Tag Archives: Politics

Israel

Not one to comment

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Temple Mount and Western Wall during Shabbat
Image via Wikipedia

I sometimes write here, and often post links on Facebook, in criticism of Israel’s government or military. I know what response to expect from most fellow Israelis. Very often, like the other day (when I posted this link), discussion almost immediately includes some old friend throwing in a personal attack on me, either in lieu of an actual argument or in addition to it.

This last attack on Facebook is a true classic; to summarize the gist of my friend’s argument: “you didn’t serve in the army so you can’t judge those who do; you haven’t experienced what they have”. This stuff gets me worked up, but rarely hurts me anymore. The comments are predictable and repetitive and repetitive, and every time I post, I quietly brace myself for them. Saying something bad about the IDF is spitting on a holy cow, as far as almost all Israelis are concerned, and criticism of the government is often taken as an attack on the existence of the state.

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I haven’t always been this vocal. After I moved away (2007), for over a year I avoided reading any news from Israel and, even more, avoided making any comment on the situation there. At the time it seemed nothing ever changed, and reading about it would be painful and useless.

My attitude changed in a process of reflection. I thought a lot: about why I told the IDF I didn’t want to be a soldier1 and later left, about my attitude towards Israel, and about the way I expressed that attitude on the rare occasions that I did. It became clear to me that although I left for mostly childish and wrong reasons, the small part of me that left in protest was kind of right. Things in Israel actually are changing, for the worse, and the many people I love who live there are affected by it.

At the same time, I came to appreciate what an amazing country Israel is, and what a great place to live. I really don’t blame anyone who lives there for loving it so and refusing to let go. I want to live there again as well. Unfortunately, to really enjoy it to the fullest, one has to keep their eyes and ears selectively shut, and one had best check their concern for human rights and justice at the airport. There are government-issued narratives to soothe the conscience, for those who can swallow them.

Sadly, I’m really bad at those things. Continue reading Not one to comment →

Footnotes

  1. As a result, they decided that I’m mentally unfit to serve due to lack of motivation, which seems like a reasonable assessment since I would have made an awful soldier. I then volunteered for civilian service and spent a year in the reception/recovery area of a large hospital’s main operating room complex. [↩]
Education

Problems with authority

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Charlie Chaplin from the end of film The Great...
Image via Wikipedia

Many people my age are uninterested in politics. They don’t vote, they don’t take part in social and political movements, they just don’t care. I wouldn’t call it selfishness; sometimes it’s jadedness. And the reasons are probably not simple. But I think one reason is the way we relate to authority.

Like any social structure in which a small group holds all authority, traditional state schools create a dynamic by which students learn to see authority figures as distant, unreasonable, and often malignant. As a result, students disengage. The individuals involved are not to blame, it’s the system that is broken. But that broken system teaches the students the wrong lessons, and twists the way they see authority. I think this might have far-reaching consequences for society and for democracy. Continue reading Problems with authority →

Education, Government, Israel

The dangers of state-controlled education

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Schoolklas begin jaren '50 / Dutch classroom a...
Image by Nationaal Archief via Flickr

In Germany, I have often heard that maintaining state control of the school system and its curriculum is important for maintaining democracy. This argument is used against the idea of private schools and homeschooling: if people can teach children whatever they want, the argument goes, religious fundamentalists of all kinds will raise the next generation for intolerance.

In Israel, this argument has now been turned on its head: Ha’aretz reports that “The Education Ministry has cut most of its budget for the intensive civics classes for 11th and 12th grades, and the regular civics classes for 10th grade, and will invest the sum in the teaching of Jewish studies.” Who needs to teach democracy, equality and civil rights when instead you can push a religion that is now being used by popular religious racists to promote and support the practice of killing children?1

The good news for Israel is that it has a larger proportion of democratic schools than any other country in the world. 2 These schools will be far less affected by these cuts, and moreover, students in democratic schools finish high school with years of first-hand experience in democracy. The bad news is that a major reason it’s so easy to start a democratic school in Israel is that the system is designed to let in religious schools with essentially no requirement that any particular topic be or not be in their curriculum. There are many more religious schools than democratic schools, and I’m willing to bet few, if not none of them, use that freedom to promote democracy and fight intolerance.

Totalitarianism cannot rise without having a firm control over education in some way or another. The governments of Germany — ridden with national guilt as they have been for the past 60 years — use their tight grip on education to promote democracy; but having such central control makes it possible for shifts in the opposite direction, like the one we are seeing in Israel right now. Wherever intolerance is fostered we must speak out against it and fight it. But a democratic state is always at risk of electing intolerant leaders, and in case that ever happens, we had better make sure those leaders don’t have the power to indoctrinate the young generation. As we say in EUDEC, democratic education is a sensible choice for democratic states.

Footnotes

  1. I certainly do not mean to equate Judaism with this sort of racism. My family is full of terrific people who happen to be religiously Jewish and are at least as disgusted by this racism as I am. However, the mainstream in Israel does seem to support a rather nationalistic view of the religion, and the linked article reveals some very disturbing things. [↩]
  2. I did not have the time to find a source to cite for this datum (a quick google search was not enough). I have, however, heard it many times; specifically, I recall Ya’acov Hecht saying that by sheer number of students in democratic schools, Israel has more than any other country in the world — even much bigger ones. There are about 30 democratic schools in Israel, which has a population of about 7 million. I know of no comparable situation in any other country today; the Netherlands had a similar proportion of sociocratic schools (which are a similar thing) but I understand that their numbers have gone down drastically in the past five years. [↩]
Israel, Links

Doing It Wrong: "Only Israel"

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A friend posted this video to Facebook:       YouTube Link

(WARNING: Viewers who don’t strongly identify with the Israeli state may experience nausea!)

The music is quite good, but the words are more problematic. I couldn’t find the lyrics in English, but they can be found in German.

Back on Facebook, I commented on the video, and for a reason I don’t know yet and might never understand, my comment was deleted. Luckily, I saved a copy of it, so I decided to repost it here where people can respond to it freely: Continue reading Doing It Wrong: "Only Israel" →

Education, Government, Israel

Contra Hecht: A Likelier Success Story for Israeli Democratic Education

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I spent most of the day at the IDEC conference in Tel Aviv, and will be going back tomorrow. The first day has already brought up a whole lot of really interesting issues, but I want to address just a small one right now. I want to respond to a claim made by Yaacov Hecht of the Israeli Institute for Democratic Education: that the big secret to Israel’s success in democratic education is the mandatory military service. Continue reading Contra Hecht: A Likelier Success Story for Israeli Democratic Education →

Education, Links

Peter Gray: Social Play and the Genesis of Democracy

Link

I’m back sooner than expected and will resume posting about democracy soon. Meanwhile, here’s a link to the latest post over at Peter Gray’s excellent Freedom to Learn blog, in which Peter discusses how free social play lends itself to the development of a sense of democracy in children:

Children cannot acquire democratic values through activities run autocratically by adults. They can and do, however, experience and acquire such values in free play with other children. That is a setting where they are treated as equals, where they must have a say in what goes on, and where they must respect the rights of others if they wish to be included.

Link: Social Play and the Genesis of Democracy

P.S.
The rest of the blog is well-worth reading as well!

Government

Democracy, Part 1: Elements

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What is democracy? The American Heritage Dictionary’s first, most comprehensive definition is “[g]overnment by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.”1 The two last definitions in the same dictionary give the two main elements of this form of government: “Majority rule” and “[t]he principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.” How do these two come together?

Majority rule is the most obvious part of democracy. In a democratic meeting, a show of hands determines the group’s decisions. In a democratic state, one way or another, the majority vote puts the administration in power. But if democracy is supposed to be government by the people, can the minority simply be left out of the loop?

This is where the other part comes into play: a democracy leans on principles of social equality and respect for the individual. The majority rules, but only under the condition that it cares for everyone’s interests, not only its own. A democratic state where only the majority has political power can use democratic procedures and have as many votes all it likes; the mere fact of majority rule does not make it a democracy. This is because the procedures of majority rule are mere tools of a greater cause: government by the people, for the people. Individuals belonging to minorities of all sorts – from ethnic groups through political movements – belong to the people no less than their counterparts in the majority and must not be subject to discrimination under a democratic government; government for the people must include them all.

But unlike majority rule, equal treatment of all people is not a simple mechanical measure that can be easily defined and protected. Majority rule is, on the face of it, a simple yes or no question. Not so the principle that all individuals are equal and worthy of respect protects all individuals equally; different democratic organizations and states have wildly different ways of applying to this concept. It is very often a difficult and debatable question whether an organization is acting in accordance with this principle.

One prominent example is the well-known divide between the economical left and right. In some democratic states, it is considered essential to the equal treatment of individuals that they are given equal socio-economical footing regardless of their history and background; such states often collect large amounts of taxes from their citizens and redistribute this wealth to make sure that individuals coming from a background with less money have a fair chance to succeed where others have the advantage of greater resources; this is usually called socialism. In other democratic states, an opposite approach is taken: it is considered essential to the equal treatment of individuals that they get to personally enjoy the fruits of their own labor as much as possible and that the government interferes as little as possible in their lives; such states try to collect less taxes, and accordingly spend less money on financially supporting their citizens, allowing the latter the opportunity to prop support themselves; this is usually called capitalism. Of course, hardly any state is entirely capitalist or entirely socialist, and all Western societies today are somewhere in between.

But there are divides on many other lines, regarding of the equality and respect due to all individuals in a democracy. Taken as a whole, these divides present a very complex picture of equality; there are quite a lot more interpretations of this concept than there are democratic states, if only because these states usually house two or three opinions on each divide, if not more.

Despite the myriad possible interpretations of equality, it is difficult to say which states treat equality in the “right” way for a democracy. This is mostly a matter of opinion and tends to depend on the opining individual’s personal interpretation of the concept; a capitalist will typically claim socialist states are not quite democratic, and a socialist will typically claim the same of capitalist states.

When the question of equality is considered together with that of majority rule, things get even more difficult: a socialist may believe that majority rule is distorted by the richer classes’ ability to manipulate the poorer classes by means of money; a capitalist may believe that government interference in the spheres of private society gives the government undue control over society and subsequently distorts majority rule.

Still, with these two concepts in mind, along with the many ways they interact and affect society, one has a working definition of democracy in the modern sense of the term. In coming posts, I shall discuss a few aspects of democracy (often focussing on its application in Sudbury schools). These definitions may be nothing new, but they form a solid basis to begin a discussion of this rich topic.

1 democracy. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/democracy (accessed: February 21, 2009).

Government, Israel, Links

A war that cannot be won

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Here are a few more articles about Gaza/Israel. Again, a common thread emerges – propoganda and the sheer unwinnability of this war.

First is Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, criticizing Tom Friedman’s support of the war, which is backed by rationale that conforms perfectly to a text-book definition of terrorism – “politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant … targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience” (quoted by GG). Greenwald’s criticism is primarily of Friedman’s position, not of the war, but it provides some interesting insights. Salon.com: Tom Friedman offers a perfect definition of “terrorism”

Then comes Daniel Larison with a brief and insightful response. Eunomia (the American Conservative magazine): Wrong and Ineffective

Next, again on Salon.com, is Gary Kamiya with an angle comparing the war in Gaza with the 1982 war in Lebanon, and particularly the massacre of the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp, as depicted in the award-winning new Israeli film “Waltz With Bashir” (which I really should go see already.) Salon.com: What “Waltz With Bashir” can teach us about Gaza

And finally Uri Avnery writes about the impossibility of defeating Hamas:

THE FAILURE to grasp the nature of Hamas has caused a failure to grasp the predictable results. Not only is Israel unable to win the war, Hamas cannot lose it.

Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.

I read his column on on-the-left-side.co.il, in Hebrew, but it can be found on his website (and the Gush Shalom website) in English as well. Uri Avnery: How Many Devisions?

Links

Two more links about the war

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Two links have come down the grapevine, to two articles (both a few days old now) dealing with different aspects of the Palestinians’ right to an independent existence and Israel’s persistence in denying this right.

First is this piece on Ynet, “Gaza’s Lost Time” (translation mine) by Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion University. Yiftachel calls to “start talking about history, the Palestinians’ history too, instead of talking about territory”. I could not find an English version, but the Hebrew version is here: Opinion: Gaza’s Lost Time (Ynet)

The other piece, by Avi Shlaim, writing for the Guardian, discusses the Palestinians’ right to an independent economic and political existence, and Israel’s apparent determination to deny this right. Shlaim closes with a scathing verdict:

This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism – the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

Avi Shlaim: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe (The Guardian)

Thanks to Alex for sharing these both.