WILL ‘CRUSHING THE OPPOSITION’ BE RABIN’S LEGACY? SUPPRESSING DISSENT ON GOLAN FORMULA FOR CRISIS

Precis: The most serious threat to
Israeli democracy may prove not to be the assassination
of Yitzhak Rabin, but the steps taken in response to
that heinous act. These include efforts to
discourage, if not suppress, a needed debate about the
nation’s peace policies, in general, and towards Syria,
in particular. In the absence of an informed and
meaningful debate, mistakes are virtually certain to be
made, mistakes that may jeopardize not only civil order
in Israel but also the very survival of the Jewish State.
Those committed to the security of Israel, both at home
and abroad, must facilitate — not impede — the
expression of differing views of how best to achieve and
preserve peace.

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, the Israeli government
announced that it would henceforth act to deny
“right-wing extremists” their rights under
Israeli democracy to free speech, travel and other
activities that might contribute to incitement of
violence and cause damage to the “peace
process.” These steps have been justified by Prime
Minister Shimon Peres as a necessary response to the
assassination of his predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin — a
heinous act said to have been stimulated by descriptions
of Mr. Rabin as a traitor portrayed in Nazi uniform.⁽¹⁾

Most modern democracies — including the United
States — have had to wrestle in recent years with the
delicate balance between respect for fundamental civil
liberties and human rights and restraint of behavior
inimical to a free society. In the Israeli case, some
influential figures in the government appear intent on
securing partisan advantage by associating the mainstream
opposition party, Likud, with odious extremist groups.

A Bolshevik Approach to Democracy

A particularly graphic example of the phenomenon was
shown on American television last week when ABC News’
“Nightline” broadcast a two-hour-long
“town meeting” from Jerusalem moderated by Ted
Koppel. In the course of a series of tense and often
bitter exchanges between, among others, representatives
of the Labor party and Israeli peace movement on the one
hand and Likud politicians and settler activists on the
other, Haim Ramon — who was appointed today to a Cabinet
position as Minister of Interior — made the following
statement:

“Maybe we can reach a consensus on some
issues. But at the end of the dialogue, if we will
not reach an agreement, we must agree on the one most
important principle — that the majority will decide,
a democratic majority, and everybody, everybody, will
respect it. And that those that are not going to
respect it, from now on, will be crushed.”

Mr. Ramon suggested elsewhere in the program that
“We are talking about crushing, crushing unjust
forces” as opposed to the parliamentary opposition.
Still, it is far from clear what the precise distinction
would be between activities deemed disrespectful of the
will of the majority — and, therefore, subject to
“crushing” — and the legitimate dissent of
elected members of the Knesset and other participants in
a democratic debate.

The Pre-Assassination Policy

What makes this ambiguity particularly troubling is
that it follows a protracted effort on the part of the
Rabin government to discourage debate both in Israel and
in the United States concerning the wisdom of Israeli
peace policies. As the Center for Security Policy noted
on 18 September 1995 in a Decision Brief entitled A
Memo for Rabin: Will His Legacy be an Israel at Risk and
an American Pro-Israel Community Too Fractured To Help?
(No. 95-D 63):

“The prime minister has adopted a sort of
‘Rose Garden’ strategy for dealing with American
friends of Israel concerned about the agreements he
is forging with Israel’s long-time enemies.
Rather than respond to thoughtful, substantive
criticism on its merits, the Rabin government has
sought to discredit the critics. At the same time
that public support for his policies is diminishing,
Rabin seems to be seeking the counsel exclusively of
a small group of advisors, all of whom agree with him
— a familiar and unhealthy pattern. And
tried-and-true American friends of Israel are
routinely demeaned as mere ‘enemies of peace’ and
consigned to the growing list of persons considered non
grata by the embassy of Ambassador Itamar
Rabinovitch. Frequently, their motives are further
impugned by the suggestion that they are simply
agents of the Israeli political opposition.

“Perhaps worst of all, however, has been
the practice of actively opposing congressional
deliberations about the Rabin initiatives and their
problematic implications for U.S. interests,
taxpayers and military personnel. With the
Clinton Administration’s strong support, intense
pressure from the Israeli government and the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has
helped to dissuade key committees on Capitol Hill
from allowing careful, timely public scrutiny of even
such basic questions as: Should ongoing PLO
non-compliance — for example, with its obligation
under the Declaration of Principles to end terrorism
against Israel — be rewarded with hundreds of
millions of U.S. tax-dollars? Should American
personnel be placed on the Golan Heights, within
miles of the headquarters and training camps of many
of the world’s most dangerous terrorist
organizations? Should Syria be removed from the list
of nations sponsoring terrorism and drug-trafficking even
though it continues to do both, simply because it
signs a peace treaty with Israel?”

Speaking of Syria

The Israeli government’s current campaign to suppress
debate at home and in the U.S. about the wisdom of its
peace policies is not occurring in a vacuum. In fact, it
coincides with reports that Prime Minister Peres intends
to use the political capital accruing to Labor from the
assassination — and from the party’s efforts to hold
Likud responsible for the climate that allegedly prompted
it — to achieve a peace agreement with Syria. President
Clinton’s special Mideast envoy, Amb. Dennis Ross,
visited Israel last weekend to discuss the status of and
prospects for the Syrian-Israeli negotiations. And today,
National Public Radio is reporting that Prime Minister
Peres is interested in “moving the Syrian talks
beyond security issues” — a formula that sounds
like code for finding economic and political incentives
that might induce Hafez Assad finally to accept Israel’s
surrender of the entire Golan Heights.⁽²⁾

If, in fact, Mr. Peres decides to pursue aggressively
a “breakthrough” on the Syrian front, he would
— once again — be adopting the advice of his long-time
deputy, Yossi Beilin. Beilin, who was tapped today to be
a Special Minister in the Prime Minister’s office, told
the Washington Post in an interview published on
19 November:

“If you ask me, if we are able to make peace
[with Syria], we may win the elections. [But, Labor
may lose the elections even if it fails to reach an
accord with Syria and, if Beilin had to choose,] I
prefer to make peace.

“The window of opportunity is going to close
[referring to upcoming elections in Israel and the
United States.] We are speaking about two, three,
four, six months — that’s it.”

In short, it has clearly occurred to the Israeli
government and its supporters that — to the extent that
legitimate opposition to and debate over Golan can be
attenuated by portraying critics as
“anti-democratic” and “extremists” —
the political risks associated with making major,
controversial concessions of strategic territory can be
minimized.

Glass Houses…

An insightful column published last week in numerous
American Jewish publications by Dr. Irving Moskowitz
describes the difficulty inherent in branding certain
political rhetoric unacceptable in a democracy. He wrote,
in part:

“Among the proposals now being circulated by
the Israeli left is the idea of the government taking
legal action against anyone whose words supposedly
helped create the ‘atmosphere’ which led to the
assassination. To understand just how outrageous this
proposal is, consider some of the statements to which
such legal action might apply:

• “‘Whoever considers going down from
  the Golan Heights jeopardizes and abandons
  the security of Israel.’ The speaker was
  Yitzhak Rabin on June 10, 1992, shortly
  before the national elections. Today, the
  Israeli left would say that the accusation of
  ‘jeopardizing and abandoning the security of
  Israel’ would constitute incitement to
  violence.
• “‘Regarding the Golan Heights and
  regarding the Jordan Valley: these areas must
  be developed and given priority in terms of
  building and employment [by Israelis] over
  other areas in the State of Israel.’ The
  speaker once again was Yitzhak Rabin, in the
  same June 10, 1992 address. By the standards
  of today’s Israeli left, Rabin’s words might
  be characterized as ‘sabotaging peace,’ by
  promoting the development of areas beyond the
  1967 borders.

“The Israeli left claims that references to
Chamberlain or Munich…are ‘incitement.’ But when
there were calls, in 1985, for a Mideast ‘peace’
conference under an ‘international
umbrella’…cosponsored by the U.S. and the Soviet
Union, it was Yitzhak Rabin who declared: ‘Whenever
anyone mentions umbrella it reminds me of Chamberlain
and Munich.’” (Emphasis added throughout.)

The Bottom Line

The Center observed on 18 September, prior to Prime
Minister Rabin’s murder:

“In the absence of…a substantive
response [to informed critiques of the Israeli
government’s peace policies], the practice of
attacking the critics as enemies of peace, tools of
Israeli opposition parties or worse merely fuels
growing suspicions that the Rabin government has no
good arguments to offer in defense of its own
policies. Free debate is in order and
long-overdue. If Rabin continues to insulate himself
and to oppose such debate, he will further fracture
the pro-Israel community in this country — leaving
it ill-prepared to deal with the dangers sure to
accompany a false peace.”

If anything, these sentiments seem more valid in the
aftermath of the Rabin assassination. His successor must
resist the evident temptation to stifle legitimate debate
and to demean those whose opposing positions give rise to
such debate. This point was eloquently made in a recent
op.ed. article in the New York Times by Israeli
opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu:

“The debate is between two mainstreams, not
between the center and the fringes. It must be
treated seriously and with full respect for the
desire for peace of the adversaries. Democracy in
Israel can survive the wrenching trauma of a horrible
assassination; other democracies have. But it may not
be able to survive the delegitimization of honest
debate.” (Emphasis added.)

The decision to give up the strategic Golan Heights
is Israel’s to make. It can only be hoped that such a
momentous decision — if it is taken — will be adopted
and approved in a truly democratic fashion. In that
regard, both Israelis and friends of Israel abroad would
be well advised to bear in mind a comment made in the
course of the “Nightline Town Hall Meeting” by
an Israeli, Esther Wachsman, who lost a son to Hamas
terrorists a year ago:

“At this point, I think peace with our
brothers is a mockery when there is no peace within
our people. Democracy, as I studied it, means
protecting minorities, it means listening with
tolerance, with respect, to different and opposing
views. It means not alienating and certainly not
delegitimizing any member of the population.”

(1) Press reports indicate that an
individual directly involved in the distribution of these
extremist materials — Avishai Raviv, head of the Eyal
organization — has been working in recent years for
Israel’s secret service, Shin Bet, which has confirmed
these reports. The assassin, Yigal Amir, was a member of
Eyal. This development is as amazing as would be an FBI
announcement that it had founded the organization to
which accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVey
belonged.

(2) Presumably, the Israeli
government expects the United States to provide a
significant part of those economic rewards, just as it
historically has for other Arab parties to peace
agreements with Israel. This raises an interesting
question: Since Syria is actively counterfeiting huge
quantities of American dollars, would it be asked simply
to print its own cash infusion instead of dunning the
U.S. Treasury for the real thing?