Former Israeli Supreme Court Justice not a stranger to controversy

Former President of the Supreme Court of Israel Aharon Barak defended the importance of making controversial decisions in his lecture on Friday at the School of Law.
After a screening of the film “The Judge,” which focuses on Barak’s policy decisions and career, the former Supreme Court president spoke to an audience of about 30 people.
In the documentary, Barak evaded the Nazis when his father arranged to have him smuggled in a bag out of a Lithuanian ghetto as a child.
Barak said that this was an event that he always looked back on throughout his career as a member of the Israeli government.
“Life in the ghetto was horrible,” Barak said in the film. “It was horrible because people were treated like garbage.”
After becoming the President of Israel’s Supreme Court, Barak confronted many national and international issues, including those that dealt with Jewish law, the Camp David Accords and Arab-Israeli conflicts.
During his Supreme Court presidency from 1995 to 2006 , Barak dealt with many controversial issues and made some decisions that were unpopular, according to the film.
“I’ve often had to make a ruling that I knew the public would oppose,” Barak said in the film.
The film also explained Barak’s work on the 1979 Camp David Summit, a meeting of United States President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat for Mid East peace.
“He was invaluable,” said Carter about Barak in the documentary. “I have always said that the hero at Camp David for the entire process was Aharon Barak.”
After the film, Barak answered some of the audiences’ questions.
“You Americans had September 11. We had September 10, September 12, September 13, September,” Barak said about the political strife in his country, particularly between Arabs and Jews.
Barak’s court forced the state to rent land to Arabs in a country where there is much resentment toward them, the film explained.
“I thought [the film] was very insightful,” said first-year School of Law student Spencer Holland. “I didn’t know anything about Israeli law coming into it. I thought he expressed an admirable amount of sincerity…in trying to seek a balance between majority rule and individual rights.”