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Evelyn Gordon

The deal involved changes to Basic Laws that may have been necessary in these political circumstances. But any country tinkers with longstanding constitutional arrangements at its own peril.
The true measure of whether a democracy is functioning properly isn’t whether problems exist; they always will. Rather, it’s whether democracy’s self-correcting mechanisms are working effectively to mitigate those problems.
Palestinians’ rights matter when targeted by Israel, but not when targeted by the Palestinian Authority. And Israeli rights never matter, except when violated by Israel.
Even if Palestinian statehood isn’t imminent, economic development now would increase the feasibility of any future state. So why is the Palestinian Authority refusing to go to Bahrain to discuss such development?
Too many legislators and voters have seen policies they cared about nixed merely because unelected justices or an unelected attorney general decided to substitute their own policy judgments for those of the elected government.
Expecting other countries to go from having never even considered moving their embassies to actually doing so in just 12 months was fatuous. But they have gone from a situation in which recognizing Jerusalem was unthinkable to one in which it’s being actively debated.
By subverting the meaning of terms like “the rule of law” and tikkun olam, the left has brought these concepts into such disdain that repairing the world is booed, while pending indictments against a prime minister are dismissed as a ploy to subvert democracy.
International law used to distinguish between offensive and defensive wars. But modern interpretations have eliminated this distinction, and thereby ended up rewarding aggression.
Many Israelis are willing to tolerate a racist party in the Knesset because they fear that the alternative is a government that will make life-threatening territorial concessions. And when voters think human life is at stake, telling them to “just say no” won’t work.