It is one tiny step back from the brink of demise for Israeli democracy. Israel´s election board gave a loud hard slap to the mug of the anti-democratic Supreme Court Justice Mishael Cheshin that could be heard round the country.
In the past few weeks, Israel´s McCarthyist Left has been attempting to prevent assorted non-leftists from running in the coming elections, while defending to the death the rights of Israel´s Arab fascist parties, openly identifying with the enemy in time of war, to run in the elections. First, Moshe Feiglin was banned from running on the Likud slate. Why? Because five years ago he was convicted of blocking traffic at an intersection in an anti-Oslo protest. For that intersection blocking he was indicted for "sedition", although the "sedition" was clearly in the fact that Feiglin was anti-Oslo in his political opinions, not in the fact that he was blocking some cars from moving ahead freely. You see, Amir Peretz, the head of the Histadrut ‘crime family’, has also sent out his trade union hooligans countless times to block intersections, while trying to extort assorted concessions and gifts from the government. He is also running for the Knesset on his own slate, yet he has not been banned from anything. Nor have leaders in the student unions, who blocked traffic intersections to demand free tuition and are now running as members of various party lists.
Then Comrade Cheshin, one of the advocates of judicial activism (meaning judicial dictatorship) in the Supreme Court, decided to attempt to block the JDL-Kach´s Baruch Marzel from running as part of the Herut party slate of Knesset member Michael Kleiner. I thought that Kleiner was foolish for recruiting Marzel for his slate, but whether or not I am correct and whether or not Kleiner´s party should sit in the Knesset is a matter for the Israeli voter to determine. It is not for some politically-correct anti-democratic non-elected Supreme Court Justice to dictate.
Cheshin filed his recommendation to ban Marzel from running and threatened to try to ban the entire Herut party. At first, the Election Board was inclined to go along, but then - in a surprise move - it reversed itself and declared that Marzel is free to run. Cheshin was outraged. "I have investigated and discovered that Marzel is still a leader of the Kach movement," said Cheshin.Well, I have also investigated, and I have discovered that Amram Mitzna is still a leader of the Israeli Labor Party, which is responsible for the deaths of nearly 1200 Israelis since signing the Oslo Accords. How come he has not been banned? How come the great defender of democracy, Justice Cheshin, has not had a single word to say about the arbitrary anti-democratic banning of the JDL-Kahanist movements in Israel on the grounds of their having unpopular political opinions? After all, the Kach groups have never killed anyone, unlike the policies of the Israeli Labor Party and unlike the Arab terrorists celebrated by Tibi and Bashara. But Comrade Cheshin is sticking to his guns. In Haaretz, on December 30, 2002, he insists that it is entirely justified that non-elected Israeli judges decide which candidates voters may vote for in elections.
Meanwhile, before anyone gets all hot and bothered and suggests I am being inconsistent when I suggest that the fascist Arab lists of Azmi Bashara and Ahmed Tibi be banned, let me remind you what happened in the cradles of democracy: in Churchill´s Britain in World War II no parties openly identifying with Hitler were allowed to run for parliament or operate at all. In the United States, no parties openly identifying with Germany and Japan were allowed to run for elections during World War II. Instead, Japanese-American civilians were sent en masse to internment camps, for far less provocation than that coming from Israel´s Arabs, who never have been interned anywhere, nor penalized at all for the sedition proudly proclaimed by many of them. The ‘Caring Left’ is sighing that if the Arab fascist parties are banned, for example under Israel´s anti-terrorism laws (Israel´s intelligence services have reported that people in Bashara´s party are involved in terrorism), or under Israel´s anti-racism law (the same one used to ban the Kach groups), then Israel´s Arab voters will be left “without an adequate way to express themselves.”
Tch, tch, tch. What a shame.
Yes, they would be. You see, Israel´s ‘Caring Left’ would like a situation in which the national dialogue within Israel taking place between Jews and Arabs would be over the logistics of how the Jews should be expelled from their homes and transported into concentration camps by the Arabs and their Jewish leftist-extremist collaborators. That is precisely the agenda of the Israeli Arab Stalinist and fascist parties, and of certain Jewish leftist extremists. Yes, by banning them, Israel would be placing certain limits on "free speech" - in ways similar to Churchill´s Britain. After all, Oswald Mosley spent the war in irons, so why is Uri Avnery running around free?
No one should be stopping the Israeli Arabs from setting up their own parties, as long as those parties renounce violence and sedition, as long as they accept as a given Israel´s existence with its Jewish majority, as long as they distance themselves from Palestinian terrorism, al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Then, they can advocate whatever they please. But banning the Arab fascist-Stalinist parties would also be making an important moral and political point. Arabs who seek any sort of dialogue and legitimacy and representation in Israel must do so on the basis of the acceptance of the rights of Jews to life, liberty, and happiness, on the basis of renunciation of genocide and violence; thus, not on the basis of debates over the logistics of the annihilation of Jews. If no Arabs are willing to seek office on the basis of those values, then so be it. They can just sit by the sidelines with no representation in the parliament, no claims on budgets, no logrolling, no pork barrels.
Bashara and Tibi are denouncing those moving to ban them and their paries as "racists" - this coming from the very same people who celebrate the blowing up of buses and cafes full of Jewish children, who openly pimp for the PLO and Hizbollah, who openly support Israel´s enemies in time of war. If Oslo has left Israeli Jews with even a smidgen of national pride, then they should refuse to countenance any political debate or "dialogue" with any Israeli Arabs on the issue of how to achieve Israel´s own extermination and the Jews´ annihilation.
Those seeking the annihilation of Jews should be "debated", to borrow a bon mot from that old Woody Allen movie, with a baseball bat. That sound anti-democratic to you? Tough.
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Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout
Budda-Bing!!!