Jerusalem, September 29 — Israel’s highest judicial body on Thursday upheld a Knesset candidate’s removal from the October ballot after concluding that a third-grade disciplinary file met a standard the justices have spent two decades declining to apply to party platforms - drawing an “I told you so” from a long-retired Mrs. Schwartz.

The ruling found that talking during quiet time, cutting the snack line, and once informing the class guinea pig that it was “not the boss of me” formed a coherent doctrine incompatible with public office. “The record is permanent,” the court wrote. “Permanence, unlike Section 7A, is not interpreted as narrowly as possible.”

The candidate’s former teacher, reached at a retirement home in Natanya, said she had been patient. “Permanent record. Remember?” she said. “He laughed. The Elections Committee did not laugh. The Court, usually, does.”

“I usually find my former students’ achievements sweet,” she acknowledged. “In this case, it’s the vindication that’s sweet.”

Only a day earlier the Central Elections Committee barred Arab slates and candidates, citing platforms and statements the panel concluded collided with the Basic Law’s bans on rejecting Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, incitement, or support for armed struggle against it. Legal historians noted the familiar sequel: since 2003 the Court has overturned nearly every such ban, asking for a “critical mass” of intent that, like a missing permission slip, is almost never in the folder.

Right-wing figures celebrated consistency of a sort. “If a juice-box incident can end a candidacy,” a spokesman said, “surely a manifesto can.” Opposition lawyers called the comparison unfair. “A manifesto is speech,” one said. “A guinea pig is a fact.”

Court-watchers sketched the emerging test. Childhood paste-eating: justiciable; a party program the Elections Committee calls a walking violation of the ballot rules: context, timing, and whether anyone brought a laminated note from home. “We require extreme cases,” a retired clerk explained. “Extreme, in this building, means the teacher is still alive and kept the carbon copies. Calling for the violent overthrow of Jewish sovereignty isn’t nearly as clear-cut grounds for disqualification.”

The candidate, standing on the courthouse steps, called the judgment “an assault on the right to have been eight” and vowed a public campaign against the Court if it again nixes the removal of Arab candidates and parties - offering a possible boost, analysts say, to incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s bid to constrain the Court’s authority.

Please support our work through Patreon. Buy In The Biblical Sense: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B92QYWSL