Prof. Paul Eidelberg
The disqualification of Moshe Feiglin from participating in the January elections for the Sixteenth Knesset is but one of countless violations of democratic principles in the so-called “only democracy in the Middle East.”
As is now well known, some seven years ago Mr. Feiglin organized demonstrations against the nefarious Oslo Agreement, demonstrations that blocked traffic on many roads in Israel. For this act, which in democratic America would have been deemed an act of civil disobedience, Feiglin was indicted and subsequently convicted for sedition!
What was his real crime? Moshe Feiglin, an observant and patriotic Jew, had but one motive and objective. Unlike the architects of Oslo, he wanted to preserve the Jewish presence in Land of Israel, the eternal and God-given patrimony of the Jewish People. Yet for years, Arab Knesset members, who constantly seek to rid this land of the Jews, have been tolerated by the Knesset and by Israel’s Supreme Court. This is a travesty not only of democracy, but of justice.
What are we to call a political system that betrays 1,900 years of Jewish yearning and suffering by offering the heartland of the Jewish People to the godfather of international terrorism, Yasser Arafat? What are we to call a political system that enabled its leaders to conclude an agreement with that murderer without Knesset or public debate?
I call it, as Alexis de Tocqueville would have called it, a “democratically elected despotism.”
Know well that Israel is the only “democracy” in the world that enables legislators to ignore public opinion with impunity. Know well that Israel is the only “democracy” in the world whose Supreme Court is in fact a self-perpetuating oligarchy that openly scorns the abiding beliefs and values of its people. Know well that Israel is the only “democracy” in the world whose government can surrender the land of its people with complete indifference to any other branch of government—as witness, most clearly, the government of Ehud Barak and the equally autocratic Ariel Sharon, who will not include in any government he forms any minister that opposes a Palestinian state.
Israel’s political system is a travesty of democracy. Under the present system, the Knesset, i.e., the legislature, is merely a tool of the government. The Knesset has never toppled a Labor- or Likud-led government by a vote of no-confidence. The explanation is simple: the ministers of the government, i.e., the cabinet, are the party leaders, who, despite primaries, can very much influence a Knesset Member’s place on his party’s list. Hence MKs cannot really exercise independent judgment.
This democratically elected despotism will not be changed until the Knesset becomes an independent branch of government, and this will not happen until MKs are individually elected by, and individually accountable to, the voters in multi-district elections. But this too will not occur without a massive grass-roots movement whose primary aim is parliamentary electoral reform as here proposed.
It needs to be understood that once legislators are elected under any electoral system, they develop a vested interest in preserving the system that made their election possible. This is especially true in Israel because of fixed party lists. Fixed party lists give a party’s leading members the prospect of a permanent, well-paid job with marvelous benefits. It is precisely fixed party lists and the absence of constituency elections that account for the forty-year tenure of Shimon Peres, who has never won an election and who could again become Israel’s foreign minister!
The architect of Oslo—the greatest diplomatic blunder in history—personifies
the grotesque nature of Israel’s political system.
It should be noted, however, that even a person of good character, once endowed
with the prestige and privileges of public office, will find it hard to sacrifice
his private interests to the public weal. The American founding fathers understood
this all too well. This is why they established not only a constitutional system
of checks and balances, but they made legislators individually accountable to
their local constituency, where they would have to defend their record against
a rival candidate. Nothing like this exists in “democratic” Israel.
And so, in the final analysis, Moshe Feiglin has been banned from participating in the elections to the Sixteenth Knesset not simply because he was (unjustly) convicted of sedition for having organized demonstrations that blocked traffic in many highways—which act a judge now had the audacity to associate with “moral turpitude.” No, Mr. Feiglin is the victim of democratic despotism.