thegreatdivide wrote on Jul 31
st, 2023 at 3:54pm:
Neither of those countries were based on fundamentalist OT mythology re "chosen people" and "Promised Land".
Not surprsingly, the current Israeli protests reveal a fundamentalist /secularist divide.
Silly, ignorant nonsense.
There is another nation—and I know there are people who will devour me if I mention them—and that is the English nation. The English were indeed anti-Semitic. The Anglo-Saxon race is like another race in the world, [the Germans]—but I admire the political intelligence of this people in its country. The English have no constitution, and their progress was not arrested because of this. On the contrary, in England it’s possible to pass a law by a simple majority, provided the king signs it. But he has to sign it. In England they began a great revolution when they decided that women have the right to vote. And they decided this by means of a simple parliamentary majority. And there, the same class of law that determines whether or not the king is allowed to marry a woman he loves also determines how much cigarettes can be sold for.
A constitution isn’t something accepted all over the world. And even if it were accepted, we should choose what’s fitting for us. In my opinion it isn’t something we need; it doesn’t suit us morally or intellectually. If you think differently—you are allowed to think differently. I’ve just presented the opinion of one man. But in this matter I have only the prerogative of a single person, perhaps an unreliable one. I don’t bow down to everything that’s conventional in the rest of the world. On things related to our lives, I am determined to think things anew. When I thought about this free from the perspective of what’s customary and conventional elsewhere, I couldn’t find any justification that would obligate us to do what they did in America. I am in favor of laws in the Knesset: laws regarding elections, on the presidency, on the government. But let us not involve ourselves in declarations. We made a declaration once. That time it was just. And the Declaration has pedagogic value. In general, parliament involves itself in the making of laws for the needs of the time and the hour. Law is the fruit of its time; there is no eternity in law.
I see what’s before the Knesset over the next three or four years. When I say “Knesset,” I mean state, and when I say “government,” I also mean state. In my opinion we have tremendous labors in front of us. We inherited many laws. Some of them are not so bad, even though they are Anglo-Saxon laws. But we also [inherited] many bad laws that are not fitting for us. Not only were they made with malice, but they’re not suitable for an independent nation. These were laws made for a colonized nation. Civil law in my opinion is absurd. I spent two years of my life studying Mecelle, [the civil law of the Ottoman empire]. And I enjoyed very much seeing parallels in it with our Talmud. But it’s absurd that we’d live in a regime from the Middle Ages. I also think the criminal law we inherited from the British is not fitting given our morality. [English law] is also currently the basis of judicial procedural, commercial law, and other matters.
The current Knesset is already burdened with work. If we begin to argue about declarations, we will embroil most of the members of the Knesset, and of course the newspapers—Ma’ariv and Y’diyot Aḥronot surely. These matters are perhaps important, but they’d instigate a fight and an argument, and would deflect attention from the work that it has to do in order to set up proper public services and to oversee and scrutinize the government. And I pray for criticism of the government—press criticism of the government is positive for the state. But I don’t see that we have time to busy ourselves with [constitutional] declarations. This is matter, perhaps, for literary people. We need laws. This state now requires laws [halakhah] rather than legend [aggadah], which is not necessary.
If we begin to engage in major philosophic arguments, we will damage the essential needs of the state: preparations for aliyah, settlement, raising living standards. These to my mind are the most pressing matters for the Knesset and for the state. The matter of a constitution will completely deflect us to another course. We very much love theoretical debates. One person will declare allegiance to Israel, another to socialist revolution. A third will say he’s loyal to popular democracy, and another to pioneering. It’s a divisive and futile debate that will take time in the Knesset and in the newspapers, and it will distract us from the essence of the matter. But in spite of all this, if the majority thinks differently, we will follow what the majority thinks.
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/israel-zionism/2021/03/against-court-and-
constitution-a-never-before-translated-speech-by-david-ben-gurion/
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