(IsraelNN.com) Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann delivered a long, crushing critique of the Supreme Court in an interview to Haaretz Friday. Among other things, he said the court should not have intervened on security matters such as the route of the security barrier, the law preventing “family unification” between Israeli Arabs and Arabs from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the IDF procedure in which a local Arab is used as a shield when knocking on doors of suspected terrorists’ homes, and the timetable for fortification of buildings in Sderot and the Gaza Perimeter.
He said that the State Prosecution is too eager to press charges against public figures, and notes the examples of former minister Aharon Abuhatzira, as well as Aryeh Deri, Reuven Rivlin and Avigdor Lieberman. As for the case against Chaim Ramon, his predecessor in the Justice Ministry: Friedmann says it was “not even a borderline case, but a sub-borderline case,” and hints that the prosecutors’ views may have affected their judgment.
“We need to select judges with a different judicial attitude from the one that is currently prevalent in the Supreme Court… The judges currently in office are from a certain milieu, they live in their milieu and they don’t see the public.” Friedmann notes the late Judge Menachem Elon as a positive example of a judge who did not favor “judicial activism” like the current court does, and was more moderate. CONTINUE
Justice Minister: Justice System Biased
Gil Ronen