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Anti-democratic forces, corruption, and an optimistic scenario
By Robert Rosenberg
January 26, 2003

I'm one of the 20 percent of Israeli voters who are undecided in this election, and like in most elections in Israel, it's not what's commonly (and incorrectly) called the Right and Left that confuses me, but which of the parties inside the bloc, to vote for.

The educated, who at least have an academic knowledge of the democratic tradition, are a majority of the undecided, say some pollsters (though others apparently don't know), but many of them will unfortunately vote for non-democratic forces, whether religious or secular, because many of them have only an academic notion of democracy. They studied it in the schools of the Soviet Union or the former Soviet Union when it was breaking up, or since. They saw a democracy being born, but have no idea how one is properly run.

Almost all the Haredim -- including Shas -- but excluding those who 'returned to the answer' and were evangelized from secularism into ultra-Orthodox Judaism (which is different from U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman's 'Modern shomer shabbat Orthodoxy') never took a civics class in all their years in their schools in Israel. But they know how to vote --and some know how to vote two or three times.

Settlements supporters and lobbyists are obviously anti-democratic because ultimately their claim is religious, and worse, racist or at least ethnicist, when they say the occupation’s price, to safeguard the safety of, for example, 400 settlers in the heart of Hebron and or less than 4,000 in Gaza, is worth the tens of thousands of casualties on both sides of the Green Line, among both Jews and Arabs. Their argument that 'the conflict' is not about settlements but about the Jewish right to a state, misses the entire point of Zionism.

Zionism is about changing reality, not bowing to it as if it was divine fortune, soluble by either Arafat's death or the wrath of the Bushies against the horrors of Saddam, in either case something other than Israel solving the country's problems. Nor is Zionism about repressing another people's rght to self-determination.

But Israel is a very new democracy, and a sometimes childish place, and like a lot of adolescents caught between a powerful adult body and the solipsism of childhood, Israel doesn't know that it is strong enough to be smart enough not to make vengeance its purpose.

THERE has been much talk about a narrow right wing government, though given the campaign rhetoric by its ideologues, to the right of the Likud, it might be preferable to refer to it as the coming regime, much the way Mapai was a regime until 1977. But that depends on many factors, including the weather on Tuesday. A torrent, as sometimes happens in the brief winters in the desert at the east end of the Mediterranean, which is the intersection of three continents and a sea, can totally disrupt a day, even if it's a national holiday as Elections Day, as it is in Israel.

Do not be surprised if it becomes very difficult for Sharon to form a government. If he brings in Lieberman and Eitam and Shas, it will be much farther to the Right regarding minorities, and non-Jews in general, let alone Arabs, per se, than any government in the history of Israel -- and much farther to the right than, Jorge Haider's government in Austria, whose members don't say behind closed doors what is said out loud by Shas, Herut, and to a certain extent National Union and even Yisrael B'Aliyah (despite its 'Anglo' support that wants to remember the glory days what their hero wasn't known as the Sharlatansky of human rights, having never said a word other then 'they need democracy' about the Palestinian conditions under occupation) about non-Jews.

THE CONVENTIONAL wisdom is that Ariel Sharon has mellowed, that he's old enough to listen to his affable, burly son, Omri, whom a certain Tel Aviv bar's habitués will say is quite a reasonable guy, that his dad really wants to be the de Gaulle of Israel.

But the only way that could happen is if Tommy Lapid of Shinui, becomes the kingmaker, and Amram Mitzna convinces him that the only way Labor will join is if Sharon agrees to empty Gaza and Hebron of Jews within the year. Lapid would go along with that but Ariel Sharon midwived each and every one of the those settlements, whether from within government or the opposition. He is not likely to suddenly turn into de Gaulle.

Yes, Sharon tore down Yamit, an ugly act of spite meant to sear into Israeli consciousness that making peace by giving up land is an ugly business, best never repeated -- but it was a Labor party settlement, deliberately placed far from Arabs. Sharon's entire settlement policy, starting in 1977, was to put settlements in places where they would stick in the Palestinian throats. More recently important, as part of the Likud’s deliberate effort to sabotage the Oslo peace process, already as Foreign Minister in Netanyahu’s government, Sharon called on settlers to build the very illegal outposts to which Barak and later Sharon and Ben-Eliezer turned a blind eye. As far as he is concerned, the 'painful conessions' and the 'Palestinian state' means a neutered series of impoverished cantons broken up by wealthy settlements that control vastly more land per capita than the Palestinians would have under Sharon's 'plan.'

This election was supposed to be about the peace process, or lack thereof, or perhaps about the way the finance minister did not tell the truth to the public and the government about what was expected in the economy, from tax revenues to inflation rates and the budget deficit, and how that has led to the impoverishment of tens of thousands of families. But once the Likud (and to a much less degree, Labor) elected their Knesset candidates, it was about corruption. Going into its final days it was about a senior prosecutor, a long-time servant of the law and the state, who was entrusted with the most sensitive investigation in the country – suspicions of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust by the prime minister. She worked on it for months in secret, but finally reached the end of her tether, and with what her lawyer calls 'ideological morality' believed that in a democracy, such an investigation should have been made public knowledge, even at the risk of damaging the investigation itself.

The Right chortled with glee over the discovery of the prosecutor as the leaker, as if it proved what has long been believed by the Right, that legal establishment is against the Right.

But if Liora Glatt Berkovich, quickly redubbed Glatt-Kosher by the wags, thought she would help bring down the government, along came an even braver legal authority than her, Mishael Cheshin, who pulled the plug when Sharon did go on the air to explain -- but instead of explaining, attacked the Labor Party, the media, and the legal establishment for 'conspiring' to bring him down.

He did not explain, in detail, how nearly $2 million in illegal campaign contributions went to his 1999 Likud campaign through a company set up by his personal attorney, his closest American-Israeli businessman friend, and his son Omri, or how his second son, Gilad, later called his 'Uncle Cyril' Kern for a $1.5 million 'business loan,' no questioned asked, and below commercial interest rates, which Cyril, by his own admission, admitted he 'arranged' through a 'trust fund' in Austria.

The source of that money remains a mystery -- though one wonders why Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. National Security Advisor, thinks it proper to conduct diplomatic exchanges with the Prime Minister of Israel through a Sharon's mediator, American-Israeli businessman Aryeh Genger, who allegedly used the Miranda act to avoid answering questions from the Israeli police asked on American soil.

No democracy can tolerate its leaders being lawless -- and no democracy can tolerate one branch having suspicions of criminal conduct by another. In democracies like England, the U.S., France and even Italy and Germany, let alone countries closer to Israel's size like the Scandinavians, governments fall for far less financial monkey business than round the world mystery cash transfers by people who when questioned by the police refuse to answer on the grounds it might be self-incriminatory, with the money ending up serving the prime minister's personal interests.

'No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise,' said Winston Churchill, adding, 'Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other forms which have been tried from time to time.' Curiously, like Uncle Cyril and the trust fund, Churchill did not name the person who said that about democracy. But he was not trying to hide it from the police.

Of course, Churchill was right about the imperfection of democracy. As he himself said, 'The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter,' as the coming election will probably show. I'm not the average, so, I know I won't vote for the Right, with its dangerous ignorance of how democracies work, its fantasies about God-given rights to oppress millions of non-Jews, and its utter lack of thinking about how to help people rise out of poverty rather than leaving them to the charities of evangelist misionaries.

And there's no need to vote for Shinui, which has an opinion about everything except the only two issues that count: immediately beginning to withdraw from the territories and consolidating Israeli democracy for all its citizens (Less reported than Shinui's ban on Haredim is its other ban -- on Arabs as potential partners in a government coalition.).

So, who will I vote for? It doesn't matter -- they all will end up a Social Democratic umbrella, from Labor to Meretz to One Nation (the unionists) to Green Leaf to Hadash and maybe even Balad (because at least Bishara is asking questions about Israeli democracy) legitimizing the cause of peace and making pragmatism the ideology of Israel, a nation grown up enough to understand that is like all the nations, and need not have the mission of shedding light upon all others before it can shed a little light on itself).

Here's a scenario: Amram Mitzna puts up a strong fight to keep the Labor Party in opposition -- but if he can get Sharon to commit to a Gaza and Hebron withdrawal in one year, he can join the coalition as the defense minister to order the army to do so (and thankfully, the army will obey that order).

If Mitzna keeps Labor in opposition, he should merge with Meretz (which anyway within a few weeks is likely to be getting some of the new Shinui members joining it), and the Israeli Left can undergo a metamorphosis into something known as the Social Democratic Party. To start the process of cleaning up Labor’s act, should do what he should have done a long time ago – dump all those on the Knesset list who have open investigations underway against them, like Yitzhak Herzog and Eli Ben-Menachem. Nothing would galvanize the public more than to see Labor, indeed any political party, finally doing some housecleaning.

Mitzna has to use whatever remains of the Labor machine after the elections to reach the poor, who have been most hurt by Likud policies of the last 25 years. The same methods Shas uses should be applied –schools, hot meals, and most important, jobs. But the most important thing for the Left to get back into power after these elections is to legitimize Israeli Arabs as political partners, as a first step to proving peacemaking is possible.

So, I'll vote for one of the parties that promotes dialogue between Jews and Arabs in Israel. That's my criteria, with a preference decided on the basis of the final polls published Tuesday morning, and, of course, the weather. There's a chance of rain, say the weather charts.

Robert Rosenberg

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