One of the most common refrains of those who see through an Israel-centered lens is that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Americans in particular assume that democracy, Israeli-style, is pretty much the same as democracy, US-style – that Israeli citizens regardless of religion or ethnicity have the same individual rights as those we think the Bill of Rights and other Constitutional provisions guarantee us. Setting aside for the moment the distortions of democracy right here in the US, it’s pretty easy to demonstrate how much Israeli democracy departs – in both theory and practice – from what Americans like to assume is basic to democracy.
I’ve written about various aspects of this disjunction throughout this blog as well as in other articles. The theoretical and practical incompatibility between being a Jewish state and a democratic state was a prime focus of the course I taught at Israel’s Ben Gurion University in 2006. If modern democracy means something beyond pure majority rule – if, as we like to think in the US, there are individual rights that even majorities cannot stamp out – then detailed comparisons between Israeli democracy and the theory and practice of other democratic states exposes Israel’s version as deeply flawed.
Today, Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted overwhelmingly to disqualify both of Israel’s small Arab political parties from running candidates in February’s election. As the Jerusalem Post explains it, quoting Section 7A of Israel’s Basic Law,
‘a candidates’ list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objectives or actions, expressly or by implication, include one of the following: (1) negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; (2) incitement to racism; (3) support of an armed struggle against Israel by supporting an enemy state or a terrorist organization.
With many of Israel’s Palestinian citizens protesting the assault on Gaza, rifts in Israeli society are more exposed than usual. Israeli Arab leaders are indeed working as best they can to alter Israeli policy, which I gather is being termed a violation of the third clause of the quoted paragraph.
But over the past couple of years it’s been the first clause that’s seemed to me most relevant. That clause bars any political party calling for full equality between Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians in a state that prefers neither. Insisting that Israel become “a state of all its citizens” rather than “a state of the Jewish people” violates the demand that all parties accept Israel as a state in which Jewish concerns count most.
There is no fundamental barrier in the United States to a political party seeking to change the constitution or other political fundamentals. We’ve had Nazi parties, Communist parties, all kinds of parties seeking to use the ballot to transform the country. No government body decides whether a party platform itself is a disqualification.
In Israel, obviously and openly, that’s not the case.
Israel’s Supreme Court will get a chance to rule on the Elections Committee’s decision. Regardless of what it decides, the fact that the country’s Basic Law bans parties that seek to alter the Basic Law should be enough to stop Israel’s supporters from crowing about Israeli democracy. Not likely, though.
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This response is long overdue, I hope that it will still be of some value.
The central elections committee, which has passed the decision mentioned here, is not precisely a government body, since it is headed by a supreme court judge. This committee’s involvement in disqualification of parties is flawed, in my opinion, because the members of this body (other than the head of the committee) are parliament members. But precisely because of its political nature the decision of the central elections committee has very little meaning. A real decision is made only by the supreme court, which can easily overturn the disqualification, or could disqualify a party regardless of the decision of the central election committee.
So far in Israel’s history the only parties disqualified from running were the right wing Kach and its offspring Kahana Chai, on grounds of their racist political program. There were several attempts to disqualify Arab parties in the past, some based on the “Jewish state” clause, all of which were rejected by the supreme court. As a general guideline, the supreme court has ruled that the disqualification can only be used as an exreme last measure when fronting clear and obvious danger.
Now let’s consider the basic law quoted above. I’ll respond to some of the statements in this blog.
“Regardless of what it decides, the fact that the country’s Basic Law bans parties that seek to alter the Basic Law should be enough to stop Israel’s supporters from crowing about Israeli democracy.”
and:
“There is no fundamental barrier in the United States to a political party seeking to change the constitution or other political fundamentals.”
There is no such fundamental barrier is Israel. Many parties have seeked to change the basic laws in Israel, and some succeeded.
“We’ve had Nazi parties, Communist parties, all kinds of parties seeking to use the ballot to transform the country. No government body decides whether a party platform itself is a disqualification.”
That’s funny. Didn’t Dwight Eisenhower sign a law that outlawed the communist party in 1954? Did this law even require confirmation from the supreme court in order to take effect?
Fundamentally, the comparison to the election system in the US is pointless because the systems are so different. Israel should be compared with other democracies with a parliamentary system. In France article 4 of the constitution requires political parties to respect “the principles of national sovereignty and democracy”. According to Germany’s constitution parties that endanger the existence of the state or the democracy are illegal. The decision is made by the federal constitutional court, but only following a request from – surprise, surprise, the parliament.
By it’s very nature, the US electoral system allows only centrist views to get represented in congress. In that respect Israel’s system allows for a far more diverse range of opinions to be represented in the parliament (for better or worse) than the spectrum of views represented in the US congress. And as I already mentioned, despite the great difficulty for off-center opinions to get represented in congress, the US government has banned the communist party in the past.
Watch what 9/11 did to basic freedoms in the US or how the (truly) great US democracy treated Japanese Americans during the second world war. Israel has been at a state of war with its neighbors since its foundation, and engaged in a bloody conflict with the Palestinian national movement, with which many of its Arab Israeli minority identify much more than they identify with the state of Israel. Yet the foundations of the Israeli democracy have remained solid.
“But over the past couple of years it’s been the first clause that’s seemed to me most relevant. That clause bars any political party calling for full equality between Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians in a state that prefers neither.”
and:
“Insisting that Israel become “a state of all its citizens” rather than “a state of the Jewish people” violates the demand that all parties accept Israel as a state in which Jewish concerns count most.”
Israel’s declaration of independence, which is the closest thing to a constitution that Israel has, states that “The state of Israel … will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture”. Therefore constitutionally Israel IS a state of all its citizens, and attempts to change that will be overruled by the supreme court.
Since Israel is a state of all its citizens, what does it mean that Israel is “Jewish state”? This is very ill-defined in the basic law, and therefore probably doesn’t mean much. If an Arab party ever gets disqualified in Israel it will quite certainly be based on the third clause (more on this below).
The declaration of independence does suggest what a “Jewish state” could possibly mean: A guarantee that Israel will be open to immigration of Jews: “The state of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the ingathering of the exiles” – which is immediately followed by “It will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants”.
You may argue that complete equality is not the situation in reality. I agree, and think that is one of the biggest flaws in Israeli society, which should have been handled very differently by all Israeli governments. Yet this does not mean that Israel is not a democracy. The US is a democracy despite deep de-facto racial inequalities. So is France, where large parts of the muslim population are less assimilated in society than Israel’s muslim population. And there are many more examples.
In the spirit of the declaration, one may also interpret it as meaning that Israel will give preference to some cultural Jewish symbols, although this is not said anywhere explicitly. Most democracies in the world regard themselves as nation states and some have laws that give preference to certain elements of culture, language, even food. In Israel, by the way, both Hebrew and Arabic are official languages.
Now I’d like to discuss the Arab-Israeli political parties.
First, just to be precise, there is a third, Jewish-Arab party in Israel, the formerly communist party. The statement about “Both of Israel’s small Arab political parties” was ill-phrased.
Next, to their platforms. If any Arab party will ever get disqualified, this will most certainly be based on the third item in the basic law, which states that a party can be disqualified if it supports “an armed struggle against Israel by supporting an enemy state or a terrorist organization.”
Arab MPs have long crossed the line that would have been seen as acceptable in most democracies in this respect. Of course all this has to be weighed against freedom of speech and opinion, but I think that its also the importance for representation of the Arab-Israeli minority in the Kneset that makes many Israelis reluctant to confront this issue. Here are some recent quotes from Arab MPs, far from being exhaustive.
Jamal Zahalka (Balad), in a demonstration in Sakhnin, Dec 27, 2008: called for the world to install a blockade on israel.
In another speech, declared that Israeli Arabs who serve in civil service (community work) are traitors. This is incidentally a very interesting statement that I would love to discuss further, because it has to do with great efforts made by Zahalka and others to stall progress in the social equality of Israeli Arabs.
Wasil Taha (NDA), July 2006, in an internet chat, called for Arab Israelis to form resistance units that will break into army camps, fight with soldiers, or take them hostages.
Ibrahim Sarsur (Ra’am-Ta’al) declared, in a speech in the Kneset, his support for Hamas. Remember, Hamas calls for the anihilation of Israel as part of its founding principles, is engaged in war with Israel, and has killed hundred of Israeli civilians.
Going back to the lame comparison with the US, can you imagine similar statements coming out of US congressmen? Have such statements ever been made by US congressmen while the US was engaged in war or even in peaceful times? I don’t think so.
A quick update:
As expected, the supreme court rejected today the disqualification of both Arab parties mentioned in this blog. The attorney general’s position (the highest ranking official legally representing the government), presented to the supreme court, was that the vote in the general elections committee did not hold water. No evidence was presented that could justify disqualification. This was also the stance of the 9 supreme court judges, who made their decision unanimously.
In another decision toady, the supreme court kept in place a police decision not to allow at this time a demonstration of right-wing extremists in the Israeli-Arab city of Umm-El-Fahm. This decision was based on public security concerns (the concern was from violent reactions in the Israeli Arab public). The demonstration will take place instead only in March, after the elections. I’m mentioning this because this goes against the notion that Israel favors Jews over Muslims in this respect. In fact, more requests for demonstrations from Jews are refused (within Israel) than request from Arabs.
In a sense this also is not a great moment for democracy in Israel. The state is allowing violent reactions of some Arab-Israelis, perpetrated by parts of the Arab-Israeli political leadership, to undermine the freedom of demonstrators to express their opinion. The fact that most Israelis believe that the views of these right-wing demonstrators are utterly deplorable doesn’t mean that they should not be able to express these views, unless they clearly and unequivocally incite violence, racism, or other unlawful action.