Britannia Radio

Boasting of Israeli Democracy: Hidden Costs

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

By boasting of Israel as a democracy, Israeli politicians and negotiators have established, in the minds of American policy-makers and opinion-makers, a set of democratic expectations, any departure from which causes, and is bound to cause, annoyance and even animosity.

Conversely, by failing to act as a government whose policies and pronouncements are distinctively Jewish, Israel’s leaders have laid the foundation for their country’s humiliation and for much of the world’s antagonism toward the so-called Jewish State.

Pundits were astonished by President Barak Obama’s scornful treatment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nothing new here. The administration of George H. W. Bush had a special talent for insulting Israel. With unprecedented disdain, Secretary of State James Baker offered his phone number to the Yitzhak Shamir government “should it be interested in peace,” he publicly and contemptuously declared. More than once during his Middle East diplomacy, Mr. Baker peremptorily arrived in Israel on the eve of Jewish holidays.

Indeed, without consulting Israel, and hardly 24 hours prior to a scheduled meeting between Prime Minister Shamir and President Bush, the State Department summarily announced that a Middle East peace conference would take place in Washington on December 4, 1991, the day preferred by the Arabs who surely knew, with the Bush Administration, that December 4 fell on a Jewish holiday. The Shamir Government refrained from expressing umbrage at this undiplomatic and disdainful behavior. But it is precisely the government’s emasculated Judaism, submerged in democratic secularism, which provokes such indignities, and to which no Arab autocracy is subjected by the democratic government of the United States.

Contrary to the expectations of Jewish politicians and intellectuals who, out of fear of anti-Semitism, constantly boast of Israel as a democracy to endow it (and themselves) with legitimacy and respectability, it is precisely this lack of national authenticity or mindless adulation of liberal democratic values that underlies international contempt for Israel.

Paradoxical as it may seem, nothing so much diminishes Israel in the eyes of the nations, nothing causes so much misunderstanding, annoyance, and antagonism toward Israel than its government’s self-effacing Judaism and smug democratism.

Israeli politicians, academics, and journalists are oblivious of the harm they do in boasting that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The more Israel is flaunted and perceived as a democracy, the more it is expected to make concessions to Arab autocracies.

The alternative to democracy is not theocracy, a concept foreign to authentic Judaism as the present writer has shown in books and articles. This is not the place to define authentic Judaism, which I have done elsewhere. Instead, let me offer a definition of democracy that transcends the Americanized version imported into Israel by thoughtless politicians and intellectuals

As everyone knows, democracy means the “rule of the people.” But what is a “people”? A people are not something amorphous or polyglot as “one-adult-one-vote” America. The essence of peoplehood or nationhood is particularism, not universalism or mere humanism. Universal ideas or ideals (such as ethical monotheism) may provide a foundation on which diverse peoples or nations can live in mutual peace. But to merit the name, a people must have a distinct ethnic character or way of life.

Whatever the differences among the individuals composing a people, these will not be as important as their shared beliefs and ethical values derived from a common past called tradition. A living and energetic people must have a vivid sense of national consciousness, of national pride sustained by the memory of national triumphs and tragedies. Therein is the heart of a people’s authenticity and the reason why its government will not bestow on other ethnic groups citizenship unless such groups swear loyalty to, and act in accordance with, the basic convictions and aspirations of their benefactors.

Aggregations of individuals do not merit the term “people” by virtue of grievances they may have vis-à-vis others. And as philosopher Lee Harris indicates, to be a civilized people requires three basic ingredients: (1) the co-operation of individuals pursuing their own interests, (2) the ability to tolerate or socialize with one’s neighbors, and (3) a hatred of violence.

These ingredients are typical of democracies. But a democracy pays an awful price when, in dealing with anti-democratic regimes, it treats ruthless enemies simply in terms of its own civilized principles. This is deadly in the context of the Middle East. Boasting of Israeli democracy inclines Israeli prime ministers to behave as if Arab autocrats are liberal democrats animated by reason and disposed to “reciprocity.” Israel has paid an enormous price in blood and treasure for this stupidity.*

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*For more by the writer, whose expertise is “how to make Israel more democratic by Jewish principles, and how to make Israel more Jewish by democratic principles", see Israel-America Renaissance Institute www.I-ari.org.