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| Israel Shahak Articles |
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| Questioning the Legitimacy of the Arab Vote in Israel as a Result of the Peace Process |
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| Israel Shahak |
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Dr. Shahak, Holocaust survivor, and retired professor of chemistry at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil
Rights.
As soon as the Israeli government showed, in spring 1993, that it wanted some kind of peace process with Syria or with the Palestinians, the Israeli opposition to any withdrawal and/or change in status of the territories became stronger and began to affect basic issues of politics in Israel. By the end of April the Hebrew press already had recognized that, as the chief political commentator of Haaretz, Uzi Benziman, put it (Haaretz, April 30),
The general staff of the right-wing parties in the Knesset, coordinated by Bejamin Netanyahu, is seeking to bring the government down. . . . The leaders of the right-wing parties anticipate that Rabin would dare concede nothing to the Arabs, even if assured of the support of 61 MKs in favor of concessions. In any case, the Knesset right wing will try to deny legitimacy to 'a blocking majority' with 5 MKs from the Arab parties. They will argue that such a majority has no right to determine the fate of the Jewish state. Any withdrawal from the Territories, and any change in the present status of Arab residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District will be presented as fateful.
Hence withdrawal would be devoid of legitimacy if it were ratified by a Knesset majority that depended on the so-called "Arab parties," i.e the communist-led front Hadash, which has three seats in the Knesset, and the Arab Democratic party (ADP), which has two. Even though one of Hadash's MKs, Tamar Gozhanski, is Jewish, her vote is also considered in this sense illegitimate by virtue of her affiliation with a party defined as "Arab." The described right-wing attempt closely resembles the antisemite practice of defining a given organization as "Jewish" in order to thereby deny legitimacy to its non-Jewish members as well. So far, no attempt has been made to deny legitimacy of the Arab vote in general. True, Ariel Sharon in his speech at the Likud convention (Hadashot, May 18) said: "We have to find ways preventing the Israeli Arab voters from affecting decisions fateful for Israel's existence." But at present Sharon's political standing, even within Likud, is very low.
The five seats of the "Arab parties" can currently be used to make up the "Likud blocking" majority of 61 MKs out of the total of 120 Knesset seats. The existence of this bloc enabled Rabin to form his government in the first place, and the "Arab" parties may yet become part of a new government coalition in the event of the Shass party's withdrawal from the current one. This is why the importance of those five seats that complement the 44 of Labor and the 12 of Meretz cannot be overstated. It can be seen that this Likud-blocking group, although representative of a bare majority of citizens of Israel, represents no more than a minority of the Israeli Jewish electorate. In the previous Knesset this bloc stopped a little short of 60 MKs, and therefore was not in the position to check a Likud-led coalition supported by both ultra-right and religious parties. It needs to be stressed that, other things being equal, the rabbis leading the religious parties always prefer to coalesce with Likud rather than with Labor. This is why in 1988 and again in 1990 they turned down Peres' blandishments to form a coalition with Labor, oblivious to financial advantages he promised them. Nevertheless, Shass could be induced to join Rabin's government only because the mentioned bloc precluded any possibility of a Likud-led coalition. The entry of Shass, with its six seats, to the government gave Rabin a Knesset majority not dependent on the "Arab" parties, and a majority within the Jewish electorate. In this way, the present government coalition can be said to be merely "supported from the outside" by the "Arab" parties. Its formal majority amounts to 62 MKs, with six from Shass complementing those from Labor and Meretz. But a public campaign aiming at the delegitimation of the "Arab" parties can undermine such calculations. This is the formal importance of a campaign whose primary thrust has been the attacks on MK Hashem Mahmeed of Hadash, which continue unabated.
Right-wing politicians seem to have made an appropriate choice in concentrating their campaign on the person of MK Mahmeed. Unlike the respective leaders of Hadash and the ADP, MKs Tawfik Zayad and Abdul-Wahab Darawshe, who command considerable respect even among their worst enemies, in and out of the Knesset, MK Mahmeed is by and large disliked, even by those determined to support his Knesset-member rights. Indeed, it is widely rumored that MK Zayad had handpicked him precisely because of his political ineptitude so as not to risk any serious dispute over the succession to the party leadership. Mahmeed is a recent Knesset member. Prior to his election he served for a long time on behalf of Hadash as the head of the municipality and then mayor of Umm El-Fahem, the second largest Palestinian town in Israel. His incompetence, haughtiness and insensitivity to the needs of the city's inhabitants in the end resulted in the smashing victory of the Islamist movement in the municipal elections there early in 1989. He spent much of his time on travels to the ex-communist states, where he was known for his vacuous speechmaking. The new Islamist movement's mayor can be blamed for instituting religious coercion, but the conditions in the town of Umm El-Fahem have admittedly improved considerably under him. Unlike Mahmeed, he really does care about public services there, in particular about the roads and schools.
Hadash compensated Mahmeed by making him an MK. But as a Knesset member he proved to be no better than as a mayor. Within less than a year of the present Knesset's lifetime, he managed to provide the right-wing MKs with good grounds to demand the lifting of his parliamentary immunity so that he could be prosecuted. His conduct is now indeed being investigated by the attorney general. The investigation concentrates on circumstances of his visits to the Gaza Strip. It is a fact that he was welcomed there by an armed "Red Eagle" squad (affiliated with the PFLP), which fired a volley in his honor in the presence of the press and crowds of spectators, and in front of the cameras. He then made a violent speech, which according to his enemies could be regarded as an infraction of several Israeli laws, regardless of the volley fired in his honor. Curiously, MK Mahmeed remains a devoted member of Hadash, which means that his political opinions must, at least formally, be at considerable variance from those of the PFLP. The present attorney general is known to be highly susceptible to political pressures. If need be, he can be relied upon to drag out his investigation as long as necessary. The fact remains that no other Arab MK has ever been accused of similar offenses. And about half a year ago, MK Mahmeed suffered another indignity. After the Prison Service provided firm evidence that while visiting some "security prisoners" Mahmeed had been smuggling "prohibited materials" and providing information to them, the Knesset nearly unanimously voted for a motion stripping him of some of his immunity privileges, thus making him liable to searches on his every visit to prison. Again, this has never happened to any Palestinian Knesset member before, whether from Hadash or of any other "Arab" party. On the last mentioned occasion, even his Hadash comrades defended him rather perfunctorily, thereafter refraining from making his immunity-privilege limitation into a "case" to be pursued further.
There is nevertheless no direct connection between the present campaign against Hashem Mahmeed and his past misadventures. Right now, at issue is something more fundamental, namely his right to equality with other Knesset members. Because of that, the present campaign has elicited much more interest than all previous claims against him. In fact, the present campaign is traceable to the Knesset's moderate success in subjecting Shabak [the secret police] to some forms of oversight. Toward the end of the former Knesset's term, there emerged a consensus of all parties that the job of overseeing Shabak be assigned to the Knesset Committee for State Comptrollership. For the first time in Israel's history, the state comptroller, who usually is a retired supreme court judge, and therefore a rather respected figure, will be permitted to investigate Shabak with all thoroughness. His findings will then be communicated in two reports, one addressed to the quorum of the Committee for State Comptrollership, and the other, containing more classified information, only to the newly formed subcommittee for Shabak affairs, comprising only the select members of that committee. The current state comptroller, retired supreme court judge Miriam Ben-Porat, enjoys an unprecedented respect and popularity, earned not only by her impartiality but also by her relentless efforts to uncover corruption and inefficiency. She can be quite tough with all parties, whether big or small. Just two weeks ago she accused the Labor party of "buying votes during the last elections." Nevertheless, the parties have no choice but to defer to her in recognition of her enormous prestige. Amnon Levy (Hadashot, May 13, 1993) wrote: "Miriam Ben-Porat is a marvelous person. She extricated the institution of State Comptrollership from its previous relative dormancy and turned it into a powerful tool of advancing the public interest." Levy was merely expressing prevalent opinion, which in my view is perfectly justified.
The membership of the Knesset committees is roughly proportional to the size of each party's Knesset faction. It is determined by the parties concerned, which reserve for themselves the right to recall any of their delegates to a given committee at a moment's notice in order to replace him with somebody else. By a long-standing custom, the big parties would allocate some of their committee seats to a party which is too small in size to be entitled to membership in a prestigious committee. In such cases, the big party reserves for itself the right to recall from a given committee a smaller party's MK as well as its own.
Shortly after the beginning of the present Knesset term, MK Hashem Mahmeed was through such a deal handpicked by the Labor party as a member of the Committee of State Comptrollership, presumably in order to reward Hadash for its Likud blocking function, to which Rabin's government owed its existence. By the beginning of April 1993, the report on Shabak was to be submitted to the Committee of State Comptrollership. The committee's chairman, MK Dan Tihon (Likud) then announced that he would deny access to that report to anyone unless MK Mahmeed voluntarily undertakes to absent himself from the committee meetings discussing it and to refrain from requesting its copy. After about two weeks it became clear that Tihon acted in concert with Labor. Shortly thereafter, the Labor Knesset faction announced that unless Mahmeed complied with Tihon's demands instantly, he would be recalled by Labor from the committee. As Khami Shalev (Davar, May 14) notes, Labor's conduct was in this case unexceptional. "MK
Gonen Segev of Tzomet [a right-wing party] was right when in his Knesset plenum speech he shamed the Labor party MKs by disclosing that they themselves had engineered the removal of MK Hashem Mahmeed from deliberations of classified matters in the Committee of State Comptrollership." Shalev placed this fact in the context of "Rabin's incessant declarations that he will never recognize the vote of the MKs from 'Arab parties' on 'fateful' questions as binding." Shalev admits that "the search for a way to somehow delegitimize the 'Arab parties' hasn't begun this week, but has been going on since the inception of Israel, on the initiative of the Labor movement rather than of parties which [subsequently] formed Likud." In this way Shalev clearly points to the predecessors of the Labor and Meretz parties as originators of that "search." MK Hashem Mahmeed preferred to surrender to this joint ultimatum of Labor and Likud in the hope of thus retaining his prestigious committee seat. A public meeting of the committee was convened at which MK Mahmeed made a fiery speech about democracy and equality. He accused Tihon of fascism without saying a word against Labor. But he concluded by accepting all of Tihon's demands, including the one to make an explicit undertaking to the media. Then he left the room understanding that his seat in the committee would thus be preserved. In fact, the real debate opened only then.
As Levy (ibid.) states, Miriam Ben-Porat long ago had raised the issue of MK Mahmeed in connection with her report about Shabak:
Seven months ago, Ben-Porat wrote a letter to the Prime Minister to draw his attention to the fact-in her view quite important-that the minorities [i.e., the Arabs] were represented in the Committee empowered to deal with her report [on Shabaki. She would have no objection to this in principle: but in this case she was concerned about polarization stemming from the segregation in society at large. This was why she perceived the presence of an Arab MK in the Committee of State Comptrollership as a grave problem, and this was why she took an unusual step to warn the Prime Minister about that matter in advance. Recently the letter happened to be brought to the notice of the Hadashot, so its correspondent Uri Stein queried Mrs. Ben-Porat about its contents. She answered that she had been guided by her sense of duty. She wanted to be in a position to lay every relevant document on the Committee's table and to make verbal presentations at its sessions without inhibitions. She knew that membership of Knesset committees was none of her business, but she wished the problem she perceived-could be somehow solved. This was why she delicately bothered Rabin about MK Hashem Mahmeed's access to top-secret information she would reveal to the Committee. Just in case, the State Comptroller classified her letter to Rabin as "top secret," in recognition of the sensitivity of its contents. But Rabin, as is usual with him, didn't bother to answer it. After waiting patiently for his answer, she approached MK Dan Tihon, requesting him to keep pressing Rabin until the latter considered the problem and made his position public,
which he in the end did. Since Tihon belongs to the right wing of Likud, he tried hard, according to Levy, to plead the case for delegitimizing all MKs from the "Arab" parties. Insofar as he succeeded, he owed it to Ben-Porat and Rabin. Incidentally, Rabin s failure to answer Ben-Porat's letter or to delegate to someone else the responsibility for solving the problem she noted, is his typical mode of proceeding. As any reader of the Hebrew press will recognize, he always hopes that problems will get solved by themselves.
Levy doesn't spare Ben-Porat in this context. After his above acknowledgment of the high quality of her performance, he continues:
For all her unique qualities, she can be wrong, and in MK Mahmeed's case she made a grave error of judgement. Her seemingly innocuous query really amounted to putting an Arab Knesset member under a grave security-related suspicion. Yet any such suspicion seems groundless, unless it is his descent, which makes him by definition suspect. A conservative Supreme Court judge, Miriam Ben-Porat, whose rulings were routinely based on "important security considerations," is here returning to us.
Still, the affair cannot be seen as caused just by Ben-Porat's whim. In concert with other columnists, Levy opines that
it can be reasonably assumed on the basis of existing evidence that Ben-Porat acted under pressure from precisely those authorities [i.e. the Shabak] she had been empowered to investigate. To all appearances, they refused to provide her with any information if she would subsequently pass it on to a committee in which any Arab MK were a member. Ben-Porat made a hint to this effect in her reply to Hadashot queries. In this predicament she had two options. Either she could tell the authorities to be investigated that they must cooperate with her unconditionally, or else she could make the whole affair public. I would very much like Ben-Porat to state her grounds for suspecting Mahmeed in public. This would square with the principles of justice and equality in which she always prides herself.
It needs to be stressed that the objection of "the authorities" to "any Arab MK" was meant to be literal, encompassing not only the MKs from the "Arab" parties but also the Arabs belonging to Zionist parties, including a Druse MK from Likud. High-ranking Druse army officers have likewise been denied all opportunity to peruse classified materials. About one month before the Mahmeed affair erupted into a public scandal, there occurred an event symptomatic of Shabak's attitude toward Druse army officers. The then president-elect Ezer Weizmann wanted to appoint a high-ranking Druse paratrooper brigade commander with a long record of distinguished service as his military adjutant. Shabak objected to the appointment arguing that the president had the right to demand access to any classified materials. Weizmann abjectly deferred to Shabak's veto, over the protests of the Druse community, which of course felt offended. Although this long-standing rule is most often invoked against the Arabs, it applies to any non-Jews. In the 1950s and 1960s I myself met some Gentile army officers of various nationalities who in 1948 had volunteered to fight on Israel's side and thereafter decided to continue to serve in the Israeli army. Even after many years of service they could not advance beyond a certain rank and were rigidly kept apart from some secret matters. As Shalev notes, this state of affairs was determined by "the Labor movement," strictly speaking by David Ben-Gurion, whose authority was then almost unchallengeable. Such racist discrimination against all non-Jews, which most grievously hurts the Palestinians, is a constitutive trait of the State of Israel. Those who ignore it (including a lot of Jewish "leftists"), cannot comprehend the very nature of the Jewish state, especially the fact of its emulation of antisemitic practices designated to hurt the Jews.
The principle of exclusion of Palestinians (and all other Gentiles) from meaningful politics has in Israel been followed since its inception and has firm roots in the Israeli culture. Avishai Margalit (Maariv, May 5) concurs with Shalev in blaming Labor for initiatives to delegitimize the "Arab parties." After saying with firmness, that a government representing only Labor, Meretz and "Arab" parties does represent a majority within the Israeli electorate at the time of the last elections, Margalit proceeds to settle accounts with the Labor party for "regarding the MKs of the 'Arab
parties' as good only for the 'Arab labor' of preventing the emergence of a Likud-led coalition." In his view,
They should also be good enough for labors of participating in the coalition. The trouble stems from the fact that Labor, as presently constituted and when led by Rabin, understands its [political] mandate as derived only from 'Jewish labor,' not from a majority of the electorate. This is why it clamors for a Jewish majority.
Margalit confirms that "MK Tamar Gozhansky of Hadash, although Jewish, is looked upon as a component of an 'Arab party' since most of Hadash voters are Arab." Margalit opines that
Meretz has done next to nothing to make the Arab MKs acceptable. I don't mean acceptable to the Right, which considers Meretz illegitimate as well. But although it was not in Meretz's power to change the attitudes of the Right toward Arab MKs, it could do something to make them acceptable to other supporters of the present government. A radical change in common attitudes toward Israeli Arab citizens would be highly desirable, but it is not clear whether Meretz itself has undergone such a change.
Of course Margalit has in mind that very same Labor movement that as Shalev reminds us, had once taken the first steps toward delegitimizing any meaningful political participation by Israel's Arab citizens. But Margalit may possibly be referring to the Shass party as well. Not long ago all Hebrew papers (but not the Jerusalem Post, nor any Western paper I have run across) published extracts from a sermon delivered by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shass' spiritual patron. In that sermon Yosef said that "the Arabs are worse than wild animals." Predictably, no Labor politician dared utter a word of protest. But unlike Labor, Meretz is not an overtly racist party. On the contrary, it prides itself on fighting racism. Yet no Meretz politician said anything in response to Yosef's sermon either. The same holds true for the plethora of organizations supposed to "promote peace." Even more remarkably, the MKs or ranking members of the "Arab" parties also kept silent, even though the Arab-language papers in Israel had quoted Rabbi Yosef's gem of wisdom with commentaries it deserved. Instead of protesting, "dovish" politicians from Labor, Meretz and the "Arab" parties continued to praise Shass and Rabbi Yosef personally, for their "peace-loving" attitudes as manifested by their declarations of support for Rabin's "peace process." Such manifestations of political sentiments prompted Asher Levy (Hadashot, May 10) to opine that Israel
faces a new Moloch [sacred cow], named the peace process. During the last year that Moloch has managed to subjugate our lives. For over 40 years we were taught to worship the Moloch of security. That idol sufficed to explain away every wrong in Israel. Most ghastly things were done in the name of security, to the point that activities that under normal circumstances would have been approved by no one with any honesty left were considered perfectly legitimate. With the advent of the present government, we seemed to be suddenly freed from kowtowing to security as the supreme value. But instead, we apparently let ourselves debase the concept of peace from meaning what most of us looked forward to intensely, into a new Moloch in whose name everything is permitted and for the sake of which no sacrifice can be too great.
In other words, for the sake of the "peace process" the entire Likud-blocking fraternity is willing to condone the most repulsive forms of racism.
The tenet of "Jewish labor" mentioned by Margalit, was adopted by the Labor movement in the early part of the century. The term refers to an enforceable duty of Jewish employers to provide work only to Jews and to refuse to employ Arabs. Due to changed circumstances, this racist policy ceased to be enforced in the early 1960s. But its underlying racism has remained as a cherished, extolled and fervently advocated ideal. Right now, the Israelis get their tutorials in racism from Rabin, who never ceases explaining that the sealing off of the territories was imposed not so much for "security reasons" (as he himself had insisted before), but because his government wants to reelevate the tenet of "Jewish labor" to its bygone glory. (He does admit that the seal-off hurts the Palestinians grievously, but it doesn't seem to be a factor in his calculations.) When the "socialist" Zionists saw to it that no Arabs could work for a Jewish employer, the term "Arab labor" meant something close to enemy labor. Now in colloquial Hebrew it simply means sloppy work. This is why Margalit' s article amounts to more than advocacy of a change. It is also a merciless assault on the sacred cows of the Labor movement.
The discussion of the Mahmeed affair in Haaretz was more extensive than in other papers. It opened with the publication of an article by its prestigious military correspondent, Ze'ev Shiff (May 10). As befits one with "connections," Shiff discloses for the first time how the parliamentary oversight of Israeli Intelligence had functioned before the Committee of State Comptrollership was assigned the task last year. His disclosures are lurid, but they deserve to be quoted extensively in view of the light that they cast on the character of the Israeli regime established by Ben-Gurion.
For long years [since 1949] it was customary to submit Intelligence Service reports to no one apart from an informal two-member subcommittee, comprising the chairman of the Committee for Defense and Foreign Affairs and the chairman of the Committee of State Comptrollership. By a long-standing agreement, the former committee was always chaired by a member of the biggest party of the coalition, and the latter by a member of the biggest party of the opposition. The arrangement was never allowed to be disclosed to the press, but it worked very well.
It is not clear for whom this arrangement "worked very well," but we may risk a guess that Shiff speaks in the name of the Intelligence services. Since neither the public nor the Knesset were informed about the existence of this arrangement, they couldn't possibly evaluate it. Unfortunately, things turned awry because of David Liba'i, the present justice minister and probably the most liberal Knesset member for many years. Shiff blames Liba'i for wrecking this arrangement. "Under Shamir's government Liba'i served as the chairman of the Committee of State Comptrollership. In that capacity, he decided to establish his own subcommittee for overseeing the Intelligence services. The chairman of the Committee for Defense and Foreign Affairs, Elie Ben-Elissar [Likud] warned him of the grave consequences of this initiative. But Liba'i refused to listen to Ben-Elissar. The latter, confident of winning his case by the majority of votes which the coalition possessed, appealed Liba'i's decision to the Knesset Rules Committee.
The National Religious party [which participated in the coalition] just then had some conflict with Likud [stemming from the latter's refusal to allocate more money to settlements]. In order to exert pressure on Likud, an NRP representative in the Knesset Rules Committee, MK Yigal Bibi, voted with the opposition without even knowing what the vote was about. As a result of this vote, the two-chairman committee ceased to exist, and a new subcommittee for overseeing the Intelligence services was founded in its stead within the Committee of State Comptrollership. When Dan Tihon replaced Liba'i as that Committee chairman in the current Knesset, he stumbled upon the new realities.
"And so he found that for the first time in Israel's history an Arab had been appointed as a member of the Committee of State Comptrollership. He turned for clarifications to the prime minister's office. There he was told that Mahmeed had given them a signed pledge to the effect that he would never demand to attend a committee meeting if told that it would discuss any secret matters. At first Mahmeed wanted to give such a pledge orally. But they [presumably Rabin's officials] demanded that it be in writing, and he consented. By signing this pledge he in a way defined himself as not deserving access to any classified communications. The problem therefore acquired a personal dimension, with all the inflammatory potential personal matters have. However, even before the affair broke, Tihon was told [Shiff doesn't say by whom] that it might be preferable to restore the old arrangement with a two-member informal committee, comprised of him and the chairman of the Committee for Defense and Foreign Affairs." Neither MK Mahmeed nor his party subsequently saw fit to deny the whole story of Mahmeed's self-demeaning pledge or even to somehow comment on Shiffs facts. I have my own reasons to believe that the story is factually correct. But, what is even more curious, Hadash has continued to take pride in Mahmeed's membership in the committee, presenting it as "a great victory," not only for Hadash, but also for "Arab honor."
Again presumably echoing his informants, Shiff believes that "to appoint MK Mahmeed to a sensitive [Knesset] Committee was a mistake." The sentence sounds as if he were pointing to Rabin as responsible for the said mistake. Shiff doesn't say it without arguing his case. "Since Israel is in a state of war, it is too early to put any Arab to such a test." In other words, the Arabs can only benefit from not needing to undergo such tests. Arguments defining discrimination against the Palestinians as really lying in their best interest have been repeated ad nauseam by other advocates of discrimination against MKs from the "Arab parties." Such arguments have a long history. They date from as early as 1910, when the Zionist "socialist" enforcers of the "Jewish Labor" practices claimed that denial of employment to the Arabs served the latter's best interests, because they preferred to work in their natural habitat.
Shiff discloses, also for the first time, that "another subcommittee for Israeli army and Security System affairs, chaired by [a Likud hawk] MK Uzi Landau is still functioning well, because it operates in complete silence." He argues that "the only way to resolve the dispute over MK Mahmeed is to restore the two-member committee arrangement." He informs that "the chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, general (reserves) MK Orri Or [Labor], shares this opinion," implying that other parties to the dispute do not. What about discriminating against the Arabs, then? Shiff also has an answer to that: "Knesset members do not have equal rights of access to classified information. . . . Even in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, where no Arab MK has ever been allowed in, not all [Jewish] members receive the really secret communications. . . . In other words, not all Jewish MKs are viewed as able to keep secrets. Formally, every Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee member can request to see any document under deliberation by one or more secret subcommittees. But even the Knesset veterans don't recall a single instance of the actual use of this right." In Shiff's eyes, therefore, discrimination against some Jews fully justifies discrimination against all Arab Knesset members. But he lets the cat out of the bag by admitting that discrimination has very little to do with the security of Israel: "Even if there is peace between Israel and the Arabs, certain categories of Knesset members will never be allowed to attend the deliberations of [Knesset] secret committees." He considers it superfluous to let out any information on who has made such decisions, under what authority, and why those decisions have for so long been kept secret. Obviously they have not been made by the Knesset.
A former Military Intelligence commander, general (reserves) Shlomo Gazit (Yediot Ahronot, May 13) can explain on the basis of his experience in what ways the Jewish MKs regarded as not trustworthy enough could be prevented from appointments to sensitive Knesset committees. "When I commanded Military Intelligence, I once agreed to Shabak's request to do my best to prevent the appointment of a certain Jewish MK to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Shabak's evaluation was that this MK could not be entirely trusted. I approached the leaders of that MK's party. As a result of my intervention, the process of appointing that party's members to [Knesset] Committees was carried out discreetly, and the appointment of that particular MK to that committee was prevented discreetly." It can be conjectured why instead of approaching the party leaders directly Shabak preferred to request the commander of Military Intelligence to do the job. In all probability, this had to do with the prestige bordering on worship, accorded in Israel to the generals, especially when they wear their uniforms. Still, Gazit's testimony does corroborate everything said in report #120 about the depth of Shabak's involvement in Israeli domestic politics. Referring to the Mahmeed affair, Gazit says straight out: "Had I been asked to assess him today, I would undoubtedly define MK Mahmeed as a security risk. I don't know whether Shabak has a file on MK Mahmeed, and if it has, what it contains. But the entire network of his personal, social and political interactions exposes him to approaches on the part of forces, some of which positively hate Israel and fight it, either by subversion or more overtly. This makes him a security risk, irrespective of his intentions. Had he served in the Israeli army or in any other national service, such considerations would have sufficed to disqualify him from any assignment defined as security-sensitive. It was therefore definitely a mistake to let MK Mahmeed become a member of a committee dealing with security-sensitive matters." Let me clarify that the term "national service," means Jewish service, understood broadly enough to encompass not only public services but also academia and even private business. It may be hoped that the next scandal will contribute to further explanations on the subject of security risks.
Avraham Tal (Haaretz, May 13) discussed the case of the Hadash MK Tamar Gozhanski who, as already mentioned, is also viewed as a security risk despite being Jewish. In Tal's opinion, assessing all the members of the "Arab" parties as security risks is "predicated on the ground of their
representing interests which not only deviate from Jewish national consensus, but are obviously at variance with it." Accordingly, such people should indeed be excluded from decision-making on "fateful" issues. No such decision should be regarded as binding unless it has been taken by a majority of Jewish MKs. "Can we imagine a peace treaty signed against the will of the MKs representing a majority of the Jewish electorate?"
The more influential Dan Margalit [not to be confused with Avishai] speaks (May 14) more to the point. His is a worst-case scenario, intended to show how terrible are the dangers of letting the "Arab" parties' MKs have access to classified documents, let alone of letting their votes determine the shape of a government coalition to come. "A ghastly horror scenario is already written on the wall, and it can materialize any time, possibly even tomorrow morning. Let us assume that the U.S. prepares a draft of the Israeli-Palestinian statement of principles. Rabin finds that the draft raises some serious objections, while the Palestinian delegation in Washington turns down Warren Christopher's initiative to resume talks with the Israeli delegation. Rabin then ponders the question: 'Should I stand firm and reject the U.S. initiative?' I cannot anticipate his decision, nor can any Israeli who hasn't seen the document in question. But one can make a low-risk bet that under such circumstances Darawshe and Mahmeed would tune their political strings to the key set in Tunis. For them, this would be a perfectly natural thing to do, since they have always recognized Yasser Arafat as the only legitimate leader of the Palestinian nation, and they would never be disloyal to him. They will never dare disobey his orders, no matter what they may be, even if their own judgement would differ from a PLO diktat delivered to them from Tunis. They cannot act otherwise, because if they do, they will not be able to withstand pressures exerted on them in their own towns and villages, especially when all their friends, neighbors and political enemies would argue that Rabin's dependence on them gives them a chance to sway him to accept U.S. demands if they only threaten him a little. Accordingly, can Darawshe, Mahmeed and their ilk ever be true partners for the Jews? Can they be allowed to know that two ministers have advised Rabin to make concessions to the Palestinians, when it can be taken for granted that the news will be instantly passed on to the PLO? Or else, can they really stand by the government if it initiates a military operation? Can they possibly agree to any such operation regardless of whether they are briefed about it in advance or only ex post facto? It is hardly possible even to demand that they genuinely support Israel's military actions." In conclusion, Margalit appeals to "Darawshe, Mahmeed and their ilk" not only to acquiesce to discrimination against the Palestinians, but also "to depict it to their people" as "a lesser evil, which anyway is a fact." While professing his "profound respect for Darawshe, Mahmeed and their colleagues," Margalit says he is certain "that when alone in a company of their own, they conceive of their dilemma in terms no different from mine. They certainly realize that for them it would be wise, expedient and comfortable to live under a government depending on a Jewish majority, with the Israeli Arabs at best supporting it from outside: in particular at critical stages of political negotiations."
The best statement of opposition to delegitimation was written by Orit Shohat (Haaretz, May 11). She challenges the views of Shiff, Tal and Margalit forcefully on two levels, pragmatic and principled. On the pragmatic level Shohat points out that apprehensions about MKs betraying secrets somehow are never voiced in regard to Jewish MKs, particularly the right-wing ones. "For some reason, the right-wing MKs are considered to be more reliable as keepers of security secrets than Zionist left wingers [i.e. Meretz], who have never yet been appointed to any really secret subcommittees." As pointed out by the Hebrew press, there are good grounds for suspecting that the religious settlers may yet try their hand in forming an underground organization bent on violence or even assassination of government members. In view of that, Shohat's question why the extreme right-wing MKs are not regarded as security risks is very much to the point. "Why can (if they can indeed) MK Uzi Landau [Likud] or MK Rehav'am Ze'evi (Moledet)-both of them members of the Committee of State Comptrollership-peruse Shabak's secret reports? Right now, Shabak's most urgent task is to infiltrate the settlers. It is even more urgent than infiltrating the Arabs. Landau and Ze'evi may well have a double allegiance problem as between the government and the settlers. Can't it be suspected that they may disclose secret information to the settlers?" To strengthen her case against Ze'evi, Shohat recounts the affair of his close ties with Tuvia Oshri, long suspected to have been an arch-gangster, until the suspicion was confirmed by a court that saw fit to sentence him to life imprisonment for a murder. She wonders why nobody has ever feared that Ze'evi might pass on state secrets to such friends.
On the principled level, Shohat argues that obstructing all Arab and some Jewish Knesset members from performing the functions mandated to them by the electorate runs against the principles of democracy, especially if such obstruction is dictated by the secret police. Shohat shows how the opposition to equality of Knesset members originates with Labor and the Zionist "left." To prove her point she quotes two mutually contradictory statements by Meretz MKs. MK Avraham Poraz from the centrist Shinui party said: "I would prefer that no Knesset member be given access to classified communications to disqualifying a single Arab MK as unfit to see them," whereas MK Hayim Oron of the "leftist" Mapam party "thinks that seating an Arab in an important Knesset committee should suffice to make the Arabs content" enough not to ask for more. Shohat opines that the Labor party should be sensitive about the need to abolish discriminatory strictures against the Arab MKs, but she immediately says that "unfortunately Labor is ill at ease about it." Though she refrains from tracing that "unease" to its roots, she ends up with two interesting conclusions. In the first place, "democracies must take risks. The principle of equality of Knesset members must override any government secrets in importance." Her second conclusion is that "continuing humiliation of the Israeli Arabs damages state security more than the presence of any Arab MK at a meeting discussing the most secret matters conceivable."
None of the columnists of the Hebrew press said anything about the contrast between the defining of all Arabs (and all Gentiles) as security risks in the Jewish state and the avoidance by all other democratic states of so labelling the Jews (and the fact that any demand to so label them would be instantly defined there as rabid antisemitism). Many Israeli Jews are, however, somehow aware of that contrast. It was discussed at length in a number of letters to the editor, most of which favored some discrimination of the Arab MKs. Let me quote passages from a letter of one Mordechay Shrik (Haaretz, May 17), which may be regarded as typical:
MK Hashem Mahmeed is an Israeli citizen lawfully elected to the Knesset. We can take it for granted that he must recurrently experience an inner conflict between his Israeli citizenship and his Arab nationality. Whoever wants to let him join a subcommittee discussing any secret matters, acts to his detriment by virtue of aggravating his mental turmoil which is there anyway. In effect, he may be tempted, God forbid, to commit a crime. Why should we expose him to temptations which cannot be resisted by Jews in other countries, if we recall the Jewish spy ring in Egypt, or the Jewish underground in Iraq, or illegal Jewish activities in Morocco? Didn't the Jewish employees of the [British] Mandatory administration in Palestine betray it routinely by passing on information to the Jewish Agency, the National Jewish Committee or even to [Jewish] terrorist organizations? Why is it that services our state or its agencies want the Jews of the world to perform for Israel are regarded as respectable, while services MK Hashem Mahmeed's nation may want him to provide [are regarded] as reprehensible? This is why anyone feeling empathetic toward MK Mahmeed must do his best to prevent the conditions under which he may face an agonizing choice between his loyalty to his civic duties and to his people.
The leftists who laud democracy to the skies while campaigning for MK Mahmeed, possibly even against his will, are dishonest to the core. What they should say instead is: "Much as we want to be a democracy, we cannot but take it for granted that some differences between Jewish and Arab citizens in the State of Israel cannot possibly be obliterated". . . . Israeli citizens are entitled to equality in all walks of life, except in cases when equality simply runs against nature. Those who insist on a kind of equality which is incompatible with human nature, will wind up with extremes of inequality.
Mr. Shrik's words can be seen as recapitulating the very essence of Zionism in a relatively moderate form, compared, for instance to Ariel Sharon's version of the same, presented at the last Likud convention. Sharon said there that "we, the Jews, returned to the Land of Israel not in order to establish a democracy here but in order to establish a Jewish state" (all Hebrew papers, May 18). It can be seen clearly that democracy (whose benefits the Jews demand for themselves in countries other than Israel), and the Zionism of "the Jewish state," are two irreconcilable things. Right now, a still relatively tiny segment within the Israeli Jewish public opinion already recognizes their irreconcilability, while responding to it in most diverse ways. Long and voluntary submission of Israeli Jewish politicians to nearly all demands of the secret police can in my view be attributed to their identification of the latter as a guardian of their most cherished values, and their most vital interests. As a rule, Israeli Jewish politicians still regard the interests of the Jewish state as overriding democracy and human rights. |
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