The left-wing political commentator and columnist Yossi Sarid, a member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) for 32 years and former Minister of Education, Minister of the Environment, and opposition leader, is the author of an article titled "Fascism is already here" that appeared today on the English-language website of the influential Israeli newspaper "Haaretz".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/fascism-is-already-here-1.311858
Excerpts: "Israeli democracy is mainly for decoration, like a tree grown for its beauty, not to bear fruit. Few people actually use it or the rights it affords. Many are merely happy that they can vote in the Knesset elections, and even this number is getting smaller. [...] But here we find a paradox: Those who fight against democracy in order to destroy it, to set up an alternative state in its place, are the very people who know how to exploit it to the full. The settlers know, as do the rabbis, who teach their students how their 'Jewish state' will look. During the past few months it appears as if fascism has already arrived here and is waiting just behind the wall. [...] They use democracy in order to toss it out."
Yossi Sarid, who is the author of six books, currently lectures at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
Already on 23 July 2010, the British newspaper "The Guardian" published in its print edition (p. 28) and on its website an article by contributor Rachel Shabi titled "Israel turns upon its own".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/23/israel-turns-upon-its-own
Excerpts: "Israel's liberal left has been warning about this for decades – and now those cautionary words seem like prophesies. Lines of Israeli authors, academics and campaigners have long said that the ugly occupation of the Palestinian people would corrode Israel and derail its democracy. Human rights advocates repeatedly warned that a nation capable of meting out such punishing discrimination to another people would eventually turn on itself. And so it has. The country is in thrall to such anti-democratic sentiment and mob rule racism, manifesting at such breakneck speed that it is hard to keep up. [...] The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Acri) lists 14 antidemocratic laws currently working their way through parliament, from the demand that Arab citizens pledge allegiance to a 'Jewish democracy' to attempts to gag Israeli rights groups. [...] All this has widespread support".
Rachel Shabi is a freelance journalist born in Israel to Iraqi-Jewish parents, but grown up in the UK. For the past few years, she has been based in Israel.
On the other hand, on 6 August 2010, "Haaretz" published an article online on "The real danger to Israel's civic society", written by Gerald Steinberg and Asher Friedman.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.haaretz.com/magazine/week-s-end/the-real-danger-to-israel-s-civic-society-1.306400
Excerpts: "In Russia, Venezuela, Egypt and other repressive societies, the activities of foreign-funded, non-governmental organizations promoting democracy are subject to police harassment and legal restraints. The Israeli environment for NGOs is the polar opposite, with thousands of these organizations, from across the political spectrum, operating freely. Taking advantage of this situation, a number of political-advocacy NGOs are leading campaigns that use the rhetoric of human rights, international law and humanitarian aid to delegitimize Israel and label its leaders as 'war criminals.' This has led to growing criticism of these organizations [...]. In response, these groups have launched a campaign, claiming that the criticism constitutes an assault on democracy. [...] Another element of the 'democracy under attack' argument focuses on Knesset draft bills that would allegedly 'damage in an extremely severe manner the basic principles' of democracy and human rights [...]. This multi-front counter-attack reflects anti-democratic tendencies among these NGOs. [...] Democratic values are threatened most when they are invoked to stifle the very debate that embodies the essence of these values. And this is the real danger to Israeli civic society."
Gerald Steinberg is Professor of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University and President of NGO Monitor. Asher Friedman is a Research Fellow at NGO Monitor.
I can't figure out whether the two "Haaretz" articles appeared in print too, either in the English or Hebrew edition of the paper.
Showing posts with label Judaism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judaism. Show all posts
03 September 2010
13 June 2010
Article: Israeli Post-Democracy: Origins and Prospects
Keith Kahn-Harris and Joel Schalit are the authors of an article titled "Israeli Post-Democracy: Origins and Prospects", published on 10 June 2010 on the pro-democracy news and opinion website openDemocracy.net.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.opendemocracy.net/keith-kahn-harris-joel-schalit/israeli-post-democracy-origins-and-prospects
Excerpts: "'The middle east's only democracy'. [...] This profound sense of itself as a democracy, which by that token makes the country an exception in the region, is woven into Israelis' self-perception. This makes it all the more painful for many Israelis to feel obliged to lament that the country's political character is now seriously threatened and that its democratic political institutions and culture are in effect under siege. It is even harder for them to confront the reality that as the repressive nature of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is increasingly exposed to the light, Israel's government has begun to treat sections of its own Jewish citizenry as it does Palestinians. True, the project of settling the West Bank (and until the withdrawal of 2005, Gaza) has always carried dangers for Israeli democracy within the 'green line' that demarcated Israel proper from the territories it conquered in 1967. The central conceits of the settlement project [...] rely on the false supposition that Israeli democracy could avoid being undermined by a fundamentally non-democratic project imposed on its closest neighbours. [...]
"Alarm about the corrosive effects of colonial occupation on Israel has long been expressed by intellectuals, radicals and jeremiahs (such as the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz); but its spread can be measured in the way that even establishment political figures (such as Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert most recently) have publicly stated that without disengagement from Palestinian territory, Israel cannot remain a democracy. [...] [A] rightist [government] coalition led by Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud [...] seeks to hold onto the maximum possible number of West Bank settlements and contains figures with explicitly anti-democratic instincts. [...] These developments in themselves do not suggest that Israel inside the green line will, any time soon, dispense with elections or become a dictatorship. However, there is a real possibility that this Israel may drift into a kind of 'post-democracy' (in Colin Crouch's term): imposing restrictions on civil rights and the rights of minorities, the media and NGOs, in a way that erodes the checks and balances on the Israeli state. Israel would become a different kind of polity, one that in key respects might resemble Vladimir Putin's Russia or (at best) Silvio Berlusconi's Italy. [...]
"Even if Israel did fully withdraw to the green line, the 'post-democratic' tendencies that have been set in motion cannot now easily be stalled. The reason is in part because the tendencies pushing Israel towards post-democracy are connected to more than the settlement project; they are also the product of possibilities that have long been inherent within Zionism. [...] Zionism, in important ways comparable to other nationalisms even if the details differ, sought to create a national Hebrew culture forged out of the disparate Jewish diaspora, and to erect a state for Jews. [...] The strength of Israeli civil society has provided a powerful bulwark against the ever-present possibility that Israel would devolve into openly racist authoritarianism. In the post-democratic era, this bulwark is being eroded. Zionism is being reduced to a retrograde 'statism' that seeks only to build state power, and is suspicious of any counterweights. [...] Israel's political horizons were in historical terms always more limited than they once appeared, but [...] it has taken the rise of anti-democratic forces to national leadership for everyone, including Israelis, to figure this out."
Keith Kahn-Harris is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Israeli-American Joel Schalit is a book author and editor based in Berlin, Germany.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.opendemocracy.net/keith-kahn-harris-joel-schalit/israeli-post-democracy-origins-and-prospects
Excerpts: "'The middle east's only democracy'. [...] This profound sense of itself as a democracy, which by that token makes the country an exception in the region, is woven into Israelis' self-perception. This makes it all the more painful for many Israelis to feel obliged to lament that the country's political character is now seriously threatened and that its democratic political institutions and culture are in effect under siege. It is even harder for them to confront the reality that as the repressive nature of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is increasingly exposed to the light, Israel's government has begun to treat sections of its own Jewish citizenry as it does Palestinians. True, the project of settling the West Bank (and until the withdrawal of 2005, Gaza) has always carried dangers for Israeli democracy within the 'green line' that demarcated Israel proper from the territories it conquered in 1967. The central conceits of the settlement project [...] rely on the false supposition that Israeli democracy could avoid being undermined by a fundamentally non-democratic project imposed on its closest neighbours. [...]
"Alarm about the corrosive effects of colonial occupation on Israel has long been expressed by intellectuals, radicals and jeremiahs (such as the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz); but its spread can be measured in the way that even establishment political figures (such as Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert most recently) have publicly stated that without disengagement from Palestinian territory, Israel cannot remain a democracy. [...] [A] rightist [government] coalition led by Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud [...] seeks to hold onto the maximum possible number of West Bank settlements and contains figures with explicitly anti-democratic instincts. [...] These developments in themselves do not suggest that Israel inside the green line will, any time soon, dispense with elections or become a dictatorship. However, there is a real possibility that this Israel may drift into a kind of 'post-democracy' (in Colin Crouch's term): imposing restrictions on civil rights and the rights of minorities, the media and NGOs, in a way that erodes the checks and balances on the Israeli state. Israel would become a different kind of polity, one that in key respects might resemble Vladimir Putin's Russia or (at best) Silvio Berlusconi's Italy. [...]
"Even if Israel did fully withdraw to the green line, the 'post-democratic' tendencies that have been set in motion cannot now easily be stalled. The reason is in part because the tendencies pushing Israel towards post-democracy are connected to more than the settlement project; they are also the product of possibilities that have long been inherent within Zionism. [...] Zionism, in important ways comparable to other nationalisms even if the details differ, sought to create a national Hebrew culture forged out of the disparate Jewish diaspora, and to erect a state for Jews. [...] The strength of Israeli civil society has provided a powerful bulwark against the ever-present possibility that Israel would devolve into openly racist authoritarianism. In the post-democratic era, this bulwark is being eroded. Zionism is being reduced to a retrograde 'statism' that seeks only to build state power, and is suspicious of any counterweights. [...] Israel's political horizons were in historical terms always more limited than they once appeared, but [...] it has taken the rise of anti-democratic forces to national leadership for everyone, including Israelis, to figure this out."
Keith Kahn-Harris is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Israeli-American Joel Schalit is a book author and editor based in Berlin, Germany.
15 May 2010
Article: Is a Halakhic State Possible? The Paradox of Jewish Theocracy
Aviezer Ravitzky, "Is a Halakhic State Possible? The Paradox of Jewish Theocracy" ("Israel Affairs", 11 [1], January 2005: pp. 137-64):
www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a714003326&db=all
Abstract: "Is a consistent Jewish religious position requires [sic] either fashioning the State of Israel into a halakhic theocracy or negating it completely? If Torah observers gained control over Israeli society, would their faith require them (or permit them) to impose the Torah's laws on one and all, even against the will of the community and its elected representatives? Would there be no escape from having the rule of Torah undercut that of the State? In this article we propose a negative answer to these questions. We argue that the vision of a halakhic theocracy is vulnerable to challenges on two main levels – on the basis of the age-old inner logic of the Jewish tradition and on account of the actual condition of the contemporary Jews. However, criticism of the 'halakhic state' does not imply endorsement of the opposing slogan, 'separating of religion and Jewish state'. The latter gives rise to its own set of serious difficulties, from the perspective of the religion of Israel and of the State of Israel alike. Both positions may be refutable equally. Yet, there is a wide range of useful political and cultural options available between these two poles."
Excerpt: "The Jewish religion is a religion of legal, societal and national dimensions. It is a religion of law (halakhah), in that it concentrates on its adherents' way of life and takes a greater interest in their tangible actions than in their declarations of faith. It is a social religion, in that it deals with communal values and seeks to shape the public domain, sometimes even before getting involved with the private. And it is a national religion, in that most of its commandments and directives pertain to a particular people, the congregation of Israel, and only a few are directed toward humanity per se. Taken together, these three elements afford the Jewish religious tradition a definite political character. Naturally, such a religio-political tradition can never be indifferent with respect to a state that it regards as the state of the Jewish people. It will strive mightily to influence that state's laws and values and to impose its imprint on its culture and symbols."
The article has been reprinted in "Israeli Democracy at the Crossroads", ed. Raphael Cohen-Almagor (Routledge, July 2005: pp. 137-64). The contents of the book appear to be (almost) identical to those of the earlier journal.
The article (as published in the book) can be partially read here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=EUomQ3KB3p0C&pg=PT137&dq
Aviezer Ravitzky is Saul Rosenblum Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and recipient of the 2001 Israel Prize in Jewish Thought.
www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a714003326&db=all
Abstract: "Is a consistent Jewish religious position requires [sic] either fashioning the State of Israel into a halakhic theocracy or negating it completely? If Torah observers gained control over Israeli society, would their faith require them (or permit them) to impose the Torah's laws on one and all, even against the will of the community and its elected representatives? Would there be no escape from having the rule of Torah undercut that of the State? In this article we propose a negative answer to these questions. We argue that the vision of a halakhic theocracy is vulnerable to challenges on two main levels – on the basis of the age-old inner logic of the Jewish tradition and on account of the actual condition of the contemporary Jews. However, criticism of the 'halakhic state' does not imply endorsement of the opposing slogan, 'separating of religion and Jewish state'. The latter gives rise to its own set of serious difficulties, from the perspective of the religion of Israel and of the State of Israel alike. Both positions may be refutable equally. Yet, there is a wide range of useful political and cultural options available between these two poles."
Excerpt: "The Jewish religion is a religion of legal, societal and national dimensions. It is a religion of law (halakhah), in that it concentrates on its adherents' way of life and takes a greater interest in their tangible actions than in their declarations of faith. It is a social religion, in that it deals with communal values and seeks to shape the public domain, sometimes even before getting involved with the private. And it is a national religion, in that most of its commandments and directives pertain to a particular people, the congregation of Israel, and only a few are directed toward humanity per se. Taken together, these three elements afford the Jewish religious tradition a definite political character. Naturally, such a religio-political tradition can never be indifferent with respect to a state that it regards as the state of the Jewish people. It will strive mightily to influence that state's laws and values and to impose its imprint on its culture and symbols."
The article has been reprinted in "Israeli Democracy at the Crossroads", ed. Raphael Cohen-Almagor (Routledge, July 2005: pp. 137-64). The contents of the book appear to be (almost) identical to those of the earlier journal.
The article (as published in the book) can be partially read here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=EUomQ3KB3p0C&pg=PT137&dq
Aviezer Ravitzky is Saul Rosenblum Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and recipient of the 2001 Israel Prize in Jewish Thought.
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