Someone must have fallen asleep. Under cover of conventional words like "Israeli" and "democratic," attempts are being made to transform a controversial private political institute into a national institution that would sit beside other general, national institutions. Let me be clear: There is nothing problem with setting up a research institute or political lobby to try influence any issue on the Israeli government's agenda. This is how research institutes from all sorts of political streams operate in all Western nations. The problem arises when someone believes that the private institution he founded is a public institution, and that his worldview is the be-all and end-all. Such is the case with the Israel Democracy Institute, whose heads regularly behave disingenuously, as if they were from the United Nations. But they are not. The Israel Democracy Institute is actually a left-wing organization in every respect. The two vice presidents are known leftists, as are most of the group's researchers, all of whom share similar views. Vice President Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer was appointed in December 2008 to head the committee established to tap the candidates for the New Left Party, which is associated with the left-wing political party Meretz. Nearly all the government bills that members of the institute have opposed have been conservative proposals, or proposals made by right-wing lawmakers. The institute said that such bills "endanger democracy" or are "anti-democratic." The institute operates practically and by compiling research; it is geared toward the media to raise, in its own words, "public awareness about the threats hiding in the wave of legislation," and also to "strengthen and internalize the essential foundations of substantive democracy." Substantive democracy is the liberal version of the theocratic state, the absolute rule of the enlightened -- there are dictates that take precedence over the majority rule, and we are the ones who set them. According to the institute, majority rule is only a recommendation. Furthermore, when initiatives raised by the institute target individual political law proposals and try to prevent them from going through, that act of itself is political. Two constitutions are today contending for priority. The institute does not accept the first clause, which is being proposed as one of the Basic Laws, that Israel is the national home of the Jewish people. Who else disagrees with this clause? The answer is mainly Arab parties and factions on the Left. The institute's method is actually rather disingenuous.
The IDI is not a national institute
מערכת היום
מערכת "היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
