Leaders are tested in troubled times: when they must protect the state while fires are breaking out at home, when their basic values are under attack, when they are abandoned. Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch fell into a leadership test right after entering her post. She passed with flying colors, almost heroically.

It was clear from the outset that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had not selected Daniel Friedmann as justice minister because he had read the latter's brilliant articles on contract law and found them profound. Olmert chose a declared enemy of the justice system and its head - a man who bears a personal grudge against them - and turned him loose on them. Olmert made this hasty and unacceptable move with a long list of criminal investigations hanging over his head - Bank Leumi, Cremiuex, the Small Business Authority, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss - and while two of his good friends, Haim Ramon and Abraham Hirchson, were entangled in investigations of their own.

Friedmann quickly dashed hopes that he would show increased intellectual honesty and a measure of responsibility, and would be wise enough not to deliver the goods to the individual who had dispatched him. A series of belligerent and hasty maneuvers, showing complete immaturity in government and national responsibility, have turned the Supreme Court into a subject of attack. Beinisch tried dialogue, compromise, silence and finally - lacking an alternative, bravely, and without flourish or cowardly leaks - she made public the content of her sharp letter to Friedmann.

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The attempt to turn Friedmann and Beinisch into adversaries of equal standing is a continuation of the efforts to falsely present the clash between the state comptroller and Olmert. After all, to some extent, Olmert is the one manufacturing the "quarrels," which in his case recall the "quarrel" between a suspected robber and the policeman who caught him. However, this is not a suspected thief, but rather a prime minister who wields great power, who in his struggle to survive will say, "let my soul die with the Philistines," and is threatening to bring down the foundations of the rule of law.

The Supreme Court deals with issues at the very heart of our lives, and, as such, it engenders a spectrum of reactions, from relevant, specific critiques to strong ideological and visceral opposition. I myself take issue with the monolithic nature with the neo-liberal economic approach of most of the judges. However, my objections, like those of others - whether to rulings on bolstering communities near the Gaza Strip; the ruling in favor of an Arab citizen's right to build on state land allocated to the Jewish Agency; or the question of judicial activism, no matter what the political angle - are irrelevant right now. Olmert's war on the institutions of the rule of law is neither material, structural nor ideological criticism. It is not even political. It is an attempt at intentional destruction, for egocentric reasons, of institutions whose strength is a condition for our democracy's existence.

This is a national emergency, essentially no different from a security emergency, since this is a war for our homes. I trust Beinisch's leadership in this serious crisis and am sorry that the retired Supreme Court justice Aharon Barak has been silent. Barak's responsibility did not end when he retired. It is a pity that his honor does not let his voice be heard.

The writer is a Labor Party MK. www.shelly.org.il