, so much so that it may not be able to be enacted into law, said Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit.
The bill will be brought on Sunday for approval of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, which would give it official government backing.
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The committee is expected to approve the bill in its present form, after which it will go to the full Knesset for its preliminary vote. The bill is expected to pass this reading too.
But a senior politician in the government coalition told Haaretz that an agreement has been reached with MK Robert Ilatov (Yisrael Beitenu), the sponsor of the bill, that after the bill passes its preliminary vote in the Knesset, it will be changed significantly in committee. The new version will ban interfering with IDF soldiers carrying out their duties and not a full ban on filming and documentation, a change that could pass constitutional muster.

The bill to protect Elor Azaria - Haaretz Editorial

Israel is set to consider a proposal banning any photographing of soldiers if carried out with the intention of ’undermining the morale of Israel’s soldiers and residents’

Haaretz Editorial May 27, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/the-bill-to-protect-elor-azaria-1.6117404

With Elor Azaria’s release from prison this month, Israel seems to have drawn the wrong conclusions from a serious incident. Today the Ministerial Committee for Legislation is set to consider a dangerous proposal banning any photographing, recording or filming of soldiers in the course of their duties, if it is carried out with the intention of “undermining the morale of Israel’s soldiers and residents.” The bill also bans the publication of photos or videos in the media or on social networks with similar intentions. Anyone who breaks the law is subject to five years in prison.
The message is clear: B’Tselem, not Azaria, is the real criminal and Israeli democracy must protect itself from the human rights organization’s future crimes. The bill’s aim was made clearer in its explanatory notes and that is to silence criticism of the army, and in particular to prevent human rights organizations from documenting the Israeli army’s actions in the territories.
It might be noted that any footage of soldiers on such missions can be presented as an attempt “to undermine the morale of Israel’s soldiers and residents.” The bill in fact seeks to almost entirely prevent the photographing of soldiers, even if it is to verify that they are upholding the law of war and the army’s orders. The immediate result of such a prohibition is serious harm to the possibility of protecting human rights and overseeing the army’s activity.
A democratic country cannot base criminal offenses on such a vague foundation, certainly not when it comes to an offense relating to freedom of expression. The bill does serious harm to freedom of the press and the public’s right to know. The public has a right to know what the reality is and especially what the “people’s army” is doing in its name and on its behalf. That is why censorship can only be exercised in cases of serious danger to state security and not in an effort to head off criticism of the army.
The message such legislation would convey, if passed, is that Israel has a great deal to hide regarding the IDF’s activities. Such a message, beyond its profound damage to Israel’s status as a democracy, also has harsh legal repercussions. The main protection against indicting Israeli soldiers and commanders in international tribunals for violating the law of war is the assumption that Israel investigates complaints against its soldiers itself, and deals with them fairly. The more Israel acts to cover up its soldiers’ actions, the more the opposite assumption is substantiated — laying the ground for the indictment of Israeli soldiers and commanders in such criminal proceedings.
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As “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” so too camouflage and concealment are the most effective contaminators. A country and army that have nothing to hide, that act to seek out and punish those who violate their code of combat, don’t need legislation in this spirit and must oppose it.

Netanyahu throws support behind bill that would annex 19 illegal settlements
Oct. 4, 2017 4:40 P.M. (Updated: Oct. 4, 2017 4:40 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=779266

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged his support for the so-called Greater Jerusalem bill, which is tantamount to the annexation of 19 illegal settlements in the Jerusalem area, including Maaleh Adumim, where between 125,000 and 150,000 Israeli settlers live.

Maale Adumim is the third largest settlement in population size, encompassing a large swath of land deep inside the occupied West Bank’s Jerusalem district. Many Israelis consider it an Israeli suburban city of Jerusalem, despite it being located on occupied Palestinian territory in contravention of international law.

“Maaleh Adumim will always be part of Israel and in addition I support the Greater Jerusalem bill,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Netanyahu as saying during a visit to the illegal settlement Tuesday. “I am also weighing placing Maaleh Adumim within the boundaries of Greater Jerusalem within the context of the Greater Jerusalem bill,” he said.

The legislation was authored by Likud minister Yisrael Katz who is reportedly expected to bring the bill to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation in the upcoming Knesset session. It would place 19 settlements, including those of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc and Givat Zeev within Israel’s municipal boundaries for Jerusalem.

#colonialisme_de_peuplement

A cornerstone
 of apartheid -
Israel’s ’nation-state’ law must be stopped - the only way to preserve a democratic Israel is to enshrine equality among all its citizens in law

Haaretz Editorial May 08, 2017
read more: ►http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/1.787870

►http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/1.787870

The nation-state bill, which the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved unanimously on Sunday, is a bad bill. Nobody denies that Israel, as the bill says, “is the national home of the Jewish people,” or that “the right to the realization of national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
The Jewish people’s right to national revival in the Land of Israel was recognized back in the 1917 Balfour Declaration and approved by the League of Nations Mandate in 1922. On November 29, 1947, this right was reaffirmed and recognized by the UN General Assembly as well.
“We ... hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, to be known as the State of Israel,” reads the Declaration of Independence. Similarly, the state’s Basic Laws define Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. And aside from all this, just last week, Israel celebrated the 69th anniversary of its independence.
>> Israeli ministers greenlight nation-state bill: Arabic isn’t an official state language <<
Nevertheless, this bill is bad, because the only legitimate way to ensure the state’s Jewishness is for Israel to be a democracy that grants full equality to all its citizens, but which also has a Jewish majority. Any situation in which Jews were a minority in Israel, and the state’s Jewishness was maintained solely via discriminatory laws and a regime that enforced them against the majority’s will, would be undemocratic, and in any event would certainly not be viable over the long run.
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The only explanation for why Israel is advancing this bill is the millions of Palestinians whom it keeps under its control in territories that it fantasizes about annexing. Because Israel is interested in applying its sovereignty to the land but isn’t interested in annexing the Palestinians who live there as equal citizens in a single state, it is forced to create the legal infrastructure for segregating Jews from Arabs and preserving the Jews’ legal supremacy. The nation-state law is the constitutional cornerstone for apartheid in the entire Land of Israel.

The nation-state law is fundamentally antithetical to democracy, as it seeks to enshrine the rule of a Jewish minority over an imagined Arab majority. This is a fearful and aggressive move by a people that sees itself as a minority and is preparing to maintain control over an apartheid state that contains a Palestinian majority living under its rule. Yet even before that point is reached, the law discriminates against members of Israel’s Arab minority and legally labels them as second-class citizens.
The nation-state bill must not be allowed to pass. The only way to preserve the national home of the Jewish people is to separate peacefully from the occupied territories and liberate the Palestinian people. And the only way to preserve a democratic Israel is to enshrine equality among its citizens in law, in line with the promise of the Declaration of Independence: “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

An Arab-free Knesset - Haaretz Editorial
It is outrageous to demand that the elected representatives of Israel’s non-Jewish minority swear loyalty to the ’Jewish state.’

Haaretz Editorial Mar 12, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/1.776614

This morning, a few days after Likud MK Miki Zohar proposed annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians the right to vote, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation is scheduled to discuss a bill that could harm the right of Arabs who are citizens of Israel to vote and to run for office. The proposed amendment to the Basic Law on the Knesset would add to the oath of office sworn by Knesset members — “to be loyal to the State of Israel” — the phrase “as a Jewish and democratic state, in accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, to preserve and to respect it symbols.”
It is not by chance that the preamble to the draft law contains no mention of the purpose of the change. After all, it is obvious that no declaration of loyalty has the power to increase loyalty to the state. At best, the bill will cause hatred, anger and rebellion of Israel’s Arab minority. At worst it will reduce this community’s participation in the electoral process, thus dealing a mortal blow to Israeli democracy. From this it follows that the aim of the draft law is not to solve a problem, but rather to spark outrage and to impinge on the right of Arabs to vote and to run for office.
For a large portion of Arab Knesset members, the oath’s revised version requires them to be untrue to themselves: For years, the term “Jewish state” means exclusion and discrimination. Even if it’s possible for a national home for Jews to exist here in the framework of a Jewish and democratic state in which all citizens enjoy complete equality, that is not the situation in practice. That being the case, it is outrageous to demand that the elected representatives of Israel’s non-Jewish minority swear loyalty to the “Jewish state.”
In addition, since the interpretation of the concept “Jewish and democratic” is so controversial, there may also be Jews who are not willing to swear loyalty to it. If “Jewish state” might also include religious content, then what about atheists who call for absolute separation between religion and state? Other communities, such as ultra-Orthodox Jews, might not identify with the concept “Jewish and democratic.”
President Reuven Rivlin, in his “four tribes” address to the Herzliya Conference in June 2015, said that we must accept that non-Zionists are a part of Israel, that the definition of a national home for the Jewish people in a Jewish and democratic state is a definition of Zionism, and that we cannot force all citizens to be Zionist against their will. In a democratic state, everyone has full freedom of conscience and no one is forced to swear loyalty as a condition for participating in the game of democracy and exercising the right to be elected. The frequent attempts to pass such laws only send a message of insecurity, as if Israel’s Jewish and democratic identity were in doubt.
It is unwise to create a problem where none exists. The oath sworn by Knesset members today, of “loyalty to the State of Israel,” is sufficient. The government must reject the legislative proposal and stop passing laws whose sole purpose is to sow hatred and cause provocation.

#apartheid #racism

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.

Soldiers’ benefits mustn’t come at the expense of Israel’s minorities
discriminations contre les Palestiniens et... contre les juifs orthodoxes
Editorial
Haaretz, 29th of October 2013
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.554919

The softened version of the Contributors to the State bill, which was approved Monday by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, was supposed to eliminate the worst of the discriminatory excesses of the original version of the draft law. The constitutional flaws of the bill’s earlier version were pointed out by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, among other.

The original bill, which was sponsored by coalition chairman MK Yariv Levin, was also approved by the ministerial committee, over the opposition of Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Health and Minister Yael German. Its provisions included preferential treatment for military or civilian national service veterans in admission to higher education, in government hiring (and wages and benefits), and in residential building rights. Weinstein ruled that the bill would cause injury to population groups that already suffer from severe discrimination and would violate the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom.

The new version, which was drafted in consultation with Knesset legal advisor Eyal Yinon, provides for “softer” benefits, such as letting soldiers in uniform jump the queue at entertainment venues, giving preference to military or nonmilitary veterans in allocating university housing and limited preference in real estate tenders. Nevertheless, it seems as if Levin and many cabinet ministers still haven’t grasped the ethical failure such a law’s very existence entails.

The Contributors to the State bill in effect constitutes systematic discrimination, in every walk of life, against entire population groups that are by law exempt from compulsory military or civilian national service. No democracy can accept such discrimination, especially when it affects already disadvantaged communities, namely Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews. The fact that military service is compulsory for a large part of the population does not justify a law that would have far-reaching consequences on civilian life, far beyond the military realm.

Many cabinet ministers have declared a fervent wish for more Arabs and Haredim in the workforce, even calling this goal a “national project” that could have a dramatic impact on the national economy.

Blind, a priori discrimination is not the way to achieve this integration. It will only create alienation and anger in these communities, sending the message that the state is lending a hand to their discrimination.

It is indeed worthy to reward those who contribute to the state through military or civilian service, but the way to do so is not by discriminating against other groups. The cabinet and Levin must draft a new bill that would recognize the contribution of veterans, such as paying higher salaries to soldiers during service. That is the only way the benefits offered in this bill will outweigh its costs.

Netanyahu blocks bid for transparency in legislation process of Israeli government - National Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/netanyahu-blocks-bid-for-transparency-in-legislation-process-of-israeli-gov

The chances of the public ever learning how cabinet ministers voted in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation have dropped considerably, after a legal opinion was issued stating that revealing this information will require the approval of the cabinet.

The initiative to publicize how the ministers vote on the legislative proposals the committee debates came from Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who views this as an important step toward transparency.

The Ministerial Committee on Legislation determines which bills go to the Knesset plenum with government backing − which makes it almost certain they will pass into law − and which bills go nowhere. The panel’s debates are confidential; they are not transcribed and how the ministers vote is not documented. The lack of transparency makes it easier for interested parties to exert pressure, make deals, and stymie legislative initiatives without the public being able to monitor the process.

Livni, who is chairman of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, announced two months ago, at the current panel’s first meeting, “It would be proper for there to be transparency in the committee, and I plan to examine this.”

Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mandelblit, however, delayed the move in order to check its legality, apparently with the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not very excited about Livni’s idea.

The legal opinion was provided by the Prime Minister’s Office legal adviser, Shlomit Barnea-Fargo, and is being revealed here for the first time. The adviser determined that Livni does not have the authority to make the change she wants on her own, nor is the ministerial committee empowered to change the cabinet work regulations.

Barnea-Fargo said that the authority to do so rests with the full cabinet. Livni has already asked the prime minister and cabinet secretary to bring the issue up for debate by the cabinet as soon as possible.