צילום: הדס פרוש / פלאש | Photograph: Hadas Parush / Flash

“Good men must not obey the laws too well,” said Emerson.

It turns out that the ugliness of Ayelet Shaked’s behavior in the face of the boys’ torture in the Duma affair is deeper than we thought.

Until now, we were of the opinion that the former justice minister had acted only with horrendous negligence. We thought she hadn’t really bothered to investigate the reality and was quick to calm the uproar when she and Bennett were promising in every direction “We looked into it in-depth; everything’s fine”.

And just now, Shaked has admitted that she knew about the torture as it was happening.

So why didn’t Shaked hurry to bring the cry of the parents to light? The same parents from the sector that chose her to represent them? And why did Shaked work actively to curb the protest and grant legitimacy to the terrible injustice that was done to those boys?

To this, Shaked replies, “Everything was done within the bounds of the law.”

Do you see? “The Great Liberal” Mrs. Shaked is prepared to legitimize unthinkable torture for boys, an indescribable moral crime, simply because it’s possible to hide behind the law!

History has taught us that the first step in the transition from a liberal society that respects human rights to a slave society that oppresses people is the replacement of the moral compass with the legal compass.

When citizens, and more so leaders, stop asking themselves “what’s good and what’s bad” but instead ask “what’s legal and what’s illegal,” we all know that we’re moving in the wrong moral direction.