By Lisa Goldman and Mairav Zonszein

For decades, the settler movement and Israel’s secular, largely Ashkenazi urban elite have been playing a game of “pretend.” The secular political elite claimed the settlers were religious ideologues, obstacles to peace and not representative of mainstream Israeli society. The settlers, meanwhile, charged that an effete minority ruling class ignored their contributions and commitment to the state.

But all the while, successive governments headed by secular, purportedly liberal leaders tacitly expedited settlement growth even as the secular, purportedly liberal judiciary handed down rulings that effectively sanctioned settlements, which are built in contravention of international law. The settlers, meanwhile, became increasingly confident as they rose to occupy important positions at the highest levels of the state’s key institutions – the legislative branch (Knesset), the executive branch (the governing coalition), the judiciary and the army.

In 2012, the game became reality: The settlers are the new ruling elite of Israel.

According to all the polls, Israelis will elect an unprecedented number of Members of Knesset (MKs) from far-right parties, even as Likud’s relative moderates have been ousted and replaced by settlers and ex-settlers with radical political agendas.

A settler was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2012, while a former justice declared that the West Bank was not actually occupied territory.

Israel’s fourth estate, too, is partly “occupied” by the settlers. This year, Shlomo Ben-Zvi, a far-right publisher and settler who owns the frankly nationalist daily Makor Rishon, bought Maariv – one of Israel’s three veteran daily newspapers. While Maariv took a right-of-center editorial line in recent years, for decades it was Yedioth Ahronoth’s chief competitor for the title of Israel’s most mainstream daily newspaper.

Throughout the year, over and over, settler violence – price tag attacks on Palestinian property, unprovoked violence against Palestinians, even flat-out murder – has gone unpunished. Worse, it rarely elicits public condemnation or even, except for a few high-profile incidents, extensive media coverage.

The settlers have influenced the national narrative to the point that politicians who talk about peace, the two-state solution and negotiations risk becoming irrelevant.

For all these reasons, +972 Magazine has chosen The Settler as its Person of the Year for 2012.

The judiciary

In 2012, Judge Noam Sohlberg was appointed to the Supreme Court; he was the first settler to be elevated to this position. Eyal Clyne wrote in an article for +972 that Sohlberg “has a proven record of controversial anti-liberal rulings in lower courts, some of which were later reversed.” His appointment resulted from “… sustained pressure on the Judicial Selection Committee, the body responsible for appointment of judges in Israel.” The right-wing coalition brought the committee to a deadlock, all-but forcing it to select conservative judges.

Also this year, a committee headed by former Supreme Court justice Edmund Levy concluded in its report on the legal status of the West Bank that it was not occupied territory but rather administered territory. The report also stipulated that illegal outposts should be declared legal. The Levy Commission was appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While the Levy Report does not contribute anything new to the Israeli discourse, it does offer the stamp of legitimacy to what was once considered an extremist narrative.

The legislature and the government

Leader of the National Religious Party (“Jewish Home”) Naftali Bennett. Bennett, and not the leaders of the moderate center, is now seen as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s main rival (photo: Yotam Ronen / activestills.org)

According to all the polls, when Israelis cast their ballots on January 22, they will send an unprecedented number of elected representatives from the far right to the Knesset – settlers, former settlers and supporters of the settler movement. These include Moshe Feiglin, who led the anti-Oslo disobedience campaign in the Knesset, and Naftali Bennett, former head of the Yesha council and today head of Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), the party of the national religious settler movement. Bennett, and not the leaders of the center or the left, is seen as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s main rival in these elections.

Avigdor Lieberman, who recently resigned as foreign minister after it was announced he would be indicted for corruption, is still head of Yisrael Beiteinu, which has merged with Likud. In other words, Lieberman, resident of the settlement of Nokdim, is now the deputy leader of Israel’s ruling party.

In the upcoming elections, a party called Otzma LeYisrael (Strong Israel) is running on a platform rooted in ideals of racism and violence. With a list of candidates that includes Aryeh Eldad and notorious Kahanists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Michael Ben-Ari, at least half the polls show the party is expected to pass the threshold and gain two or three seats in the Knesset.

With Likud-Beiteinu polling at about 35 seats and the far-right parties at 15 or 16 seats, and given that Netanyahu is all-but guaranteed to win the coming election, it is very likely that he will form his next coalition in the 120-seat Knesset with the far-right parties, rather than the center and center-left parties — like Hatnuah, headed by Tzipi Livni, and Shelly Yachimovich’s Labor Party. But even if Netanyahu ends up with a more centrist government, the far right will be the dominant ideological force in the next Knesset.

Politics and the national narrative

Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich won’t criticize the settlements publicly (photo: Yotam Ronen / activestills.org)

The success of the settler movement is reflected in changes to the national conversation. Labor leader Yachimovich, who was elected to lead a putatively liberal-left party, will not touch the issues of the occupation and negotiations with the Palestinians. Nor will Stav Shaffir, one of the faces of the J14 social justice movement, who is now running for a Knesset seat on the Labor list. Both women know that the national narrative has swung so far to the right that mentioning the occupation will make them politically irrelevant. Yachimovich, a former journalist, a social democrat and a feminist, once voted for Hadash. Now, after entering political life, she says she supports the accreditation of a university in the settlement of Ariel, wants the budget for settlements to remain untouched and announced she would not rule out joining a government coalition headed by Likud.

Shaffir has not taken a public position on the settlements. The J14 movement that she helped lead in the summer of 2011 refused to draw a connection between Israel’s wealth gap and the funding shifted to the settlements, lest they make the movement “political.” She continues to focus on issues of domestic social injustice, completely ignoring the conflict.

Yet the traditional focus on the center seems somewhat irrelevant, as a new role model of the Israeli Sabra emerges in figures like Bennett, who has been receiving quite a bit of publicity lately, including a feature in the New York Times. The cherubic, youthful-looking Ra’anana resident is a former director general of the Council of Judea and Samaria; prior to that he was Netanyahu’s chief of staff, when the Likud was in the opposition. Born in Israel to American parents, Bennett served as an officer in an elite combat unit before going on to make his fortune in hi-tech, which is practically an Israeli Everyman story for men of his background. But Bennett, the Zionist patriot, recently said in a television interview that as an army reserve officer he would refuse orders to evacuate settlements.

Refusing orders has long been a red line that few dared to cross; politicizing one’s army service was considered a taboo in mainstream Israeli society that many thought made one unelectable. Yariv Oppenheimer, the former director of Peace Now, continued to serve his annual reserve duty in the West Bank even as he devoted his career to ending the occupation and eyed a career in politics. Oppenheimer ran unsuccessfully for a place on the Labor party list this year but was sidelined by internal party politics; if he had been a refusenik, his candidacy would have been unacceptable for a mainstream center-left party. But while leftists are marginalized for vowing to refuse service in the occupied territories — and are handed jail sentences for making good on their promise — Bennett’s popularity and poll numbers seem unaffected by his controversial statement. If anything, he has become more popular. The ground has indeed shifted.

Settler violence and an atmosphere of impunity

With Israelis from Tel Rumeida settlement looking on from above, Israeli soldiers arrest two Palestinians and an international volunteer after confrontations between settlers, the Al Azzeh family who had just harvested their olives, and the military, October 22, 2012. The arrests followed the first time the Al Azzeh family was able to harvest their olives since 2007. (photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

The past year saw a precipitous rise in settler violence against Palestinian civilians. Some of the more egregious attacks received wide media coverage, but the settlers seem to operate in an atmosphere of impunity. Only a handful of indictments have been filed for uprooting olive trees, vandalizing and burning mosques, firebombing cars or accosting and beating Palestinians so badly that they require hospitalization – for no reason other than their being Palestinian.

In August, settlers threw a firebomb at a Palestinian family traveling in a taxi near the settlement of Bat Ayin. The entire family was wounded and required hospitalization, including an infant. The parents and driver received third-degree burns. That same week, a mob of Jewish teenagers assaulted and beat unconscious Jamal Julani, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy from East Jerusalem,  while he was walking on a popular downtown pedestrian mall in West Jerusalem. Other reported incidents of violence committed by settlers this year include the severe assault of an Israeli Ta’ayush activist in the South Hebron Hills. The activist testified to being blindfolded and beaten by a group of settlers. Just this week, five settlers accused of tracking IDF activities in order to thwart evacuation of outposts were let off with just community service and up to three months in jail.

According to reports published earlier this year by EU officials in Jerusalem, settler violence more than tripled over the last three years. Yesh Din, a human rights organization, reports that since 2005, fewer than 9 percent of police investigations into Palestinian complaints of settler violence have resulted in indictments.

The consequences of the rise of the settlers as the new elite

Construction of the new settlement of Leshim on the lands of the West Bank village of Kafr ad Dik, near Salfit, December 7, 2012. (photo: Activestills)

With the rise of the settlers, the once-radical idea that Israel should annex or maintain its military occupation of the West Bank indefinitely has gained new currency in relatively mainstream circles. Government approval for settlement expansion continues unabated. The taboo on discussing one state in liberal circles has been lifted. In 2012 we saw a flurry of op-eds declaring the two-state solution dead, with the writers making the declaration either with satisfaction or with regret.

Judea and Samaria Council leader Dani Dayan declared in a New York Times op-ed that the settlers’ “…presence in all of Judea and Samaria — not just in the so-called settlement blocs — is an irreversible fact.” Likud MK Danny Danon published a book called “Israel: The Will to Prevail,” in which he sketches out his solution to the conflict: annexation of the West Bank and no Palestinian state of any kind. One Haaretz columnist has declared the two-state solution dead and painfully admits the majority in Israel seek one state; the nature of that state remains unclear.

The emerging settlement reality has also reverberated within the American Jewish community. This is evidenced, among other indicators, by the fact that Peter Beinart, considered to come from within the mainstream Zionist, “pro-Israel” American Jewish establishment, made waves when he called for a boycott of Israeli settlement products. In a New York Times op-ed from March, Beinart argued that this is the only way to save the Zionist project.

This was the year the settler narrative regarding Israel’s control over the West Bank became institutionalized: the Education Ministry mandated school trips to Hebron for high school students. The next generations of soldiers and leaders is being taught that the territory once regarded by the majority as temporarily occupied pending a negotiated solution, is actually part of the Israeli birthright.

The rise of the settlers is a result of state policies. This has been the case since the 1970s, when the government began shifting funding toward Jewish settlement of the occupied territories, turning it into a major national enterprise that preoccupied successive prime ministers. In 1993, fewer than 100,000 Jews lived in the occupied Palestinian territories. Today, there are half a million; thus, almost one out of 10 Israeli Jews is a settler, and one out of five people living east of the fading Green Line is a settler.

The political power of the settlers has extended to the judiciary, the powerful security establishment, the media and the business elite. They will decide Israel’s future – or perhaps its fate.

Read Also:
+972 Magazine’s People of the Year 2012: Bloggers’ picks
+972 Magazine’s Person of the Year 2011: Woman activist of the Arab world
+972 People of the Year 2011: Bloggers’ picks
+972 Magazine’s Person of the Year 2010: Abdullah Abu Rahmah
 +972 People of the Year 2010: Bloggers’ picks

By Tomer Persico

Moshe Feiglin, head of “Jewish Leadership” group in the Likud (photo: Wikimidia CC)

The coming elections in Israel will introduce many new faces to the Knesset. Unless something very surprising happens, among those will be Moshe Feiglin, who heads a group called Jewish Leadership and has for the past dozen years attempted, unsuccessfully to date, to be elected in the Likud Party’s primary elections in a high enough spot in order to become an MK (*Jewish Leadership, however, was able to assist the candidacies of some of the Likud’s most hawkish members of Knesset, among them Yariv Levin, Danny Danon and Tzipi Hotovely).

Feiglin is by any judgment one of the most methodical and principled thinkers in Israel’s right wing camp, and an effort to comprehend his thought is in order. Below I will attempt an examination of Moshe Feiglin’s concept of the democratic regime. I stress this is an attempt, as Feiglin did not write about it at length, and on the other hand  there are writings of Feiglin’s I haven’t read yet. What makes it easier for me to position Feiglin’s political-civic stance is the fact that he has referred to the issue specifically.

For instance, in the chapter (containing several articles) titled “The Jewish State – Democracy and regime” in his 2005 book, “The War of Dreams” (Milkhemet Ha’Khalomot) Feiglin writes about democracy that:

As I see it, democracy is but a method for changing government without violence. Several other values are attached: The freedom of expression, for instance, the equality before the law, and the separation of powers. But all is fluid, all is flexible, all is under whim of those who shape the term “democracy” to fill their needs. (“Democracy or Greater Israel,” 26.1.1998, p.464)

Feiglin is of course correct about the flexibility of the term “democracy.” Different states have used it in very different ways, and I hope it’s needless to point out that the Poplar Democracy of [North] Korea bears little resemblance to the liberal-constitutional democracy of the U.S. On the other hand, obviously, a democracy based on basic rights of its citizens, such as the freedom of expression and the separation of powers, is not truly subject to the whims of its rulers. That, after all, alongside other principled differences between versions of democracy which I’ll point out, is the crux of the issue.

Feiglin continues to explain his position:

If the land of Israel was truly a supreme national value for you, you’d understand that democracy has to fit the country, not the country democracy […] The State of Israel was created for the Jewish people, and its democracy is supposed to serve the Jewish people. If this state acts against the interests of the Jewish people, there is no longer any point in its existence, be it democratic or not. […] They [the Arabs] will never, never be fully equal citizens, in the national sense of the word. (Ibid., p. 465)

The picture becomes clearer: according to Feiglin, democracy has to fit the country, or rather the people living in it. When it comes to the State of Israel, this is the Jewish people, and hence democracy has to serve “the interests of the Jewish people.” That is why, for instance, the Arabs residing in the country have no chance at equal status, since they are not a part of the people that the democracy is supposed to serve.

No possibility of choice

What sort of a democracy serves a specific people, not universal principles? Of course, this is a popular democracy, known in its more mild versions as communal democracy. This version of democracy is principally different from liberal democracy. Feiglin, who is certainly well-read and learned, knows this well, and expressly differentiates between liberal democracy and communal democracy, only the latter of which he supports:

There are several views on democracy, out of which I’ll examine two: one liberal and the other communal. The liberal tradition supports a position based on one measure. It considers it to be a universal position, which is not biased towards other cultures, other values, other traditions. It believes in the values of equality and freedom of the individual, while the state is intended to serve the individual alone. The state in itself has no purpose, and it does not exemplify the values of its society.

The other view is communal. According to it, the person requires social-consciousness in order to reach self-knowledge, and only through this process does he come to know his views on morals and values. The community, therefore, is of the highest importance, and through it the person identifies with his country. The community and the state have an important role in the development of the values and the identities of the citizens. By this view, democracy is a form of government which allows the basic values of society to be expressed. Every society whose core values are freedom values can and should be democratic, but it must “fit the lid to the pot”– fit its democracy to its unique character and values.

A communal democracy sees the individual as an organic part of the community, to the point that, on its own, she or he cannot fully express themselves, regarding both their full potential and their freedom. Only by recognizing the reciprocal ties between themselves and the society around them, and – of no lesser importance – by becoming a living part of the surrounding society with its unique values and cultural characteristics, can the individual reach self-knowledge and thereby live a life worth living. Contrary to the liberal basic assumption, which discerns a tension between the demands of the community and individual rights, this concept sees in accepting communal values the only way to realize true individual autonomy.

The goal of communal democracy is the betterment of man. This is a goal liberal democracy doesn’t dare to actively promote, as it is obviously an act toward a specific ethical direction, and as such one in the course of which it will have to determine decree between conflicting values (such as freedom and equality) and cancel others (such as the freedom of religion). Communal democracy directs the individual towards a certain direction, reached allegedly through the common values of the community or even the whole nation; thereby it perfectly expresses the “will of the people.” According to this concept, every political system which will express the will of a community or a people is, by definition, democratic towards that community or people, no matter how totalitarian, illiberal or draconian its laws may be.

“The rule of the people” reaches its summit here, not because the regime allows each individual to make its own choices, but because the regime expresses the essential will of the people, with no possibility of choice. To a large degree, this democracy lacks representation, because the rulers do not represent the will of the people, but express it, or even become it and actualize it (in the same way the Fuhrer was the will of the German people, and each of his actions was the action of the Aryan nation). We are not dealing with the total sum of the wishes of the individuals of a nation, but with the essential will of the people as an organic entity, with the inner and deep expression of the people as a personality. On the other hand, liberal democracy is a representative democracy, which does not try to pave a certain ethical road, but only to maintain basic moral principles. Liberal democracy tries to create the conditions in which the citizens would be free to try and better themselves, to the best of their own knowledge, every little community in its own way.

A ‘truly’ Jewish identity

According to its principles, a communal democracy has no place for different communities in the same state, since the state is wholly formed according to the values of one community. For this reason, “the Arabs” have no voting rights in Feiglin’s Jewish state (“Israeli citizenship to Jews only […] the immediate expulsion of any person of another people who claims any sort of sovereignty in the Land of Israel” – Ibid., p. 436).  This state acts on the collective values of Judaism which I imagine Feliglin derives from his own interpretation of Judaism. These values express in the most perfect way the will of the nation, and of course direct each of its sons and daughters towards their own fulfillment. It is possible Feiglin thinks only such a realization will promise true freedom to the individual, and hence to the community as well. As the title of the article quotes above notes, the Israeli democracy can be democratic only because it is Jewish.

Which is why the Jewish democracy may not retreat from the occupied territories:

The debate over the Land of Israel is not a territorial or a security one. The question of national identity is expressed today through the Land of Israel. Those who wish to get rid of territories are actually asking to disengage from Jewish identity. ‘The Jews have defeated the Israelis’, said Shimon Peres to Haaretz in an interview after losing [the 1996 elections] to Netanyahu. The debate between those who hold and those who wish to let go is the debate between those who hold to their Jewish identity and those who wish to disengage from it and replace it with a new Israeli identity. The process of the Disengagement [from the Gaza Strip – T.P.] is a process of forcing the new identity on the majority of the people. Hence, essentially, it must lead to a dictatorial reality, as indeed happens. Only an Israeli state living in harmony with its Jewish identity, a state intended to serve this identity instead of fighting it, only such an Israel can also be truly democratic. (Ibid., emphasis in the original).

According Feiglin’s model, maintaining hold of territories is not a question of security but a question of identity. A truly Jewish identity can be realized only through the holding of any occupied territories in the Land of Israel. Those, on the other hand, who wish to return such territories are trying to sabotage Jewish identity and replace it with “a new Israeli identity.” These are people like Shimon Peres and apparently also Arik Sharon, who carried out the “disengagement” from Gaza. We are speaking, of course, of leftists. That explains why in Feiglin’s view “the deep aspect of [the] Oslo [process] is a trend of assimilation, of ‘becoming integrated in the [middle east] region’” (Ibid., p. 454). And, indeed, according to Feiglin, “the strategic goal of the left is to obfuscate and make us forget our Jewish identity (Ibid., p. 504).” Oh, well, perhaps this is related to the fact Feiglin thinks “the left is not a movement of life and emancipation. It is an ideology based on the aspiration of death” (Ibid., p. 29).

Note the principled basis behind those harsh statements: A communal democracy represents the essential will of the people. Hence, any person objecting to the actions of the state is ipso facto not truly of the people. Actually, it is almost impossible to criticize government in a communal democracy, because such criticism automatically excludes the critic from the community of citizens the government represents, and therefore also from the community of citizens entitled to its protection and to civil rights. For, how can a loyal citizen criticize the actions of a government representing his will? If his will is different from that of the government, he is certainly not a loyal citizen.

Such disloyal citizens are either foreigners, i.e. not members of the people; or they are members of the people, but ones needing re-education. One may recall the fate of such citizens from “popular” regimes in the past. In the Israeli case, even today left-winged people are sometimes reffered to as Erev Rav or Amalek, derogatory religious terms signifying traitors within or simply entities who are pure evil. This kind of people undermine the expression of the will of the people, the same will which can be assumed is known to Feiglin.  This is why, in Feligin’s “One Hundred Days Plan” (Hebrew) the Ministry of External and Internal Security will “be in charge of all the issues of security, acting against the enemies of Israel, foreign and domestic. An enemy of Israel is one who wishes to destroy it, either physically or essentially, as a Jewish State.” Anyone who supports a return of the occupied territories endeavors, as we’ve seen, to essentially destroy the Jewish State, first and foremost “essentially”. In Moshe Feiglin’s regime such dissidents will be dealt with by the Ministry of External and Internal Security.

“Feiglin. It’s possible to believe.” A Moshe Feiglin ad on a bus in Jerusalem (photo: Mohamed El Dahshan / CC BY-NC 2.0)

Roots of the  popular democracy

It is not my intention to defame the communitarian idea; I am, in many ways, a communitarian myself, and as such I am a student of such great scholars as Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre and others. It is clear, however, that these thinkers do not dream of erecting a regime remotely similar to what Feiglin plans. There are several forms of communal democracies, some more totalitarian, some less. I don’t know where precisely Feiglin stands on this scale, even though the quotes above cloak his vision of a communal democracy with a very distinct odor. As previously mentioned, on the extreme scale of the communal democracy we speak of the same model under which all those “popular democracies” of the former Communist Bloc acted.

As is well known, the origins of the concept that the regime acts under the “will of the people” derives from Rousseau, and from him it reached the Jacobins during the French Revolution and many of dictatorships of the 20^th century. The idea is that the regime, though tyrannical, is not immoral, since it is perfectly expresses the will of the people. We can see this clearly from the decisions of the National Assembly under the revolutionary regime in France. Article Six of the constitution written by the Assembly in 1791 says that “the law is an expression of the common will,” and Article Five says that the natural rights of man by be abrogated by law. To wit, if the common will of the people is to limit the rights of the individual, there’s no principle problem here.

When the Assembly wrote the constitution, its members were thinking of the American Declaration of Independence, which stated that the rights of people are “unalienable” (which today means “inalienable.”). The United States created, by a long and painful process, a liberal democracy, where human rights cannot be ignored even if the majority desperately wants to, and even if someone thinks this is the “common will” of the people. France saw the creation of a Jacobin democracy, under which the rights of the individual can be cast aside in the name of the popular will, and its murderousness is notorious to this day. As soon as the popular will can abolish human rights, we have nothing more than a tyranny of the majority, or, in most cases, the tyranny of an individual who claims to understand the will of the majority.

As noted, that same idea served as inspiration to the “popular democracies” of the former Communist Bloc. In a famous speech in 1949, Mao Zedong contrasted “bourgeois democracy,” Western democracy, with China’s popular democracy (which he calls The People’s democratic dictatorship, since he recognizes the tyranny of the people towards the reactionary elements standing in its way). Mao thanks Marx and Lenin for formulating the theory which allowed China to move from a bourgeois democracy to a popular democracy, which brought “socialism and communism” and “a world of Great Harmony.” According to Mao, the true will of the masses is equal to the will of the proletariat, and it expresses the perfect society. He states that:

All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people’s democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right. […] The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. […]The foreign reactionaries who accuse us of practicing “dictatorship” or “totalitarianism” are the very persons who practice it. They practice the dictatorship or totalitarianism of one class, the bourgeoisie, over the proletariat and the rest of the people. […]The people’s democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working class. For it is only the working class that is most farsighted, most selfless and most thoroughly revolutionary.

Replace “reactionaries” by Arabs or Leftists, replace “the working class” by Jews, and suddenly, there isn’t much of a difference between the leftist Marxist-Leninist tyranny and the right-wing nationalistic-Judaistic tyranny. It’s clear, anyway, that a popular democracy is not a traditional Jewish idea, but rather a modern Western one.

When safeguards become obstacles 

As Feiglin himself noted, the failure of liberal democracy comes from insisting on the protection of principles it considers universal – precisely those human and civil rights, those difference freedoms and equality before the law. In a liberal democracy they must be guarded above all. In a popular democracy they are considered to be foreign principles of Western bourgeoisie, “Christian morality” or liberal soft-heartedness, and ignoring them is not only possible, but is necessary. This point cannot be overstated: In every democratic regime, there will be a conflict between the will of the majority and the rights of the individual or minority. In such cases, popular democracy will always prefer the will of the majority, and a liberal one – the rights of the individual.

For instance, if we think the right of a person over his body is absolute, then even if the majority decrees otherwise, he may not be raped. If we think a person’s right over her property is total, even if the majority says it should be taken from her, there is no permission to do so. These are the human rights embedded by the UN in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, following the lessons learned from the horrors of fascism. These are the same rights invoked by the opponents of the Gaza Disengagement, when they argued even a government decision cannot, in a democratic country, evict people from their homes.

Lord Acton, the same one who taught to us that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote that in a popular democracy:

The true democratic principle, that none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic principle, that the people shall not be made to do what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall never be required to tolerate what it does not like. The true democratic principle, that every man’s free will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken to mean that the free will of the collective people shall be fettered in nothing. Religious toleration, judicial independence, dread of centralisation, jealousy of State interference, become obstacles to freedom instead of safeguards, when the centralised force of the State is wielded by the hands of the people.

A final word. I have no doubt that Feiglin is sure that the communal-to-popular democracy he wishes to found not only will not be tyrannical, but would create a model society. I believe he is certain the Jewish people will express its will in a much more decent and better way than the failed experiments of the French or Chinese people; that he believes with all his heart that, unlike these (and other) disastrous experiments, a perfect and wondrous popular democracy is possible in Israel, since while the others had only a half-baked revolutionary thrust or a Marxist ideology woefully bereft of inspiration, the Israeli nation has the Book of Books to guide it and the Hand of God to support it.

And who knows, maybe this time the Lord will redeem us from our troubles, and make our path right where others have stumbled so terribly. As someone who would probably be taken care of by the Ministry of External and Internal Security in the early days of the new regime, I am not likely to live to see this miracle.

_____________

Moshe Feiglin’s response:

As a rule, I stand by what I write and say. Of course every period has its own special emphasis. Words written while facing a demolished house and burned bus are not as words written on mundane days. The sentence you chose to quote [about the left's ideology being based on the aspiration of death – T.P.] is an excellent example of the fine distinction between serious research and demagoguery. This is a sentence I fully support, but quoting it requires long explanations, otherwise it sounds as nothing more than a swearword. In order to seriously complete the mission you undertook, you should organize a proper meeting, in the view of your readers, which I’ll be happy to attend and answer all questions.

______________

The Likud, Israel’s ruling party the last four years, and the one expected to win the next elections according to every poll I have seen since 2009 (!), held its primaries on Sunday and Monday. The outcome was somewhat expected but is still stunning, and more than anything, it reveals the deep change Israel is going through.

The top of the ticket will be held by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Roughly one-third of the seats will go to Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party, as part of the deal on the joint ticket the two parties reached (Lieberman himself will hold the number two spot); therefore, only the first 20 candidates on the Likud list are expected to enter the Knesset.

All the so-called Likud “moderates,” except for Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, were pushed out of the top seed and will probably be out of the Knesset; that includes ministers Benny Begin, Michael Eitan and Dan Meridor. The most vocal backbenchers – those behind attacks on the left, Arabs and human rights NGOs – won the day. The Likud looks right now like the Tea Party’s dream team.

Examples:

#1 in the Likud primaries is Gidon Sa’ar, the current education minister and the person behind the school trips that take Israeli children to the settlement in occupied Hebron, and the effort to open a university in the settlement of Ariel. He also has a lot to do with the attempt to shut down the Department of Government and Politics at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva.

#5 Danny Danon: One of the most extreme right-wing Knesset members, who incited against asylum seekers in the rally that turned into a riot in Tel Aviv. Danon was the man who brought Glenn Beck to Israel.

#6 (Reuven Rivlin) and #12 (Tzipi Hotovely) support annexing the West Bank. To their credit, they also toy with the idea of giving full citizen rights to the Palestinian population. Hotovely once organized a Knesset hearing on “the problem” of Jewish-Arab interracial relationships.

#8 Ze’ev Elkin, the brains behind many recent anti-democratic legislative attempts – including the infamous “boycott law.”

#9 Yariv Levin: Not as high-profile as Danon, but even more active. Levin led the effort to pack the Supreme Court with conservative judges. He took part in the effort to limit the funding of human rights NGOs and in the legislation of the boycott law. Levin led the committee that drafted the law forcing a national referendum in the event of a retreat from any territory held by Israel.

#13 Miri Regev, former IDF spokesperson, who called Arab MKs “traitors” and referred to asylum seekers from Africa as a “cancer.”

#14 Moshe Feiglin, who wants the state to encourage Palestinians – he once referred to them as parasites – to leave the country. Feiglin’s claim to fame was the civil disobedience campaign he launched against the Oslo Accord. One of his latest op-eds was titled, “I am a proud homophobe.”

#18 Ofir “Joe McCarthy was right about everything” Akunis: The sponsor of the anti-NGO bill.

Here is the full list of the first 20 names (the final list will be a bit different due to affirmative action and other internal Likud procedures – and remember that we are still waiting for Lieberman’s men): 1. Gidon Sa’ar; 2. Gilad Erdan; 3. Silvan Shalom; 4. Yisrael Katz; 5. Danny Danon; 6. Reuven Rivlin; 7. Moshe Ya’alon; 8. Ze’ev Elkin; 9. Yariv Levin; 10. Yuli Edelstein; 11. Haim Katz; 12. Tzipi Hotovely; 13. Miri Regev; 14. Moshe Feiglin; 15. Yuval Steinitz; 16. Tzachi Hanegbi; 17. Limor Livnat; 18. Ofir Akunis; 19. Gila Gamliel; 20. Carmel Shama-Hacohen.

One final note: More than anything, this list is the result of the occupation. The longer it lasts, the crazier this country gets. And it’s happening faster than people think.

UPDATE: a few more details that I missed last night (source: Ynet): Yariv Levin attempted to give the Likud-controlled Knesset authority over the identity of Supreme Court judges and to forbid the High Court from overruling Knesset legislation; he also tried to change the definition of the state from “Jewish and Democratic” to “A Jewish state with a democratic system,” to make it clear which comes first. Levin, Elkin and Hotuvaly tried to impose Israeli law on the Jewish settlement in the West Bank - practically annexing the occupied territories without giving the Palestinians any rights; the three, together with MK Regiv, initiated a law forcing the government to have Knesset approval for any diplomatic agreement. Dannon and Elkin want to change the law regarding the administration of state land so it would be managed “for the benefit of the Jewish people,” thus making it difficult to create zoning plans for Arabs; and there is more. Much more. 

The leftist swamp is abuzz in the last few days following an initiative (Hebrew) by Gil Kidron, who wants 10,000 leftists to join the Likud party in order to change it from within. So far, he says, he’s managed to convince 400 leftists to register themselves as Likudniks. Kidron, who makes no bones of the fact he is mimicking Moshe Feiglin and his Manhigut Yehudit (“Jewish Leadership”) faction, tried to convince me to join. He failed, so I’ll take the time to explain why.

To begin with, and most importantly, this idea is immoral, because it is based on deceit. While Kidron keeps saying nothing he plans is secret, the idea of overtaking a party by activists who abhor its ideas in order to change its policy is deceit nevertheless. It’s done according to the rules and is completely legal, yes, and it is still deceitful. There’s plenty of untruths in Israeli politics without us adding to it.

Secondly, this idea encapsulates both despair of politics and a cynical attempt to bypass. Essentially, Kidron says that our camp has no change of achieving power; So, instead of working hard, showing a stiff upper lip and waiting for the pendulum to swing leftwards – which it may still do – we should behave as cuckoos, and lay our eggs in other birds’ nests. There’s nothing to bring over Likud voters to your ideas like their surprise when they hear one of their elected representatives speaking hotly about the need to end construction in the settlements.

In response, Kidron has pointed out that if rightwing cuckoos like the authors of “Torat Hamelekh,” the murderer Yoram Shkolnik, settler leader Meir Bartler and other extreme right-wingers (Hebrew) register to the Likud, and manage to drag into the Knesset Kahanists like Tzippi Hotovely and characters like Ophir “McCarthy” Akunis, Danny Danon and others – well, they can’t bloody well complain about a few leftist cuckoos.

That, however, is not the case. The Likud was, once, a liberal party – or, at least, one which struggled between its liberal and nationalistic elements. That was a long time ago, however: Some 30 years ago. There are still liberal remains in Likud – the names of Rubi Rivlin, Benny Begin and Dan Meridor are often mentioned – but they no longer serve as anything more than fig leaves.

The chasm between the right wing and liberalism is no longer bridgable. An anti-human rights demonstartor (Photo: Yossi Gurvitz)

Benny Begin made it clear when he left the Knesset after the 1999 elections: There is no longer an electorate, he said, for people like him, who – trying to square the circle – believe both in Greater Israel and in human rights. More than a decade has passed since that speech, and the chasm between the Israeli right wing – which is essentially volkisch and is based on a concept of racial superiority, the so called “Jewish genius” – has widened to the point it can no longer be bridged. Like many good things in Israel, the liberal right wing became a casualty of the occupation. You can’t be a liberal and lord it over another people. Human rights are not divisible. The Likud voters of today are clearly right-wingers, people who cheer Danny Danon when he describes Rubi Rivlin as a “collaborator of the left.”

Ok – some of Kidron’s supporters would tell me – so what if it’s immoral. Screw morality. We’re fighting for our country. All means are sanctified by this cause. I understand their argument, but it fails, for several practical reasons.

Let’s start with the funding. In order for Kidron’s method to work, 10,000 leftist will have to cough up 64 NIS per year each, for two years (the baseline requirement for registering as a Likud member). This means some 1,280,000 NIS which will make their way from the left, which is already severely underfunded, to the Likud. If those people give that money away to purposes they actually believe in, it will do much more good.

Next: The likud voting system. It allows candidates to distribute the famous “liquidation lists”, which tell their registered supporters who to vote for, and more importantly who not to vote for. Assuming leftist cuckoos do make it to the primaries, it’s a safe bet all real candidates will order their supporters to vote against them. And if they do manage to survive this, which is not likely, the Likud has a party tribunal, which can eliminate candidates.

Furthermore, while the Kidron supporters won’t get far, the Likud can use the attempt to infiltrate it as a bloody shirt to be waved. It will say that the left is so frightened of it, it is trying to deceive the public. Any decent demagogue can run wild with this. Kidron’s move is likely to fail, but will serve as rhetorical ram against the left for decades. The damage, ironically, will be worse if Kidron actually manages to push a leftist as a Likudnik MK.

In short, Kidron and his supporters are asking to waive our principles in order to carry out a political operation whose chances of success are nil, and the damage from it is significantly greater that any miniscule reward it may actually get. Say “no” to Kidron. Let’s leave politics-as-deceit to the long-time specialists: The settlers.