The police made the minimum effort required of them, and then acted as though they had been paralyzed. For four months, they waited for Rabbi Dov Lior to be kind, and to respect the law. But when he refused, they intercepted his car while he was traveling from Kiryat Arba to Jerusalem, and brought him in for a brief questioning. The police preferred to intercept him in his car to avoid embarrassing him in front of his followers. Rabbi Lior's followers undermined the rule of law, stormed the Supreme Court and blocked the entrance to the capital, after which their leader described democracy as "the idolatry of our generation." The strange incident of the interrogation of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, son of Shas' spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef, was on Sunday added to this theocratic putsch. The police brought him in, respectfully, and asked him questions, not, God forbid, at the police station, but at Police National Headquarters. Despite this, more protests broke out on Sunday and Monday, and one of the rabbi's followers offered a reminder that Justice Yaakov Zemach, who sentenced former Shas leader Aryeh Deri to prison, has died. The heavens are doing our work for us, he said. This is terrible. It was actually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who played the role of the child who exposed the emperor's nakedness in "The Emperor's New Clothes," when he called his son "a fool." Those are true words of love coming from a loving father. But the son's stance is not mere foolishness. When a member of Knesset like Yaakov Katz [National Union Party] talks about creating a new rule of law, he is referring to a theocracy: no women's rights, no equality before the law, no High Court of Justice for appeals, but rather, rabbinic rule. He means to terrorize people like MKs Yuli Edelstein and Zeev Elkin [Likud], who are looking ahead to the primaries while turning a blind eye to those who break the law. They don't want rabbis to be investigated for inciting harm to non-Jewish children, but what about when they are suspected of sexually abusing young boys and girls? Or of physically abusing or starving children at home- We are to blame. I am not referring to the extreme Left, which has no interest in the connection between Jewish law, the Land of Israel, and the Zionist world view. Nor am I referring to the ultra-Orthodox community, which was raised and educated in the disciplinarian yeshivas of Rabbi Lior and dreams of returning Israel to the days of old, the old spiritual ghetto. I am referring to us, the people who believe in the unity of Israel and have not rejected Jewish heritage as an integral part of our youths' education; the people who understand that education must include the memorization of chapters of prophetic ethics and love of the land mentioned in books and in the Declaration of Independence. I am referring to those of us who know that it is possible to support two states for two peoples but also that a Jewish student cannot matriculate without first visiting the Western Wall and the Cave of the Patriarchs. There is a fundamental disagreement with Rabbi Lior, who does not understand that the essence of Judaism combines accepting the authority of the sovereign while allowing room for debate, or, in other words, democracy. Jewish creativity was born out of disagreement and not out of blind acceptance for rabbinic authority. Yet this argument requires a different framework. Right now, the main thing is to prevent a theocracy from being established. This is the mission for Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuven Rivlin, Benny Begin, Dan Meridor, Moshe (Bogey) Ya'alon, Silvan Shalom, and Gideon Sa'ar. Their partner, Ehud Barak, must also bear some of the burden. If they do not rise up to protect the Supreme Court and the values of democracy, but rather leave that to the mounted police officers and their horses, the rule of law will be undermined to the point that we - those who love the land of the Jews, as well as Jewish law and morality - will not be able to bear it any longer. Enough of this lawlessness. We've been warned.
