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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Category Archives: Israel

The Election Season

12 Fri Apr 2019

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Israel, Middle East

≈ Comments Off on The Election Season

Tags

Benjamin Netanyahu, Bharatiya Janata Party, elections, India, Israel, Likud, Narendra Modi

Israel went to the polls on April 9 and India followed it two days later in its multi-phase, five-week-long format. Though the dates are an interesting coincidence, the two demonstrations of universal adult suffrage have a powerful common theme running through them – in Israel as well as in India, the central issue in these elections is the personality and character of the incumbent prime minister.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared early elections after his ruling coalition collapsed at the end of December 2018 over disagreements on a bill that would abolish the exemption and require haredim to serve in the Israel Defence Forces like all other citizens. An electoral campaign this year, however, was inevitable as the Netanyahu administration’s term was set to expire in November anyway.

What also surrounded the announcement of elections was the shadow of corruption charges against the prime minister – Netanyahu is facing indictment in three corruption cases on charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust. If convicted on all counts, he could face up to 13 years in prison and a fine.

Additionally, Israel is no stranger to the global backlash against liberalism. The country has for long been at odds with the international – American – Jewish Diaspora over several issues of identity such as women at the Kotel, the Orthodox Rabbinate’s monopoly in the personal sphere (marriage, divorce, burial, conversion, kashrut, olim, etc.), as well as over policy such as towards the Iranian nuclear programme, Gaza, and the Arab inhabitants of Judea & Samaria. However, these differences over identity with the Diaspora go back much further than the Netanyahu administration or even the foundation of the State of Israel.

The key question for Israel’s elections, therefore, was the personality and character of the prime minister. Even critics of the current administration agree that the economy is doing well, tourism is booming, and Netanyahu has handled his relations world leaders admirably, balancing ties with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, reaching out to some of the Arab states in the region, and opening up more of the world to Israel. Most importantly, no one in Israel, Left or Right, has a better solution to the intractable problem of Palestinian intransigence on the peace process or Iranian ambitions towards regional hegemony.

Predictably, the Opposition’s core message during their campaign was that they were not Netanyahu; on everything else, they closely echoed existing policies. Ultimately, this was not enough to swing the Israeli voter away from a known figure to a coalition of, at best, imitators, and at worst, unknowns.

India’s elections indicate a similar stamp. As in Israel, India’s economic and security indicators are generally as healthy as can be expected though things can always be better. For all the arguments around the policies of the Narendra Modi government, the core issue most people are voting on is identity. Modi is seen, rightly or wrongly, as the face of a resurgent Hindu nationalist identity that could transform the Indian republic. To his detractors, pace all the courts in the land, Modi will never escape the ghosts of the riots in the aftermath of the Godhra train burning incident in 2002.

Interestingly, many of the prime minister’s supporters are lukewarm about his identity agenda – because they only see symbolism in place of action over the past five years – than his critics are vociferous in denouncing it. Regardless, although conversations in India are ostensibly about economics, security, and other issues, most soon collapse to the Sangh Parivar’s idea of India. The battle for India’s soul, like in Israel, goes back much before the current administration. Yet the Modi government has been by far the most powerful voice for an alternative vision of the India republic.

The Indian Opposition, as in Israel, has little by way of new ideas to challenge the incumbent’s narrative of development or security. The platforms of the various parties seem to be largely lifted from socialist tracts of the 1960s that have failed several times before, interspersed with a dose of the contemporary politics of victimhood. There is little clarity on India’s greatest security threats – cybersecurity, intellectual property lawfare, terrorism, China, or Pakistan – except to say more of the same. While the Modi government has not necessarily distinguished itself on these fronts, the alternative offered is a recipe that has been tried before and found wanting.

The victory of the religious Right coalition was a foregone conclusion in the Israeli elections though how well Likud would fare, especially if the attorney general issued the indictments against Netanyahu, was up for debate. In the final outcome, the Likud emerged the largest party and increased its tally in the Knesset though overcame its rival, the new agglomeration Kahol Lavan, by the skin of its teeth. Similarly, most polling pundits seem convinced that May 23 – the day the results of the Indian elections are announced – will still see Modi in power but the fortunes of his party and coalition are in question.

One advantage Netanyahu had is that Israel’s population and politics have shifted to the Right in recent years and are broadly centre-right. In terms of the broader view of peace in the Middle East, Left and Right are mostly aligned, which is why neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas expressed any interest in the democratic ritual. India’s population, however, is more mercantile. A weak nation held together by a beleaguered state machinery, the majority of Indians are more concerned with quotidian social and material hurdles in their lives. Hence, Modi’s success cannot be as confidently foretold as observers could with Netanyahu.

Pretend as you will, India will vote over the next five weeks on Modi as Israel voted on Netanyahu. Securing his fifth term in office, the Israeli prime minister is on track to be not only the country’s longest-serving prime minister but in all probability the one with one of the strongest legacies. Only time will tell if a similar fate awaits Modi.

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Jews and Israel, Nation and State

21 Sat Jul 2018

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Israel, Middle East

≈ Comments Off on Jews and Israel, Nation and State

Tags

Aharon Barak, Avi Dichter, Basic Law, Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, identity, Israel, Judaism, post-Zionism

The Israeli Knesset passed on July 19 the contentious ‘Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People’ legislation with 62 votes in favour, 55 against, and two abstentions. The slim margin of victory is a good barometer of the divisions the law has exacerbated in the Israeli and Jewish communities, Arabs and Jews, sabra and Diaspora alike.

In essence, the Nation-State Bill (NSB) explicitly declares Israel as the “national home of the Jewish people” and is part of the Basic Laws that guide Israel as a constitution might other states. It further declares that the undivided city of Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state and that the state shall “encourage and promote” the “establishment and consolidation” of Jewish settlements. Other clauses of the Bill reiterate the status of Hebrew, the Sabbath, the anthem, national holidays, and the use of Jewish symbols by the state. Furthermore, Israel will remain open for Jewish immigration and strive to ensure the safety of Jews all around the world.

The Bill was first proposed by former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter in 2011 and has caused controversy ever since. The barrage of criticism has been loudest from Israel’s own post-Zionists and the United States, though Arab members of the Knesset and Europe have not been far behind in their hyperbolic condemnation of the law that heralds the birth of “fascism and apartheid.” The primary concern seems to be that such a law disturbs the equilibrium between Israel’s democracy and its Jewish identity.

There is a fundamental philosophical weakness in this line of argument and it is that it not only takes European social development as normative but also considers only the outcomes that conform to particular theories or ideologies. In doing so, it reaffirms the self-indulgent belief that a liberal politics is truly pluralistic and neutral whereas liberalism actually advocates a dogma of its own that is no less rigid or exclusive than others.

Despite the controversy, if there is one thing that most Israelis agree on, it is that Israel is a Jewish state. The bulk of the NSB – its reaffirmation of Israel’s national symbols and its designation as a safe haven for international Jewry – is de facto law and finds wide consensus among Israelis. The need to restate the obvious and enshrine it into law, however, comes from the equally widespread feeling that the Jewish character of the Israeli state has been gradually undermined by post-Zionist intellectuals, the New Historians, and an increasingly liberal activist Supreme Court beginning with Aharon Barak, president of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006.

The Basic Laws, which serve as the constitution of Israel, clearly establish the civil and political rights of its citizens and make an overt commitment to secularism and democracy. Although the Declaration of Independence unequivocally defines Israel as a Jewish state, what that constitutes was left ambiguous; the NSB remedies this lacuna by providing an anchor to the state’s Jewish heritage and identity.

The circumstances in which Israel was created in 1948, the Jewish experience in Europe over the preceding two millennia, and the status of the country as the sole Jewish state in the world merit some consideration in the Knesset’s desire to cement the state’s Jewish character. Despite the demonisation, much of what the NSB has proposed is no different from many Western democracies. If Israel’s observation of the Sabbath or prevalence of the menorah make it less secular, the same might be argued for Christian countries who observe Sunday as the day of rest and display Biblical symbols in their sigils.

Opponents of the NSB are worried that the reservation of the right to national self-determination in Israel only to the Jewish people (1C) may put the country’s sizable Arab minority at a disadvantage. Yet it is unfathomable that any sovereign state allow national self-determination to any group other than the dominant majority. Spain, for example, has little patience for Basque or Catalan national expression and Italy may not react well to the Alto Adige returning to Austria.

Related to self determination is the encouragement and promotion of Jewish settlements (7A). While foreign critics are worried that this spells a fresh wave of Jewish halutzim to Judea and Samaria, David Hazony, executive director of the Israel Innovation Fund, points out that the Hebrew word used – hityashvut – reminds Israelis of the Negev and the Galilee.

Another fear opponents have of preferential treatment given to Jewish settlements is that the law could cascade into further housing discrimination against Arabs. Again, this is unlikely as Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty passed in 1992 provide certain protections. The NSB, however, does weaken the ability of the court to intervene in mundane quotidian matters of budgetary allocations favouring Jewish population centres over Arab areas. It is important to note that there are already over 400 yishuvim – villages – in the Negev and Galilee that are preferentially Jewish settlements whose right the Supreme Court upheld in 2014 to appoint “acceptance committees” to vet candidates who wish to move to these settlements.

However, conservatives might want to reconsider giving legal force to communal segregation. The right to create exclusive communities does not sit well with a modern cosmopolitan democracy and can only be a recipe for turmoil in the future. They might still work at a smaller scale of an apartment complex but entire mono-cultural settlements could easily be polarised pockets simmering with radicalism and instability. Problems need not arise just from Jewish communities excluding Arabs but even other Jews from Haredi settlements, for example.

The Zionist project was undoubtedly secular, even atheistic perhaps, but it was not seen as hostile to Judaism, its raison d’etre, until recent intellectual developments. There is the obvious case to be made that the NSB is a backlash against the potential Progressive capture of state institutions before it is too late. Yet to call it a frontal assault on the secular nature of the Israeli state is to have too slavish a devotion to the European experience rather than the Jewish story.

An intriguing interpretation is presented by Eyal Benvenisti, a professor of international law at the University of Cambridge, and Doreen Lustig, a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University, who argue that the fears surrounding the Nation-State Law must be tempered with other Basic Laws on Human Dignity and on Fair Employment. Furthermore, reading the Nation-State Law in conjunction with the February 2017 Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law, it appears plausible that the Likud and its coalition partners are laying the groundwork for an inevitability they have realised – a Jewish Israel and an autonomous, Islamic Palestinian region as part of a single state.

The Western keening for Israeli democracy is at least puzzling if not downright hypocritical. Most established nations have used force to forge a national identity and protected it with the banal acts of everyday nationalism and immigration controls; the only difference is that Europe and the United States had achieved this a century ago while Israel is a newer nation. As waves of Muslim refugees threaten European shores, the backlash is already discernible in policies and voting patterns. Israel, though a Jewish state, lives with a multicultural population whose demographics threaten to weaken the core of its identity – an ipseity its people have been persecuted for over the centuries like no other. One cannot fault Israeli lawmakers for a passionate defence of their homeland’s essential Jewish character.

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The Asian in Europe

16 Mon Jul 2018

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Israel, Middle East

≈ Comments Off on The Asian in Europe

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AFC, Asian Football Confederation, Fédération Internationale de Football Association, FIFA, football, Israel, Qatar, UEFA, Union of European Football Associations, World Cup

France are not done celebrating their recent success at the World Cup in Russia but football fans already have their eyes turned towards Qatar, the hosts of the biggest tournament in sports for 2022. FIFA, or the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, the international governing body for football, has declared its intent to expand the competition to 48 countries from the present 32, which was itself an increase from 24 until 1998.

Attention is fixed on the tiny Gulf monarchy and the World Cup it intends to host for another reason – the average temperature during June and July, when the World Cup is usually held, can soar up to 50°C, making it not just difficult but dangerous for players to perform. The proposal is to shift the event to late November when the weather would be more amenable but this clashes with club football season in Europe and South America; FIFA has been in negotiations with them to accommodate the World Cup and allow players to go and represent their countries. To the relief of fans, the Islamic country is also setting up dedicated zones for fans around the stadia where alcohol consumption is not prohibited.

The selection of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup is interesting not just for the change in the format of the tournament it promises to bring or the reworking of the logistics of international football but also because it also brings to the fore the internationally less condemnable iniquity of anti-Semitism. During the bidding process, to strengthen its chances of being selected as hosts, Doha had to categorically state that the Israeli team would be allowed on Qatari soil were they to qualify for the championship. To be fair, were Israel to qualify, it would not be the first time Israeli athletes have competed in Qatar though it remains exceedingly rare. Qatar does not officially recognise the State of Israel though trade relations were established in 1996; business, however, remains around a paltry $1 million.

Listening to passionate fans discuss football may well be a lesson in geopolitics for the uninitiated, if not at least history. Israeli football takes that to an altogether different level. The Jewish state joined the Asian Football Confederation over the protests of many of its Muslim member states in 1954. In response, a large number of Asian Muslim countries boycotted Israel’s football team in tournaments. This created embarrassing situations such as in 1958 when Israel qualified for the World Cup without having played a single match after Turkey, Indonesia, and Sudan chose to forfeit their matches against Israel. FIFA hurriedly arranged for a play-off between Israel and Wales so that the qualifier would have played at least one game on the way to Sweden, the hosts that year; Israel lost and failed to qualify.

Israel were runners up for the AFC Cup in 1956 and 1960, finally winning it in 1964 but only after 11 of the 16 participants pulled out – the Jewish state’s hollow victory came from defeating minnows like India, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Iran, who had refused to play Israel that year, ironically won the first of their three consecutive Asia Cups by defeating Israel in the finals in 1968. In a promotional video about the history of the Asia Cup released by the AFC in 2015, the organisation shamelessly made no mention of the tournament in 1964.

Israel qualified for the World Cup in 1970 but again, its path was marred by politics – North Korea refused to play in Israel and was disqualified. Although Israel finished at the bottom of their group, they managed to hold Sweden and football powerhouse Italy both to a draw in Brazil.

In 1974, Israel was expelled from the AFC after a motion led by Kuwait found 17 supporters against 13 naysayers and six abstentions. In 1994, Israel was finally admitted into the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) but not before they played in World Cup qualifications in East Asia for 1978, Europe in 1982, and Oceania in 1986 and 1990. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has been trying for years to have Israel expelled from FIFA altogether.

The two other anomalous members of UEFA are Turkey and Kazakhstan: the first might be understandable as it is, technically, a transcontinental state, but the latter, as a landlocked Central Asian state who shifted from the AFC to UEFA in 2002, remains a bit of a mystery.

Israeli football officials remain adamant that they are not interested in returning to the AFC but the fact remains that Israeli footballers have faced occasional anti-Semitism during their matches in Europe. In 2003 in Bosnia, for example, spectators chanted “Sieg Heil!” and in 2013 in Budapest, the crowd shouted “Heil Benito Mussolini” and called the team “stinking Jews.”

From the angle of the sport itself, Israel’s chances of qualifying for the World Cup from Europe diminish significantly because the continent is home to most of football’s powerhouses – just England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain have won between themselves 12 of the 21 titles since the beginning of the tournament in 1930. Some of Europe’s teams who fail to qualify could easily win against the best teams of Asia despite FIFA’s regional representation calculus allocating over thrice the spots (six times before 2006) for Europe than for Asia. Israel’s record against Asian teams, on the other hand, has been much better.

Israel’s footballing story ought to lay to rest any notion that sports help build bridges and mend fences between hostile nations. International attention is no less motivated and focused on issues of political convenience. For example, while FIFA has generally kowtowed to the majoritarian impulses of the Muslim members of the AFC, there has been no outcry over the daily human rights abuses in the same countries that call for Israel’s boycott.

For a month and a day, the world revelled in the beautiful game in Russia. Yet a closer look at the World Cup and its history reveals the ugly tentacles of non-conventional warfare Islamic states and their fellow travellers have long waged against Israel without any reprobation from the international community. The message is clear – there is no purity of sport, nor is there any cost for targetting the Jewish state in any way whatsoever.

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