A Quick Diversion To Tunisia
March 26, 2012 § Leave a comment
Despite it not being Israel or Turkey, I write about Tunisia a lot as well, and there is some significant news today on that front. Contrary to some who insisted that the ruling Islamist Ennahda Party was no more moderate than any other Islamist party in the Arab world and that their proclamations regarding not making religious dictates compulsory was cover in order to win over Western audiences, Ennahda has announced that it will keep the language in the first clause of the existing Tunisian constitution in place. This may seem trivial, but it is significant because the Tunisian constitution makes no mention of sharia law, and Ennahda is not going to alter that despite its Islamist ideology. This is going to make it harder for them to defend their right flank and will likely prompt an outcry from Tunisian Salafists, who have been demanding sharia law and a rollback of the more liberal social legislation that has been a hallmark of Tunisia since the days of Habib Bourguiba. This is just the latest in a long list of reminders that not all Islamists – even Arab Islamists – are the same. Ennahda advocated for democracy and was receptive (and even positive) toward Western influences well before the Arab Spring, and it has consistently pledged to maintain Tunisia’s secular Personal Status Code. Furthermore, its founder Rachid Ghannouchi wrote decades ago that secularism with personal freedom is preferable to sharia with authoritarianism, so today’s announcement on the constitution should not surprise anyone. Some object to the description of Ennahda as moderate given Ghannouchi’s and others’ statements on the acceptable use of violence against Israel, but the harsh reality is that even Arab liberals espouse some odious positions on Israel and Jews, and moderation in Arab politics is a sliding scale. On every other issue, Ennahda is aptly described as moderate and does not appear to have a nefarious plan to institute creeping sharia through the back door. It instead presents a hopeful model for what an Islamist regime can look like when it is focused on policies that will improve democratic quality and social freedom in an effort to win votes past the initial election rather than on policies designed to create Islamic social homogeneity. It is important to object to Ennahda’s position on when it is ok to kill Israelis since Israeli life should be deemed just as valuable as any other, but that should not blind anyone to the fact that it is a completely different organization in both tenor and practice than the Muslim Brotherhood.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming…
Right After I Write About Turkey’s Jews, They Are In The News
March 26, 2012 § Leave a comment
And they are understandably upset over cosmetics companies using Hitler to sell shampoo. It might be because Youtube was banned for over three years between 2007 and 2010, but clearly Turks are not familiar with the Downfall parody meme.
Migron and What Comes Next
March 26, 2012 § 1 Comment
Migron is the kind of place that should never be in the news. It is a relatively small outpost in the West Bank that was started, vacated, and started again, built on land privately owned by Palestinians, and will never in a million years be part of any land swaps that might take place should the Israelis and Palestinians work out a peace agreement. Last August, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered it to be evacuated and demolished by the end of this month, and there is no reason that anyone but the government and the residents of Migron should have thought about it ever again. Yet, Migron is now all over the news because the government negotiated a deal with Migron’s residents to allow them to stay for another three years and then amazingly asked the Supreme Court to ignore its own ruling and approve the new agreement.
This might seem at first glance like a strange strategic move, but it was actually a smart one on its face because the makeup of the Court has changed. The new president, Asher Grunis, is a conservative who was able to assume his new position last month despite being less than three years away from the mandatory retirement age of 70 after the Knesset passed a law clearing the way for him to be appointed. The reason this was done is because his predecessor, Dorit Beinisch, who was responsible for the Migron decision among others, was seen as extremely activist and the assumption was that having Grunis at the helm would make the Court more compliant with the government’s wishes. In the first real test of this theory, however, the government has been unpleasantly shocked, as Grunis was part of the three judge panel that unanimously ruled yesterday that the deal between the government and Migron’s residents does not supersede the Court’s order from last August, which means that Migron must be demolished by the end of the week August 1.
No matter what your political persuasion, it is tough to view this as anything but a victory for the rule of law and judicial independence. The Court’s order was clear, and the fact that the government and Migron’s residents petitioned the Court to approve their deal casts aside any doubts as to whether the government has the power to simply disregard the original decision. The question now is whether the Knesset will scramble to pass a bypass law that nullifies the Court’s decision through a legislative override. If this happens, it will be a truly disastrous move on a number of fronts. With all of the attention that has been focused – including by me – on the various anti-democratic legislation moving through the Knesset, passing a law to avoid enforcement of a Court decision that was itself an attempt to enforce a previous Court decision would add unnecessary fuel to the fire, and provide ammunition to people who erroneously declare Israel to no longer be a democracy. A legislative override will also further doom any last shred of prospect that remains for a peace agreement with the Palestinians, since if the government cannot bring itself to evacuate a place like Migron, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine ever uprooting any settlements as part of a negotiated deal for a Palestinian state. Bypassing the Court is also terrible timing given that Israel is about to face Goldstone Redux, since the new UN committee set up to investigate the settlements is without a doubt going to issue a damning report, and Israel is making the same ill-considered mistake it made last time by refusing to cooperate at all and cutting off all communication with UNHRC commissioner Navi Pillay. What is going to happen next is sadly predictable – Israel will not try to lobby the committee at all in the belief that doing so would grant the committee legitimacy, the committee will blast Israel in every possible way and the government’s strategy will be an utter failure when nobody ignores the report or accepts Israel’s argument that its lack of cooperation makes the report illegitimate, and Israel will then spend months, if not years, complaining that its side of the story was not represented and that it is being unfairly demonized by a one-sided version of the facts.
So for a variety of reasons, this is just not the time to create an even bigger mess by sending the message that Israeli Supreme Court decisions can be ignored whenever they put the government in an uncomfortable position or conflict with the politics of Likud’s coalition. Yet, I’ll bet almost anything that Migron is not evacuated and demolished by week’s end August 1, and that Likud’s younger rightwing vanguard does everything in its power to make sure that the Migron decision is consigned to nothingness. The Knesset’s current coalition politics will not allow anything less, and Israel will continue to fight a losing battle to convince the world that it is blameless for the situation with the Palestinians and that it will be able to withdraw from part of the West Bank whenever the Palestinian leadership is interested in returning to the negotiating table. Migron and all of the machinations surrounding its eventual fate is a crushingly sad symbol of the state of Israeli politics and the inertia of the peace process.
Turkey’s Jews
March 23, 2012 § Leave a comment
This FP essay from a Libyan Jew about his desire to return home and rebuild the Libyan Jewish community, which is literally non-existent, has been making the rounds, and it got me thinking about the Turkish Jewish community, which has between 15,000 and 25,000 people depending on whom you ask. I got to spend some time with Istanbul’s Jews right after the Mavi Marmara incident when I was there doing research in 2010, and the community was understandably skittish and on edge. On the one hand, many Turkish politicians and editorialists took care to make a distinction between Israel and Jews and stress that Turkey’s Jews were not to blame for Israel’s action, but this is something that is easier said than done and Turkish Jews often felt that the distinction was lost on many people. The community had long taken extra precautions – synagogues, including the one on Büyükada, are surrounded by barriers, blast walls, and have armed checkpoints at the entrances – but everyone was on higher alert than usual that summer.
One of the things I found particularly interesting was the perception that Turkey was on its way to becoming like Iran and would soon be a theocratic state. As an impartial outside observer and particularly as one who studies Turkish politics and foreign policy for a living, this contention seemed absurd to me but to Turkey’s Jews it appeared as if the AKP was moving in that direction. Some of them spoke about the way in which Erdoğan initially embraced the Turkish Jewish community, going so far as to be the first Turkish PM to visit Turkey’s chief rabbi in his own office following the synagogue bombings in 2003, and how his actions and especially his rhetoric had dramatically changed following his 2007 reelection. They also talked of seeing many more veiled women in Istanbul and more open hostility toward Jews in the streets from random Turks. What was so fascinating though is that a number of them volunteered to me that they had voted for the AKP over the CHP and would do so again. The rationale was that things would be worse for the Jews with the CHP in power because they are secular nationalists who do not understand religion, and while the AKP is a Muslim party, it respects religion in general whereas the CHP does not. Some Jews were also wary of the CHP’s burgeoning ties to far-right parties such as the MHP.
Another observation is that Turkish Jews felt a strong connection to Turkey and were more ambivalent toward Israel than, for instance, American Jews. Many Jews are emigrating to Israel from Turkey, but they seem to feel that their hand is being forced since they don’t feel comfortable any longer and that their strong preference would be to stay. Some told me of their certainty that they will make aliyah at some point in the future, but they didn’t appear to be terribly excited at the prospect. This is understandable in light of the fact that Turkey’s Jews have been there since they were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, and many can trace their roots all the way back to the 15th century. When your family has been in a place for centuries, uprooting to go anywhere else is traumatic. Hopefully, Turkish Jews will feel comfortable remaining where they are, as strong Diaspora communities are the historical backbone of Jewish survival, and those that choose to leave will do so because they genuinely want to rather than feeling as if they have to.
Is Netanyahu The Decider on Iran?
March 22, 2012 § 1 Comment
The quick answer is only partially. In undertaking such a big decision, the Prime Minister needs to gain approval of a larger group of ministers. Eli Lake reported on the smaller group called the Octet (Shminiya in Hebrew) that is comprised of an informal group of seven officials aside from Netanyahu – Ehud Barak (Defense), Avigdor Lieberman (Foreign), Eli Yishai (Interior), Dan Meridor (Intelligence), Moshe Yaalon (Strategic Affairs), Yuval Steinitz (Finance), and Benny Begin (minister without a profile). However, Lake’s take is not entirely accurate, since there is a Lake focuses on the Octet, but also mentions the larger official security-political cabinet of fourteen that would probably have to give the official go-ahead before Netanyahu undertakes a decision. There is a lot of speculation on where people fall on the issue with some waffling, and Lake contends that Lieberman has switched his position from being against a strike to being in favor of a strike. There was a report in Maariv last week (Hebrew language only) that in the group of fourteen, eight are in favor of an attack and six are against. Of perhaps greater consequence though is that four members of the Octet – Yaalon, Yishai, Meridor, and Begin – are currently opposed to Israel carrying out a strike, and if Lake is correct that this is the group that actually needs to come to an informal consensus, it contributes more evidence to my argument that an attack on Iran is not imminent. Other people to watch are high ranking IDF officials, with Chief of Staff Benny Gantz having to be on board for a strike irrespective of the cabinet’s views. Pay attention to the speculation that you read arguing that Israel will or will not go ahead with a strike, and remember that anyone who paints it simplistically as being solely up to Bibi and his mood does not have any real idea how the Israeli political system works. Netanyahu is in favor of an attack, but unlike George W. Bush he is not The Decider.
Why I Do Not Agree With A Settlement Boycott, Cont.
March 22, 2012 § Leave a comment
I wrote a few days ago that one of the reasons I do not support Peter Beinart’s call for a settlement boycott is that it is unlikely to achieve the result that he believes it will since the Israeli economy does not depend on the settlements to a particularly large extent. Via the Forward, some hard facts and numbers backing up my assertion and an acknowledgement from Beinart himself that the economic impact would be limited.
