The price of victory

Headnote: I was tipped to the article linked to here by a post on one of the blogs I read regularly - but I'm not sure which one and now I can't find that post. If you happen to be the poster or know who is, please drop me a line: I'd like to give credit where it's due.

There is a nation in the Middle East today whose government is suffused with corruption.

In just the past few weeks, it's chief of police has been forced to resign over the fact that several of its highest police officers were found guilty of corruption and negligence.

This came[, writes Indiana University history professor Dror Wahrman at the History News Network on March 5], within a week of the forced resignation of [its] Chief of Staff from the military.... It was also some ten days after [its] minister of justice was convicted of sexual assault while on duty, and a couple of weeks after [its] president – who holds a largely symbolic position – resigned temporarily following charges of rape and sexual misconduct. It was also the same day that the head of [its] tax authority resigned because of possible corruption charges. In the meantime, several other investigations are still pending, not least two or three directed at the Prime Minister himself ... concerning corruption and favoritism.

Corruption charges have also emerged in a dispute over the minister of police's choice for a new police chief. It is all bad enough that some voices within the nation, including official ones, have raised the possibility that it's heading toward internal collapse.

That nation is Israel.

Suddenly the Palestinians and the Hizbullah, and even Iranian nukes, have taken a back seat: Israel does indeed seem in danger of imploding from within, at least as a viable democracy.

I hasten to say that I pass this on with no sense of joy or pleasure, but rather as an object lesson in where a preference for domination over dialogue and for the "security" of war over the "risks" of peace can, does, will lead.

Wahrman refers to

[t]he infinite variety of devices through which Israel has condoned and often actively encouraged the breaking of the rules in its drive to expropriate Palestinian occupied land against both Israeli and international law....

He cites one particularly galling example from the previous week's news:

[I]t was revealed that the Israeli government is withholding its formal recognition of the new leader of the Greek-Orthodox Church in the Holy Land, Patriarch Theophilus, because it wants him to sell prime real estate near Jaffa Gate to settlers as a condition for recognizing his official status.

That act and others, he writes, "brazenly ignore Israeli law," but based on past experience, "are likely to succeed." And it's not even that such incidents have gone undocumented; indeed, they even were

the subject of a thick government judicial document, known as the “Sasson Report,” which created something of a furore when it was handed to prime minister Ariel Sharon in March 2005. Within months, however, the Sasson Report joined the mounting pile of legal and normative documents that have been effortlessly side-stepped by the settlers and their supporters in multiple branches of the government. It was only a matter of time, inevitably, before the lawlessness of the occupied territories – and their support networks throughout the Israeli state apparatus – began infecting Israel proper. [emphasis added]

The ultimate question the professor wants to raise is, is Israeli democracy, which he describes as "young, evolving, and certainly not indestructible," in danger? He believes the threat is very real.

From my perspective, I believe that the outward form of democracy as practiced in Israel is under no threat - but the spirit of democracy, at least the grander aspects of that spirit, has long since been damaged by years of occupation, militarism, and oppression. During the time I have been blogging (and for a good number of years before) I have expressed hope for every bit of movement toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace - but have become increasingly doubtful that the Israelis, trapped by their own assumptions and frustrated by their inability to impose their will on the Palestinians, actually desire a settlement or even can conceive any longer of what peace would look like.

Wahrman concludes by saying

the friends of the Jewish state should be mobilizing post-haste to help Israeli citizens, jaded, disappointed and angry as they might be,

to make sure the injuries to Israeli democracy are not fatal. I'll conclude by saying that those of us who would like to consider ourselves friends of the Israelis and friends of the Palestinians and friends of the elusive peace should be mobilizing to help Israelis, jaded, disappointed and angry as they might be, understand that a dramatic change in policy is the only thing that will ultimately protect their democracy from the encroaching scourge of militarism.

Footnote, Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Laugh Div.: Israeli ambassador to El Salvador Tsuriel Raphael has been recalled two weeks after he was found in the yard of his official residence, naked, tied up, and drunk, with sex toys lying nearby. When found, he was unable to identify himself until the ball gag was removed from his mouth.