Democracy In Israel Is Dying

[The following post is a draft I’ve had since March 2021. Given recent events, I decided to let the draft go up. Stale content, yo.]

Democracy in Israel has been slowly dying since Netanyahu’s first tenure as Prime Minister over 25 years ago. The demise accelerated in 2021.

Israel has an unusual, but not unprecedented, democracy. Millions of people, who live and work in the country, and are subject to its laws and courts, but not graced with civil rights or political equality, find themselves trapped in an anti-democracy. I say that's not unprecedented because there were two other democracies in the 20th century which operated in much the same way. The Republic of South Africa had a vibrant democracy for whites, and brutal oppression for the majority blacks, until the 1990's. And the United States, so proudly the Land of the Free, subjected millions of its citizens of color, to segregation and an American system of apartheid until the mid 1960's.

Because of the occupation, in effect since 1967, Israel has moved farther and farther right, trading its democratic principles for security. As the decades march on, the need to oppress the Palestinians has of course made Israel less and less faithful to its founding ideals. It proves the old cliche, that one cannot keep another enslaved without ultimately enslaving oneself.

So the Israelis have reduced themselves to a miserable choice. For all practical purposes, there is no political left in the country, since leftists inevitably demand justice and equality for the Palestinians. That would put the nation on the road to real democracy, but it would surely end the dream of Israel as a Jewish state. If Israel is to be a Jewish state and not a multi-ethnic nation, it cannot be a true democracy, since that would grant the Palestinians full political and social equality.

The result is the fiction of a two-state solution. No serious student of this question believes that such a "solution" has any chance of coming to fruition. Israel has annexed more and more of the land once thought to be essential to the creation of a viable Palestine. Increasingly, there simply is no there there. And it must be remembered that even if some poor bantustan of a Palestine were somehow to emerge, Israel would never permit it real sovereignty. Palestine would not be allowed to establish a small military, or conduct an independent foreign policy, because such a state could threaten Israeli security.

Israeli politics is now played out on a small and increasingly undemocratic field. It's voters must choose between a center right party, and an extreme right wing coalition. Netanyahu, always just one step ahead of the sheriff, has managed to survive by allying with small, crypto-fascist parties, some of whom want to annex all of the West Bank and expel all non-Jews from Israel. Anyway, that's the way I see it.

Uncle Tim wrote this post.

Follow Through And Expel Every Democrat

Why stop at the young black representatives? The Tennessee House has set a new prescient. If they can expel representatives they disagree with, then why not expel every Democrat? They can continuously expel Democrats as they are replaced. Just turn the Tennessee house floor into a never-ending expulsion ceremony. The egg has been cracked. Expel all the Democrats! It’s what the GOP wants to do, right?

While we’re at it, let’s toss out the medicine. All of it.

As we are seeing this week, the GOP is keen to set new precedents almost every day. They want to ban common, safe medications. Signaling a desire to effectively ban abortion nationwide by taking mifepristone off the market, the GOP is desperately trying to set a new precedent that any medication can be criminalized. So do it! Ban other life-saving medications. Start with insulin. Block the sale of chemotherapy drugs. Stop the sale of vaccines. The egg has been cracked. Ban all the meds!

And they want to prevent medications from being mailed to people. They are testing a dormant ‘zombie law,’ the Comstock Act, to see if it can prevent the shipment of drugs directly to consumers. It will likely fail, but it shows just how committed the GOP is to ruining everything for everyone.

And what’s the reason again? We made a black man president in 2009? We now respect queer people? We acknowledge that women and brown people have some rights? The GOP is waging a violent war against modernity and is taking down the nation with them.

All of this. All of these authoritarian actions by the GOP, are destabilizing our republic. It’s falling apart. The GOP, unable to win a national election, has decided to burn the Republic down and give their rich sponsors and friends an opportunity to plunder for a couple more generations while it burns.

Bad News Ahead

There are five big, bleak elections happening in the world this spring, and the all look bad.

As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms. The problem, to put it succinctly, is that it requires an informed and engaged electorate. Americans are politically lazy, ill-informed, resentful, fearful, and often bigoted. Now obviously that isn't true for millions of our fellow citizens, but it pretty well describes the folks who've put Trump in the White House, and gave that collection of clowns and rascals known collectively as the contemporary Republican Party full control over the Congress and most state governments. It's extraordinarily hard to feel bad for people who insist on giving power to a party that despises it's own supporters. And the problems are not confined to the U.S. The idea the Italians are seriously contemplating reinstalling Silvio Berlusconi as head of their government should make civilized people weep. Basta!

Freedom Officially Dead In Zimbabwe

Freedom and democracy were endangered for years. But a wave of terror, intimidation, rape, and murder have officially shut-down the opposition party, and have made Robert Mugabe stronger than ever. And Mugabe has essentially vowed not to relinquish power until he dies. Claiming that the MDC, the opposing party, is not patriotic and panders to British interests, the 84 year-old Mugabe said this:

Only God, who appointed me, will remove me. Not the MDC, not the British. We will never allow an event like an election [to] reverse our independence....

Mugabe's challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, and the MDC won more votes by narrow margin in parliamentary elections in March, but fell short of earning 50% of the popular vote required to avoid a runoff. The runoff was scheduled for June 27th. But today Tsvangirai and the MDC stood down amidst intimidation, beatings, and killings by pro-Mugabe gangs. As is frequently the case in dictatorships, Mugabe explained that the months of escalated violence has been committed by the MDC, not by his party or supporters.

Time for a disclaimer as well. I don't think there are any liberal bloggers who defend Mugabe. I say this because I know that Mugabe was once a victim of a white apartheid government when his country was known as Southern Rhodesia. Surely a man who survived white imprisonment and helped lead his nation to independence could be admired 30 years ago. He is also a vocal adversary of the UK and the US - two governments we liberals are always happy to criticize. But by no means does that make him someone to admire.

Since 1980, Mugabe has become quite a monster. And yes, some right-wing blogs, such as Instaputz, have frequently attacked Mugabe. But in this case, the enemy of our enemy is still our enemy.

Same applies to Hugo Chavez. On one hand, he is proving that second-world, resource-rich countries, can compete with the USA in the same hemisphere (like Brazil). Venezuela is a viable, alternative economic partner to African and Asian countries that don't like the USA's prices. But on the other hand, Chavez is still a power-hungry, irrational, democracy-smothering son of a bitch.

And Mugabe is becoming a murderous, dangerous, son of a bitch. His actions threaten not only his country, but to a lesser extent, he threatens the already-fragile prosperity and democracy in Africa as a whole.

Chaos Is On The March

So this is how democracy dies - in two fragile democracies.

In Kenya, the rioting and violence related to the nation's contested election was taken to a new level when a mob torched a church where people tried to escape the chaos. Over 30 civilians, including many children, were killed. The UN ought to join the US and EU in calling for an internationally monitored recount and/or independent investigation of the election.

In Pakistan, the general election scheduled for January 8th, has now been called 'impossible' to hold as scheduled by the nation's election commission. A postponement would almost certainly provoke international criticism and more violence on the streets.