Aharon Barak’s protest gavel

In a slew of interviews on Thursday, former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak came out swinging his proverbial gavel. His target was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—this time around for firing Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and gearing up to get rid of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.

Since going after Netanyahu was what the left-wing press expected of the esteemed elder, the retired judge-turned-oracle didn’t disappoint. If anything, he went above and beyond the call of duty.

“The prime minister,” he told Channel 13, “needs to understand that the situation is very bad and that … we are heading toward bloodshed, toward a civil war.”

The schism among Israelis, he said to Ynet, “is getting worse and, in the end, I fear, it will be like a train that goes off the tracks and plunges in a chasm, causing a civil war.”

And this to Channel 12: “[T]he rift in the public is immense, and no effort is being made to heal it. … Today, there are demonstrations … but tomorrow there will be shootings, and the day after that there will be bloodshed.”

This is just a taste of Barak’s multi-media onslaught. Though described by his champions as a “warning” to the Netanyahu-led government that any moves against Bar and Baharav-Miara would rip apart the country and—ho hum—destroy Israeli democracy, his pontificating had two main motives.

The first was to threaten Netanyahu that if he proceeds with the ousters—the legality of which is indisputable—the demonstrations in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will turn violent. Implicit in the admonition was that such a dangerous spike in societal unrest would be both inevitable and justified.

The second aim of Barak’s sermonizing was to signal support for Bar’s refusal to exit his post and Baharav-Miara’s abuse of her role, while instructing the High Court to overrule the government in each of the cases. As though it needed any coaxing on that score.

Still, a nod from the father of Israel’s “constitutional revolution”—who justified his power grab for the bench more than 30 years ago on the grounds that “no areas in life are outside the law”—is a cherished commodity among the robed elites. Though he retired 18 years ago at the mandatory age of 70, he remains a jurisprudence giant in the eyes of the legal community, at home and abroad.

Indeed, even those who consider his activism excessive tend to pay lip service to his ostensibly original thinking and supposed superior intellect. Due to this reputation, however ill-deserved, Netanyahu selected him to sit as Israel’s ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in January 2024—to hear proceedings brought by South Africa accusing the Jewish state of violating the Genocide Convention.

The choice of Barak raised eyebrows and hackles on the right. After all, he had been a key figure in helping the opposition undermine the government’s plans to reform the judicial system.

During the months leading up to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and ensuing war in Gaza, Barak—who referred to the right-wing victory in the November 2022 election as a “tyranny of the majority—gave credence to the lie that any judicial reform would result in an end to Israeli democracy. Then, as now, the press made a pilgrimage to his home to amplify the bogus allegation.

Netanyahu must have thought that dispatching the internationally renowned, anti-Bibi Barak to The Hague was thus a wise maneuver. But it was actually too clever by half, which is why it backfired.

Rather than fully representing Israel’s position, Barak voted in favor of two out of six measures proposed by South Africa: the “facilitation of humanitarian aid” to Gaza and the “prevention of inflammatory speech that could incite further violence.”

Judge Julia Sebutinde of Uganda put him to shame by dissenting on all six anti-Israel measures. Not that he felt remorse for his disgraceful performance, mind you. On the contrary, he clearly took pride in showing the antisemitic kangaroo tribunal that he wasn’t tainted by loyalty to his people.

Fortunately, he resigned in June from the futile position, citing “personal family reasons” and thanking Netanyahu “for the trust you placed in me.”

No mention of his betrayal of that trust, other than from those of us who weren’t the least bit surprised by it. You know, considering his outrageous conduct prior to and during the proceedings.

Nor were we shocked at his being dusted off and shoved in front of the cameras last week to reiterate his indictment of the democratically elected political echelon and foment the worst form of internecine strife—at a time when the country is in the throes of an existential battle for its survival, no less.

Dubbing him the “high priest of progressivism,” Likud MK and Deputy Knesset Speaker Hanoch Milwidsky aptly summed up the message of Barak’s recent broadcast-blitz: “Submit to us, or there will be bloodshed. Do as we wish, or there will be a civil war.”

Barak, he tweeted, is a “dangerous and dark man. I hope he lives long enough to see his ‘constitutional revolution’ abandoned in favor of true democracy in the Jewish state of Israel.”

Amen to that.

© JNS