What if Israel ceases to be a 'democracy'?
Jeffrey Goldberg worries that Israel will one day cease to be a democracy. I will admit here that my assumption has usually been that Israelis, when they finally realize the choice before them (many have already, of course, but many more haven't, it seems), will choose democracy, and somehow extract themselves from the management of the lives of West Bank Palestinians. But I've had a couple of conversations this week with people, in Jerusalem and out of Jerusalem, that suggest to me that democracy is something less than a religious value for wide swaths of Israeli Jewish society. I'm speaking here of four groups, each ascendant to varying degrees:The haredim, the ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose community continues to grow at a rapid clip; the working-class religious Sephardim -- Jews from Arab countries, mainly -- whose interests are represented in the Knesset by the obscurantist rabbis of the Shas Party; the settler movement, which still seems to get whatever it needs in order to grow; and the million or so recent immigrants from Russia, who support, in distressing numbers, the Putin-like Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister and leader of the "Israel is Our Home" party.Rabbi Meir Kahane HY"D (may God avenge his blood) predicted all along that the day would come when Israel would have to choose between being a Jewish state and being a democracy. And indeed it could happen.
Let's just say, as a hypothetical, that one day in the near future, Prime Minister Lieberman's government (don't laugh, it's not funny) proposes a bill that echoes the recent call by some rabbis to discourage Jews from selling their homes to Arabs. Or let's say that Lieberman's government annexes swaths of the West Bank in order to take in Jewish settlements, but announces summarily that the Arabs in the annexed territory are in fact citizens of Jordan, and can vote there if they want to, but they won't be voting in Israel. What happens then? Do the courts come to the rescue? I hope so. Do the Israeli people come to the rescue? I'm not entirely sure. There are many Israelis who value democracy, but they might not possess the strength to fight. Does American Jewry come to the rescue? Well, most of American Jewry would be so disgusted by Israel's abandonment of democratic principles that I think the majority would simply write off Israel as a tragic, failed experiment.
Am I being apocalyptic? Yes. Am I exaggerating the depth of the problem? I certainly hope so. Israel is still a remarkably vibrant democracy, with a free press and an independent judiciary. But on the other hand, the Israel that I see today is not the Israel I was introduced to more than twenty years ago. The rise to power of the four groups I mentioned above has changed, in some very serious ways (which I will write about later) the nature and character of the Jewish state.
But a couple of points need to be kept in mind. First, Israel can be a democracy without being identical to either the United States or Western Europe. We can be a democracy in our own style - indeed, we must be our own style of democracy in order to preserve our Jewish character. Neither the United States nor the Europeans (with the nominal exception of the Church of England) has an established religion. Most other democracies have nothing like the Law of Return, which clearly discriminates in favor of Jews. Does that make us not a democracy? Not at all. It just means that in some less-than-absolute sense, we have already chosen to put the State's Jewish character ahead of Western notions of democracy.
Second, Goldberg assumes that we can push a button and be rid of 'the territories.' We can't even if we wanted to. We can't because it would make us militarily vulnerable. We can't because it wouldn't bring peace and it would encourage war. We can't because it's not what the Arabs are after. What Goldberg and those who 'worry' about Israel's democracy don't or won't understand is that Israel's war isn't a war about territory. It's existential. Once you accept that, you can more easily accept necessary limitations on democracy to cope with that reality.
Labels: Israel is a Jewish state, Israeli democracy, Law of Return
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:38 AM
6 Comments:
Yup. Israel cannot abandon its Jewish character and Israel cannot abandon the cradle of the Jewish homeland. Those are two principles most Israeli Jews understand are non-negotiable. The Arabs contest this. Both sides aren't going to find common ground in the foreseeable future - since the Israel-Palestinian conflict is not about demography or territory its about rights and national existence and the latter issues do not lend themselves to a compromise agreement. Israel will be never be Western Europe or the US and its high time the Jeffrey Goldbergs of the world understood it.
"Neither the United States nor the Europeans (with the nominal exception of the Church of England) has an established religion. Most other democracies have nothing like the Law of Return, which clearly discriminates in favor of Jews."
Carl is unfortunate mistaken here. Many democratic Western countries have an established religion (Norway and most Scandinavians, Greece, in Germany one pays a tax solely for the churces etc.) moreso than Israel, which IIRC doesn't officially establish Judaism. Even more have something akin to the "Law of Return" (Ireland, Germany, Poland, etc. etc.). And until not so long ago, their laws were pretty much racist with explicit quotas (e.g. Britian until their reform in the 70s).
But in the broader scope of argument, Carl has it right, and Goldberg mistake is a fundamental one - As long as Israel does not annex the territory, it does not have to give anyone the vote (no more than the US has to give the vote to Afghans), and if anyone argues the occupation lasts too long, they should point the finger at the Palestinians and the rejectionist leaders as well.
Furthermore, I'm sure any future Lieberman PMship*** would be sufficiently cognizant of demographical realities to ensure any areas annexed to Israel do not disturb the balance.
*** Hopefully never, but my reasons for disliking Lieberman are likely very different than Goldberg's.
Kahane was right.
"Saved by American Jewry"?
HA!
Conservative and Deform Judaism are non-Jewish ideologies; the people who follow these movements would not recognize a Jewish concept if a Torah flew at them out of the sky! -- "Saved"... what a great laugh!
Secular "Jews" worship Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Jews who actually follow Judaism follow Halakcha law.
Kahanism, through and through, has been the only solution to the Israeli problem.
"Go vote in Jordan"? -- No, go LIVE in Jordan [and if you wage a war from there, Jordan will then belong to the Jewish people, and you will move to Iraq or Syria, and if you attack from there...].
G-d bless Rebbe Kahane [ZT"L HY"D].
the real problem is that Goldberg like most on the left uses democracy to mean liberal values, which he claims is threatened by the popular democracy of sefardim, russians and settlers... the usual scapegoats for the Israeli elite
Well, we agree with Jeffrey, we don't wish to preceed pell-mell towards the non-democratic oppression of Haman. After all, we are Jews, we have politesse, we have sechel. For instance, Ahmed Tibi is free to actively delegitimize Israel and call for its isolation as the King of Palestine in forums abroad because, hmmmm, Knesset immunity. And this the Knesset of an oppressor apartheid state he himself does not recognize. So while we are working out the exact, too small, too tall, just-right balance of democracy with non-suicidal policies of self-preservation, we could see what would happen if that immunity is removed.
Yo, Alexander, Jabotinsky was a secular Jew. Kahane didn't invent the slogan "In blood and fire Judah fell..." or the airplane. The Zionist wheel has a lot of parents.
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