Can Israel Handle Strains in the Democratic Process?
Weekly AJC Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs January 1, 2003
Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office
American Jewish Committee
The first day of 2003 dawned bright and blue-skied, as winter days in Israel can—all the more intense and promising after a week of torrential and beneficial rains. The beauty of the little things around us on such days can be a solace in difficult times. In our local park, the white herons were back, perched atop the old pine trees, etched against the sky –a perfect National Geographic image to start your day with on the morning walk.
The news in the paper, waiting at the gate, was less lovely. The political landscape looks more like the underside of the very same bird perches: messy and stained. An election campaign that should have been fought on the issues—Can we ever trust Arafat again? Can we delay the separation from the Palestinians any longer? Can we bring the Israeli economy back to rapid growth and deal with social gaps as we do so?— has by now degenerated into an object lesson on the ills that can damage and strain the democratic process (unless curbed by constitutional restraints, of which we have too few):
1. Majority and minorities: The issues surrounding the limits of democratic legitimacy in a society in which a sizable minority, namely Israeli Arabs, feels ill at ease, as “their country fights their people,” are acute and highly problematic. Unfortunately, they were drowned out in the uproar surrounding an overtly political act—the disqualification of two Arab leaders—by the party representatives who hold the majority in the Central Election Committee. Their choice to bar Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi from running for Knesset seats was made against the opinion of its chairperson, Supreme Court Judge Mishael Cheshin. This obscures the fact that the problems involved are real enough:
· A democratic Israel cannot be expected to simply acquiesce when one Member of Knesset acts openly as an adviser to an enemy in wartime and another goes to Damascus to participate in a gathering side by side with a genocidal terrorist. (While Tibi has acted as an adviser to Palestinian leader Arafat, one can just read Hizballah leader Nasrallah's speeches and you will see why many feel Bishara has crossed all legitimate lines.)
· Moreover, it is safe to say that being represented by radicals who choose to promote the strategic agenda of Israel’s Arab enemies rather than the very real social and economic needs of their own constituents has done more harm than good to the majority of Israeli Arabs.
Having said this, we face the unpleasant notion that even an act driven by real concerns can become illegitimate, and certainly harmful, if done for the wrong reasons—even more so when tainted by the CEC decision to allow an equally odious politician, Baruch Marzel (an upholder of Meir Kahane’s racist legacy), to run in a far-right party, which claims for itself, unjustly, the name of Begin’s party, Herut (Liberty). Again, this decision was taken by the same political majority in the CEC, against Cheshin’s anguished advice. It will now fall to the Supreme Court to save the good name of Israeli democracy—and leave the necessary space for a serious, disinterested discussion of what is (really) wrong with Bishara’s and Tibi’s politics.
2. Power and money: A stain of corruption is clearly visible, more so than in any previous campaign (although Ehud Barak’s team in 1999, and Ariel Sharon’s in 2001, were also caught with their hands in the cookie jar). The sacking of Deputy Minister Naomi Blumenthal, suspected of bribing Likud Center “vote getters,” because she “took the Fifth” under police investigation, may take the edge off the pressures on Sharon, for a while; and several more Knesset candidates might take a fall. Still, the big question ahead has to do with the manner in which the prime minister’s camp--for very legitimate and even strategic reasons--overloaded the party rolls so as to block “Bibi” Netanyahu’s operators and deny him a return to power, and thus opened the floodgates to highly questionable elements. Full accounting for these decisions and developments will come only after the election. It is already clear, however, that it is Shinui (“Change”), Tommy Lapid’s “party of the angry middle class,” that is poised to gain the most from Likud losses. Labor, perceived as soft on Arafat and internally divided, is not picking up any momentum.
3. Religion and State: With Lapid fast becoming the hot item in this strange election, the deepest of all Israeli political divisions is resurfacing. Lapid claims that his problem is not with the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox) per se, but with the manner in which they milk the public purse, while secular and national-religious (Modern Orthodox) Israelis must work, pay taxes, and defend the country. And yet his position shades over into dislike of organized Jewish religion as such, and abhorrence toward “the other”; and ugly tones creep into the debate on both sides. (It is not unusual for Haredi politicians to call Lapid—who, like another Hungarian Jew, Representative Tom Lantos in the U.S. Congress, is the only Holocaust survivor in the Knesset—an “anti-Semite,” and worse.)
Israeli democracy is thus under some strain, but nowhere near breaking. The key institutions of civil society and political liberty—from the rule of law (like AJC, the Israeli court system was originally built by Jews of German, “Yekke,” origin, and built to last) all the way to an aggressive and inquisitive press—are still very much there and ready to roll. And once the votes are counted and the dust settles, new opportunities will arise to fix some of these ills. Israel’s friends will then be in a position to remind decision-makers here how bad things came to be this time and where they need urgent constitutional action, possibly colored by the American experience. It was not for nothing that a recent Israeli academic conference on “The Federalist” was so well-attended.