In 1965, the justices of Israel's Supreme Court disqualified the Arab List, which was based on the Al Arad movement, from running for the Knesset. The justices wrote that: "There can be no doubt that Israel is not only a sovereign, independent state that embraces liberty and is governed by the people, but was also established as a Jewish state in the Land of Israel."
Among the justices who ruled to exclude the Arab List was Shimon Agrent, whose rulings promoted democratic principles that included freedom of the press. He handed down a ruling that overrode a decision to shut the newspaper Kol Ha'am. The justices saw Israel as a democracy that was defending itself and thought that movements that sought to destroy it must not be allowed to gain traction in the Knesset. The cited the Weimar Republic of Germany, which collapsed under the pressure of anti-democratic forces.
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This week, we saw the Joint Arab List running amok in a process of democratic insanity. Democracy is shaken up when anti-democratic players grow strong at the expense of the people and their votes. The legal system, the party of retired military chiefs, the Palestinian party, and the media are all destructive to democracy, taking advantage of the "liberty-embracing" Israeli society.
The parliamentary putsch by Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, and Ofer Shelah was nixed thanks to a few brave MKs. But damage has already been done. The idea of bringing in political forces that reject the existence of the Jewish state and serves the nationalist goals of the Muslim world has even farther-reaching implications for the nation's survival than the Oslo Accords did in their time.
The Oslo Accords, as mistaken and dangerous as they were, came into being through peace negotiations with the enemy. Then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, then-head of Meretz Yossi Beilin, and Shimon Peres believed they were promoting the interest of the state of Israel. Whereas the alliance between Blue and White and the Joint Arab List is based on the idea of governing at any price, even if that price is handing the Joint Arab List veto power on who would serve as prime minister of the Jewish state; canceling the gains of the Trump peace plan; and rejecting other national interests. Unlike Rabin, who knew that the PLO was the enemy, Gantz and his friends take those who serve the enemy, whitewash them, and present them as vital governmental partners.
For the heads of Blue and White, delegitimizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has turned into dehumanizing him. He has become untouchable as far as they are concerned. As Blue and White No. 2 Yair Lapid put it, it's either a minority government that depends on the Joint Arab List or a fourth election. They are so befuddled that they cannot see the reality Israel is currently grappling with – a nascent economic crisis resulting from the coronavirus epidemic.
The Left's campaign to dehumanize Benjamin Netanyahu puts the prime minister in exactly the same position as Jews who are the target of anti-Semitic attacks.
At the start of the week, Lapid was furious at the criticism being aimed at him. He said if only the state weren't trapped by a dangerous, unstable leader who was steering it toward disaster. "We won't compromise on Israel's security." I found his response: "Dangerous and unstable leader who was steering it toward disaster." ironic, as Lapid, Shelah, Gantz, and Ya'alon are already leading Israeli society toward disaster. Lapid isn't the only one saying these things. Some of the retired defense chiefs have also used extreme language. But that's exactly what the people who have spent years trying to delegitimize the state of Israel tend to do.
During the Second Intifada, when Israel was facing a wave of terror, unprecedented in the western world, with dozens of people being killed bombings on buses or restaurants, a group of left-wing Israelis were publishing articles in the foreign press and signing letters and petitions that blamed Israel for perpetrating genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people. The film "Jenin, Jenin," was produced in that spirit, even today its director Mohamad Bakri is a hero in leftist circles in Israel and abroad.
"The loss of legitimacy effectively means the loss of the right to speak and debate in various forums. When a political entity is widely delegitimized, and it makes no difference what its speakers have to say on any subject, even when no unique principle is up for debate, their remarks are seen as irrelevant," the late Professor Ehud Sprinzak wrote in 1984 in a great article titled Anti-Zionism: From Delegitimization to Dehumanization.
From a majority to legitimacy
Ofer Shelah is leading the charge against Netanyahu's activities, and he is the one representing those that calls Netanyahu's supporters "baboons."
Lapid's insane comment about "dangerous, unstable, disaster" - which many are repeating in various versions – is intended to isolate Bibi and stigmatize him as a stray who must be removed from the realm of legitimate discourse. Stray dogs are shot, not brought into the discussion. Lapid says what Shelah thinks. Anyone who has been following Shelah's remarks on Netanyahu over the past few years might notice that he never directly addresses Netanyahu's actions, dismissing them all by saying that "Everything Netanyahu does is for his personal survival."
Shelah is Lapid's "Mr. Security." In an interview a few years ago, Shelah said he wanted to be defense minister. He is an educated man, with a Spartan-bourgeois worldview. He talks a lot about the serious wound he sustained while fighting with the IDF's elite Shaldag Unit in 1982. He never stopped functioning or commanding under fire. He was a company commander in the IDF Paratroops Brigade, the son of an NCO in the paratroops, and today there are those who say that the company commander is the one who is somehow navigating for the three blind chiefs of staff.
According to one story, Shelah once told an IDF major general that people like him were the reason he (Shelah) was pushing his children to study math and English so that when the time came, they would be equipped to leave Israel. The Blue and White gang represents a ruling class in Israel which, in order to regain power, is even willing to join forces with representatives of the enemy. Public figures Moti Gilat and Yehonatan Geffen said things following the election that are typical of that class - Gilat said that most Likud voters were on some level criminals, and Geffen called Netanyahu "king of the monkeys."
Meanwhile, Channel 12 News called Likudniks "baboons" and "sleaze." Another senior journalist found a Shimon Peres-like way to delegitimize Netanyahu: by saying that Netanyahu has a majority, but not legitimacy, whereas Gantz had legitimacy but no majority. In other words, the votes some two-thirds of the Jewish population in Israel cast for the Likud were nothing more than a nuisance.
The above doesn't make any difference when that the 'legitimate' Gantz's plans with Joint Arab List leader Ayman Odeh and Balad leader Ahmad Tibi have caused Israel's legitimacy as the Jewish state to crack.
