Lieberman Defends Russian Elections

While most of the Western world is questioning whether the recent Russian parliamentary elections were fair, and while Russian protesters are being brutally suppressed, Vladimir Putin has one ally he can depend on. That would be Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who vouched for the election's fairness and democratic practices. He should know, as fellow Yisrael Beitenu member Faina Kirschenbaum was an official foreign observer, and she claims there was nothing wrong with the election.

Lieberman, Kirschenbaum and Putin believe in democracy as the rule of the majority. The rule of the current majority, when they're part of it, that is. Then, the majority can do anything to make sure it stays the majority - starve human rights NGOs of funds, toss out votes cast for the wrong candidates, etc.

Yes, I'm sure the recent Russian elections were a model of democracy. Putinistic democracy. It is a model Lieberman would like to implement in Israel. He, members of his party, members of Likud and even members of Kadima, are working on it as we speak. He won't succeed.

ThunderCats and Democracy

A new ThunderCats* series has started airing in the States. This reminded me of the fact that three of my favorite shows - ThunderCats, He-Man and She-Ra - all had magical sword-yielding princes as their heroes. As an adult, I'm not crazy about the idea of shows teaching kids that there are certain people who were born to lead, due to the fact that they were born to the right families.

I've read that the new ThunderCats show has changed a lot of the elements of the original. For instance, Lion-O is no longer a kid trapped in an adult's body. He's a teenager now. However, he is still the Lord of the ThunderCats, just because his father was king. The show is about him learning the leadership skills required of a man in his position.

If it were up to me, I'd change the storyline to something more democratic. I'd start the new show with Lion-O's father declaring the end of the Thunderan monarchy and a transition to a democratic republic. One aristocratic ThunderCat does not want to lose the privileges of power, and schemes to become king himself. However, he can't do it alone, so he calls the mutants, who do a bit of overkill. They destroy the planet, leaving the traitor without a kingdom.

Lion-O and his fellow ThunderCats flee to Third Earth, where he is not expected to become a leader, because of his father's wishes to end the monarchy. However, he still wants to learn leadership skills, because he'd like to earn the leadership position, rather than inherit it.

Wouldn't that be a better, more democratic and educational version?

* As you may have noticed, my logo includes the ThunderCats' Sword of Omens. No deep thought went into choosing the elements of the logo. If I remember my thought process, I wanted a pen and a sword, but since I knew that wasn't very original, I wanted the sword to be special. So, I thought of television shows I liked as a kid. I don't remember why I didn't use the sword from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which inspired this blog's title. Perhaps it wasn't distinctive enough, so I chose another 80's favorite - ThunderCats.

The Anti-Boycott Law

If you call for the economic, cultural and/or academic boycott of Israel and the settlements, you may soon be civilly liable. A controversial bill, scheduled for a final approval vote today, would grant pretty much anyone the right to sue boycott advocates and demand compensation without the need to prove direct damages. It isn't clear whether the vote will go forward or be delayed by one week in order to avoid embarrassment when the Quartet convenes today to adopt President Obama's parameters for peace.

I've never supported any kind of BDS, not against the settlements and certainly not against Israel proper. I find the concept of a boycott of Israel vile, one sided and counterproductive. However, I can understand Israelis and foreigners who boycott products of the settlements, even if I don't engage in it myself.

Having said that, I think this bill is just plain wrong and undemocratic. Even if it only addressed the issue of boycotts against Israel, rather than the settlements, I still would have opposed it. Choosing what to buy is every person's right. Calling for boycotts should be protected speech, even when it is absolutely disgusting. Nobody should be sued for it, especially not when no direct damage has to be proven, and theoretically, hundreds of different people and companies can sue the same person for millions each.

The only part of this bill that makes sense is the part about not allowing people and organizations who support a boycott against Israel to participate in government bids (though I would allow those who only support a boycott of the settlements, not of Israel, to participate). After all, by supporting a boycott of Israel, you lost your right to do business with it. You might think it doesn't make sense that someone who is pro-BDS would even want to get an Israeli government contract. That would be true with regard to foreigners, but there are Israelis who support boycott against themselves, but still want to take Israel's money for business ventures or non-profit projects.

I hope this bill does not pass the Knesset. I hope enough MKs will come to their senses. If they don't, I hope the Supreme Court will strike it down.

The Arab Spring and the One State Solution

The lack of democracy in the Arab world is one of the main reasons I oppose the idea of Isratine, a single country from the River Jordan to the sea. The closest thing to an Arab democracy right now is Lebanon, a country where every party has its own militia. My view has alrways been that, in a One State, we'd probably be like Lebanon at best - if democracy doesn't break down completely, that is.

Now the Arab Spring brings with it a glimpse into the possible future of the theoretical One State. Of course, this will be a long process with different outcomes in different Arab countries, and what happens in Egypt or Syria isn't exactly what would happen with the Palestinians. We can approximate, though, since many of the refugees who would return under the One State plan live in these other Arab countries, and there are other cultural similarities.

These are the questions that have to be asked: Will there indeed be Arab democracies? If so, what kind of democracies will they be. If we see illiberal democracies forming, where people get the formal right to vote but other freedoms are suppressed, this may indicate the illiberal future of an Isratine. Already, we see that the religious freedom of minorities has greatly diminished in some Arab Spring countries. I do not want to be persecuted in my own country like the Coptic Christians are in Egypt.

Also in Egypt, it seems like the new transitional regime is more interested in hanging Mubarak and his henchmen, rather than in recoving the money they stole and rebuilding Egypt. Will the new Palestinian majority not want to do something similar, by wishing to hang Jewish Israeli leaders who they believe committed crimes against them, rather than building the new joint society?

I am looking to see whether or not any Arab country will manage to achieve the level of democracy Israel has. I live in a very vibrant democracy, even though it is very flawed. Don't even start talking to me about a binational state before you prove to me that there is even a slight chance that it won't become less liberal and less democratic than it is now.

Israel's Egypt Policy: Does It Really Matter?

Thomas Friedman is sick and tired of the Netanyahu government. He believes that Israel should have sided with the pro-democracy protesters, and that such a stance would have created a better relationship with the Egyptian people, the leaders of what Friedman calls "the new dynamic popular trend". In hindsight, it is true that Israel sided with a dead horse (Mubarak), but it isn't at all clear that it really matters.

First of all, events are still unfolding. We have no idea what kind of regime Egypt will now have. Will it be a liberal democracy, a flawed "illiberal democracy", a theocracy or a military dictatorship? Other than the unlikely first option, the three latter options are all equally possible. The protesters have won the battle, but not yet the war. If the military retains power, the fact that Israel stuck by the regime will be a positive thing in the eyes of the new leaders.

If democracy or theocracy await Egypt, anything Israel would have done regarding Mubarak would not help the relationship with the new regime. Egyptians hate us. Despite the cold peace between the two countries, Egyptian civil society boycotts Israel. Egyptian individuals who travel to Israel get punished by their professional associations. If Israel called on Mubarak to resign, Egyptians would see it as too little too late, and might even think of it as Zionist meddling.

As Friedman said, the Egyptian revolution had nothing to do with Israel. Similarly, Egyptian hatred of Israel has little to do with Israel's policy towards Egypt. The main problem is that they still see the Jewish State as a foreign colony in the Arab Middle East, as well as their anger at the way Israel treats Palestinians.

The only way for Israel to look more favorable in the eyes of Egyptians, and Arabs in general, is to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. Even then, many would continue to hate us, but less.

Fear of an Egyptian Islamic Revolution

Hosni Mubarak is a dictator. He is not good for his people. As a liberal, I should be delighted at the prospect of his overthrow, but I'm not. Who will replace him if the mass riots bring his downfall? Probably not the mild-mannered Muhammad El-Baradei, former chief of the International Atomic Energy Ageny. He isn't very popular in Egypt, despite the fact that he's the opposition leader who is most prominent in Western media. The most popular movement in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, the undemocratic fanatically Islamist older brother (or father) of Hamas.

Having Hamas ruling Gaza is bad enough. Having a Hamas-like movement ruling all of Egypt, together with the prospect of Hezbollah ruling Lebanon, is quite a scary idea for us Israelis. But in a way, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt would be worse for Israelis than Hezbollah in Lebanon. We don't have a peace agreement with our northern neighbors anyway. With Egypt, there is a risk of this important Arab country rejoining the ranks of our enemies, and actively arming Hamas against us.

Egyptians, if you get rid of Mubarak, please don't replace him with religious zealots!

American Zionism and Israeli Democracy

There's an interesting Bloggingheads debate between Peter Beinart and Eli Lake, in which they debate a few aspects of Israel-U.S. relations. I found two parts of it particularly compelling. First, they discuss the growing gulf between American Jews, especially young ones, and Israel. Beinart recently wrote an excellent article on the subject in the New York Review of Books, where he explains that young liberal Jewish Americans don't see Israel as a liberal country and so don't identify with it, while most of the young people in the States who still feel a strong connection with the Jewish State are illiberal Orthodox Jews. He says that part of the problem is that the major Jewish organizations support anything Israel does, and so young Jews don't see that they can be both liberal and Zionist at the same time. I think his analysis of the situation is spot on.

The other part I found interesting was the question of whether Israel is becoming more and more illiberal and undemocratic. Here, again, I think Beinart is right that there are alarming signs, but I also believe Israeli democracy is still strong.

Eli Lake keeps saying to Beinart that he (Beinart) just isn't capable of reading Israeli politics. First of all, it is kind of rude to dismiss these arguments by basically saying "you're an idiot". Secondly, I'm an Israeli, meaning I'm probably better at understanding Israeli politics than Lake himself, and I agree with most of what Beinart says. Lake seems like such a douchebag (I love that word).

On a related note, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy agrees with me about our democracy. He thinks our main problem is "small politicians".

Fascists and Theocrats

All polls now show that the right wing will have a majority in the next Knesset. How large the majority will be varies wildly from poll to poll, with estimates ranging from 62 seats to 70-plus, out of a total of 120 Knesset seats. It seems certain Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next prime minister.

Unless Netanyahu decides to form a unity government with Kadima and Labor, his natural coalition partners would be Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) and the four religious parties. There is a problem here, though. Lieberman and the ultra-Orthodox parties don't like each other. Both sides share a disdain for democracy, but each takes it in a different direction. Yisrael Beitenu wants all citizens to declare their loyalty to the State of Israel or lose their citizenship. This, of course, is aimed at Arab citizens, but soon enough it will reach whoever has the wrong political views, in Lieberman's eyes. Shas and United Torah Judaism, the two ultra-Orthodox parties, don't necessarily object to this. They do object to the only part of Lieberman's platform that I agree with: making the country more secular, including non-religious marriages.

Shas and UTJ, on the other hand, would like to make Israel a Medinat Halacha, Halacha being the Jewish equivalent of Sharia law. A theocracy is their favored form of government, though they try not to say it directly. Lieberman, of course, totally opposes this idea.

I have a slim hope that the Likud-led right wing bloc will receive such a small majority that the coalition will have to include all the bloc's parties to pass the 61-member threshold. Then, maybe the disagreements between the fascists and theocrats will lead to Netanyahu's failure to form a government.