Member of Knesset Simḥa Rothman (Religious Zionism) alleged earlier this week that the justice ministry under Gideon S’ar (New Hope) is quietly seeking to enter Israel into the Istanbul Convention.
Such a move would be a shocking betrayal of Israel’s national sovereignty, cultural character, and greater moral purpose on the world stage.
The Istanbul Convention is a vehicle of the Council of Europe purportedly designed to protect women against domestic violence and sexual abuse. The main provision of the treaty requires member states to criminalize the following activities: domestic psychological and physical violence, stalking, sexual violence of any kind, forced sexual acts, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, forced abortion, forced sterilization, sexual harassment, honor killings, etc.
Because all of the above acts required to be criminalized by the treaty are already illegal in Israel, entrance into the Istanbul Convention would bring no actual change to Israeli law. What membership in the Istanbul Convention would do, however, is allow the Council of Europe a jurisdictional foothold in Israel, effectively sacrificing Israel’s domestic sovereignty to the self-serving whims of the supergovernmental organization and its bodies.
The Council of Europe would easily gain sweeping jurisdiction over Israel under Article IV of the Convention. Article IV, Section 3 gives the Council of Europe broad jurisdiction to enforce policy on member states in regards to “discrimination on any ground such as sex, gender, race, color, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, state of health, disability, marital status, migrant or refugee status, or other status.”
Israeli membership in this Convention would surrender any independent policymaking to the will of the Council of Europe on these abstract and terribly extensive grounds.
This issue is no new concern. The prospect of surrendering Israeli sovereignty to this mammoth degree is the reason why Bulgaria, Slovenia, Poland, and Hungary all refused to enter the Convention and why Turkey, the Convention’s first signee, withdrew in 2021.
It is the agenda of the European political establishment to salvage their hegemony by debasing any independent national or moral forces to ensure maximum global subservience. Israel’s steadfast national and moral character has been the driving force behind European antipathy towards Israel and the prospect of gaining the jurisdiction to strip Israel of its identity, gaining an unproblematic subservient cooperator, free of independent national or moral concerns, in the process is too great a prospect to deny. Israel’s colonized bourgeoisie who crave European dominance over Israel and harbor a considerable disdain for Israel’s national, territorial, legal, and cultural Jewish character, are delighted to comply.
This issue of sacrificing Israel’s sovereignty to the Council of Europe is all but a symptom of the bigger problem with Israel’s potential entrance into the Istanbul Convention. It is Israel’s role to be a leader on matters of global moral and political leadership, not a follower. When Israel betrays this mission and instead seeks a subservient role in these issues, it inherently makes itself vulnerable to corrupt political forces.
The State of Israel currently lacks the temerity to demand its rightful seat at the head of the world’s moral and political table. Israel’s political establishment has demeaned the Jewish people by reducing our state to a docile vassal of the Western powers at every opportunity. Such a role is both unnatural and unsafe for the children of Israel as it negates our role as a “light unto the nations.”
