Israel as a Judicial Dictatorship

There is a structural flaw in the Israeli democracy and you would not hear Alan Dershowitz complaining about it. The Israeli Supreme Court judges are promoted from within the system, instead of being appointed and approved by the elected officials, as the case in America. The result of this is that the Supreme Court judges in Israel are not accountable to the elected officials and the people; the judges interfere in political process and threaten politicians with persecution. The selection of these judges is an arcane process of cronyism and influence peddling. A stunning expose about this by Ben Chorin.

A footnote: there is currently a discussion about the future of Ben Bernanke as the head of the Federal Reserve. He is a moderate republican appointed by the President Bush. Everyone recognizes that Bernanke has done a tremendous job, but he is perceived as too independent. There is chatter that if the economy tanks further Ben will not be agreeable to monetary easing or stimuli that might be required for Obama’s reelection (never mind the dire consequences after the election). Therefore people assume that the renewal of his term is questionable. Similarity Bush the elder implied that refusal by Alan Greenspan to ease the monetary policy cost him his Presidency (despite the fact that Greenspan generally erred on the side of easing, even contributing to this current recession). So in this case the lack of independence by the Federal Reserve might be counterproductive to the long term economy.

P.S. My personal view on this is that the Israeli political system was set up this way because the secular Israeli founding fathers could not free themselves from the 2000 thousands years of the cultural experience where the Rabbinic LAW was the ultimate political and executive power of the Diaspora.