Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Sharon does not destroy Arafat because he sees no POLITICAL solution to the Arab Palestinian problem. And the reason he sees no solution to this problem is because he has, like Israel’s intellectual elites, a democratic mentality. Therein is the core of Israel’s malaise, which hardly anyone has properly explored.
First, let me remind you of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of the American Congress shortly after his election in May 1996. He baldly declared that there is no “clash of civilizations” in the Middle East. Why did he make this gratuitous and patently fallacious statement? The reason is this. He wanted to appear as a bona fide democrat, and such a democrat must be committed to peace above and beyond any ideological—in this case Zionist¾convictions. He thus wanted to convey to multicultural America that, as far as he is concerned, Jews and Arabs can live in peace with each other regardless of their differences. This is good democratic fare, and it conforms to humanism.
Similarly, when Ariel Sharon went on the Temple Mount in September 2000, he called for “peaceful coexistence” between Jews and Arabs. This he could only do as a democrat, one who ignores cultural antagonisms because such antagonisms play havoc with the idea of treating all ethnic groups as equal, and equality, more than freedom, is the key principle of democracy in its old age.
The cultural antagonism between Jews and Arabs (and/or Moslems) means that the differences between Jews and Arabs are more fundamental than anything they may have in common. Jews and Arabs are members of the human race, to which extent they are equal from this abstract (and humanistic) point of view. Otherwise they are emphatically unequal, especially in their attitude toward individual freedom and the sacredness of human life. This disturbs those tainted by moral or cultural relativism, which contends that all “values systems” are equal, that none is objectively superior to another. (It is precisely this equality that logically endows all ethnic groups, regardless of their character, with the an equal right to national self-determination.)
Relativism or moral equivalence thrives in democratic times, and this relativism modulates Israel’s ruling elites. This is why Ariel Sharon could say in an April 13, 2001 interview with HA’ARETZ, that his son Omri had taught him “not to see things in black and white.” This makes it easier for Sharon to accept the idea of a Palestinian state even though the Arab Palestinians supported Saddam Hussein and now endorse the barbarism of suicide bombing. But this is only half the story.
Democracy has supplanted Zionism as the justification for Israel’s existence. It is democracy, not Zionism, that now endows Israel’s ruling elites with legitimacy and respectability. Zionism means a Jewish state, a state of and by and for the Jewish people. Democracy means “a state of its citizens,” wherein all inhabitants of the state—Jews and Arabs—are equal. Zionism requires the government to address the internal Arab demographic problem. Democracy prevents them from doing so¾and this even though the democratic principle of one adult/one vote points to Israel’s eventual demise as a Jewish state.
Consciously or otherwise, democracy—the religion of our times¾prevents Sharon from destroying Arafat. Destroying Arafat does not and will not solve the Arab Palestinian problem. Notice that the Left has repeatedly stated that it is contrary to democracy for Jews to rule the Palestinian Arabs, and Sharon has accepted Palestinian statehood. Why? Because his democratic mentality takes OPERATIONAL precedence over Zionism and the idea of a Jewish state.
We have here a fundamental conflict: a Jewish state cannot exist on purely democratic grounds. Israel’s ruling elites deny this conflict even more than they deny the civilizational conflict between Jews and Arabs. These two denials are intimately related. Democracy induces its partisans to say, contrary to daily experience, that Jews and Arabs can live together in peace and equality. Which means that Judaism and Islam are compatible religions—something Arabs emphatically deny and prove by teaching their children to kill Jews.
So long as Israel’s ruling elites speak of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs, they cannot but minimize Judaism and Zionism—as the Labor Party has manifestly done, and as Sharon is doing via his so-called government of national unity. Sharon’s security cabinet, which includes Shimon Peres, is dominated by Labor, an anti-Zionist party dependent on the Arab vote!
Peres, let us recall, has ever been Arafat’s apologist. He will oppose any attempt to destroy him. And even though Sharon has called Arafat a “liar” and a “murderer,” he will follow the Peres line. Sharon is too much a democrat to destroy Arafat, and as a democrat he has no solution to the Palestinian Arab problem.
One last word. There are now as many Arabs as Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Soon the Arabs will outnumber the Jews (as they eventually will within the Green Lines). Democrats cannot solve this problem. To the contrary, they can only make matters worse!