Can Israel Survive as a “Democracy”?
Although Israel’s system of governance is far from being democratic, Israeli politicians have a democratic mentality—the key tendency of which is moral egalitarianism. This egalitarianism prompts them to seek, rather than shun, negotiations with Arab dictatorships in the hope of achieving peace. Little do they understand the moral significance and deadly consequences of such negotiations, and neither do “politically correct” political scientists.
The story begins with certain principles of democracy. Democracy is based on the primacy of consent or persuasion. In principle, therefore, democratic governments seek to resolve international conflicts by negotiation rather than by force. The exact opposite is the tendency of dictatorships—and all Arab regimes fall under that category. Since the domestic structure of dictatorships is based on the primacy of coercion rather than consent, the tendency of dictatorships is to resolve international disputes by force or intimidation.
Moreover, whereas the modus operandi of democracies is publicity, dictatorships thrive on secrecy and duplicity. Thus, for democratic spokesmen to speak of “confidence building” measures between Israel and her Arab adversaries is diplomatic nonsense having lethal consequences for the so-called Jewish state.
The notion of “confidence building,” like that of “conflict resolution,” is foreign to Islamic mentality. Such notions are products of Western political science, which, being morally neutral, makes no distinction between good and bad regimes. Consider, therefore, the unsophisticated view of things—the view of the ordinary decent citizen of a democracy.
This decent citizen makes a distinction between a “good citizen” and a “good man.” He defines a “good citizen” as a law-abiding person loyal to the goals of his country. Whether a “good citizen” is also a “good man” would then depend on the character of his country. (Think of the “good citizens” of Nazi Germany).
Reasoning on these lines, the “good citizen” is a democracy would be, to that extent, a “good man.” In contrast, the “good citizen” of a dictatorship—which is to say a person dedicated to the goals of a dictatorship—would be, to that extent, a “bad man.”
Our decent but unsophisticated citizen makes these distinctions because he regards democracy as “good” and dictatorship as “bad” (without inverted commas). Such a person may therefore be puzzled by the desire of the leaders of democracies, i.e., of “good” regimes, to negotiate with the leaders of dictatorships, i.e., of “bad” regimes. Obvious this requires “good men” to negotiate with “bad men”! (By so doing, however, these “good men” disarm their fellow-citizens and render them more vulnerable to the designs of the enemy—of “bad men.”)
This conclusion (which should concern Israel’s prime ministers and foreign minister) has a number of interesting ramifications. Our decent but naïve citizen may even ask: “Why have various presidents of the United States been so deeply committed to resolving the conflict between reputedly democratic Israel and its despotic Arab neighbors, when such conflicts seem perfectly natural as well as irresolvable? After all, the conflict between the democracies and Nazi Germany had to be resolved on the battlefield.
Compounding his moral confusion, the ordinary citizen might ask: “Why should American diplomats be ‘even-handed’ or impartial between the representatives of democratic Israel and the representatives of the despotic Palestinian Authority—impartial, therefore, between good and bad men?”
The more he reflects on the subject, our decent citizen might begin to wonder whether the good men at such negotiations are really good, and whether the bad are really bad. He may even recall Ariel Sharon saying he does not see things in “black and white.”
But now our decent citizen may wonder how Israel, whose ruling elites obviously do not see things in black and white, can persevere in a protracted conflict with an enemy that does think in such terms. He may even deem it illogical for these elites to avoid thinking in black and white terms, on the one hand, and yet maintain that peace in the Middle East must be based on democratization of the Arab world on the other.
Having become more discerning, our decent citizen may then conclude that Israel’s graying elites are more likely to appease Arab regimes than pursue a strategy designed to defeat and democratize them (as the Allies did to their enemies in World War II). Such a strategy requires men of dauntless courage and wisdom, men which democracy, in its old age, does not produce. Hence, given its feckless leaders, it’s more reasonable to expect the State of Israel to self-destruct than to expect the defeat and democratization of Israel’s enemies.
This seems to be the probable consequence of Israel’s 2006 national elections, seeing that the Knesset drifted markedly to the left, and that the only new party to enter the Knesset represents the pensioners.
