Hacker News Reader

Comment by slavak | Hacker News Reader

The Israeli government has absolutely no say in how any of this plays out, that is the entire point of an independent judiciary. The lawsuit and sanctions are decided by the courts based on existing laws and precedent, and for them Facebook's size or position in the Israeli market does not (and should not) hold any weight whatsoever.

The most the legislative can do is amend the relevant laws to make what Facebook tried to do legal going forward, and that still wouldn't apply retroactively. The odds of the government choosing to extensively overhaul its consumer protection laws for the interests of a single multinational in a single lawsuit aren't great.

View on HN

> The Israeli government has absolutely no say in how any of this plays out, that is the entire point of an independent judiciary.

Israel has no genuinely independent judiciary, nor genuinely free press.

IDF regularly intervenes in both, that's a very poorly held secret.

Any normal nation would be completely horrified at the prospect of a private company effectively intervening into its foreign relations, but Israel is remarkably not, and even seem to give NSO a considerable amount of legal cover.

I believe it's just a cover for the state to distance itself from the activity in public eyes, just like IDF distances itself from peddling military hardware around the world by hiding behind "independent private companies."

>Israel has no genuinely independent judiciary, nor genuinely free press.

Israel is the only country in the world where the judiciary appoints itself and a newspaper like "Ha'artez" can exist.

>Any normal nation would be completely horrified at the prospect of a private company effectively intervening into its foreign relations

That would make most of the West "not normal nations".

> Israel is the only country in the world where the judiciary appoints itself

No.

Judges who serve on the Supreme Court, as well as the district and magistrate courts, are appointed by the Judicial Selection Committee, which consists of nine members: the Minister of Justice, another cabinet member, two Knesset members (in practice one is from the coalition and the other is from the opposition), two members of the Israel Bar Association, and the President of the Supreme Court and two other Supreme Court justices. The committee is chaired by the Minister of Justice. It can appoint judges to the magistrate and district courts by a majority vote, but appointing a Supreme Court judge requires a majority of at least 7 to 9 or two less than the number present at the meeting.

In short, Judges and people who are dependent on them have an absolute majority. They also have a direct veto power over any Supreme Court appointment (7 of 9 and they have 3 votes).

The establishment already has 3 votes by default, and needs only 2 yes votes — an easy thing to do, and almost certain if supreme court is already stuffed by pro-establishment judges for a few government terms.

And candidates for supreme court appointment almost always come from seniormost district court judges, which were simple majority appointed.

And if supreme court appointment keeps getting vetoed, they can simply do nothing, and wait for appointment by default of seniormost district court judge.

And all of this does not matter at all when IDF intervenes.

"The establishment already has 3 votes by default, and needs only 2 yes votes"

Except the 'only 2 votes' are dependent on the other 3 vote block for a living. Also, the Supreme Court has retained its option for interfering with the composition of Knesset block, and putting an opposition member in it, which would make it an effective 1 member block.

India too (which is actually unconstitutional, but somehow that's ignored and judges select their friends and kin as next gen judges)

Keeping jokes to myself, but Pakistan also has quite a number of jokes how words "judicial fraternity" apply in the most literal sense.

18th amendment tried to fix the issue, but paradoxically just made it worse. The Chaudhry train wreck was a complete tragicomedy.

You have no idea what you're talking about, and comments like "that's a very poorly held secret." don't deserve the effort of trying to find a reference to refute them.

> Israel has no genuinely independent judiciary, nor genuinely free press.

That's just not true, where are you getting your information from?

Israeli courts have repeatedly ruled in a way that violates international law, including on illegal Israeli settlements.

Does it really matter if they're independent if they disregard the law in exactly the same way the Israeli government does?

Facebook could choose to leave the Israeli market so it would not be bound by Israeli law.

Yes, Facebook could do that. There's probably many laws in many other countries Facebook operates in that are a lot less reasonable than this one, but I guess if for some reason this was the specific hill they wanted to die on, they would absolutely be free to do so.

Facebook also has a pretty big engineering office in Tel-Aviv, which they'd probably have to close in this scenario. I imagine that would also be a massive PITA. But, again, there's nothing technically stopping them from doing that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com