Since the tenure of Aharon Barak as its chief justice, Israel’s highest court has arrogated to itself broad powers to overturn legislation and intervene in various aspects of public life, based only on its evaluation of the “reasonableness” of any particular measure. To David M. Weinberg, the concept of “reasonableness” has become an “authoritarian” tool that “allows high-court justices to apply elastically their own sensibilities; to re-engineer Israeli society—in their enlightened image, of course.” He notes how arbitrary this standard has become in recent cases, and its implications for those cases that the court will soon hear:

It was found “unreasonable” that Religious Zionist Jews operate acceptance committees to maintain distinctly homogenous small communities. . . . But it is “reasonable” for Bedouin and Arabs to operate acceptance committees because they are considered “distinct,” and apparently more kosher, communities by the court.

So it was two weeks ago when the court struck down the latest version of an immigration/deportation law pertaining to infiltrators and refugees. So it may be when the court considers a petition to outlaw the new position of “alternate prime minister,” [the creation of which made the current governing coalition possible].

So it may be when the court rules on the historic Nation-State Law of 2018, which was passed as a “Basic Law”—meaning that it was meant as constitutional legislation [that] the court has no right to touch. Nevertheless, Chief Justice Esther Ḥayut has convened an eleven-justice panel to judge the law’s “reasonableness.”

So it may be when the court rules soon on a petition from a group of extremist professors to terminate all government funding for separate-sex ḥaredi college programs. Accepting the petition would be a disaster for the slow but measurable movement of ḥaredi men and women into the workforce—which is crucial for the Israeli economy and the future of our society.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.