Why were the new Supreme Court justice's social media accounts deleted?
Op-ed: Bayit Yehudi, the so-called ‘Jewish’ Home party, is quietly smuggling America’s deep right into Israel. MK Moti Yogev’s bulldozer will strike the Supreme Court from the outside, and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked will import elements to undermine the democratic system from the inside. So what if they’re emigrants?
Last week, the Judicial Selection Committee chose Prof. Stein as a Supreme Court justice. Shortly before the appointment, Stein took steps to conceal his public profile. He deleted, for example, a Twitter account under the username alexstein7. Now, all that is left of it are a few crumbs that can be gleaned from Google’s cache.
The last tweet is apparently from February 8, 2018. Then, alexstein7 disguised himself as Her Majesty’s secret agent 007, and Twitter’s bird went to sleep with the fishes.
Isn’t it poetic? They say a judge “sits among his people,” so Stein is acting like a criminal, or at least like someone who has a lot to hide.
And this isn’t the only case. Avishai Greentzeig reported in B’Sheva newspaper that Stein had “deleted his Facebook account in the final stretch before his appointment.” The diligent journalist (who is actually thrilled about the appointment) revealed a number of troubling comments from the account that vanished. But before examining their content, we should ask ourselves: why were the accounts deleted? Was Stein ordered to do so? What else is hidden there? And most importantly, was the Judicial Selection Committee exposed to it when it got acquainted with the candidate?
This is a critical revelation, as Stein is in no way “a judge who sits among his people.” In the past 15 years, he has been living and working in the United States. The man has never served as a judge, and even the scope of his work as a lawyer in Israel is limited.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked explained Stein’s selection by referring to the candidate as “a legal genius.” What a disgrace for the State of Israel, and for our legal system in particular. Out of dozens of local jurists, there isn’t a single worthy Israeli candidate?
Knesset Member Elazar Stern called the move “a spit in the face of the State of Israel’s basic values.” The committee members wiped their face dry and reached a delusional compromise: the professor’s son will come to Israel to serve in the IDF, and that will make him a legitimate justice.
By the way, Prof. Stein was appointed along with Judge Ofer Grosskopf. Once again, the Supreme Court gets two Jewish Ashkenazi men, members of the ruling minority which makes up about 20 percent of Israeli society at most. For years, people have been talking about proper representation for all layers of the public, but when it’s time to take action—it turns out to be a bluff. And the saddest thing is that the election of these two Ashkenazi men was devised by two “strong women,” the justice minister and Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut.
There is a concern that Chief Justice Hayut (after her embarrassing silence in the Judge Gerstel affair) has fallen victim to Minister Shaked’s craftiness and to the Judicial Selection Committee’s silence. This concern grows stronger in light of the little that had been revealed—after the appointment—about Prof. Stein: the IDF isn’t obliged to respond in a proportional manner, Israel isn’t obliged to provide electricity or gas to Gaza, his support for the Regulation Law or his opinion that the court has no business intervening in the equal IDF draft issue—and that’s just the beginning.
Bayit Yehudi, the so-called “Jewish” Home party, is quietly smuggling America’s deep right into Israel. Like Knesset candidate Jeremy Gimpel (who wanted the Dome of the Rock to be blown up, but didn’t know how to erase the evidence on time), and in the spirit of leaning on American billionaires’ money and on cuckoo evangelicals’ support.
MK Moti Yogev’s bulldozer will strike the Supreme Court from the outside, and Minister Shaked will import elements to undermine the democratic system from the inside. So what if they’re emigrants, or as Yitzhak Rabin once called them, “the leftovers of weaklings”? Just remind me, who’s Rabin?
