ISRAEL'S GOVERNMENT IS A GRAVE THREAT TO DEMOCRACY

The power of the threat of the popular majority against the government are harbingers of the danger that the coming elections will be called off.

25 july 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)

By Sefi Rachlevsky

Anyone who was present at the demonstration of the tens of thousands of people roaring "Bibi go home" on Saturday should understand the intensity of the threat against the present government. Anyone who heard Yehuda Alush shouting "We're tired of this" at the fat belly of the government knows that it is in fact the vulnerable belly of right-wing rule. The protest is speaking "Likudese." It was this language that helped spur the victory of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin - with "The Likud has cut itself off from the people." Using those materials the tent protest is once again asserting: "The government has abandoned the people."

Anyone who saw the joy with which the Knesset celebrated the Boycott Law should understand what kind of governmental determination and aggressiveness we are facing. Without blinking an eye, it crushed one of the very foundation stones of democracy. The prolonged price in global terms - exemplified in last week's editorial in The New York Times, which expressed doubt as to the democratic nature of Israel - was known. But the gang of democracy-crushers have no god. Nor do they have any intention of removing their talons from the government.

Anyone who listened to Dafni Leef, the organizer of the test protest, describing the National Housing Committees Law - due to be enacted now - as a wicked and cynical law, should understand what kind of a government we are confronting. This legislation is reminiscent of a situation where an abusive husband tries to claim that the real problem is the police who disturb him. With utter cynicism, the removal of restrictions to loot land from the citizens is being presented as an act designed to help them. As in the case of the land itself, the Netanyahu gang is planning to speculate with democracy as well. Like the ghost neighborhoods in Jerusalem, in which the world's wealthy are the owners of empty apartments instead of Israelis occupying them - the country is liable to be stolen from those living in it.

The power of the threat of the popular majority that is taking shape against the government - in addition to the anti-democratic determination to maintain control of it - - are harbingers of the danger that the coming elections will be called off. The first part of the plan, which is the process of being implemented, is enacting the law to enable voting abroad. In a country that many have chosen to leave and in which Jews receive citizenship on the spot, this means a de facto cancellation of the elections.

The law has three right-wing "teeth" to bolster it: First, most former Israelis who chose to move to a place without hamsins, missiles and an alienated government support the right and its adventures from a safe distance. Second, under cover of the Law of Return, tens of thousands of religious Jews who visit Israel can receive citizenship for the purpose of long-distance voting, so as to help choose the government in a country where they don't live. Lastly, the Interior Ministry has the power to create hundreds of thousands of "Pollards": Just as the incarcerated Jonathan Pollard received long-distance citizenship by means of a temporary order, it will be possible to add to the voter registration lists hundreds of thousands of Haredim from Brooklyn, who haven't even bothered to visit here.

This is not some summer hallucination. It is for the purpose of this "looting law" that Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz's special governance committee was established, and is awaiting an anti-democratic legislative blitz when it becomes necessary.

That is "only" the beginning. The same number of people voted in the 1999 and the 2009 elections. Since Defense Minister Ehud Barak's targeted assassination of hope, there has been a sharp decline in the voting percentages of the non-right in Israel. One million people with the right to vote have joined the electorate since 1999, but they didn't actually cast ballots.

Based on past voting percentages, that means 800,000 voters - the vast majority of whom are supporters of the non-right. When they arise against the government to demand their country back, they will constitute a clear majority. And now they are rising up. The young people of the tent protest won't be satisfied with a protest and this time will come to the polls. Furthermore, Israeli Arabs are also capable of translating their anger over racism into a winning protest vote.

A chilling governmental idea is now facing the awakening majority. If the Supreme Court is deterred from acting, what may succeed is a plot to invalidate a party such as Balad. The objective of such a cynical move would be to spur Israel's Arab citizens to protest and not come to the polls. Thus the "ideal" situation would be created: By means of Jews and former Israelis who don't live here, the country would be stolen away from a clear majority of its citizens, who are tired of the right-wing government and want a welfare state that can live in peace.

Against the determination of those entrenching themselves in the government, Israeli citizens must join Leef and her friends in counter-determination - one that will stop the de facto cancellation of democratic elections. That will help rescue Israel at the polls.