The problem with the democracy argument is that it is entirely
disconnected from reality. Israel does not rule the Palestinians. The
status quo in no way impeaches Israel’s democratic identity.
It is true that the Palestinians are
not represented in the Knesset. But Israeli residents of Judea and
Samaria are similarly not represented in the Palestinian Legislative
Council. Simply put, both the Palestinians and Israelis vote for the
legislature that regulates them. That is democracy (though obviously it
does not play out as well in the Palestinian political system).
The Palestinians have developed an independent, self-regulating
government that controls their lives as well as their foreign policy.
Indeed, they have accumulated all the trappings of independence and have
recently been recognized as an independent state by the United Nations.
They have diplomatic relations with almost as many nations as Israel
does. They have their own security forces, central bank, top-level
Internet domain name, and a foreign policy entirely uncontrolled by
Israel.
The Palestinians govern themselves. To anticipate the inevitable
comparison, this is not an Israeli-puppet “Bantustan.” From their
educational curriculum to their television content to their terrorist
pensions, they implement their own policies by their own lights without
any subservience to Israel. They pass their own legislation, such as the
measure prohibiting real estate transactions with Jews on pain of
death. If Israel truly “ruled over” the Palestinians, all these features
of their lives would be quite different. Indeed, the Bantustans never
won international recognition because they were puppets. “The State of
Palestine” just got a nod from the General Assembly because it is not.
Whether the Palestinian self-government amounts to sovereignty is
irrelevant and distinct from the question of whether Israel is denying
them democracy. Indeed, Israel’s democratic credentials are far stronger
than America’s, or Britain’s–the mother of Parliaments. Puerto Rico and
other U.S. controlled “territories” do not participate in national
elections (and this despite Puerto Rico’s vote last year to end its
anomalous status). Nor do British possessions like Gibraltar and the
Falklands. These areas have considerable self-rule, but all less than
the Palestinians, in that their internal legislation can ultimately be
cancelled by Washington or London. The Palestinians are the ultimate
masters of their political future–it is they who choose Fatah or Hamas.
To be sure, Israeli security forces operate in the territories under
Palestinian administration. But that has nothing to do with democracy;
it is about security. Democracy does not give one political entity a
right to harm others. And that is why American security forces conduct
raids–assassinations, even–in countries around the world. While many
object to America’s aggressive policies in these countries no one thinks
it has anything to do with the democratic credentials of one side or
another. Similarly, the Palestinian military operates throughout
Israel–through rocket and missile strikes from Eilat to Ashdod. Yet no
one suggests Palestinian military activities in Israel–which determine
when there will be school in Beersheva and when not–mean that they have
deprived Israel of democracy.
This is no longer a dispute about democracy; it is a dispute about
territory. The Palestinians have their own government; now their demand
is to increase the geographic scope of their legislative powers to “Area
C,” where 100 percent of the Jewish settlers live, some 400,000 people,
and only 50-75,000 Arabs. The Palestinians want their “no Jew” law to
apply there as well.
Palestinian self-determination is one of the biggest developments that no one has noticed.
The army chief came to President Mohammed Morsi with a simple demand:
Step down on your own and don't resist a military ultimatum or the
demands of the giant crowds in the streets of Egypt.
"Over my dead
body!" Morsi replied to Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Monday, two days
before the army eventually ousted the Islamist leader after a year in
office.
In the end, Egypt's first freely elected president found
himself isolated, with allies abandoning him and no one in the army or
police willing to support him.
Even his Republican Guards simply
stepped away as army commandos came to take him to an undisclosed
Defense Ministry facility, according to army, security and Muslim
Brotherhood officials who gave The Associated Press an account of
Morsi's final hours in office. They spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The Muslim
Brotherhood officials said they saw the end coming for Morsi as early as
June 23 - a week before the opposition planned its first big protest.
The military gave the president seven days to work out his differences
with the opposition.
The harsh dilemma between respecting the democratic process and
dealing with the repression that it brought about was resolved the day
before Thursday.
One may of course question the essence of a
democracy that needs an army to achieve its goals, but it is wrong to
judge the protest movements for their impatience with the product of
their demonstrations.
The
Egyptian spectacle, which deserves praise and admiration, is not
without risks and still has no answers to the hard questions facing
Egypt. The country is immersed in a deep economic crisis and the state
of public security is far from satisfactory. The Muslim Brotherhood has
not accepted Morsi's ousting and may act, even violently, against it.
The way to political stability is paved with mines.
But
the lesson to be learned by this new revolution has already been
clearly outlined. Even in democracies, leaders are not permitted to
cling to election results as though they were a promissory note that
authorizes them to impose their ideology, while ignoring the wishes of
the people.
I wonder whether Haaretz would be willing to send the same message to Yair Lapid, or for that matter to Barack Obama, both of whom think they have 'mandates' to impose their ideology on their respective countries.
The Likud's MK's are sharpening their knives for the Prime Minister, because he has decided to leave the current Likud ministers in place even though many young MK's ranked far higher in the party's primary.
Meanwhile, the younger generation of Likud MKs, who ranked high in
the party primary - Ze'ev Elkin, Danny Danon, Tzipi Hotovely, Yariv
Levin and others - began to express frustration at reports that
Netanyahu does no plan to appoint any new ministers from within his
party.
Danon expressed careful optimism that he - ninth on the
party list - could get a ministry instead of MK Tzachi Hanegbi - 26th,
who Netanyahu promised a portfolio.
"I hope the prime minister
will consider the results of the primary," Danon said. "He needs to [go
by the party list], because the Likud is a democracy."
Danon also
called for Netanyahu to realize that there is a new generation of
lawmakers in the Likud, and that not all of the old guard should be left
in place.
"Netanyahu can't ignore what Likud voters want," Danon added.
MK
Tzipi Hotovely, the highest-ranking woman in the Likud, attacked
Netanyahu's intentions more directly, saying that he is making a
mistake.
"It's a mistake to go for old politics and recycling the
old list of ministers. At the end of the day, the public will look at
the Likud's list and say, if the government doesn't change, then why did
we vote in the primary? In a way, this shows lack of faith in the the
[primary] voting process," Hotovely told Galei Yisrael Radio.
Hotovely
specifically mentioned Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat, 27th
on the party's 31-seat list, as someone who should no longer be part of
the government.
"Thousands of votes separate me and Limor Livnat," Hotovely pointed out.
I suppose we should be thankful he's given up on keeping Ehud Barak as Defense Minister. But Danny's Danon's phrase that I highlighted above is so wrong it's pathetic. Netanyahu pushed Moshe Feiglin down to an unrealistic slot after the 2009 primaries, he prevented a new central committee from being elected for years, and he is now trying to return the Likud to a system where the Central Committee - rather than party members - selects and ranks the candidates for MK positions.
As someone who spent more than three hours voting in the primary, I'm angry but not surprised. .The Likud a democracy? It's about as democratic as Egypt.
Video: Michael Coren interviews Steve Emerson on the Muslim Brotherhood and the stealth jihad
Here's Michael Coren interviewing terrorism expert Steve Emerson, who's talking about the Muslim Brotherhood and the stealth jihad. Full transcript here.
I think we're only a few years away, at most, from a total South-Africanization of this issue. And if Israelis believe that the vast majority of American Jews -- their most important supporters in the entire world -- are going to sit idly by and watch Israel permanently disenfranchise a permanently-occupied minority population, they're deluding themselves. A non-democratic Israel will not survive in this world. It's an impossibility. So Israel has a choice -- find a way to reverse the settlement process and bring about the conditions necessary to see the birth of a Palestinian state (I'm for unilateral closure of settlements but the military occupation's end will have to be negotiated with the Palestinians) or simply grant the Palestinians on the West Bank the right to vote in Israeli elections. Gaza is an entirely separate problem, but one not solvable so long as Hamas is in charge, but even without Gaza's Arabs, Israel would cease to be a Jewish state if West Bank Arabs became citizens.
It will be extremely difficult for any number of reasons for Israel to leave the West Bank, but it will be impossible for Israel to survive over the long-term if it remains an occupier of a group of people who don't want to be occupied. I understand the security consequences of an Israeli departure from most of the West Bank, but I also understand that there is ultimately no choice. I don't believe a one-state solution is any sort of solution at all; Israel/Palestine will devolve quickly into civil war. The only solution is a two-state solution.
Even assuming one accepts the creation of a 'Palestinian state' as a desirable outcome (an outcome I do not accept as desirable and which is not required under any signed agreement between Israel and the 'Palestinians') what bothers me about this formulation is its assumption that Israel - and Israel alone - can solve the problem. From where should we withdraw Jeffrey? Even you don't want to go back to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. So from where do we withdraw? Look at a map and show us.
Once we withdraw without an agreement, how do we respond to the inevitable 'Palestinian' attacks? You know as well as I do that withdrawing from some is going to egg them on to demand the rest - including 'west' Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.
'Leave the army and just withdraw the settlers'? Contrary to perception in the mainstream media, the presence of the 'settlers,' most of whom are graduates of combat units, helps the army by effectively setting up outposts (no, not 'illegal outposts' but the Jewish cities and towns) at strategic points throughout the area. The army has admitted that without the revenants in Judea and Samaria, the territory would be much harder to defend.
This is a time when we need the Jeffrey Goldberg's of the world to stand by us - not to lecture us. When and if the world tries to turn us into a pariah like South Africa was (which unfortunately is likely to happen if Obama is reelected), we need the Jeffrey Goldberg's of the world to fight against it, not to join the pile-on. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to get that.
For the last eighteen years, we have been hearing that we 'must' have peace, and that 'everyone knows' what is needed for peace. Well, 'everyone' doesn't and not everyone believes we 'must.' It takes two to tango. And for the last three years, the 'Palestinians' have been totally uninterested. We can't dance by ourselves.
Give me Jewish and undemocratic over being massacred (God forbid) any time.
Ben Smith has some highlights of a two-hour shmooze with Israel-hating Samantha Power at Bir Zeit on the Hudson on Monday.
A foreign policy adviser to President Obama said this evening that the Administration has "rehabilitated" the concept of human rights, tarnished by the Iraq war, in a way that laid the groundwork for international collaboration.
Samantha Power, a senior director on the National Security Council best known for her human rights advocacy before she entered the White House, spoke at Columbia University in New York City two hours before the president's planned speech in Libya tonight.
Obama "has used his pulpit and a number of speeches ... to kind of clear the brush that had gathered around the norms in previous years, rehabilitating some of the principles and cleaning up some fo the associations," she said, referring to international values of democracy and human rights.
"The words 'democracy' and 'human rights' have come to acquire meaning and content that Barack Obama and his administration provided," she said.
"His success in rehabilitating those norms or providing that ocntent has actually made it easier for other governments to stand with us," she said. She didn't refer directly to the coalition now battling the Libyan government.
One of the key elements of this "clearing of the brush," she said, had been "recognizing that human rights had to begin at home, and that his task and the Administration's task was to strenghten the power of our example."
She cited Obama's torture bank, his "return to the Geneva Conventions, and his push to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
"He also renounced the imposition of democracy by military force," she said.
Well, Gitmo is still open and I don't see Obama or anyone else pushing to close it. A bow in the direction of reality perhaps.
But let's leave 'human rights begin at home' for a second and look at some of the ways in which the Obama administration has 'cleared the brush' and 'rehabilitated' the concept of human rights. We'll leave Israel for last:
1. Obama gave a speech to the Muslim world in Cairo that included no words of opprobrium for the hosts but did defend the 'rights' of women to wear the burkha.
2. Obama didn't 'impose' democracy on Iran, but instead sat on the sideline while the Ahmadinejad regime stole an election and then brutally suppressed those who would have 'imposed' democracy on Iran.
3. Obama attempted to assist a dictator in Honduras who wanted to ignore his country's constitution by making himself President for life. Only the brave Honduran people prevented this attempt to impose an undemocratic regime on them.
4. Obama joined the United Nations 'Human Rights Commission,' where he has subjected the American people to the embarrassment of, having their human rights record critiqued by such notable bastions of democracy and fair play as Iran, Cuba, Libya (until recently), China, Russia, Saudi Arabia etc. His representative to that lofty commission voted 'present' when Iran was named to its commission on women.
5. Obama has subjected American foreign policy to the United Nations, where over 100 dictatorships are available to ensure that repressive policies are able to pass.
6. Obama rushed to pull US troops out of Iraq, based on the date on the calendar and not on facts on the ground, thus ensuring that the Iraqi people will not have a democratic government in place for long.
7. Obama has attempted to 'engage' with some of the world's most repressive regimes, including Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Bolivia, and with terror organizations like Hezbullah and Hamas, thereby proving that one can be a repressive regime that disrespects human rights and still be respected by the United States.
8. Obama has sacrificed former American allies - like Georgia and Poland - that were bulwarks against repressive regimes in their respective neighborhoods - in the interest of making nice to America's enemies.
9. Obama has dismissed the idea that the Syrian people might be entitled to democracy by smearing Congress as holding the view that Bashar al-Assad is a 'reformer.'
10. Obama has attempted to suppress the will of the people of Israel as expressed through their democratically elected government.
But in Power's view, all this prepares the groundwork for 'international collaboration.' 'International collaboration' to do what?
I found this tweet on Twitter regarding the prospects of Egyptian democracy.
Given where Turkey seems to be heading, I'm not sure they're a better model than Iran.
By the way, the woman who tweeted that message is a Member of Parliament of the United Arab Emirates, Young Global Leader, and founder of Najla Al Awadhi Consulting. The only twitterer (tweeter?) she follows in Israel is Haaretz.
Messiah's times: Obama seeking advice on Egypt from bipartisan panel, including (gulp!) former Bush NSC official
I think this is a first. President Obama has invited a bipartisan panel of experts, which was among the few groups to warn of the coming crisis in Egypt, to advise him on how to handle what's going on in Egypt. The panel includes (gulp!) former Bush administration National Security Council official Elliott Abrams.
Several foreign policy scholars and former officials have been urging the U.S. administration for months to prepare for the end of the Hosni Mubarak era and the instability that would accompany it.
Now that the administration has found itself scrambling the past few days to, first, try to avert a bloodbath in Egypt and more broadly, figure out what to do amid a hugely complicated power transition there with much at stake for the U.S., it's worth noting the people who have been pleading for policy attention on this issue long in advance. Chief among them, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Michele Dunne, a former NSC and State Department Policy Planning official, and the Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan, who co-chair a bipartisan working group on Egypt.
...
To their credit, the National Security Council's top Middle East hands Dennis Ross and Dan Shapiro met with Dunne and Kagan in November to discuss the issue (at a stuck moment of the peace process which has remained stuck), and other democracy and human rights specialists in the administration, including the NSC's Samantha Power and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East democracy issues Tamara Wittes, have frequently met with them. But the regional advisors' priorities mattered most, advocates believed, and to a great extent, much of their focus (as for that of the principals above them, and indeed, the wider policy community and media) has been on the peace process, and looking at Egypt through the prism of its role in supporting the peace process.
Just got late word that Dunne, Kagan and others from their group including former Bush NSC Middle East hand Elliott Abrams, as well as George Washington University Middle East expert Marc Lynch, have been invited to the White House Monday.
Before we go jumping for joy over last weekend's coup in Tunisia, perhaps we ought to consider the likely outcome of democratic elections in that country and in others in North Africa and across the Arab and Muslim worlds.
The announcement that Rachid Ghannouchi, Tunisia’s leading Islamist agitator, is to return home from exile in (where else?) London certainly should raise alarm bells in some quarters. Ghannouchi fled into exile after the Tunisians claimed he was linked to plots to blow up tourist hotels in Tunisia – claims, it should be said, Ghannouchi has always denied. But his links to militant Islamist groups throughout North Africa, such as the Sudanese government which is currently the subject of war crimes charges at the Hague, are well-document and give you some idea of which way Tunisia post-Ben Ali could go if the Tunisians do not take care.
And it is a pattern that could be replicated throughout the Maghreb. In Libya Islamist militants pose the most serious threat to the Gaddafi clan’s survival, while in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood have made no secret of their desire to establish an Islamic theocracy to replace the current secular regime. It was not so long ago that Muslim militants in Algeria were busily blowing up the Paris metro.
In the war against Islamist terror North Africa is already an area that causes Western intelligence agencies serious concern. And the threat to Western interests would rise considerably if Islamist regimes replace the secular dynasties that have pursued pro-Western policies, but in doing so have woefully failed their people.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's clearly not business as usual.
Egyptian street: Forget the 'Palestinians,' bring us democracy
This is from an article by al-Reuters discussing Egyptian disappointment at President Obama's failure to follow through on his commitments in Cairo 17 months ago.
"I personally had higher expectations for change" after the 2009 speech, said Cairo lawyer Hatem Khalil. "It's ignorant to believe Obama will solve the Palestinian case... I also agree that if the U.S. takes out all its military from Iraq in one phase the country will collapse -- but I think that with Egypt, more needs to be done."
Obama's Jakarta speech emphasized democracy and Indonesia's progress in bridging racial and religious divides, but Cairo University politics professor Hassan Nafaa said Arab states had moved away from democratic reform since the Bush administration.
Nafaa said Obama did not mention the recent record of Arab governments on political reform though his upbeat remarks about Indonesia's vibrant democracy were seen as a veiled reference to autocratic Muslim countries to emulate the Asian country.
In Egypt, a decades-old state of emergency remains in force and opposition groups say they are muzzled and their activities curtailed. President Hosni Mubarak, 82, has not yet said if he will seek a sixth six-year term in office next year.
"We knew a while ago that Obama does not want to pressure the Middle East states that are friends with the United States," Nafaa said.
"And this is because he fully realizes he has economic and political interests with those states and pressuring them will not lead to any outcome, as previous pressure from former President George Bush failed to bring any change."
If I were an Egyptian, I would look at President Mubarak's health as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get out from under the Pharaoh. And if I missed that opportunity because Obama abandoned me, I'd be pretty upset at the United States for a long time to come.
Bush was right on this one. At least under his watch, the United States was taking a moral position.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
