Archive for the ‘Israel’ Category

A Pause In Israel’s Judicial Changes, But At What Price?

Friday, March 31st, 2023

Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the U.S. and it have created a bilateral relationship based on tangible, steadily increasing security and economic interests, not just shared values. Israel has become a lynchpin in our efforts to achieve stability in the middle east (Our success in that regard has been dubious, at best). In fact, at the final presidential debate of the 2012 campaign season, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney mentioned Israel some 30 times, more than any other country except Iran. Both candidates called the Jewish state “a true friend,” pledging to stand with it through thick and thin. And we’ve done that. Since the end of World War II, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, assistance totaling more than $158 billion (non-inflation adjusted).

Unlike most democracies, Israel lacks a written Constitution, functioning, rather, under what are called “Basic Laws.”

The Basic Laws, enacted at various times between 1958 and 2018, number thirteen and are mostly rather vague. The 8th Basic Law, The Judiciary, enacted in 1984, lays out common sensible judicial requirements about honesty, transparency, judicial probity and process, and the like.

The Basic Laws place a heavy burden on the country’s judiciary and its Supreme Court, the High Court of Justice, making it the final arbiter. By nature, the Court is always involved in a tense relationship with its sister institution, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. In this regard, both are critical pillars in Israel’s foundational house of democracy.

Four months ago, a coalition comprised of the conservative Likud Party and five other far right and ultra-orthodox Parties won a national election and returned Benjamin Netanyahu to power as Prime Minister for the sixth time, despite his standing trial in three current corruption cases for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The coalition has a one vote majority with 61 seats out of 120 Knesset members.

Immediately upon taking control, the Coalition introduced a number of judicial law changes aimed at weakening the Supreme Court, chief among them one that would enable the Knesset to overrule Supreme Court decisions by a simple majority, which is currently what Netanyahu’s coalition enjoys. The reason for this seems to be that the Prime Minister’s coalition partners, without whom he cannot survive, blame the Court for stifling the establishment of new settlements in the West Bank and for being lackeys of the left. Their anger about this has been growing for years, but until now they have been unable to do anything about it. Entering a coalition with the weakened Netanyahu provides the opportunity they have long sought. If they are successful and this particular change were to become law, Israel’s Supreme Court would no longer be the “final arbiter.” Rather, it would serve at the pleasure of the Knesset.

This is a monumental change in the 8th Basic Law, in which Section 17 says,

“A verdict of a court in the first instance, may be appealed by right, save a verdict of the Supreme Court.” (emphasis added)

Further, Section 22, entitled, Stability of the law, reads,

“Emergency regulations do not have the power to change this law, to temporarily suspend its validity, or to subject it to conditions.”

Clearly, the authors of Basic Law 8 intended for the judiciary’s Supreme Court to be independent and unfettered.

The proposed judicial changes, like an oncoming train wreck, could be catastrophic for Israeli democracy.

Last week, the Knesset passed a portion of the proposed changes — a measure making it harder to remove Netanyahu, after which the prime minister announced his intention to take a more hands-on role in pushing the reforms, something he had guaranteed he would not do given the cited corruption charges and his ongoing Trials.¹

Hundreds of thousands of citizens have taken to the streets every weekend in protest. The Army, heavily dependent on highly-trained reservists, who have threatened not to obey orders if the judicial changes actually pass into law, has warned that national security is in serious jeopardy. All of Israel’s western allies have told Netanyahu he is making a terrible mistake by continuing to push for Knesset approval of the judicial changes.

Last Saturday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has become increasingly concerned that a growing number of reservists — including cyber warfare teams, pilots, and intelligence officers — have been skipping training duty in recent weeks because of the proposed changes, publicly urged Netanyahu to at least wait on the reforms until the Knesset returns from recess in a month, arguing pushing forward would make Israel vulnerable to attack. “This is a clear, immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state,” he said. “For the sake of our security, for the sake of our unity, it is our duty to return to the arena of dialogue.”

For this candid advice, Netanyahu promptly fired him.

The most vociferously far-right of his coalition partners, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, vowed to resign from the government if Netanyahu halts the judicial change plan. If Ben-Gvir resigned, the coalition would collapse, which would leave Netanyahu less protected with respect to his corruption charges.

That may have been the one-too-many straws that broke the enervated camel’s back. On Monday, in an address to the nation, Netanyahu announced a pause in the judicial change agenda. Not a stop; a pause, and only until the Knesset returns from its April recess. In his speech, Netanyahu blasted protesters for urging Reservists to avoid reporting for duty and Reservists for heeding that advice, saying, “The State of Israel can’t exist without the Israel Defense Forces, and the IDF cannot exist if there’s refusal to serve. Such refusal will be the end of our country.”

It would appear that Netanyahu’s coalition partners have him right where they want him. Before Mondays “pause” speech Ben-Gvir announced he would not resign and that he had agreed to back Netanyahu’s call for a pause in exchange for the Prime Minister’s promise to create an Israeli “National Guard” under Ben-Givr’s control.

This was confirmed when Ben Gvir circulated a letter to media outlets, signed by Netanyahu, in which the prime minister promised to raise the issue of forming such a body within the National Security Ministry in the cabinet meeting two days from now. Achieved through nothing but extortion, what would a new National Guard mean when placed under the control of Israel’s most far-right cabinet extremist? It seems a terrible price Netanyahu is willing to pay to stay in power.

Left out of any of these discussions are the 1.6 million Arab citizens of Israel who make up 17.2% of the population. Whatever rules, compromises, or judicial changes come out of this mess will affect them in a tangible and meaningful way, which could be far more impactful than the current political hijinks.

My modest proposal is that Israel immediately get to work on writing a constitution, as most modern democracies have done. They could dust off the one John Adams wrote for Massachusetts in 1780. It’s the oldest in the world and the model for America’s. It has stood the test of time. If Netanyahu were to announce such a move, saying the judicial changes are on a longer pause pending completion of the draft constitution, the warring factions may see the benefit of open dialogue rather than polemical threats.

Call me Pollyanna.

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¹ Israel’s attorney general issued a sharp rebuke on Friday, warning that Netanyahu had broken the law by announcing his direct involvement in the overhaul while facing criminal charges — a stern statement that raised the specter of a constitutional crisis.

A Sad Update And One Sweet Diversion

Wednesday, March 29th, 2023

Once again, into the darkness

So, here we are again.

In Nashville two days ago, the U.S. suffered its 131st Mass Shooting of 2023. That’s 131 in 86 days, for a rate of 1.52 a day — thus far.

This was also another Mass Murder, the 13th of the year. What’s the difference?

The Gun Violence Archive, which began documenting gun violence in the U.S. in 2013, defines a mass shooting as a gun violence incident in which four or more people are killed or injured, excluding the suspect or perpetrator.¹

The FBI does not have a definition for mass shootings; rather, it tracks mass murders, which it defines as an incident in which four or more people are killed.  It includes gun violence, bombings or any other incident where four or more are killed. Mass Murder would statistically be a subset of Mass Shooting.

Consequently, in the first 86 days of 2023, there have been 131 mass shootings and 13 mass murders. The event in Nashville added to both categories.

Regardless of definitions, what really matters is that in the first 86 days of 2023, 10,009 people who were alive to welcome in 2023 on New Year’s Eve are now dead by gun violence, 4,267 by homicide; 5,742 by suicide.

Gun violence incidents rocketed to another level in America in 2020 as the Coronavirus gripped the country, and since then they have not slackened at all.

I have periodically been writing about gun violence since 2005, and most recently just two months ago in January of this year.

I’m not going to rehash what I’ve written previously. I urge you to read the column from this past January. It says it all — except for one thing. It doesn’t discuss the children. In yesterday’s obscene brutality, the obviously deranged shooter killed three nine-year-old children. They were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs. Also killed were Mike Hill, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Cynthia Peak, 61.

This is how bad things have become: guns kill more children than any other cause.

As I reported in May of 2022, the US dwarfs the 28 most economically developed countries in the 38-member OECD in deaths by firearms. Not only is our firearm death rate nearly 25 times higher than our OECD companions, our total homicide rate is eight times higher. In America, 98 people die by firearms every single day. In those other 28 OECD countries, with a combined population more than twice that of ours (712 million vs. 331 million), that number is 19.

I have found people to be mostly the same the world over. Many are smart; some are not. Many are wealthy; most are not. But we in America have two things other countries do not have: more guns than people and sky-high homicide rates.  The first leads to the second. Why? Because guns can kill fast and from a distance. It’s hard to outrun a bullet. Other methods often take some time during which a victim has a chance to run away. Countries with far fewer guns have far fewer homicides. Simple as that.

Rather than doing something about the root problem — 393.3 million guns — we’ll continue to nibble around the edges mistaking movement for progress. And more nine-year-old children will die.

What kind of allegedly enlightened society allows this to happen?

Only ours.

And now for a sweet diversion

Do you know what rheology is?

To save you the trouble of looking up the answer, I’ll tell you.

Rheology is the branch of physics that deals with the deformation and flow of matter, especially the non-Newtonian flow of liquids and the plastic flow of solids.

There. Now you know.

This is a story of rheology, an Oreo cookie, and how a couple of MIT kids may have too much time on their hands.

Graduate student Crystal Owens and undergraduate Max Fan set out to solve a cookie conundrum that I’m sure has baffled you forever: whether there is a way to twist apart an Oreo and have the filling stick to both wafers. For Owens, the research “was a fun, easy way to make my regular physics and engineering work more accessible to the general public.”

According to Fan, “There’s a fascinating problem of trying to get the cream to distribute evenly between the two wafers, which turns out to be really hard.”

In fact, they couldn’t do it. PhD candidate Owens, who studies the properties of complex fluids, said, “Videos of the manufacturing process show that they put the first wafer down, then dispense a ball of cream onto that wafer before putting the second wafer on top. Apparently that little time delay may make the cream stick better to the first wafer.”

In the lab, the research team subjected Oreo cookies to standard rheology tests (whatever they are) and found that no matter the flavor or amount of stuffing, the cream at the center of an Oreo almost always sticks to one wafer when twisted open. I have no idea how many of the failures were eventually consumed, but I think it would have been a shame to waste any of them. Maybe they had after work Oreo and Gator Aid² parties.

And to show you how MIT students go to lengths you’ve probably never dreamed of to solve a problem, Owens and Fan designed a 3D-printable “Oreometer” — a simple device that firmly grasps an Oreo cookie and uses pennies and rubber bands to control the twisting force that progressively twists the cookie open. Instructions for the tabletop device can be found here. They are marvelous, and I include them, because, you never know, you might want to try this at home.

So, what do you do after you’ve done a research study on Oreo cookies and built a 3D-printable Oreometer, to boot? Why, you publish a paper detailing your research.  On Oreology, the fracture and flow of ‘milk’s favorite cookie appears today in Kitchen Flows, a special issue of the journal Physics of Fluids.

Get your copy now.

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¹ Two other reputable non-profit organizations track gun violence in the U.S.: Everytown Research & Policy and the Giffords Law Center.

² Gator Aid is another wonderful creation invented in a University lab, in this case the University of Florida’s.