In Israel, the political crisis reaches the Supreme Court
By questioning the method of appointing the president of Israel's highest court, one of its judges is destabilizing an already weakened institution.
The blow came from within. The Supreme Court has until now appeared as a besieged citadel, the last bastion of Israeli-style democracy which resisted the attacks carried out by the current coalition aimed at reducing its independence. But Judge Yosef Elron, a member of this court, applied on Wednesday August 30 for the presidency of the court. In doing so, he broke, for the first time in the history of the country, with the customary rule that had prevailed until now: when the president retires, the oldest magistrate succeeds him.
“The idea of the seniority rule was to avoid any kind of competition, any encouragement to judges to want to please the executive. The judiciary is already under strong pressure from the government. The position of president guaranteed his independence ,” explains Guy Lurie, researcher at the Israel Democratic Institute. With the current head, Esther Hayut, stepping down on October 16, Judge Yitzhak Amit was supposed to take over. Today, no one knows if this scenario will be respected.
A personal vendetta
Why is Yosef Elron weakening the jurisdiction at a time when it is undergoing attacks of unprecedented scale? It would be a personal vendetta. The magistrate's parents are Jews originally from Iraq, from Mosul precisely. They passed through the transit camps where many Sephardim from North Africa and the Middle East were housed upon their arrival in Israel in the early 1950s, in often unsanitary conditions. This treatment has fueled the new arrivals' feeling of being second-class citizens compared to the Ashkenazim, who came from Europe. Judge Elron, born in 1955 in Haifa, spent part of his career there, and crossed paths with Yitzhak Amit.
He was also a magistrate in the coastal city, before being appointed to the Supreme Court in 2009. Originally from Tel Aviv, formerly of the prestigious intelligence unit 8200, he is a representative of the Ashkenazi elite, regularly denounced by those in power. It appears the two were not the best of comrades in the Haifa court.
