Why the Israeli Declaration of Independence Is So Popular

I am grateful for the excellent comments by Eugene Kontorovich and Yonatan Green to the final installment of my seven-part series on Israel’s declaration of independence.

Basically, these two learned legal authorities focus on what the declaration isn’t. The declaration isn’t a political map of the borders of Israel, and it isn’t a credible substitute for a constitution; its drafters, as I show in my last essay, never intended that it be either of those things. Moreover, in announcing that a constitution would be produced separately and at a later date, the declaration explicitly disavows any pretense to be one.

In brief, on each of these basic points the three of us are mainly in complete agreement. Not only that, but we also agree on the importance of underscoring these facts. The reason? Because, as I have documented and as Kontorovich and Green concur, for some time now the Supreme Court of Israel has been, in Kontorovich’s words, “treating [the declaration] as a constitutional document—that is, as a basis to overturn Knesset legislation”: a move that finds no warrant whatsoever in the declaration itself.