Summary
Moshe Landau, as Lahav presents him: born in the free city of Danzig, Teutonic in manner, a fierce Zionist, the only Jewish magistrate in Haifa before Simon Agranat joined him in 1940, and Agranat’s lifelong friend and collaborator on the bench (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 866-960).
Details
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With Agranat he insisted on writing judicial opinions in Hebrew; against the district court president’s 1942 English-only directive the two staged a minirevolt, hinting at a Yishuv uproar, and the order was postponed and never raised again; Lahav notes Agranat did not know whether a similar directive went to the Arab judges (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 935-955).
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A week after independence in 1948, Landau and Agranat forced open the locked Haifa court; Landau remembered Agranat personally kicking the door open, Agranat remembered instructing the clerks to do it (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1003-1025).
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In the violence of late 1947–1948 Landau suspected the young Arab clerk the two judges shared, and both men obtained permits to carry pistols (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 960-985).
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Landau concurred in Agranat’s unanimous Kol ha-Am opinion of 16 October 1953, with Joel Sussman (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1330-1345).
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Landau chaired the Eichmann Trial panel (with Halevy and Raveh) after the statute was amended so a Supreme Court justice could preside over Nazi-crimes trials; Lahav presents him as a Danzig-born, German-cultured pianist and English-educated judge of thirty years’ standing whose presence reassured Western journalists, and who had declined German reparations on principle (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1733-1800).
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He chaired the Central Elections Committee that banned Al-Ard’s list in 1965, conceding the committee’s burden of proof was “much less” than a court’s, and his 1964 concurrence had relied on a Radio Cairo broadcast and a Falastin article praising Al-Ard (see Yeredor Case) (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2102-2271).
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A devoted disciple of judicial restraint, Landau sat on the Agranat Commission and penned, as a footnote, its recommendation on applying the criminal law to journalists (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2500-2791).
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Landau alone was asked to eulogise Agranat at his private funeral in August 1992 (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2792-2861).
Related pages
Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, Simon Agranat, Israeli Supreme Court, Landau Commission Eichmann Trial, Yeredor Case, Agranat Commission