Advice on democracy from the only democracy in the Middle East

Here's a bizarre piece in The Times of Israel.  A former Israeli minister under Ehud Olmert and an adviser to the nearly but not quite late, Ariel Sharon, Rafi Eitan, has said that the USA should never have allowed Mohammed Morsi to become president of Egypt.

“The military unequivocally decided that [Ahmed] Shafiq will be president, not [Mohammed] Morsi,” Eitan told The Times of Israel. “But the Americans put all the pressure on. The announcement [of the president] was delayed by three or four days because of this struggle.”

Immediately after Egypt’s presidential elections in June 2012, Eitan spoke to unnamed local officials, who told him that with a mere 5,000-vote advantage for Islamist candidate Morsi, the military was prepared to announce the victory of his adversary Shafiq, a secular military man closely associated with the Mubarak regime.

But secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Eitan said, decided to favor democracy at all costs and disallow any falsification of the vote.

“This is idiocy. An act of stupidity that will resonate for generations,” Eitan said. “I also thought Mubarak should be replaced, but I believed the Americans would be smart enough to replace him with the next figure. Mubarak would have agreed to that, but the Americans didn’t want that; they wanted democracy. But there is no real democracy in the Arab world at the moment. It will take a few generations to develop.

I don't think the US approach to the Arab world is any less racist than Israel's.  I'm guessing they just don't like to be as obvious as Israel when it comes to throwing their weight around.

Israel's anti-boycott law

Israel has passed an anti-boycott law. It's yet another example of Israel jettisoning its democratic facade but apparently it's to protect the economy of the settlements.  Here's Avirama Golan in Ha'aretz:

the Boycott Law is only ostensibly about boycotts of goods produced in the settlements, just as the Admissions Committee Law is only ostensibly about community life in small towns and the Nakba Law is only ostensibly about commemorating the Palestinians' "catastrophe," and so on and so forth ad infinitum.

All of these new laws, all the new conditions stating that "anyone who doesn't recognize the Jewish and democratic state" will not receive state funds or will lose his citizenship or will not be allowed to sleep in the afternoons, have one purpose only: to completely eradicate open political debate and to comprehensively delegitimize everyone who doesn't think like MKs Zeev Elkin, David Rotem, Michael Ben-Ari and their friends.

The question that most preoccupied Meridor yesterday related to how Israel would be perceived by the international Quartet. He was genuinely worried that the law to punish those who boycott the settlements would not paint Israel's parliament in a terribly flattering light.

But Israel's image is a truly trivial issue compared to the process of change being wrought in Israeli society by the cabal of Yisrael Beiteinu, extremist rabbis and Kahanists. This process is crudely erasing entire entries from the democratic dictionary, and in their place - via a series of focused laws with intentionally vague wording - it is putting blatantly totalitarian values.

The Boycott Law is just one step in this process. Anyone who attempts to relate substantively of any of these separatist laws - all of which are meant to "defend" Israel from a long list of imaginary monstrous enemies - or who chooses to ignore their overall anti-democratic context is guilty of naivete at best, and perhaps even of dangerously feigning innocence.

Magnes Zionist has an interesting take on the new law here. He thinks it's unworkable. I don't know if it is or it isn't. I do find it remarkable though that so many people in the west who claim to support Israel because it's "the only democracy in the middle east" don't say a word when the trappings of democracy are being steadily undermined by the Israeli government.

Who learned what from whom?

I got a text yesterday telling me that I'd had a letter published in The Independent so I bought a copy. Here's what I was responding to:

Ian McEwan was absolutely right to criticise Jewish settlements on the West Bank (News, 21 February) when receiving his literary prize in Jerusalem. Hopefully the emerging democracies in the Arab world will soon be able to emulate Israel's openness.

Stan Labovitch

Windsor

Here's what I wrote:

Stan Labovitch seems not to have noticed that across the Arab world people have already found something to emulate in Palestine.  From where else did this generation learn the art of intifada?

And here's what they published:

Art of intifada is catching

Stan Labovitch hopes that Arabs will soon be able to emulate Israeli democracy (letter, 23 February). He seems not to have noticed that across the Arab world people have already found something to emulate in Palestine. From where else did this generation learn the art of intifada?

Mark Elf, Dagenham, Essex

Nice headline of its own but I rarely call the zionist occupation of Palestine "Israeli democracy".  Still there is one good thing.  You see how I italicised the word intifada? Well The Independent didn't see fit to do that. That means that for them the word "intifada" has now passed into the English language and that is good news.

Irish Republic blocks US arms to Israel

Ha'aretz has really come into its own given a near total blackout on reports in the UK media regarding Wikileaks reports involving the State of Israel.  Many of the reports have been on the Ha'aretz site for a few days now.  This one on Ireland blocking American arms transfers to Israel via Ireland's Shannon Airport shows how public opinion can have an impact.

The Irish government has acted to limit transfers of American weapons to Israel and Iraq through Shannon Airport in the wake of public outrage after the Second Lebanon War, an American diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks reveals.

The blocking of such transfers could even cost the Irish economy:

A cable sent in 2006 by the U.S. ambassador to Ireland at the time, James C. Kenny, discloses that the deputy head of mission warned Irish officials that the United States would begin using other European airports. Such a move could cost the Irish economy tens of millions of dollars.

But politics sometimes trumps economics:

According to the [US] ambassador, "Segments of the Irish public ... see the airport as a symbol of Irish complicity in perceived U.S. wrongdoing in the Gulf/Middle East." He said the Irish government "has recently introduced more cumbersome notification requirements for equipment-related transits in the wake of the Lebanon conflict."

The ambassador noted that the Irish foreign office protested to him that in February 2006, Apache helicopters were sent to Israel via Ireland without the local authorities being appropriately informed.

The ambassador wrote that senior Irish officials told him informally that if the United States made further mistakes in its conduct at the airport, the matter could become a central issue in Ireland's 2007 elections.

Imagine, arms to Israel becoming an issue in the elections of a western state....

Mubarak pays homage to his liege lord in Washington

I guess Obama's ecstatic demeanor is the result of hearing how $2 billion of U.S. monies every year are used to detain bloggers, arrest and torture political activists (as well as the merely unlucky) and suppress democracy. With the health reform in the U.S. falling under the knives of the insurance industry and his voters slowly realizing that he too is, as Isaiah once called Egypt, a "staff of this broken reed"--a description that is still fitting Egypt as well although in a different context--Obama might consider that Mubarak has much to teach him about keeping a disaffected public under the leash.

Not that we should be surprised:

Obama's choice to address Muslims around the world from a country run by a dictator has not only shown us that he is hypocritical when promoting democracy, but even worse - he has given Mubarak both the assurance and the green light to continue ruling. (Khouloud Khalife)

The struggle in Honduras escalates

While protesters against the oligarchic coup are shot in the street, Obama, who in fact owns the political class of the client state of Honduras, is trying to have his cake and eat it, notwithstanding the libidinal investment of some leftists (still worth reading).