Selling Democracy Door to Door

(Welcome to visitors from Haveil Havalim. Please take a moment to go to the home page and take a view from the top.)

The West in general, and the US in particular, is trying to sell Iraq, and its neighbors, on Democracy. But what are they trying to sell Israel? According to Gil Troy, Professor of History at McGill University:

Western diplomats, who like shady salesmen with ties to organized crime, repeatedly strong-arm Israel into buying an increasingly shoddy product, are now pressuring it to accept representatives of an organization committed to Israel's destruction, as long as they are democratically elected....A similar farce is playing out on Israel's Lebanese border, where Hizbollah unleashed yet another barrage of bombs and bullets, once again trying to kidnap Israeli soldiers and toy with their lives. Hiding behind Lebanese sovereignty, violating an internationally recognized, UN-sanctioned border, ignoring UNIFIL "peacekeeping" troops deployed there, Hizbollah strafed Israeli farmers, bombarded Israeli border positions, and shot rockets and missiles into two northern Israeli towns - hitting one home directly. Fortunately, it was unoccupied.

Democracy is the magic word, the silver bullet, that is going to stem the tide against terrorism--particularly Islamic terrorism.

But whose version of democracy?

Martin Kramer critiques Sharansky's "The Case for Democracy" by pointing out that there are different calibers:

The late Elie Kedourie put it best. "The Middle Easterner," he said, "is very far from thinking that he has a right to have a say in politics. All he wants is to be left alone and not to be oppressed." Elsewhere he wrote of the Syrians, as archetypes of the Arabs, that "they have never been much accustomed to being asked their opinion about their rulers. For them the happy man has always been he who has a beautiful wife, a comfortable house, a lucrative occupation, who does not know government, and whom government does not know; in short, the private man."

No doubt this is a desire for freedom, but it is freedom from, not freedom of. What is the difference? You may desire freedom from oppressive government, and still deny your beautiful wife the freedom to drive, or get an education, or go about in public. You may fervently wish not to know government, but still expect blasphemers and adulteresses to be punished by law. You may fight for freedom from oppression for yourself, and not much care if your neighbor is oppressed, especially if he is from a different family, or tribe, or sect.

Using Kramer's definition, one could argue that in Iraq, they are striving for a freedom of. Putting aside the hyperbole and agenda of the media, just what are the Palestinian Arabs after?

Whatever the brand of democracy, the West does not seem to care very much--how else to explain how Iraq and the Palestinians are both held up as examples of attempts at democracy. Yet, in Iraq the Baath party is dismantled--while Abbas wants to integrate terrorists and allow Hamas to take part in the election. Clearly the democracy of the Palestinian Arabs is held to a far lower standard. No messy fuss about guns, terrorists, or their constitution. Just get me to the election on time.

On this point Troy notes:

Democracy requires more than periodic elections. During the bad old days of communism, in Saddam Hussein's late unlamented regime, the world saw how strongmen could strong-arm voters into voting for them. But questions of the legitimacy of the electoral process among the Lebanese and the Palestinians aside, democracy demands the rule of law, respect for others, basic rights for all. An organization that commits mass-murder with no compunction cannot wipe out its crimes by winning some votes.

But no one seems to be stopping them from trying.

Today, Senator Joe Lieberman has a piece in the Wall Street Journal defending what the US is doing in Iraq. At one point he writes:

Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns...

Robust?

The 'voters' are bringing guns to the ballot box and 2 months ago one of the groups running blew up 17 people, including a number of children. This is the very opposite of robust and healthy.

[Update:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party scrambled on Wednesday to salvage a primary election rocked by turmoil that has widened internal rifts ahead of a political battle with its Hamas rival.

...“You cannot say that the elections were really democratic,” Central Committee member Nabil Shaath said about the ballot in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. “There was a lot of fraud and cheating.”]

Two years ago Americans were killed by Palestinian Arabs and today the US still has not caught the murderers. If the US is so invested in seeing to it that there be a Palestinian state that they will let those murderers go unpunished, can we really expect that it look out for Israeli interests?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Palestinians.