The Chief Justice Aharon Barak is the country’s leading proponent of this doctrine. But there are many other reasons why Barak is a danger to Israeli democracy.

Aharon Barak is the man who ordered a retrial for the Arab murderers of the child Dani Katz, and his sidekick, the wacky Dalia Dorner, then put those murderers back on the streets. They were later reconvicted.

Barak has led the judicial jihad to impose the vision of the radical secularist Left on the country. He recently ruled that the parliament or Knesset has no rights to pass laws. He has ordered the government to pay reparations to Palestinians injured while attacking Jews. He led the assault against Orthodoxy and against the Arutz7 radio station. He ruled that the Knesset cannot decide which Rabbis oversea conversion to Judaism for purposes of the law.

Barak has expressed the opinion that people should be prohibited from expressing criticism of the Supreme Court’s decisions. He has never once acted against the McCarthyist attacks on free speech by the Left. He did nothing when anti-Oslo dissidents were jailed. He did nothing when Margolit Har-Sheffi was jailed. He has long held that it is the job of the courts to impose ideas favored by "enlightened" people (meaning secularist leftists), regardless of what the parliament legislates.

But perhaps even more serious is the system of appointing justices that has been perpetuated by Barak. In Israel judges are not elected. They also cannot be dismissed by either the parliament nor by popular ballot propositions. Judges, including Supreme Court Judges, are appointed by a panel composed mainly of other Supreme Court Justices. This way, Barak and his allies on the Court protect their turf and perpetuate their hegemony over the judicial system.

In reality, Barak’s dictatorial control of the process of appointing justices is more radical than that. Israel has a bizarre system by which contenders for the Supreme Court bench are "invited" to do a "test run", sitting there as judges, a sort of apprenticeship. They participate in Supreme Court decisions, but as temps and fill-ins. It is all but impossible to get a real Court appointment without first doing a tour gig as one of these temps.

Only problem is, the Panel for Appointing Judges does not decide who gets invited to do such an "apprenticeship". The decision is in the hands of one man and one man alone: Justice Aharon Barak, Israel’s Judge Mussolini.

In a development this week, one of Israel’s leading justices resigned from the bench because the Chief Justice refused to allow him to do such an "apprenticeship" and so effectively blocked his chance of getting a seat on the Supreme Court. This judge is Amnon Strashnov, one of Israel’s most respected District Court judges. He was the judge in the espionage case in which Nahum Manbar was prosecuted for selling military equipment to Iran. Manbar’s lefty lawyers tried to throw the case by spreading rumors that the judge was sleeping with the prosecuting attorney, rumors that turned out to be false.

Barak’s jihad against Strashnov appears to be personal. So where can we find a judge whose career Barak has been promoting? Why Judge Oded Alyagon, the Beer Sheba bigot who likes to scream that religious Jews are lice and vermin!!

Meanwhile, in another interesting development, Justice Mussolini has gone on the war path against professors of law in Israel. Now do not get me wrong here - the bulk of those professors are Oslo lefties and politically correct ad nauseum. However, Barak has antagonized them intentionally. Barak has launched repeated ad hominem attacks on leading law profs, reported widely in the press, including in Haaretz April 11.

The problem is that Barak expects all of the law profs to behave like groveling sycophants and simply praise Barak and his ideas and decisions. EVen worse, some profs refused to enlist when Barak demanded that they back him in his personal vendetta against the head of the Bar Association in Israel. One of Israel’s leading legal minds and a brilliant lefty, Prof. Ruth Gavison, has a book out attacking viciously Barak’s "judicial activism", and others have also come out against it. Other dons refused to endorse Barak’s jihad against introducing "constitutional courts" in Israel. The Knesset considered these, but Barak sees this as a threat to his own unchallenged hegemony and wanted the Law School Deans and profs to sign up for his jihad against the idea. Not all did so. Still others have the temerity to question the wisdom and legality of some of Barak’s more outrageous judicial atrocities.

Aharon Barak is a danger to Israeli democracy. The Knesset should not only dismiss him at once (let him try to call in the cops when he rules that his own dismissal is illegal) but strip him of his pension as well.