Democracy Hypocrisy
To the Editor:
Richard Just makes a valid point regarding dictators who
lecture on democracy [Democracy Hypocrisy], but his accusation of hypocrisy would
have more weight if it didn’t look suspiciously like another thinly disguised
paean to the “only democracy in the Middle East,” Israel. The only problem
there is that the Israeli democracy has cheerfully chosen a known war criminal to
be its prime minister. Sharon’s murders, which go back to1953, are well known to
the Israeli public, yet somehow he has managed to avoid a life spent in prison.
I don’t wish to single Israel out; America has its share of high-ranking war
criminals, as do other democracies. But that’s the point. Too often, when
singing the praises of democracy, we fail to recognize that democracies are only
the least bad form of government. Nothing stops people from choosing to look the
other way when one of their own has a record that ought to lead to a war-crimes
trial.
Donald Johnson
Richard Just Responds:
Donald Johnson is severely mistaken in assuming that the election of Ariel
Sharon as prime minister proves that Israel is no more moral than its enemies. In
fact, Sharon’s career makes a strong case for the superiority of Israel’s
democratic government to the autocratic systems of its neighbors.
In calling Sharon a “war criminal,” Johnson is no doubt referring primarily to
Sharon’s failure to prevent the massacre of hundreds of civilians at the Sabra
and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon during the 1982 war. Following those
massacres, Israel’s government formed the Kahan Commission of Inquiry, which
found that the Israel Defense Forces had erred in allowing Christian Phalangists
— who perpetrated the massacre — into the camps. The committee specifically
held Sharon (who was then defense minister) and General Raful Eitan (who was then
the Israeli Army’s chief of staff) responsible for failing to anticipate that the
Phalangists would kill civilians. Both men were dismissed. It was widely assumed
that Sharon’s career had ended in disgrace.
Let’s compare Sabra and Shatila to another 1982 incident, Syrian President
Hafez al-Assad’s massacre of 20,000 of his own citizens in the town of Hama. It
may come as a surprise to Mr. Johnson that Assad was never held “indirectly
responsible” for these massacres by an independent commission of inquiry. Nor was
he forced to resign in disgrace. Why? Because genocidal autocracies don’t form
commissions of inquiry to investigate themselves. But democracies — such as
Israel — do.
Amazingly, King Hussein of Jordan never formed a commission of inquiry to
publicly question his offensive against Palestinian militants in September 1970,
which resulted in thousands of deaths. I may be going out on a limb here, but
I’ll bet the fact that he’s a king has something to do with this. And I am
certainly looking forward to Saddam Hussein’s formation of a commission of
inquiry to publicly rebuke his own government for the gassing of its citizens at
Halabja in 1982.
No democratic government — Israel’s included — is perfect. But to imply that
the election of Sharon as prime minister calls into question the moral
superiority of democracies to nondemocracies makes no sense. In fact, the arc of
Sharon’s career is a perfect example of how democracies succeed in disciplining
those who err — especially when compared with the record of nondemocracies in
handling similar circumstances. Sure, knee-jerk opponents of Israel think that
Sharon’s punishment for Sabra and Shatila should have been a lifetime in jail
rather than 15 years in relative political purgatory. But that’s a matter of
opinion, and one that almost always serves a cynical political purpose rather
than an objective interest in human rights. At least he was punished at all.
Mr. Johnson need not like Ariel Sharon; a decent percentage of Israelis don’t,
either. And how do we know that many Israelis dislike their prime minister? By
way of a little concept called freedom of speech — which just happens to
be peculiar to democracies.
A Separate Peace?
To the editor:
It is true that moderate American Jews who support Israel, a two-state
Solution, and human rights feel very much alone these days (Jeff
Mandell,”A
Separate Peace? In search of pro-Israel Moderates“) . Trapped between
Jewish establishment “leaders” who move in lockstep with the Sharon
government and a progressive community that is too quick to condemn Israel
and often sees only Palestinian suffering, we feel we have nowhere to turn.
But even though some would silence them, other voices do exist. Progressive
Jewish Alliance, for example, stands firmly with the Israeli peace camp. We
are a grass-roots Jewish social-justice organization, and there are others
like us across the country. Our pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-human rights
position and programming resonate with many American Jews. The challenge is
in reaching them at a time when many in the Jewish community’s leadership are
scared and defensive, and thus inclined to tar any opposition voices — no
matter how loyal — as divisive and inappropriate. But the hundreds of
thousands of Israelis in the peace camp are not disloyal; nor are their
American supporters. Moderate American Jews should not lose hope: There are
tens of thousands of us out there. You just may have to look a little harder
to find us.
Daniel Sokatch
Executive Director
Progressive Jewish
Alliance
Still Unbiased
To the editor:
Geoffrey Nunberg’s article [Still Unbiased: Closing the Case on Media Labeling] is
interesting and convincing, but it seems almost moot. Even if the media
were far more likely to label conservative politicians “conservative” than
to label liberal politicians “liberal,” it would be no evidence of bias, because
there would be such a simple explanation for the behavior.
Due largely to the efforts of talk-show pundits such as Rush Limbaugh, and
arguably to the bumbling of Michael Dukakis, the term “liberal” has been turned
into a slur among a large portion of the population. It’s not that the population
has swung far to the right and hates all liberals on sight; it’s literally that
many people have forgotten that the term ever meant anything beyond the negative
connotation they now attach to it.
(The most egregious, though anecdotal, case might have been the man in 1996 who
told a pollster that he was voting for Bill Clinton because Bob Dole was “a
liberal.” It’s not clear what anyone who would consider voting for Clinton could
have meant by calling Dole a liberal, unless they were using the term as a
random term of abuse.)
“Conservative” has gone through no such transformation. Even people extremely
hostile to conservatives don’t use the word as a content-free slur. It seems
extremely hard to imagine anyone voting for Dole because they considered Clinton
“a conservative”, unless they were following the (idiotic but, among the left,
sadly common) strategy of sending a message to a politician they dislike by
attempting to ensure that he lose to a politician they dislike more.
Of course, most newspaper editors are sensitive to the actual meaning of the
term “liberal.” But they may also be sensitive to the fact that some, perhaps
even many, of their readers are not. It would stand to reason that an editor
would be afraid of labeling a politician “liberal” for fear of seeming (to some
of the readership) to gratuitously insult him or her; no parallel
consideration applies to the label of “conservative.”
So in fact, ignoring any accusation of bias, it’s extremely surprising that
newspapers employ the term “liberal” as often as they do.
Sincerely,
Avrom Faderman