Wonderful piece by civil rights activist Hagai El-Ad at Foreign Policy says that it’s not about Israel’s right to exist, but its defiance of international law. Israel is out of kilter, and Obama knows it. This is another sign that there are currents in Israeli society that want their country to be judged by international standards.
Netanyahu is correct in recognizing that for a country like Israel the loss of moral credibility (domestic as well as international) is no less a danger than strategic military threats. In that, he would seem to echo the words of then President-elect Obama in his victory speech on November 4, 2008:
the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.
Having agreed on this beautiful principle, the two leaders could not diverge more on how it is then applied in their respective circumstances. For President Obama this meant reviewing and at least being open to correcting existing policies that were dramatically out-of-kilter with America’s own self-image and the role it seeks to play in the international arena.
For Netanyahu it seems to be all about the effectiveness of the cover up–hope nobody notices the gaping chasm between hype and reality and if that chasm is exposed then blame (and crush) the messenger. The actual policies that are undermining Israel’s standing are not only left untouched, but accelerated and entrenched.
This in turn generates a greater need to suppress the whistle-blowers, the dissenting voices without whom there is no democratic accountability, the clamp-down produces its own egregious examples of un-democratic regime behavior and so the vicious cycle in which Israel is trapped (by design of Netanyahu’s government) continues.
Netanyahu confuses (perhaps intentionally) the legitimacy of his government’s particular policies with the very legitimacy of Israel’s existence–but the two are not equivalent. Criticizing specific government policies that violate human rights and civil liberties is a far cry from questioning a country’s core legitimacy; secondly, instead of addressing the real policy issues that are the basis for his loss of legitimacy, he is treating the matter as a PR problem, to be solved by going after those who dare point out his government’s shortcomings.
Netanyahu cannot secure international acceptance for his policies.This is unsurprising given the measures that his government is taking to further sustain the 43 year-old occupation–one that Netanyahu shows no signs of ending–and given that he came into office following the erosion of Israeli adherence to international law and norms witnessed during Operation Cast Lead. True, the current government did not create the occupation nor was it in power during Operation Cast Lead; yet, it is under this government’s watch that the following policies have been enacted or perpetuated: the insistence on not undertaking a credible independent Israeli investigation into Operation Cast Lead-something previous Israeli Governments did after past military operations; the ongoing blockade on Gaza, collectively punishing a million and a half human beings and depriving them of basic needs; the arrests of leaders of the emerging non-violent Palestinian campaign against the occupation; the removal of Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrahin East Jerusalem; segregated roads (pdf) and separate legal systems for Palestinians and settlers in the occupied West Bank multiply;and the abysmal record for holding settlers accountable for acts of violence….
for those in Israel and Palestine who are steadfast in their commitment to the realization of democracy, human rights, social justice,and an end of the occupation: while the attacks against our values are becoming more and more aggressive, there is no reason for despair. For if our message did not resonate and even shame then it is unlikely that such efforts would be invested into silencing us. If our values were not so challenging we would not be so targeted. The fears of the past join hands with the shortsighted politics of the present, together fueling anti-democratic campaigns and prolonging an unsustainable, unacceptable reality.
