Guest Columns
Israel’s democratic reputation
What is the center of gravity, hence point of vulnerability, of the Netanyahu Government, indeed, of any Israeli government? Answer: Israel’s democratic reputation.
Israel’s democratic reputation.
One can make no serious change in the Oslovian or “territory for peace” policy without challenging Israel’s democratic reputation. That’s a dangerous strategy, but the only way to initiate a significant change in Israel’s policy of “land for peace.” This stagnant and self-destructive policy has cost Jewish land—and lives: more than 15,000 Jewish casualties since Oslo 1993. Worse, it has even made Israel a pariah nation on the one hand, while virtually endowing her sworn enemy, the “Palestinian Authority,” with statehood on the other.
I therefore contend we must trash Israel’s reputation as a democracy. Israel better resembles a democratically elected despotism, as the eminent Alexis de Tocqueville would have described it!
The key to this seeming paradox is Israel’s seemingly democratic system of Proportional Representation (PR). That system has fragmented the country into thirty and more narrow and even single-issue parties. That in turn results in a multi-party cabinet government incapable of pursuing a coherent and long-term national strategy.
Thus, what Israel most boasts of, her democratic reputation, is a primary cause of her frailty and precarious existence.
Israel has never had a majority party at the helm. So no party can rally the entire nation to the nation’s cause or set of permanent Jewish values and principles.
I have addressed this dilemma for more than thirty years in books and articles and even on Israel national radio. And I have done so without success, and without any public support from the political science departments of Israeli universities.
I therefore conclude what Israel needs is a bloodless revolution!