By this time tomorrow, there's a very good chance that you will have been reading about Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman. As someone who cares a whole awful lot about the State of Israel, it's sad and frustrating both to see Lieberman succeeding at playing this terrible game and to see what a bad light this puts Israel and the Jewish people in. But I know it's actually not quite as bad as all that, and I want to share a couple of thoughts on why:
1. It's not just a democracy when we vote for things I like. - Lieberman has a position that does some crummy things, but it doesn't advocate violence towards the polity, so I wouldn't vote for it, but I also wouldn't advocate banning his candidacy or anything. Those are the breaks.
2. I chose the Tom Tancredo juxtaposition carefully. Lieberman is 'worse' than Tancredo. But how, and why? On the one hand, there's not a steady stream of suicide bombers and imported rockets firing down on Tancredo's (former) constituents, but on the other hand, what if there were? Would Tom Tancredo still be advocating loyalty oaths in that society?
3. Think "Bloc Quebecois". I know this may come as a suprise to you, but the world's only Jewish democracy is not, in fact, known for exhibiting homogeneity of opinion about anything. Moving from right to center (but not necessarily on economics or social policy, where the order changes again) the parties will be Yisrael Beitenu (Lieberman) - Likud (Netanyahu) - Kadima (Livni). Alltogether, they're looking at like 40-50 votes in a 120 seat parliament. Everybody knows that the parliamentary leaders will be putting together a coalition, and as we can tell you from the American experience, governments accomplish things that parties agree on (ie, special interest tax breaks and subsidies for sugar and ethanol), not what they disagree on (ie, liberalizing/repealing abortion laws). Likewise with Israel. A lot of people will be voting for the cranky Lieberman to express their crankiness.
4. Andrew Sullivan can go fuck himself. Do a search of his blog for a few terms: Avigdor (don't use "lieberman"), Meshal/Mashal, Haniyeh, Ranitisi, and Yassin. Four appearances for Avigdor Lieberman, for the first one. Avigdor Lieberman is a minority politician in a democratic country. Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh run a terrorist organization that's fired thousands upon thousands of rockets at civilians without even offering the pretense of strategy, and it recruits, arms, and trains suicide bombers while its leaders avoid the bombing in a bunker under a hospital. Abdel-Aziz Ranitisi and Ahmed Yassin were the brave, iconoclastic thinkers who got together in the mid-80s and said, "Sure, Palestinian terrorism against Israelis and Americans has worked so well for us up to now, but the PLO has this goofy secular, egalitarian vibe that just doesn't work for some of us. Maybe we can start something a little more repressive?" The last four names (and the common alternate transliterations of the names) appear on the blog zero times.
I try to be careful writing about Israel, because I know you really don't have to listen to me, so I want to make it work. Israel is pretty important to me, and my love for the country and respect for my friends (you reading this) makes me talk about it as I understand it, and not just from a "Rah Rah Rah" or "you have to agree with me or else yada yada yada" perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment