Israel's Fear Of Its Majority

Today saw the third meeting of the Knesset's constitution and law committee. The topic of defining Israel's Jewish democracy was continued. It looks as if the committee will vote to include some mention of Israel's Arab minority and possibly a characterization of Israel as a parliamentary democracy. I would not be surprised if "proportionalism" will also be proposed. These specifications would be very detrimental to the principles of public service to a citizens' constituency based on individual rights.

The following is a draft version of an opinion piece I'll be sending out soon.

Israel's Fear of its Majority

“The people have spoken,” reads a type of bumper sticker that you can find on many Israeli cars, applied to a wide variety of political stands. “The majority wants...,” is another ubiquitous refrain appended with many, sometimes contradictory, claims. Political PR efforts, supporting various initiatives and campaigns, produce such slogans to resonate with a democratic principle of majority supposedly shared by Israel's mainstream public.

In practice, Israel's political establishment rarely makes an effort to satisfy the will of any popular majority and, except for limited survey samplings by political interests, rarely polls its public. When Israelis go to the polls during elections, they don't have the final word regarding specifically who will fill the seats in their legislature. In Israel's proportional system, that privilege is left to the party central committees, who get a number of seats in proportion to their share of the popular, nationwide vote. So, there is no direct, personal representation between sitting legislators and any body of citizen constituents.

The political philosophy behind Israel's system election and its government decision-making prevents the formation of an Israeli popular majority that will dictate a national direction. Since the founding of the state, no election has seen a single party receiving a popular majority of votes. Rather than vote for a person to act as a representative and public servant of a constituency, Israelis vote for a party on the basis of the party philosophy. Benefits of this system have been dubious; setbacks include nothing less than the disintegration of Israel's national identity and its collective will. Looking forward to the future, the political and social consequences may turn out to be existentially catastrophic.

The system of post-election coalition bargaining, part and parcel of our parliamentary system, effectively removes almost any influence a popular majority might have over policymaking in the executive part of the government. The party tapped to form the government will do almost anything, including reverse its pre-election platform policy if necessary, to satisfy the minimum number of coalition partners. When the promises are empty and citizens cannot hold their representatives individually to account, citizen involvement drops; public dialogue and debate deteriorate to mere slogans and eventually disappear.

The factional system generated through proportional elections produces a weak sense of public cohesion. This, in turn, produces either weak leaders who cater to strong narrow interests or despotic leaders who act with impunity and little respect for public interests or sentiment. One case in point is Ehud Olmert, perhaps the weakest prime minister in Israel's history, who stated in an interview before Rosh Hashanah, “A prime minister has to run a country. He doesn't have to have an agenda.” An example of despotism can be seen in Ariel Sharon's 2005 rape of Israel's political norms, enabled by the weak separation between the legislature and the executive branch, a weakness facilitated by parliamentary design. It is also questionable whether this system benefits minorities over the long term, given the capricious rotation of coalition partners that occurs when it suits the individuals heading a coalition government.

In contrast, majoritarian or “direct” elections, in which candidates compete personally for single seats in geographically distributed electoral districts, encourage public debate and the consolidation of diverse interests behind fewer candidates for public office. When only one will be elected, the diverse interests in a constituency do their best to find common cause with others in order to gain influence with a popular candidate. Minority interests find political “homes” within larger camps as long as there are not contradictions with the interests or values of the larger party. In this way, over the course of majoritarian elections, popular majorities organically take form within heterogeneous populations. In turn, national identities take shape and gather strength through a heterogeneous unity. Furthermore, collective bargaining among interests take place before the election, in stark contrast to the proportional, parliamentary system. As a result, citizens can make more powerful, more dependable choices.

In such systems, political parties do their best to engage public participation beyond the vote itself. Promises made before an election are more credible because winning candidates are personally accountable to their citizens and generally plan to run for more than a single term. A line of empowerment from constituency to representative exists in parallel to a line of accountability from representative to constituency. When citizens realize they really have the influence to choose their representatives, they have long memories of their representatives' promises and performance.

So, why does Israel maintain a system of politics that prevents the formation of a popular majority? The answer itself is very, very undemocratic. Put simply, the system is designed to lock in the “status quo,” the assumed balance of power distributed among the leaders of political factions. This reverence of the status quo is most readily apparent by the lack of public debate and dialogue running up to national elections. Most of Israel's political and academic elite fear a popular majority because it could shatter age old power sharing agreements between leaders of several different communities. For this reason, the power elites oppose changes to political proportionalism and parliamentarism.

The reverence of the status quo presumes that Israel's inter-community struggles are best avoided through institutionalized factional divisions. According to this logic, political and demographic separations between ethnic communities within a country prevent friction. According to this logic, diverse ethnic communities could never find sufficient common ground to live within a single public, subject to a mainstream unifying political culture. This principle, which has been applied since the founding of the state, is erroneous because a democracy cannot long survive with separate standards for different communities. It is dangerous because it actually stymies a national consensus to form in an enlightened public while it hobbles a nation's ability to adapt to its own environmental changes.

Consider the converse principle. When the significant unit of political entitlement is the individual citizen, when ethnic groups are not institutionalized to form official government entities, there is a greater chance of preventing struggles between groups and of individuals from diverse communities finding common cause. This does not deny the existence of minority communities; it signifies that individual citizens, through their directly elected representatives, will influence how the government relates to these communities. The factions committed to living under the principles of Jewish democracy, including moderate Haredim, must accept this as the only way a Jewish national resolve can survive. Factions committed to the eradication of a Jewish democracy, including anti-Zionist and radical factions, will be marginalized as they become politically non-viable in the mainstream.

Israel's near term future is filled with difficult choices. We face challenges of a growing population and growing infrastructure needs in a land with limited resources. We face numerous challenges in the global economy. We face powerful foes dedicated to our eradication. We face the dilemma of whether to make risky concessions or to defy international pressure to serve national interests. In light of these real challenges, our country cannot survive without public confidence in its government and united commitment to its national well-being. To our detriment, however, we are politically ill-equipped to face this reality. There are quantitative and qualitative indicators showing that our national will and national cohesion are deteriorating to a dangerously low level of commitment. Israel's national will, based on the shared identity of its citizens, stands a chance of healing only when the converse of the status quo principle, the majoritarian principle, is applied. Israel must make the momentous decision to slaughter the sacred cow of the status quo and serve the sovereignty of an emergent popular majority.

Constitutional Committee 10 December 2006

Yesterday, the Knesset's Committee on Constitution, Law, and Justice met for the second time under the leadership of Menachem Ben-Sasson. This meeting concentrated on the issue of the interests and considerations of Israel's Arab citizens.

Present: Menachem Ben-Sasson (Chair-Kadima), Colette Avital (Labor), Haim Oron (Meretz), Aryeh Eldad (National Unity - NRP), Moshe Gafney (Torah Judaism), Amira Dotan (Kadima), Matan Vilnai (Labor), Nissim Zeev (Shas), Avraham Michaeli (Shas), Avraham Ravitz (Torah Judaism), Reuven Rivlin (Likud), and Otniel Schneller (Kadima).

The legal consultant described a proposed clause that explicitly mentioned that the group rights of minorities, especially the Arab minority, would be recognized. This, of course, is highly problematic. Firstly, from an civil rights perspective, such a clause is completely unnecessary. There will certainly be clauses protecting the individual rights of every Israeli citizen, regardless of sex, race, religion, or ethnicity, and this should be the last word on civil rights. The proposed clause is highly problematic because it explicitly and implicitly sanctions differential treatment of members of minority groups.

Explicitly acknowledging the rights of an Arab minority, as a community and not only as individual citizens, can be interpreted as a license for the Arab community to have a different legal code than non-Arabs. Indeed, this concept surfaced later in the session.

Elyakim Rubenstein, of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center presented his views that the constitution will honor the rights of the Arab minority.

A scholar on Arab Affairs, Michael Kariani, was invited to address the committee. He stated that he would speak from his own personal perspective. Kariani began by quoting the recently released Iraq Study Group report commissioned by President George W. Bush. The group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, whose anti-Israel biases are widely acknowledged, declared that the Arab-Israeli conflict is inextricably linked to Iraq and, by implication, to every other issue of instability in the Middle East. Bush has distanced himself from that and other highly problematic conclusions of the report. That Kariani would raise the report, as an introduction to his comment on the constitution, is a clear indication of the rhetorical ammunition he plans to use and to what purpose. Labeling the Arab-Israeli conflict the central cause of instability in the Middle East has been the excuse of dictators and anti-Semitic terror apologists for decades.

The meat of Kariani's address was a basic opposition to a constitution, especially one that declared Israel a Jewish and democratic state, unless there were clear safeguards and benefits for the Arab community. He called for continuing dialogue between the two communities. The clear message was that Israeli Arabs who feel like Kariani would continue and amplify their efforts to secure a special status as a "nation within a nation." The best we will be able to hope for is not a single heterogeneous, integrated Jewish/Muslim/Christian public, but a dual-national, sectarian arrangement.

Next up was Yisrael Harel, of the Institute for Zionist Strategy. Harel stressed the need to attain a "constitution of consensus" while a consensus exists. Harel doesn't realize that a consensus does not exist and will never exist; that the only hope for a constitution, and for a continued Zionist viability, is an appeal to a wide popular majority. Only by allowing a popular Zionist majority to form will Harel be able to help the country's political system withstand the challenges from both the narrow interests and the Arab, anti-Zionist minority.

Prof. Eli Reches, an Arab-affairs expert from Tel Aviv University, provided further perspective from the Arab community. Among his observations and conclusions:

• Israeli Arabs are increasingly becoming involved with the Palestinian national movement.
• Israeli Arabs don't see themselves as part of a national solution.
• An amalgamation of all Arab subgroups.
• A separation of Israel's democratic and Jewish characteristics in the eyes of Israeli Arabs.
• An increased activation of Naqbah rhetoric.
• Israeli Arab view of Israel as a continuation of European colonialism.

In short, according to Reches, the Israeli Arab community is increasingly falling into lockstep with the PLO narrative that invalidates and delegitimizes Israel's sovereignty. Again, this underscores the need for Israel's political system to enable a popular majority to form. This will not happen under the current proportional system, that effectively prevents the formation of a popular political majority.

The big surprise of the meeting was the pronouncement of Torah Judaism's Moshe Gafney. Gafney stated that his Haredi faction would welcome a constitution because it is the only way to stop the Supreme Court from legislating from the bench, almost always with a pronounced bias in favor of Arab and extreme left positions and against traditional, Orthodox Jewish religious positions. Gafney also qualified his support of a constitution with the caveat that it would have to be "thick" enough to ensure Haredi interests, i.e., the Haredi veto. This, of course, would be disastrous in that it would alienate most of mainstream Israel, in addition to being ethically unsound.

More than ever, I'm convinced that Israel faces systemic political challenges that could make it impossible for it to face its physical existential threats. Israel's lack of a popular majority weakens its posture in the face of an increasingly antagonistic Arab minority. Furthermore, the willingness of Israel's political elite (Meretz, Labor, Kadima) to officially accommodate Arab nationalism is tantamount to Zionist suicide.