It was always a boast of the Israelis that they were an isolated island of democracy surrounded by a dangerous ocean of reactionary Arab states. For the well-meaning, but ill-informed, American voter, whose country’s treasury has been the wellspring of Israel’s financial survival, Israel’s democratic credentials reinforced the sentiment that it deserved his support.
How will it seem now that Israel’s Election Commission has seen it fit to ban two Arab deputies from standing for re-election, because it does not agree with their political views on the plight of their fellow Palestinians? The decision to bar Azmi Bishara and his Balad party from contesting his seat in the Jan. 28 elections comes a day after it disqualified another Israel Arab MP, Ahmad Tibi. The charge against them is the catch-all "seeking the destruction" of the Jewish state. It is an accusation that doesn’t need to be proved in Sharon’s Israel. If it is an Arab, accusation is proof.
When it comes to specifics, Bishara is accused of supporting the intifada and the suicide bombings. He is also charged with helping Israeli Palestinians visit relatives in Syria, with whom Israel is still officially at war. This last charge is clearly a ruse since it is unthinkable that the Shin Beth, Israel’s secret service, did not know of the visits. However, it probably suited the authorities to ignore what was happening until it needed to use the information to discredit Bishara.
The more serious accusation however concerns Bishara’s support for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The politician has made no secret of his sympathy for the struggle against this naked oppression. However, he insists that he has never condoned the suicide bombings.
But Israelis seem in no mood to listen to his arguments. Just as their patron, President Bush, is throwing subtlety to the winds, so the Israelis are prepared to abandon the fig leaf of running a truly representative democracy and throw Bishara out of the political process. The Arab deputy was right in describing the ban as "a step toward apartheid, at least in the political culture."
Yet even if his view really were extremist, it is notable that the Jewish ultranationalist politician Baruch Marzel of the Herut party has been allowed to stand, despite his organization’s declared belief that all Palestinians should be expelled from within the borders of a greater Israel. That view is, without question, extremist. But it takes some imagination to believe that Bishara is Marzel’s Palestinian counterpart.
However, a mature democracy, which Israel claims to be, ought to be capable of listening to contrary views. What this would seem to demonstrate is that Israel is increasingly unsure of itself and its doubts are generating fear. Only a frightened man will refuse to listen to his opponent.
The violence that Ariel Sharon has unleashed on the Palestinians appears to have scarred the Israeli psyche. They are treating Palestinians with the same cold cruelty that the Nazis treated the Jews with. There may be no death camps, but there are ghettoes and trigger-happy soldiers free to murder at will and an administration that is increasingly dehumanizing the Palestinians. And yet, US voters are happy to pay for this.
