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Defining Democracy Down May 14, 2002
By Tim Wise
Webster’s New World Dictionary defines democracy as, among other things,
"the principle of equality of rights, opportunity and treatment, or the
practice of this principle." Keep this in mind, as we’ll be coming back to
it shortly.
Now, imagine that the United States were to abolish our Constitution, or
perhaps had never had one to begin with. No Bill of Rights. No guarantees
of things like free speech, freedom of assembly and due process of law.
And imagine that Congress were to pass a law stating that the U.S. was from
this point forward to be legally defined as a Christian nation. As such,
Christians would be given special privileges for jobs, loans, and land
ownership. Furthermore, political candidates espousing certain
beliefs--especially those who might argue that we should be a nation with
equal rights for all, and not a "Christian nation"--were no longer allowed
to hold office.
And imagine that next month, new laws were passed that restricted certain
ethnic and religious groups from acquiring land in particular parts of the
country, and made it impossible for members of ethnic minorities to hold
certain jobs, or live in particular communities.
And imagine that in response to perceived threats to our nation’s internal
security, new laws sailed through the House and Senate, providing for
torture of those detained for suspected subversion. This, on top of still
other laws providing for the detention of such suspects for long periods of
time without trial or even a formal charge against them.
In such a scenario, would anyone with an appreciation of the English
language, and with the above definition in mind, dare suggest that we would
be justified in calling ourselves a democracy?
Of course not: and yet the term is repeatedly used to describe Israel--as
in "the only democracy in the Middle East."
This, despite the fact that said nation has no constitution.
This, despite the fact that said nation is defined as the state of the
Jewish people, providing special rights and privileges to anyone in the
world who is Jewish and seeks to live there, over and above longtime Arab
residents.
This, despite the fact that said nation bars any candidate from holding
office who thinks Israel should be a secular, democratic state with equal
rights for all.
This, despite the fact that non-Jews are restricted in terms of how much
land they can own, and in which places they can own land at all.
This, despite that fact that even the Israeli Supreme Court has
acknowledged the use of torture against suspected "terrorists" and other
"enemies" of the Jewish state.
For some, it is apparently sufficient that Israel has an electoral system,
and that Arabs have the right to vote in those elections (though just how
equally this right is protected is of course a different matter). The fact
that one can’t vote for a candidate who questions the special Jewish nature
of the state, because such candidates can’t run for or hold office, strikes
most as irrelevant: hardly enough to call into question their democratic
credentials.
But of course, the Soviet Union also had elections, of a sort. And in those
elections, most people could vote, though candidates who espoused an end to
the communist system were barred from participation. Voters got to choose
between communists. In Israel, voters get to choose between Zionists. In
the former case, we recognize such truncated freedom as authoritarianism.
In the latter case, we call it democracy.
If it was not already obvious that the English language was dead--what with
the inanities introduced to it by the business-speak of corporate
capitalism, such as "thinking outside the box," "managing one’s human
assets," and "planned shrinkage"--this should pretty well prove the point.
If what we see in Israel is indeed democracy, then what does fascism look
like?
I’m sorry, but I am over it. As a Jew--hear me now--I am over it. And if my
language seems too harsh here, that’s tough. Because it’s nothing compared
to the sickening things said by Israeli leaders throughout the years. Like
Menachem Begin, former Prime Minister who told the Knesset in 1982 that the
Palestinians were "beasts walking on two legs." Or former P.M. Ehud Barak,
who offered a more precise form of dehumanization when he referred to the
Palestinians as "crocodiles."
And speaking of Barak, for more confirmation on the death of language, one
should examine his April 14 op-ed in the New York Times. Therein, Barak
insisted that democracy in Israel could be "maintained" (ahem), so long as
the Jewish state was willing to set up security fences to separate itself
from the Palestinians, and keep the Palestinians in their place.
Calling the process "unilateral disengagement," Barak opined that limiting
access by Arabs to Israel is the key to maintaining a Jewish majority, and
thus the Jewish nature of the state. That the Jewish nature of the state is
inimical to democracy as defined by every dictionary in the world matters
not, one supposes.
Barak even went so far as to warn that in the absence of such security
fences, Israel might actually become an apartheid state. Imagine that:
unless they institute separation they might become an apartheid state. The
irony of such a statement is nearly perfect, and once again signals that
words no longer have meaning. They are but the sounds that emanate from
one’s throat and are accompanied by breath and occasionally spittle. They
mean nothing. Define them as you choose.
Interestingly, amidst the subterfuge, other elements of Barak’s essay
struck me as surprisingly honest: much more honest, in fact, than when he
had been Prime Minister and supposedly made that "generous offer" to Arafat
about which we keep hearing.
You know, the one that would have allowed the maintenance of most Jewish
settlements in the territories, and would have restricted the Palestinian
state to the worst land, devoid of its own water supply, and cutoff at
numerous chokepoints by Israeli security. Yeah that one. The one that has
been described variously (without any acknowledgement of the inconsistency)
as having offered the Palestinians either 93%, or is it 95%, or maybe 96%,
or perhaps 98% of the West Bank and Gaza.
Well, in the Times piece, Barak finally came clean, admitting that Israel
would need to erect the fences in such a manner as to incorporate at least
one-quarter of the territories into Israel, so as to subsume the
settlements. So not 93 percent, or 96%, or 98%, but at best 75%, and still
on the worst land.
Furthermore, the fences would slice up Jerusalem and restrict Arab access
to the Holy Basin and the Old City: a direct swipe at Muslims who seek
access on a par with their fellow descendants of Abraham.
That this was Barak’s idea all along should surprise no one. And that such
a "solution" would mean the final loss for the Palestinians of all but 17%
of their pre-Israel territory will likely not strike many in the U.S. media
or political elite as being terribly unfair.
If anything, we will continue to hear about the intransigence of the Arabs,
and their unwillingness to accept these "generous offers," which can only
be seen as generous to a people who have become so inured to human
suffering that their very souls are in jeopardy.
Or to those who have never consulted a dictionary. For once again, it
defines generous as: "willing to give or share; unselfish; large; ample;
rich in yield; fertile." In a world such as this, where words have lost all
meaning, we might as well just burn all the dictionaries.
Sometimes, the linguistic obfuscation goes beyond single words, and begins
to encompass entire phrases. One such example is the oft-repeated statement
to the effect that "Jews should be able to live anywhere in the world, and
to say otherwise is to endorse anti-Semitism." Thus, it is asked, why
shouldn’t Jews be able to settle in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem?
Of course, whoever says such a thing must know of its absurdity beforehand.
After all, the right to live wherever one chooses has never included the
right to live in someone else’s house, after taking it by force or fraud.
Nor does it include the right to set up house in territories that are
conquered and occupied as the result of military conflict: indeed,
international law expressly forbids such a thing.
And furthermore, those who insist on the right of Jews to live wherever
they choose, by definition deny the same right to Palestinians, who cannot
live in the place of their choosing, or even in the homes that were once
theirs.
Needless to say, many Palestinians would like to live inside Israel’s
pre-1948 borders, and exercise a right of return in order to do so. But
don’t expect those who demand the right for Jews to plant stakes anywhere
we choose to offer the same right to Arabs.
Many of these are among the voices that insist Jordan is "the Palestinian
state," and thus, Palestinians should be perfectly happy living there.
Since Palestinians are Semites, one could properly call such an attitude
"anti-Semitic"--seeing as how it limits the rights of Semitic peoples to
live wherever they wish--but given the transmogrification of the term
"anti-Semitism" into something that can only apply to Jew-hatred, such a
usage would seem bizarre to many, one suspects.
The rhetorical shenanigans even extend to the world of statistics. Witness
the full-page advertisement in the New York Times placed by the Conference
of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which ran the same
day as the Barak op-ed.
Therein, these supposed spokespersons for American Judaism stated their
unyielding support for Israel, and claimed that the 450 Israeli deaths
caused by terrorism since the beginning of the second intifada, were equal
to 21,000 deaths in the U.S. from terrorism, as a comparable percentage of
each nation’s overall population.
Playing upon fears and outrage over the attacks of 9/11, the intent was
quite transparent: get U.S. readers to envision 9/11 all over again, only
with seven times more casualties! A brilliant move, indeed.
But of course, honesty--an intellectual commodity in short supply these
days, and altogether missing from the rhetorical shelves of the Conference
of Presidents--would require one to point out that the numbers of
Palestinian non-combatant (that is to say civilian) deaths, at the hands of
Israel in that same time period, is much higher, and indeed would be "equal
to" far more than 21,000 in the U.S., as a comparable share of respective
populations.
To be honest to a fault would be to note that the 900 or so Palestinians
slaughtered with Israeli support in the Sabra and Shatilla camps during the
1982 invasion of Lebanon, would be equal to over 40,000 Americans. Even
more, the 17,500 Arabs killed overall by Israel during that invasion would
be roughly equivalent to over 800,000 Americans today: the size of many
large cities.
In the dictionary such a thing might fall under the heading of terrorism.
But remember, words no longer have any meaning.
Sounding eerily like Adolph Hitler, Ariel Sharon once said, "a lie should
be tried in a place where it will attract the attention of the world." And
so it has been: throughout the media and the U.S. political scene, on CNN
in the personage of Benjamin Netanyahu, and in the pages of the New York
Times.
And in my Hebrew School, where we were taught that Jews were to be "a light
unto the nations," instead of this dim bulb, this flickering nightlight,
this barely visible spark, whose radiance is only sufficient to make
visible the death-rattle of the more noble aspects of the Jewish tradition.
Unless we who are Jews insist on a return to honest language, and an end to
the hijacking of our culture and faith by madmen, racists and liars, I fear
that the light may be extinguished forever.
Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and educator. He can be
reached at tjwise@mindspring.com
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