Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Not a few commentators criticize the people of Israel for their apparent apathy. Why did they passively accept the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of September 13, 1993. How can they tolerate the consequent murder of almost 1,000 Jews and the wounding and maiming of many thousands more?
The truth is that the people are not apathetic but powerless, and of course powerlessness generates apathy. The people simply have no political and no judicial means of redressing their grievances concerning Oslo and its deadly consequences. They are not only oppressed by Israel’s SYSTEM of government, but deceived and distracted by the veneer of democracy—periodic multiparty elections.
Consider the Knesset. The people vote for parties, not for individuals who can be held accountable in constituency elections. No constituency elections exist in Israel.
Consider the Government, i.e., the cabinet. It is composed of party leaders who can ignore public opinion with impunity because these party leaders have safe places on their party’s electoral lists. (That’s why Shimon Peres is Israel’s foreign minister.) Few commentators realize that no Labor- or Likud-led government has ever been toppled by a Knesset vote of no confidence! This makes Basic Law: The Government a formula for despotic rule, for the Government has the power to make treaties without Knesset approval.
Consider the Supreme Court. It is a self-perpetuating, anti-Zionist oligarchy whose membership is virtually determined by three of its sitting judges, above all, the court’s president. The court has consistently ignored or refused to decide on the merits of various petitions challenging the legality of the Oslo Accords.
What all this means is that Israel is a democratically elected despotism. If proof is wanted, only recall Ariel Sharon’s landslide victory in the February 2001 prime ministerial election. That election should have resulted in Oslo’s abrogation and the utter dismantling of Arafat’s entire terrorist network. Instead, some 500 Jews were murdered during the first 18 months of Sharon’s rule. But let us go back to 1992 elections.
Do you know that Labor Party leader Yitzhak Rabin violated his campaign pledge to the nation not to recognize the PLO—the precondition of Oslo?
Do you know that in a professional poll conducted during the 1992 campaign
no less than 55% of Israel’s Jewish population—excluding the Jewish
residents of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza—agreed that these areas ought to
“remain under Israeli rule, even if this meant hindering the peace process.”
Only 33% favored “land for peace.” How many of the latter would
have taken this position had they known it entailed the loss of eastern Jerusalem,
to say nothing of the release and arming of thousands of Arab terrorists?
Do you know that on September 7, 1993, a week BEFORE Oslo, some 450,000 Jews
assembled in Jerusalem and demonstrated against the Rabin Government and its
“land for peace” policy?
Do you know that this Government, by negotiation with the PLO, was violating the law, specifically the 1986 Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, which prohibited contacts with that terrorist organization?
Do you know that an overwhelming majority of the Jews of Israel have always been to the right of their governments, but that the system of fixed party lists and the absence of constituency elections, as indicated above, render these Jews powerless?
Do you know that, with the help of the media, Israeli governments, whether led by Labor or the Likud or both, have conditioned Jews to being murdered?
Do you know why demonstrations against these governments are exercises in futility? Let me explain.
These demonstrations are futile because those who organize them do not have as their objective fundamental change in Israel’s GOVERNING INSTITUTIONS. They do not understand that, in Israel, INSTITUTIONAL REFORM IS A NECESSARY PRECONDITION OF CHANGING THE POLICIES AND DIRECTION OF THIS COUNTRY. It never occurs to them that their demonstrations can even be counterproductive. For even though such demonstrations may sometimes awaken many people from lethargy, they also distract many people from the basic cause of Israel’s malaise, its flawed institutions.
Indeed, the fact that the government tolerates demonstrations reinforces the myth of Israeli democracy and thus hinders institutional reform. The leaders of these demonstrations thus unwittingly sustain the very Establishment they deplore!
And so the people are misled. They are called upon to sign petitions or to send faxes to the government protesting against Oslo or against a Palestinian state, and they have been doing this sort of thing year after year after year—all to no avail. The government continues on its suicidal course.
It’s easy to blame the people. I prefer to focus primarily on the SYSTEM of government, while questioning the wisdom of critics who focus on the symptoms rather than on the basic causes of Israel’s plight.