The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, first delivered on June 26, 2004 and updated August 24, 2008.

Back in June 2004, more than a year before the government expelled 10,000 Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria, I reported that the Right, the so-called national camp, has failed to galvanize the people against the Left. The Right, representing at least 75% of the people, has allowed the Left to undermine Israel’s territorial integrity and thereby undermine the heritage of the Jewish people. This was done in the name of democracy.

I pointed out that analysis of Israel’s legislative, executive, and judicial institutions reveals that Israel is not an authentic democracy, despite its periodic, multiparty elections, Political theorist Henry Mayo correctly states that “A political system is democratic to the extent that decisions-makers are under effective popular control.”

But decisions-makers in Israel are not and cannot be under effective popular control so long as members of the Knesset are not individually elected by and accountable to the voters in regional elections. The Right—politicians, professors, and journalists—have not told the people the truth about Israel’s oligarchic system of governance.

Don’t these elites know that in 1949, the Provisional State Council, instead of drafting a constitution as prescribed by Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed itself the Knesset (parliament) and thus established a form of government without the consent of the people?

Don’t they know that Israel’s Government can conclude agreements with terrorist groups and release terrorists without Knesset or public debate?

Don’t they know that Israel’s system of governance enables the prime minister to ignore the will of the people with impunity, as Ariel Sharon did when he adopted Labor’s “unilateral disengagement” policy, which had been rejected by a vast majority of the voters in the January 2003 election?

Don’t they know that this betrayal of the electorate is a direct consequence of the fact that members of parliament are not individually accountable to the voters in constituency elections, contrary to the practice of almost every democratic country, many of which are smaller in size and population than Israel?

Don’t they know that Israel’s former cabinet minister, Moshe Arens, uttered sheer nonsense when he said Israel’s parliamentary system of government “is one of most common among democracies in the world”? Don’t they know he was being disingenuous when he added that this system “has functioned very well”? (It sure has for the ruling elites!)

Don’t they know—doesn’t Mr. Arens know—that Israel’s parliament is not only subservient to the Government, but that, unlike any other parliament, it has allowed the Supreme Court to become a super-legislature?

Don’t members of the national camp know that Israel’s parliament has allowed the Supreme Court—a self-perpetuating oligarchy—to deny Israel’s lawful and historic right to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza?

Don’t they know that many rulings of the Supreme Court violate the abiding convictions and permanent interests of the Jewish people?

I have documented these facts in my book, The Myth of Israeli Democracy. But aren’t these facts obvious to politicians, professors, and journalists of the Right? Then why don’t they tell the people that Israel, under its present governmental system, is not a democracy? Why don’t they tell the truth? Here are three reasons:

First: Israel’s ruling elites—Left and Right—know that the democratic façade of periodic multiparty elections placates the people, while the absence of constituency elections enables these elites to ignore the convictions of the people.

Second, Israel’s ruling elites cannot transcend the democratic mentality of the present age. Democracy is their supreme standard of what is politically good and bad, right and wrong. Having no higher ethical standard, politicians, professors, and journalists of the Right could not expose the myth of Israeli democracy even while the Government was expelling 10,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria in the name of democracy!

Even while this unspeakable crime was being orchestrated by Sharon and legalized by Chief Justice Aharon Barak—who falsely ruled that Gaza as well as Judea and Samaria constitute “belligerent occupied territory”—politicians, professors, and journalists of the Right persisted in referring to Israel as a “democracy.”

Israel’s “politically correct” Right—politicians, professors, and journalists—may grudgingly admit that Israel is an “imperfect” democracy. But who among them has the wherewithal to say that Israel has never been a democracy—as belatedly confirmed in the Memoirs of David Ben-Gurion?

But there is a third and deadlier reason why the Right—the so-called national camp—perpetuates the myth of Israeli democracy: Israel’s ruling elites—Right and Left—know that the government’s legitimacy as well as their own respectability is derived from Israel’s reputation as a democracy, especially in the United States.

The Right will not expose the myth of Israeli democracy even though this myth is facilitating the treacherous agenda of the Left, is truncating Israel and undermining its survival.

The Right, like the Left, will object by saying that Israel’s democratic reputation is a precondition of U.S. military and economic aid. Not so! Joseph Sisco, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, once told the Israeli author Shmuel Katz: “I want to assure you, Mr. Katz, that if we were not getting full value for our money, you would not get a cent from us.” Decisive in U.S.-Israel relations are not ostensible common values but economic and strategic interests.

In fact, Israel’s democratic reputation is counterproductive! It is precisely because of its democratic reputation that Israel is expected to (1) make territorial concessions to its enemies; (2) make “confidence building” gestures by releasing Arab terrorists; (3) exercise self-restraint against terrorist attacks; and finally, (4) recognize the fictitious right of the fictitious Palestinian people to statehood on Jewish land.

That Israel’s leftwing political and judicial elites have betrayed the Jewish heritage in the name of democracy, and that they have promoted the cause of Israel’s enemies by their lip service to democracy, is unsurprising. But that the Right—politicians, professors, and journalists—should engage in this democratic rhetoric to secure their democratic credentials is no less contemptible. Indeed, this democratic flim-flam persists even while the Government fails to fulfill the first precondition of any legitimate government, namely, to protect the lives of its people.

I want to see a new Right, a real Right. With this in mind my colleague attorney Dov Even-Or is initiating a public demonstration to call for new elections. The demonstration will take place at the Rose-garden in Jerusalem in front of the Prime Minister’s office for a week, starting today, Monday, August 25, through Monday September 1 from 5 pm to 8 pm. We are going to demand that the Knesset call for new elections to be held on Nov. 11 of this year — the day of the municipal elections in Israel. We want the elections to be held under the control of the State Comptroller rather than the Knesset Election Committee, which consists of the representatives of the parties presently sitting in the Knesset.

It is outrageous that after the Kadima primaries this illegitimate Kadima party will simply form another government that will continue to lead Israel to oblivion.

Those unable to come to Jerusalem are invited to organize simultaneous demonstrations in their towns, in front of the municipal buildings or in other public places. For further information, please call Dov Even-Or at 052-871-7297.

I will be speaking at the demonstration in Jerusalem and I will call for regime change. New elections will probably make Benjamin Netanyahu Israel’s next PM. Okay, I want the Right or national camp to call on Netanyahu to abrogate Oslo. I want the Right to call on him to proclaim that Israel will no longer negotiate with terrorists. I want the Right to insist that he pledge—here and now—that if he is elected, not a single Jew will be expelled from Judea and Samaria, and that not a centimeter of Jewish land will be surrendered to Israel’s implacable enemies.

I want the Right—the new Right—to demand regime change, to do so in clear terms, in a systematic and sustained way, yes, and in an emphatic way on every public forum, something no so-called right-wing or nationalist organization has done in Israel—regardless of their written program.