The Leadership Must Stop Pandering: Israel as a Free Nation Won't Survive the Occupation

Source: Haaretz, by Zeev Sternhell

Democracy requires acceptance of the majority decision, but it does not mandate recognition of the rightness or the moral legitimacy of the majority.

Ever since the “upheaval” in 1977 that brought Menachem Begin to power, the Israeli center has been haunted by the fear of being disconnected from “the people:” Since the people has turned rightward and extremism is growing, the only possible way to regain its good graces is by imitating the right and supplying the same goods that it does, in different packaging. This sad, pathetic show continues to repeats itself, occasionally with the addition of innovative elucidations: Anyone who withdraws from the majority opinion, who is disgusted by it and who fights it, is said to reject the very essence of the democratic process.

Nothing could be a bigger mistake: Democracy requires acceptance of the majority decision, but it does not mandate recognition of the rightness or the moral legitimacy of the majority. When the majority opinion rejects the universal principles of justice, equality and individual and collective human rights, it loses its legitimacy. Human rights, which in the past were also called natural rights, were devised exactly for this goal, in order to ensure the rights of the individual, of the society or of a national, ethnic or religious minority against the ruthlessness of the majority.

That is why the Jewish majority in Israel does not have the right to deprive the Palestinians of their right to freedom, independence and self-rule, just as it does not have the right to violate the rights of those who reject its opinion to freedom of expression, of association and of resistance. These are exactly the principles in which the majority here does not believe. Is it even possible to change the majority’s opinion and to convince them, for example, that the occupation hurts the Jews more than it does the Arabs? In the present struggle, Palestinian society only coalesces further and doubles down on its negation of Israel, while large parts of Israeli society are losing their faith in the country’s future. An apartheid regime in the West Bank, including placing the “people’s army” at the employ of the settlers, the slow process of brutalization — of which the murder of an incapacitated Palestinian assailant as he lay on the ground in Hebron is only one symbol — create a sense of alienation in many Israelis.

Against this formula of “democracy,” which in practice empties it of its liberal and universal content, this same minority, which observes the slow sinking of its country with forlorn eyes, is rebelling: Nowhere has a democracy of masters lasted over time. This knowledge is what causes revulsion for so many who are unwilling to follow the majority only because it is a majority. Different people give this feeling different expression: There are those that think the battle has already been lost and after 50 years of occupation, almost half the period of Zionism from its beginning, their children and grandchildren have no future here.

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Zeev Sternhell
Source: Wikipedia