The publication last week of two documents: one, the State Attorney’s Office protocol suggesting a cover-up by its top members; the second, a remarkable interview with Hebrew University law professor Ruth Gavison, raises many questions about the legal system’s ethos and role. Gavison, a distinguished jurist, criticizes the legal establishment for acting as a closed guild, and for trying to impose a Western, secularist, liberal ethos on a pluralistic society. But actually, the legal establishment, especially the Justice Ministry, is thoroughly illiberal.

Like successive marriages, the blind faith of Israelis that “clean, new” leadership will set all wrongs right represents the triumph of hope over experience. Again and again, our statist distributive system corrupts politics and brings out the worst, even in the best. Rampant statism has ground the Soviet empire to dust, and caused us disaster after disaster. Yet, after each catastrophe, we search amidst the rubble for a new white hope, clinging to the illusion that given the “right” leadership, Israel can revive itself without paying the painful cost of true reform.

As a result of last fall’s violence and the ensuing efforts to rescue the peace process, security concerns have once again eclipsed all other public policy issues in Israel. Despite years of talk about the need for economic reform, therefore, major changes are not likely in the near future. But once the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has some breathing space, there is reason to hope he will do more than talk.