Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Israel has become more liberal

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http://bicom.org.uk/analysis-article/4943/
 
 
Against all odds: the story of Israeli democracy, by Alexander
Yakobson
 
Alexander Yakobson is an Associate Professor of Ancient History at the
Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Together
with law professor Amnon Rubinstein, he authored Israel and the Family
of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights, published in
July 2008 by Routledge. This article is reproduced with permission
from Justice, Issue no. 49 (2011).  Justice is the magazine published
by The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists
(IAJLJ).
 
In discussing Israeli democracy, the usual procedure is to take for
granted the fundamental fact that the political system in Israel is a
multi-party parliamentary democracy, and then to point out this
democracy’s weaknesses and flaws. These flaws are sometimes described
as particularly noteworthy “precisely because” Israel is a democracy;
or, as some would have it, “for a country that claims to be a
democracy” (a neat way of turning the existence of democracy in Israel
into a reproach without actually admitting that it exists). And
indeed, when it comes to discussing the Israel democracy’s flaws,
there is no lack of fruitful themes for discussion. But there has
never been anything to be taken for granted about the very existence
of democracy in Israel. It emerged and developed under conditions and
in an environment about as favorable to liberal democracy as the Dead
Sea is to fishing. Nevertheless, Israel over time became more – rather
than less, as is often claimed – of a liberal democracy.
 
I venture to suggest that if ever it comes to awarding a Nobel prize
for democratic achievement in recent decades, this prize should go
neither to Denmark nor to Norway. With all due respect to these
exemplary democracies, no extraordinary achievement is involved in
maintaining a liberal democracy in the prosperous and peaceful
northwestern corner of Europe where democracy has been deeply rooted
for generations and national conflicts are unknown. Praising such
countries for their democracy is rather like praising angels for not
succumbing to temptation. The Nobel prize for democracy should go to
two non-Western countries vastly different from each other, where
democracy with many flaws has emerged and flourished under nearly
impossible conditions – India and Israel. Saying so is in no way
intended to minimize the flaws, or the need to confront and rectify
them. An old Israeli joke said that in Germany there is an economic
miracle, and in Israel it’s a miracle that there is an economy. The
state of Israel’s economy has improved since then; so has the state of
its democracy. While it is true that in most cases, a democracy (no
less than an economy) is better served by pointing out the flaws with
a view to correcting them than by celebrating the achievements,
nevertheless it is sometimes worth our while to recall what a miracle
it is, in this country, that there is a democracy.
 
No modern free society came into being and was shaped under conditions
as adverse to liberal democracy as Israel’s. One doubts if any
computer, fed with all the relevant data, would return the answer that
a country existing under such conditions can maintain a liberal
democracy. The first obstacle to liberal democracy in Israel has,
naturally, been the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is an understatement to
say that Israel has been involved in a violent national conflict since
the country’s inception more than 60 years ago. In truth, the conflict
preceded the establishment of the state by decades. Not merely the
state but Jewish-Israeli society itself came into being and took shape
during the conflict. This conflict, while falling far short of a
permanent war, has meant that Israel never knew a day of peace. It has
known ups and downs; few will dispute that the last decade saw it, and
its violent aspect, exacerbated.
 
It is no secret that violent conflicts and grave threats are apt to
lower the democratic standards even in long-established and highly
developed democracies. A nation under a serious threat invariably
deviates, to some extent, from the standard – that is to say, peace-
time – liberal-democratic norms. The only real argument – an important
argument indeed – is over the extent of the deviation versus the
gravity of the threat. What happened in the United States after 9/11
is a case in point. Without going into any of the controversies
surrounding Bush’s “war on terror,” it is clear that this was never
only about Bush. The Obama administration has reversed the
controversial aspects of his predecessor’s anti-terror and security
policy, once strongly criticized by Obama himself, only to a very
modest extent, and is now being criticized for this by some of his
liberal supporters. European countries, where today it is fashionable
to denounce American brutality and paranoia, have their own record of
robust extraordinary measures in times of emergency, including
terrorism, not to speak of war. But Israel is not a democratic state
that encountered a state of emergency at some point, dealt with it
with the help of appropriately strong medicine, and then recovered and
went back to normal. Rather, the emergency pre-dated the state itself,
and has accompanied it, with various degrees of severity, ever since
(which does not of course mean that claims of emergency and security
have never been abused – in Israel and elsewhere). Whole generations
of Israelis were born into the conflict and raised under it.
 
The conflict, it should be stressed, is not purely external – and not
only because it takes place, especially where the Palestinians are
concerned, next door rather than beyond the seas. It inevitably casts
a shadow over relations between the Jewish majority and the Arab
citizens of the state – by far the most significant issue of civil
rights in Israel. This is not simply a matter of majority versus
minority, which is usually complicated and challenging enough, even
without the backdrop of a violent conflict, when the minority is as
large, and as culturally distinct, as in this case. The Arab minority
considers itself, overwhelmingly, as part of the Palestinian people.
Its leaders and spokespersons express not just cultural and ethnic
affinity and not just political solidarity with the Palestinians in
the territories (and often with neighboring Arab states). They are apt
to voice, making use of the Israeli freedom of expression that has
expanded over time, more or less explicit support for the other side
during actual armed conflict (involving, as it has done especially in
the last decade, systematic attacks on the concentrations of Israel’s
civilian population). This is something which is not always tolerated
in other contemporary democracies. In this, the majority in Israel
(which is but a tiny minority in the Arab-Muslim Middle East) faces a
challenge hardly paralleled in the history of relations between a
national minority and a national majority – though it must be stressed
that the Arab minority in Israel, for all the provocative rhetoric
voiced by its representatives, is also far more peaceful in practice
than this rhetoric would imply, and when compared with other
minorities stranded in a national conflict. Moreover, polls suggest
consistently that its actual attitude to the state is much more
positive than the rhetoric of its leaders.
 
The composition of Israeli society militates against the development
of a liberal democracy no less that the chronic, open-ended state of
emergency. The vast majority of Israel’s Jewish population hails,
originally, from countries without a democratic political culture, and
in many cases, with a highly undemocratic one. Roughly half originates
in the Arab Muslim countries of the Middle East; the second,
“European’’ half, including, importantly, the country’s founders –
overwhelmingly, in the non-democratic (and less developed) countries
of Eastern Europe (including Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union).
This mixture, characterizing Jewish-Israeli society, was basically
created during the first several years of Israel’s independence after
1948. At that time, some 650,000 Israeli Jews (many of them newcomers
themselves, scarcely settled down, and in a country facing huge
economic difficulties) received more than a million Jewish immigrants,
most of whom came with little or no property. The European equivalent
of this would be for Britain or France to receive within the space of
a few years, under similar conditions, more than 100 million
immigrants, mostly from underdeveloped countries with illiberal
political cultures, and integrate them immediately into the political
system, with the immigrants receiving citizenship and the vote upon
arrival. This would have presented a very considerable challenge to
any democracy, however well-established. The large Arab minority in
Israel (approaching 20 percent of the population) is without
experience of democracy except for Israeli democracy itself, imperfect
as it is in this respect. The usual perception of Israel as a
“Western’’ enclave in the Middle East is highly dubious in point of
fact; Israel is considered Western because it is a success story,
rather than being a success story because it is Western.
 
It has nowadays become fashionable to stress the highly undemocratic
background of Avigdor Lieberman and most of his voters, Russian-
speaking immigrants, in explaining the challenge they present to
liberal democratic values. There is, no doubt, much truth in this, and
it is good to see that political correctness doesn’t always stifle
free public debate. But this undemocratic background is anything but
unprecedented. This has been true for previous waves of mass
immigration no less than for the mass immigration from the former
Soviet Union in the 90s. Thus challenged, repeatedly and on a massive
scale, how could – one asks – any liberal values survive in this
country? This, then, is the remarkable story of Israeli democracy:
millions came here, overwhelmingly from non-democratic countries, and
built a vibrant democracy – under a chronic state of emergency, in the
midst of a nasty national conflict lasting for decades, in the heart
of the Middle East.
 
(Of course, strong electoral support for populist and nationalist
right-wing parties, that are not above appealing to less-than-noble
sentiments of the public, is a phenomenon well known, nowadays, in
several of Europe’s long-established, peaceful and prosperous
democracies. These do not require masses of Russian-speaking newcomers
among their electorate in order to reach this result; though no Muslim
member of the Dutch parliament, for example, has ever publicly praised
a group firing rockets into Dutch cities.)
 
The very imperfect democratic system established by the founders in
Israel’s first years – an extraordinary achievement in the
circumstances of that time – included, owing to a complicated mixture
of political, social and cultural reasons which merit a discussion
going far beyond the scope of this paper, a mechanism for steady
improvement. In the early 60s, while David Ben-Gurion was still prime
minister, and though his style of leadership was certainly
authoritarian by our standards (and also those of many of his
contemporaries), the system was already much more liberal than in its
first years. By 1977, when Labor was voted out of power, Israel had
grown much more liberal than in early 60s. This event was in itself an
important milestone in the development of democracy, rather like the
first time that the Indian Congress party, similarly identified with
the state, lost power – whether or not one feels fully comfortable
with either Hindu nationalism or the coalition of right-wing and
religious parties that came to power in Israel. Today this country is
undoubtedly much more of a liberal democracy than in 1977, though the
opposite was confidently predicted by some, and feared by many, when
Menachem Begin came to power. Of course, one can argue that there is
nothing especially remarkable about this process: the entire Western
world has become much more liberal since the 50s. But it is far from
trivial that Israel is, politically, part of this world and of this
process. Egypt, it should be recalled, was, in early 50s, much more
liberal than it has grown to be in recent decades.
 
Recently, largely because of a series of highly controversial bills
sponsored by Avigdor Liebeman’s party, Israel Beitenu, and the
aggressive rhetoric accompanying them, one often hears – both in
Israel and in the Western media – that Israeli democracy is
deteriorating and is in a grave danger. It is worth recalling how
often, and how confidently, this has been asserted in the past. Since
1977, it has been claimed repeatedly that Israel’s democracy is
deteriorating and some form of clerical fascism is emerging. In the
aftermath of the 1977 election, a member of the outgoing Labor
government burned his papers, fearing what might happen if they fell
into the new regime’s hands. These fears, then, were not confined to
some radical fringe.
 
In a somewhat less dramatic fashion I shared and voiced them too.
These fears seemed reasonable under Begin, whose bombastic
nationalistic rhetoric before widely enthusiastic crowds I cannot even
now recall without shuddering. While Begin was at once a nationalistic
rabble-rouser and a liberal prime minister (who, among other things,
did a lot to strengthen the power and prestige of the Israeli
judiciary), some of his political allies, both in his own party and
among its coalition partners, were quite obviously anything but great
liberals. We voiced those fears under Shamir, when we had occasion to
miss Begin’s pedantic parliamentarism, legalism and firm commitment to
liberal democracy (little appreciated by us at the time). I shared
these fears well into the 90s. Then, at some point, I started noticing
what an abyss had opened between the rhetoric of “democracy is in
danger’’ current in left-liberal circles and the actual reality on the
ground. While many among those who strongly opposed the policies of
the Israeli Right were constantly speaking of the dangers that
threatened Israeli democracy, and taking its deterioration for
granted, the country was undergoing a far-reaching and wide-ranging
process of liberalization.
 
As part of this process, it has become much more acceptable to label
Israel a fascist (or semi-fascist) state, or at any rate to deny that
it is a democracy at all. Today, much more than in 1977, when such
views were largely confined to fringe outlets, the mass media is wide
open to such a message (which, naturally, is also echoed abroad);
every established platform is open to it, often at public expense;
from time to time somebody receives an official prize for voicing it.
You don’t believe that fascism is engulfing us? Why, only the other
day I heard it all explained so nicely on Army Radio.
 
Needless to say, the left has no monopoly on wild rhetorical
exaggerations. The Israeli far right, whenever it feels that the state
has failed to pamper it sufficiently, immediately proceeds to denounce
it, in the same grotesquely self-refuting manner, as a Stalinist
dictatorship. The mainstream right, too, is not wholly above deploying
such tactics when it happens to find itself in the opposition.
Admittedly, a certain overstatement of an existing problem or a
looming danger (preferably, without losing all contact with reality)
may sometimes be pardonable, perhaps even useful. But the real
question is – in which direction are things moving? How has Israeli
democracy faired since it became fashionable to talk about its
deterioration and to warn against the danger of its collapse?
 
Even before 1977, Prof. Yeshayahu Leibovich made his famous prediction
that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would destroy Israeli
democracy. I must admit I found this thesis very convincing when I
first heard it. How can a people remain free when they rule another
people by force? It turns out they can, sometimes. One might argue
that we don’t actually deserve to be a democracy, because of the
occupation. Perhaps. In order to determine what each side to this
conflict deserves, its respective contributions to the conflict (and
attitudes to the other side’s national rights) need to be impartially
examined. I still believe that in the long run, regardless of how one
apportions the blame, perpetuating the occupation would doom Israeli
democracy because it would doom Israel itself. If the land between the
Jordan and the Mediterranean is not partitioned between its two
peoples, eventually a single state will emerge – not bi-national, as
some delude themselves, but Arab and Muslim. This does not, however,
change the fact that Israel today is much more democratic and liberal
than it was in the 70s.
 
Today, unlike before 1977, the ruling party in Israel always knows
that the electorate can realistically be expected to vote it out of
power. The Knesset is much stronger vis-à-vis the executive.
Parliamentary committees exercise a much stronger oversight of
ministers’ activities and of secondary legislation. Much of the
legislation originates now in private members’ bills, quite often by
opposition deputies – including those from the radical opposition.
When Tamar Gozansky, a Communist deputy famous for carrying dozens of
bills on social matters (not on vital issues of policy, naturally, but
still important enough for those involved), retired from the Knesset
several years ago, her accomplishments as a parliamentarian were
rightly celebrated. Israeli parliamentarism had a share in the
celebration: such a legislative career would have been unthinkable in
the good old days of Labor hegemony, when Communist members of the
Knesset (and in the 50s, to a large extent, members of the main right-
wing opposition too) were shunned and isolated. Nor, indeed, would
such a thing be possible today in most countries with a parliamentary
system – certainly not in Britain, where a private member’s bill may
not increase government expenditure.
 
Israel’s political parties, once ruled firmly from atop, have become
much more democratically governed (and, I am afraid, considerably more
corrupt as a result). Local self-government is less dependent on the
central government. The State Comptroller, once a thoroughly
unimportant institution, has grown powerful enough to imperil a prime
minister’s political survival (as happened to Ehud Olmert). Civil
society is much more developed, vibrant and influential. The judiciary
has grown much stronger – first and foremost, the High Court of
Justice, but also the independent attorney general. Claims of national
interest and state security meet a much less deferential response in
both the higher and the lower courts. Even military courts are quite
capable of overruling the government on matters that it regards as a
vital national interest (even when it doesn’t overstep any legal
boundaries): witness the relatively light prison sentences imposed by
military judges (much shorter than what would probably be imposed by
American courts in a similar situation) on high-ranking Hamas
officials after Gilad Shalit’s abduction, frustrating the government’s
obvious intention to keep those people behind bars long enough to
pressure Hamas into releasing the Israeli soldier.
 
The High Court has grown much more activist and interventionist, much
more likely to overrule the government on sensitive issues, including
security. The security establishment is under much greater legal,
parliamentary and media scrutiny. The media is much more free,
aggressive and biting. Military censorship has largely become a joke.
Even on strictly operational matters it often finds it difficult to
control the flow of information, as was demonstrated during the Second
Lebanese War. Today it sounds incredible that yet in the 80s, a
national newspaper (‘‘Hadashot”) could be shut down by military order
for several days because it had defied the army censors on a matter
that had nothing to do with military secrecy in any proper sense (by
exposing the killing of two captured terrorists).
 
Rather than the mouths of the opponents of the occupation being shut
(as Leibovich predicted), what really happened was that the mouths of
the opponents of Zionism were widely opened. Every Zionist sacred cow
is today slaughtered with gusto – in the media, in  academia, in the
arts and in the state-funded cinema industry – incomparably more so
than in the 70s. Thanks in large measure to increased judicial
activism, the rights of the Arab minority are much better (though
still far from perfectly) protected and enforced; the High Court is
now, for example, willing to interfere in budgetary allocations in
response to claims of discrimination, and even to mandate, in some
cases, the appointment of Arab representatives to public bodies.
Despite the religious parties’ coalition clout, the status quo on
religion and state (still quite unsatisfactory from the liberal
standpoint) has been eroded in favor of the secular public in many
areas. The country – even Jerusalem, not to speak of Tel Aviv – has
been covered with places open on Saturday and offering non-kosher
food. Gay pride parades are officially-sponsored in Tel Aviv, but they
also take place in Jerusalem – a sure sign that we have become, or are
fast becoming, a Middle Eastern theocracy. The Israel Defense Forces
have long left the Clintonian “don’t ask, don’t tell” far behind.
People praise Tel Aviv as an island of liberalism and tolerance in a
sea of clerical fascism – as if such a sea could ever have tolerated
such an island in its midst. Most of what Tel Aviv is praised for
emerged, or reached its peak, during the decades in question.
 
None of this is meant to present an idealized picture of the past
decades. All the negative phenomena and warning signs that people talk
about today were very much in evidence throughout that period. Shrill
nationalistic rhetoric abounded; at its worst it was (and is) indeed
racist and fascist. Appalling things were said in the name of Judaism.
People on the left were routinely accused of disloyalty, quite often
of actual betrayal; what they themselves sometimes said about their
opponents is beside the point right now. Grave instances of extremist
violence occurred, including, on several occasions, murder. Wild
illiberal measures were often proposed. On some occasions,
undemocratic steps were actually taken by the authorities and
draconian laws passed. The Supreme Court turned them into a dead
letter. The same court will today deal in the same spirit with any
undemocratic bill that is passed – if it passes (for there is often,
in such cases, a huge difference between what is originally proposed
and what is eventually adopted). Now, however, unlike in the 70s, the
Court has the power to actually annul illiberal legislation.
 
In the 80s, the Knesset passed a law banning political parties that
opposed Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, as well those
espousing racism or hostile to democracy, from participating in
elections. At the time, the Zionist left voted for the law (rightly
expecting that it would lead to the disqualification of Meir Kahane’s
racist movement). Under today’s liberal standards, such a law would
have been roundly denounced as draconian and racist. At that time, it
was not expected that the law would drive the Arab representatives
from the Knesset, because the Communist party, which then received
most of the Arab protest vote, and always had Arab deputies, was much
more moderate in its rhetoric on this issue, perhaps remembering its
support, in accordance with the Soviet line at the time, for the UN
partition plan providing for a “Jewish state’’ and an “Arab state’’ in
Mandatory Palestine. Since then, the state has become more liberal,
while the Arab leadership, which now consists mostly of Arab
nationalists and members of the Islamic Movement, has become more
radical. But although the Arab parties in the Knesset have turned the
rejection of the Jewish state into their most important political
banner, the Supreme Court has rejected, and will undoubtedly continue
to reject, using its power of interpretation with considerable
flexibility and ingenuity, all attempts to disqualify them on the
basis of this law.
 
The so-called “Nakbah bill” has recently been adopted by the Knesset.
In its original form, it sought to criminalize the practice of marking
Israel’s Day of Independence as a day of mourning, on the part of Arab
citizens, for the defeat in the 47-48 war and its consequences. Any
law adopted in this form would be sure to be annulled by the Supreme
Court as violating freedom of expression. The bill was eventually
watered down to a partial and qualified ban on government subsidies to
any group that practices what it originally tried to criminalize. Why
anyone who insists on turning a country’s Day of Independence into a
day of public mourning should seek government subsidies for this
particular act of offence and provocation, rather than doing it at
their own expense, is rather a mystery. The law as adopted will
probably be pretty meaningless in practice, for it will be anything
but easy to prove, to the judges’ satisfaction, that what any
particular act of mourning referred to was the Day of Independence as
such.
 
That a string of dubious, and sometimes clearly undemocratic, private
members’ bills is now, regrettably, before the Knesset, does not mean
that civil rights in Israel, and in particular freedom of expression,
are likely to erode. I venture to predict that Israeli citizens, Jews
and Arabs, will continue to enjoy the right not merely to reject the
Zionist ideology and narrative, but to express open support for the
other side during actual armed conflict. Sometimes it seems that
tabling draconian bills is mainly an attempt to score public-opinion
points, rather than to bring about the changes these bills notionally
promote. . Whenever such a move is made, it must of course be strongly
opposed – but not necessarily by bemoaning the cruel fate of Israeli
democracy, as has become customary on such occasions.
 
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, not eternal panic-
mongering. Democratic values and norms can never be taken for granted.
To some extent they are always in danger – liable to be infringed even
when democracy is in no danger at all. The 60s in America saw,
overall, a great improvement in civil rights; democracy was never in
danger. This does not mean that democratic norms were never violated.
Certainly, there are illiberal and undemocratic phenomena and forces
in Israel; lately, it seems that in Europe, too, the sky is not
entirely cloudless in this respect. Such forces and tendencies need to
be vigorously confronted. In the meantime, it is also worth pointing
out, from time to time, especially since the very opposite is so often
and so loudly maintained, that the story of Israeli democracy has to
date been a tremendous achievement.

 La notizia sfugge solo a chi evita di considerare il lungo periodo.
 
60 anni? AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH