Israel: No Tax Money for Public Broadcast? Hopefully. Who is the Sovereign? The People or the Judges?

Communications Minister MK Shlomo Karhi said: “I intend to privatize or close the Public Broadcasting Corporation.” His intention is already well known. Now is the big question, when? When finally will the full right-wing government implement one of the big and visible milestone projects like no tax money for public broadcasting, full justicial reform, bringing down the costs of living, or the death penalty for Islamic terrorists?

So far concerning national projects, the full right-wing government has little to offer. Without a doubt is the list of successes concerning the war impressive. However, all are waiting for the finalisation, the finishing of the unspoken war goals to reinstall sovereignty: Dismantling the “PA”, toppling the Mullah regime, declaring sovereignty over Aza, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the full Golan Heights and release of all hostages.

Back to the public broadcast. Public broadcast is in the meantime in all democracies a threat to free speech, free press and free media. They behave more like left-wing educative, anti-Israel and anti-democratic NGOs – like BBC, ARD, or ZDF to name a few – than entities of honest journalism.

It is not the task of the state to run media. The state and its institutions (court system etc.) does not have a right to free speech. Human Rights once were established as rights to defend the citizens against the state which has a strong tendency to overreach. As in Israel.

The state has to guarantee that free media and free speech are possible. However, the state is neither entitled to run media under the disguise of “saving free speech” (what an Orwellian approach) nor to proscribe the citizens what he, the citizen, has to regard as truth.

The state tries currently in all democracies to put itself in the place of the people and to supersede the citizens as the sovereign subject. Slice by slice we hear instead ‘We, the people’, “We, the state”, the state is the people and similar nonsense. No.

The relation is very simple in a democracy: ‘We, the people’. The people are the master. The state is the servant. End of the story. That is the check and balance on a vertical axis. On the horizontal axis, we have the three branches legislative (as primus inter pares), executive (government) and judicative. The judicative is the third branch, not the first.

Who is the Sovereign? The People or the Judges?

But always, always there the last word is with the people and its elected representative: The Parliament. And no Constitution is above the ‘We, the people”. The sovereign is the last instance. That is the standard in all democracies. Fact.

In the discussion – The Economic Affairs Committee, chaired by MK David Bitan (Likud), convened on Wednesday for a special meeting dealing with the initiatives to amend the legislation on the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) – about the abolition of the public broadcast the President of the Israel Press Council Supreme Court Justice (ret.) Hanan Meltzer said:

“Even if 120 Members of Knesset were to support this, the amendment would be unconstitutional, based on the doctrine of defensive democracy. If someone acts against democracy and wants to cancel the manifestations of democracy—even if he obtains a majority of all 120, this bill would be disqualified, because it’s unconstitutional.”

He is wrong. If the people decide, the decision is democratically legitimised and correct. There is nobody and nothing above the will of the people. The sovereign is the people. Fact. And for sure not the ‘Basic Laws” which misses the basic features of a constitution. Fun Fact: Democracy means literally ‘Rule of the People’. And not the ‘Rule of Basic Laws’.

In the most famous Constitution of the world, we read: “We the People of the United States … do ordain and establish this Constitution.“

After all, he finds himself in a massive conflict of interest as director of public broadcasting in Israel. Like his colleagues in Europe, he fantasizes that public broadcasting is a bulwark of democracy, even and especially against the will of the people. In other words, it is a re-education institution in a bad socialist tradition.

At the moment we are seeing a movement from the ‘rule of law’ (Rechtsstaat), which is good, right and important, to the ‘judge-based state’ (Richterstaat), which is not desirable. Both in the current academic discussion and with regard to the Torah, the ‘judge-based state’ is considered negative and rejected. The ‘judge-based state’ is regarded as a foreshadowing of dictatorship. The conflict is: ‘We, the People’ vs. ‘We, the Judges’ and mutatis mutandnis the unelected elites of the deep state.

Finally, a logical argument: Let us assume, we have a Constitution empowered by people’s referendum – which we do not have in Israel! – then this Constitution has to establish the Judges as the final authority if it is wished that the Judges can finally decide what is constitutional and what not. Even it is against the ‘Will of the People’. Otherwise, the Judges would not have the authority if it is not written down that way (means the ‘We, People’ gave away its final authority of the last word as Sovereign to an unelected committee of Judges). That means once the Constitution is established you can cancel all elections, because of this (self-conflicting) authority of the Judges. Or put in other words: The Constitution overrides the will of the people and the will of the Constitition as established by the Judges is the Sovereign what is not desireable and is conflicting with any idea of democracy. Thus we have in the consequence the undemocratic rule of non-elected ‘We, the Judges’. This creates a self-conflicting reality which is forbidden according to the laws of logic, metaphysics, ethical rules like The Categorial Imperative and all known principles which ever were deployed and developed in defence of the rule of law and the people. Often the concept of the “We, the People” is complemented (recently) by the concept of a ‘defensible democracy’, which is anchored in Israel, for example, in Basic Law 7a. A fundamentally legitimate restriction, but one that can be imposed too easily today. Here, too, we have the basic problem outlined above, which in my opinion can only be solved by ensuring that such serious interventions in democracy (banning a party, abolition or restriction of basic laws etc.) are only permitted with a 2/3 majority each in the judiciary, in the executive and in the legislature. A power that cannot be held by a small committee of unelected Judges, as the conflict of interests is inherent. It becomes evident again, Israel needs a real Constitution empowered by the People.

Within this context, it is very disturbing to watch a video in which Mr Meltzer is threatening the sovereign. Tally Gotliev wrote on X: “Meltzer came to the Knesset today and threatened Minister Dr Shlomo Kerei and the Knesset members that if they dare to enact a law that the bully Meltzer opposes, they will risk being disqualified by the Elections Committee from running for the Knesset.“

Minister Shlomo Karhi commented on X: “The former Labor Party attorney general, the former attorney general of News 12, in the guise of a judge, threatens an Israeli minister and Knesset members that if they advance their economic agenda, he will support their disqualification from running for the Knesset!!! Or in his own words: “You need to think about it carefully because they can ask for his disqualification. I warn those who advance the laws.” He warns…

We hope to see that Israel will abolish the public broadcast and give the free market, and the will of the people a chance in Israel. Let us hope that the full right-wing government, whatever this means, finds finally its inner courage. Do it.

updated 20.12.2024:13.00 Israeli Time.