This week's rant

The week's rant comes from the financial paper/website, Globes, with the headline Moshe Gafni's attack on the governor of the Bank of Israel illustrates precisely what critics of the proposed judicial overhaul fear. "You are the governor of the Bank of Israel, the economic adviser to the government, and suddenly I hear you talk about the judicial reform being liable to harm the economy. There’s a political debate here that goes to the root of the matter. Why do you have to express a view on it?" Knesset Finance Committee chairperson Moshe Gafni asked Governor of the Bank of Israel Amir Yaron at the opening of a committee session yesterday. "Do you think that the governor of the Bank of Israel should express a view when half the residents of the State of Israel think otherwise?" Gafni continued. [end of quote]

I want to stop here, because that final sentence deserves some attention. It's true that "half the residents of Israel" voted for the political parties that comprise the ruling coalition; it's good that they don't claim that 55% or 60% or even more voted for those parties. This statement acknowledges that for every person that voted 'for', there is another person who voted 'against'. It is only the peculiarities of the electoral system that awarded a majority to those parties.

In my 'enlightened leftish traitor' world view (deliberate sarcasm), when there are two people who have to decide on something and their opinions are opposed, normally the option that causes the least damage is the one chosen. Obviously Gafni et al. have never heard of this; they don't mind causing damage if the decision taken will improve their position.

Also, as we were informed on the Friday night news (admittedly from the supposedly leftish Channel 12 news), 42% of those who voted for the ruling parties want to stop or delay the legislation regarding the judicial system; 45% of those who voted for those parties want to continue the legislation. This translates to 71% of the population want to stop or delay this legislation. That's not a statistic that one hears.

If I'm writing about the Channel 12 Friday evening news, then I have to mention that in order to balance things up, they have introduced a right wing commentator who in my humble opinion is exceedingly annoying because of his total inflexibility and his undying belief that 'right [wing] is always right'. It was bad enough last night, but the previous week he was so obnoxious that it was unbelievable. The discussion then was not about the judicial system legislation or even anything political; it was about women's rights, especially after a horrifying report of a man who broke into a flat on the second floor of a building (of maybe eight floors), then tied up the woman living there and raped her. This commentator automatically attacked the (female) reporter who delivered the story and widened it to include other cases of abuse. His attitude to the three female commentators (out of six) appearing on the show was extremely rude and should be condemned.

I hesitate to bring evidence coming from the 'Wonderful country' [ארץ נהדרת] satirical tv programme (also channel 12); they had in the past a popular section based on one of the cast who posed as a taxi driver and would make provocative remarks to the people that he transported with their responses being shown. If one thinks about this, the people filmed would have had to give their consent to having their remarks broadcast, so this is hardly an unbiased sample. Anyway, the programme restored the taxi driver to life and showed him talking with various people who 'naturally' voted for the right wing parties. They were all against the judicial system reform/ruin, especially once it was explained to them (most of them did not know what the 'override clause' was, where the Knesset can override decisions taken by the Supreme Court, thus making the court superfluous and allowing the government to do whatever they like).