Israel Palestine Infos
Uri Avnery
November 19, 2011
“YOU AND your
The accusation was not
unjustified. In 1960, during the Eichmann trial, I wrote a book about the fall
of the
But now I am not alone
anymore. During the last few weeks, the word
It should be sprayed in
huge letters on the walls.
ISRAELI[] DEMOCRACY is
under siege. No one can ignore this anymore. It is the main topic in the
Knesset, which is leading the attack, and the media, who are among the victims.
This does not happen in
the occupied territories. There, democracy never existed. Occupation is the very
opposite of democracy: a denial of all human rights, the right to life, liberty,
movement, fair trial and free expression, not to mention national rights.
No, I mean
The attackers are members
of Binyamin Netanyahu’s government coalition, which includes semi-fascist and
openly fascist elements. Netanyahu himself tries to remain discreetly in the
background, but there can be no doubt that every single detail has been
orchestrated by him.
In the first two years of
this coalition, attacks were sporadic. But now they are determined, systematic
and coordinated.
At this moment, the
anti-democratic forces are attacking on a wide front, The three main pillars of
democracy – the courts, the media and the human rights organizations – are under
simultaneous, deadly assault. (Remember
THE SUPREME COURT is the
bastion of democracy. Israel has no constitution, the Knesset majority is
totally unbridled, only the court can (if reluctantly) check the adoption of
anti-democratic laws.
I am not a blind admirer
of the court. In the occupied territories, it is an arm of the occupation,
devoted to “national security”, approving of some of the worst incidents. Only
in rare cases has it come out against the worst practices. But in
The extreme rightists in
the Knesset are resolved to put an end to this. Their front man is the Minister
of Justice, who was appointed by Avigdor Lieberman. He is pushing a series of
scandalous ad hominem bills. One of them is designed to change the
composition of the public committee that appoints the judges, with the
undisguised intention of bringing about the appointment of a particular
right-wing judge to the Supreme Court.
Another bill has the
undisguised purpose of changing the existing court rules in order to put a
certain “conservative” judge in the chair of Chief Justice. The declared purpose
is to abolish the rule of an independent court which dares, though only in rare
cases, to block “anti-constitutional” laws enacted by the Knesset majority.
They want the court to “represent the will of the people”. (Remember
Until now, since the
first day of the state, the justices have been, in practice, chosen by
cooptation. This has functioned perfectly for 63 years.
Another bill, which would
have compelled candidates for the Supreme Court to undergo grilling by a Knesset
Committee chaired by another Lieberman appointee, and obtain their approval, was
withheld at the last moment by Netanyahu himself, He had already given his
approval, but shrank back after the almost universal condemnation – and is now
posing as the defender of democracy from his own underlings.
The chairman of the
Judicial Committee of the Knesset, another Lieberman appointee, is rushing these
laws through his committee, contrary to established procedures. In a stormy
session this week, a female member called him “a coarse thug”. He replied: “You
are not even a beast”.
A minimal purpose of
these bills is to terrorize any judges considering vetoing the other
anti-democratic bills that are being enacted. Some say that the effects are
already being felt.
In several famous cases,
the government openly flouts the Supreme Court’s orders, especially concerning
the evacuation of “settlements outposts” built on lands belonging to Palestinian
farmers.
Who will defend the
court? The former Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, who was hated by the rightists
because of his pioneering “judicial activism”, once told me: “The Court has no
army divisions. Its power rests solely on the support of the public.”
THE ASSAULT on the media
started some time ago when the American casino baron, Sheldon Adelson, a close
friend of Netanyahu, started a daily tabloid paper with the express purpose of
helping Netanyahu. It is being distributed for free and now has the biggest
circulation in the country, threatening the existence of all the others (but
also bribing them by giving them huge printing orders.) Money is no object. Huge
sums are being spent.
That was only the
beginning.
In 1965 the Labor party
government enacted a new libel law (called literally “the Law of the Evil
Tongue”) which was then clearly designed to muzzle “Haolam Hazeh”, the
mass-circulation news magazine I was editing, which had introduced investigative
reporting to Israel. I appealed to the public to send me to the Knesset in
protest, and 1.5% of the voters were incensed enough to do so.
Now the right-wing gang
in the Knesset wants to sharpen this anti-media law even more. The new amendment
grants up to $135,000 damages to anyone claiming to be hurt by the media,
without their having to prove any damage at all. For newspapers and TV channels,
which are already in a precarious financial position, this means that they
better give up all investigative reporting and any criticism of influential
politicians and tycoons.
The new winds are already
being felt. Journalists and TV editors are cowed. This week, a program on
Channel 10, considered the most liberal, gave five minutes to a song glorifying
the late “Rabbi” Meir Kahane, who was branded by the Supreme Court as a fascist,
and whose organization was outlawed
for advocating what the court called “Nuremberg laws”. An avowed member of this
organization, which is alive and kicking under another name, is now a vocal
member of the Knesset. (Remember
A major purge of TV
journalists is already underway. One by one, directors of all TV channels are
being replaced by confirmed rightists. It was openly admitted that the
government would force the closure of Channel 10 by calling in outstanding debts
if a certain journalist were not fired. Though generally an establishment type,
this reporter had irked Netanyahu by exposing his and his wife’s luxurious
traveling style at government expense.
AT THE same time, human
rights and peace NGOs are under heavy attack. The Knesset gang is producing bill
after bill to silence them.
One bill already under
way forbids human rights associations to receive donations from foreign
governments and “state-like organizations”, such as the UN and the EU.
Right-wing organization receive, of course, huge sums of money from Jewish
American billionaires, who fund the settlements (which are also indirectly
financed by the
The law which levies huge
indemnities on organizations and individuals who advocate a boycott on the
products of the settlements is already in force. The hearing of an application
submitted by Gush Shalom to the Supreme Court against this suppression of
political protest has been postponed by the court again and again and again.
This parliamentary
terrorism is accompanied by the accelerating violence of fascist gangs from the
settlements. These SA-like gangs call their actions “Price Tag”. Usually, they
react to the isolated cases of the army demolishing a few “illegal” buildings in
a settlement by attacking a neighboring Palestinian village, setting fire to a
mosque or carrying out what can only be described as a pogrom. (Remember
MARTIN NIEMÖLLER, a
German U-boat captain and later pacifist pastor, who was thrown into a
concentration camp by the Nazis , coined the famous lament: “When the Nazis came
to take the Communists, I was silent. After all, I was no Communist. When they
took the Jews, I was silent. I am no Jew. When they arrested the Social
Democrats, I was silent. I was no Social Democrat. When they came to take me,
there was no one left to protest.”
What we are witnessing
now are not isolated attacks on one or another human right – what we are seeing
is a general attack on democracy as such. Perhaps only people who have
experienced life under a fascist dictatorship can fully realize what that means.
Of course, the similarity
between the collapse of the German republic and the processes in today’s
Certainly, there is no
similarity between the small German town called
Weimar was once a
cultural center, where geniuses like Goethe and Schiller produced their
masterpieces. The German republic which was founded in 1919, after World War I,
was called by this name after the national assembly which framed its very
progressive constitution there.
On these lines, the
endangered democratic State of
We are not yet in 1932.
The Storm Troopers are not yet roaming our streets. We still have time to
mobilize the public against the looming danger. The demonstration taking place
today in Tel Aviv against the de-democratization of Israel
may mark a turning point.