This Is Why Rabbis Should Stick To Torah Rather Than Politics
May 15, 2012 § 1 Comment
A committee is being established to come up with an alternative to the Tal Law, and the deal that emerges will affect Israel’s Haredi community more than any other segment of society since it will determine what becomes of the system whereby Haredi Jews are granted exemptions from military service. So naturally, one would expect the Haredi parties to be intimately involved in coming up with new proposals and fighting tooth and nail to get as many seats on the committee as possible. Right?
In fact, the Tal Law committee is being boycotted by Shas and UTJ following rabbinical instructions to the parties’ MKs that they should not participate since the Haredi rabbinical leadership is ideologically opposed to compulsory military service for the members of its community. Shas head Eli Yishai, who was previously on record as being willing to consider alternatives to the Tal Law, changed his mind after meeting with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and now says that he is against any negotiations or quotas and that the right of Haredim to study Torah should not be subject to debate. Instead, Shas is going to come up with its own plan for draft reform outside the auspices of the official committee, while UTJ has threatened to leave the coalition on the orders of its own rabbinical leadership should Haredi students be prevented from studying Torah all day.
Boycotts of politics never end well. All that happens is that politics proceeds apace, and the parties that choose not to participate do not get to air their grievances, promote their interests, or affect the results in any way. This is particularly true when the boycotters are not protesting the legitimacy of the political system itself, but rather a specific policy that they do not like. Shas and UTJ are not taking a stand against the Knesset’s legitimacy; they just think that the people they represent should be allowed a different set of rules than everyone else. Now, it is understandable that they think this way, since for decades they have indeed had a different set of rules that were endorsed by the Knesset, the courts, and the other organs of Israeli democracy. The corollary to this though is that if the old rules were deemed to be legitimate, then any new rules that emerge must be deemed legitimate as well.
It seems to me that the Haredi politicians understand this. Yishai seemed willing at first to be involved in crafting a compromise, and apostate Shas MK Haim Amsalem has blasted Shas for not participating in the committee. It is only on the orders of the various rabbis who comprise Shas and UTJ’s “spiritual leadership” that the two parties are now boycotting the committee rather than serving on it. This appears like a logical step to the rabbinic overseers, since like anything else that conflicts with their interpretation of halakha – immodestly dressed women, “secular” music, the internet, etc. – their approach is to ban any contact with it. In their view, the Tal Law committee is going to force Haredim to stop devoting all their time to learning Torah, and since they consider this to be unlawful from a religious standpoint, they will have nothing to do with it and have instructed their MKs accordingly. While the religious logic of this might make sense, the political logic does not. What is sure to happen now is that a compromise will be worked out that will not be to the Haredi parties’ liking, the Haredi community and its leaders will reject it as illegitimate, and Israel will have a new problem on its hands. I do not begrudge the Haredi parties their reliance on rabbis to influence their policy proposals. In a democracy, any party has the right to organize itself as it chooses, and this applies to religious parties just as equally as it applies to anyone else. The Shas and UTJ MKs, however, know enough to realize that religious expertise is not the same as political expertise, and when the rabbinical leadership begins to control tactical political decisions rather than broad policy preferences, it is going to lead to political disaster.
60 Minutes On The Gülen Movement
May 14, 2012 § 6 Comments
Another Monday, another post about 60 Minutes. Last night’s segment of interest was on Fethullah Gülen and the Gülen movement, and centered on the growing number of Gülen charter schools in the U.S. The gist of the report was that Gülen is himself a secretive figure whose true motivations cannot be entirely ascertained, but that he preaches a tolerant brand of Islam focused on education and social mobility and that his Harmony Charter Schools are by all accounts doing great work while at the same time stirring up controversy by appearing to skirt immigration laws. On the whole, the segment’s tone was a positive one, and in a lot of ways it painted Gülen as a cleric who fits in well with the general American creed of hard work, education, and capitalist ethos leading to success. The Gülenists, who can be notoriously thin-skinned, have to be happy with 60 Minutes for portraying them in a good light.
Far more interesting to me is not what 60 Minutes reported but what it didn’t report. All Turks of every political stripe would find it inconceivable that a major American network did a profile on Gülen and his followers without one mention of either Prime Minister Erdoğan or the AKP. In fact, someone with no prior knowledge of Gülenists at all would have thought after watching the report that the Gülen movement has little role in Turkish politics and is nothing more than a somewhat shadowy business conglomerate. The reality is that the Gülenists and the AKP have long been intertwined in many ways with their twin rises coinciding with each other, and the AKP’s decade in power has led to Gülenists now filling many high posts in Turkey’s judiciary and police. Gülen and his followers are not easily separated from politics and their many business interests are not the only part of the story. Gülen media organs, such as Zaman, championed Erdoğan’s rise and now consistently back him, and it has been alleged that the Ergenekon investigation is a reward to the Gülenists as a way for them to get back at the military that oppressed them during the 1980s. While recently there have been rumblings of a power struggle between the Gülen movement and the AKP, the fact remains that it is difficult to discuss one without discussing the other, yet this is the very feat that CBS managed to pull off. For someone who studies Turkey, it came off as a very strange omission.
One thing to give 60 Minutes credit for is that it did not give undeserved airtime to those arguing that the Gülen schools represent a secret plot to introduce creeping Islamization or sharia into American society. To begin with, while the Gülenists are controversial in Turkey because they often come off as a personality cult, there is little question that Gülen preaches tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and a distinctly non-confontational brand of Islam. The folks who rail against Gülen and his schools on ideological grounds have a problem with Islam in general and not with anything that Gülen is saying. There is also the inconvenient fact that the schools are all public charters, which means that like any other public school in this country, there is no religious instruction or school-supported religious activity of any kind. Opening a group of public charter schools would be a pretty boneheaded way of trying to carry out a program of religious indoctrination given that there is literally zero space or opportunity for religion to be pushed, and whatever else people may think of Gülen and his followers, stupid is one of the last words that comes to mind.
Most people who saw the 60 Minutes report probably came away with the impression that Gülen is a secretive guy who genuinely believes in promoting math and science education and whose followers are looking for creative ways to come to the U.S. and carry out this message while simultaneously making money. I don’t think this is a bad read on the situation at all, but given the fact that Lesley Stahl went to Turkey to see what was going on for herself, the absence (aside from a few seconds from Andrew Finkel) of any reporting related to the movement’s political activities in Turkey and the intense controversy that it has stirred up surrounding the prosecution of the military and its critics – no doubt Ahmet Şık would have had something interesting to say on the matter – was odd to say the least. Does this mean that CBS and 60 Minutes are naive or guilty of sloppy reporting once again, or is this more fodder for those who conspiratorially proclaim the awesome and secretive power of the cemaat to silence its accusers? Given what we saw from 60 Minutes a few weeks ago, I’d vote for the former, but no doubt the latter explanation will quickly gain currency among those who see Gülen’s hand in everything that goes on related to Turkey.
The Likud Maneuvering Begins In Earnest
May 11, 2012 § 2 Comments
For those who are not familiar with him, Silvan Shalom is Bibi Netanyahu’s political nemesis and constant foil. He is also somewhat inconveniently one of the vice prime ministers and Netanyahu’s erstwhile main challenger for the Likud leadership. I wrote this in March:
Netanyahu and vice premier Silvan Shalom are long time rivals who do not like each other. The two go out of their way to antagonize each other by scheduling conflicting events and trying to embarrass the other through tactical voting on legislation, and Netanyahu even made sure that Shalom’s face was blocked in the official picture from the Cabinet meeting in which the Gilad Shalit deal was approved. While Shalom often comes across in these confrontations as bumbling and hapless, his resentment of Netanyahu is at the boiling point and Bibi cannot afford to make any of the younger MKs unhappy and risk a genuine leadership challenge within Likud.
Shalom has formally challenged Bibi to be head of Likud twice and both times he has lost, but he is still constantly looking for an opening. Today, while speaking to Moshe Rosenbaum, who is the chairman of the Beit El regional community council which has jurisdiction over Ulpana, Shalom called for an authorization law that would retroactively legalize all settlements and outposts since he believes that fighting for individual hilltops on a case by case basis is not supportive enough of the settlement project at large. These comments came after a cabinet meeting of senior ministers (which did not include Shalom) in which no decision was taken on whether to comply with the High Court order to demolish Ulpana by July 1, and in the midst of pressure from Likud MKs for the government to pass a law bypassing the High Court entirely.
As I have said a couple of times this week, bringing Kadima into the government gives Netanyahu lots of room to maneuver within the larger coalition, but it does nothing to alleviate – and even intensifies – his problem within his own party. Shalom is naturally trying to seize upon this, knowing that Netanyahu needs to placate the hardline members of what is after all a pro-settlement party but that doing so will cause trouble for Netanyahu with Mofaz and Kadima. Likud’s fault lines are being exposed, and it is going to be a Herculean task to try and keep the party in one piece without causing a major political crisis between the Knesset and the High Court. I don’t know that doing so is feasible, and I remain convinced that Likud is going to fracture and that an official split is coming at some point. Meridor staked out his position yesterday and Shalom has staked out his position today – the question is, where does Netanyahu ultimately stand? The answer is not one that he is going to be able to avoid providing for too much longer.
The Clock Is Ticking For Likud
May 10, 2012 § 3 Comments
Dan Meridor, member of the Octet and the security cabinet, deputy prime minister, and one of the Likud princes, has given an interview in which he says that Israel should freeze all settlement construction beyond the large blocs like Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim. Meridor stresses that he believes that the entire land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is historically Jewish but that it is foolish to think that Israel can hang on to all of it while remaining both Jewish and democratic. He says that building all over the place is the single most damaging thing that Israel is doing to itself, and that the policy should be to build up international support for a land swap that would let Israel keep the major settlement blocs. Meridor adds that the whole world is after Israel because of its settlement policy, and that while he would keep Israelis in the settlements until there is a negotiated deal, there is no sense in allowing the settlements to continue growing.
Make no mistake, this development is just as important as the Likud-Kadima unity agreement. Meridor is not a fringe figure and also not someone who is free to say anything he likes by virtue of no longer being in government (see: Ehud Olmert). This is a break with current government policy by a senior minister, and one who is a member of Likud no less. Plenty of people will downplay this, but it really shouldn’t be downplayed. What this is going to do is crystallize the rift in Likud even further and bring things to a head. Meridor and those who agree with him can no longer coexist in the same party with MKs like Danny Danon, Yariv Levin, and Likud’s other Young Guns who take a hardline maximalist position when it comes to settlements. It is not a side issue within the party, but the main issue within the party. As it is, the younger hardliners do not trust the older Likud generation – and this includes Netanyahu – when it comes to settlements, and Meridor’s very public statement that settlement growth needs to completely cease outside the areas that Israel is expected to keep in a deal is the kind of thing that can spark an intra-party civil war.
The pressing question here is whether Meridor is acting alone. On the one hand, Meridor is in some ways a Likud apostate, having left the party to form the Merkaz (Center) Party a little over a decade ago, and then taking his time to rejoin Likud once Merkaz folded. One of the reasons he left Likud originally was because he and Netanyahu did not get along, and he now may very well be providing the rope for Netanyahu to finally hang him with. On the other hand, Meridor is also the perfect person for Netanyahu to use in floating a trial balloon because he is an old-guard Likud member without any higher political ambitions at this point and because he still commands respect both at home and abroad. There’s no way to know what is actually going on, but the timing of this coming right after Netanyahu has built a coalition that can withstand Likud defections is suspicious to me. If it comes to a point where the party splits into factions and Netanyahu has to choose to go with the Meridor wing or the Danon wing, I find it difficult to see him choosing the latter. I wrote yesterday that I think a split within Likud is possibly imminent, and Meridor’s interview will only hasten that along.
Opportunities and Pitfalls for The U.S. and Turkey
May 10, 2012 § 1 Comment
The Council on Foreign Relations has a new report out on U.S.-Turkish relations that looks at Turkey’s rising geopolitical role while acknowledging some of the more worrisome authoritarian trends taking place, and calls for growing the U.S. bilateral relationship into more of an equal partnership in order to recognize and take advantage of Turkey’s new position. I was at the report’s DC rollout yesterday where Madeleine Albright, Steven Hadley, and Steven Cook talked about the report’s conclusions and answered questions, and I have some thoughts about some of their comments and the recommendations contained in the report. I think that the report is overall an excellent document with a great assessment of Turkish accomplishments and ambitions, and it is undoubtedly good strategy for the U.S. to deepens its strategic relationship with Turkey and expand it on issues of joint interest. I do worry, however, that too heavy a reliance on Turkey risks putting the U.S. in a bind since there are going to be issues on which the two countries are never going to agree and Turkey’s rising ambitions may get in the way of U.S. interests in crucial areas.
As the report notes, Turkey has recently been an important and helpful ally in many ways, and the U.S. would be smart to deepen the relationship across all sectors of government and the bureaucracy. Either Steven Cook or Steve Hadley (don’t remember which) observed that relations have traditionally been based on defense and military issues but that this is changing and is part of a natural evolution. I actually wonder if defense issues are going to become even more important in the years ahead while the relationship’s foundation broadens. Aaron Stein pointed out to me yesterday that there is a split in NATO over hosting U.S. nuclear weapons, with Turkey and Italy agreeing with the U.S. on keeping nuclear-armed aircraft on their soil and Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands wanting them gone sometime during the next decade. This makes Turkey an even more valuable defense ally than it already is, and makes me wonder whether the combination of the differences within NATO over its future and the fact that Turkey already has the largest military in Europe means that there will be an eventual shift away from U.S. reliance on NATO and more of an ad hoc coalition between the U.S., Turkey, Britain, and other countries. No matter what happens, a real partnership with Turkey is unquestionably in U.S. interests and will only be beneficial since it makes lots of sense to closely align ourselves with the dominant growing power in the region.
What concerns me is a point made by Albright, when she said that people ask her if its a problem that we are too reliant on picking up the phone and calling Erdoğan whenever we need something, and her response to that is that its not and that we should be relying on him even more. On some issues our interests with Turkey align perfectly but on others they don’t, and this notion that the U.S. should be depending on Erdoğan to always advance our interests is a dangerous one. Turkey has its own goals for the region and the world, and on issues from Iran to Israel to Sudan its interests might not be in concert with American ones. Turkey is also madly casting around for ways to solve its growing energy consumption problem and this inevitably leads it to look to Russia, and tighter ties between Turkey and Russia are not necessarily a good thing for the U.S. given recent Russian intransigence on a number of issues and the return of Putin as president. All of this is perfectly understandable on Turkey’s part, but it means that leaning on Erdoğan and Turkey to solve all of our problems has the potential to seriously backfire. Albright’s stance on this appears to be more extreme than that laid out in the task force report, but the report does suggest that better lines of communication might have averted the spat over the Turkey-Brazil-Iran nuclear fuel deal, whereas I am not so sure that is the case. Aligning more closely with Turkey is smart, but farming out parts of our regional policy in the Middle East to Ankara is not.
There is also the fact that Turkey has been displaying some worrying authoritarian tendencies which the report does not at all downplay or whitewash, but that might throw a wrench into developing a genuine partnership. One of the reasons that it has become easy to view Turkey as a real ally is because of its democratic status, but it hints of cynicism to continue deepening the relationship on all levels and relying on the friendship between President Obama and PM Erdoğan while Turkey continues to imprison journalists and even members of parliament at an alarming rate and prosecute officers in trials that have become discredited. It is beginning to cause embarrassing incidents with other countries, and both Erdoğan and Hüseyin Çelik acknowledged yesterday that the February 28 coup prosecutions are beginning to get out of hand, with Çelik worrying aloud about “trouble in the international arena” over the nature of the trials. This suggests that Turkey recognizes that it has a growing public relations problem, although not necessarily that it thinks a solution is required other than speeding up the process. This kind of thing needs to be solved and Turkey needs to move unambiguously in a democratic direction lest it gum up progress on modernizing the U.S.-Turkey relationship.
Two other observations from yesterday. First, much of the discussion got off track and moved away from Turkey and toward the issue of American intervention in Syria, which both Hadley and Albright went on record as supporting (although Albright qualified it by noting that intervention encompasses a wide range of action). I don’t know if this is a harbinger of more intense U.S. involvement down the road, but it’s something to think about. Second, I wonder what Israel’s reaction is to the bipartisan call for a deeper and more equal partnership with Turkey. One of the problems noted by Steven Cook is that stereotypes and negative views of Turkey are more prevalent on the Hill than in the administration which is a barrier that must be overcome, but in my view it will be difficult for this happen while Israel and Turkey are still feuding given the pro-Israel sentiment in Congress. Yet another good reason for Turkey and Israel to resolve their differences…
P.S. Perhaps the best thing about yesterday was Yigal Schleifer suggesting that I find a picture of Ben-Gurion as a law student in Istanbul to use as my blog icon, which I promptly did. So next time you share one of my posts on Facebook, you will be rewarded with the image of Ben-Gurion wearing a tarboosh and looking like quite the Ottoman Zionist.
Religious Minorities and the New Turkish Constitution
May 9, 2012 § 3 Comments
PM Erdoğan caused a stir the other day by giving two speeches in which he called for “one state, one flag, one religion,” which is of course a phrase that does not give comfort to Turkey’s different groups of religious minorities. Hüseyn Çelik and Erdoğan himself both chalked it up as a slip of the tongue, and Erdoğan even called the criticism of him following the remark justified and urged people not to read anything into it, but it is curious that he said it on two separate occasions before two separate audiences. The opposition is going to try to leverage Erdoğan’s comments to raise concerns about his intentions, and the optic of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu meeting with the heads of Turkey’s non-Muslim religious communities yesterday is bound to keep the story alive for a little longer.
I think it likely that it was a mistake and that a big deal should not be made of it, but it does raise the question of how the new constitution is going to deal with religious minorities in Turkey. It is one of the thornier issues that faces the commission charged with drafting the document, although it is also ironically in some ways one of the least pressing given Turkey’s enormous Muslim majority. The original Turkish constitution made no mention of religious minorities at all in an effort to create a new Turkish identity that would subsume all else, and while the AKP has fought for Muslim majority rights when it comes to things like headscarves, it has a more mixed record on religious minority property rights. Erdoğan’s blatant attempt to diminish Kılıçdaroğlu during the last election campaign by constantly bringing up his status as an Alevi was also not an encouraging sign.
There are three basic possibilities. The new constitution might skirt the issue of religion entirely, it might specifically guarantee religious minority rights, or it might enshrine Islam as the sole official religion of Turkey. Certainly Erdoğan’s comments increase fears that this last option is being considered, but I think it to be highly unlikely. The second option has its pitfalls as well though since it touches upon the issue of enumerated rights vs. unenumerated rights; in other words, can we assume that if a specific right is left out that it was done so on purpose and therefore is not meant to exist, or do we assume that any list of rights provided for in the constitution is not an exhaustive list? If rights are specifically provided for, does that mean that only those rights exist and no others? U.S. constitutional law has run into this problem since ratification, and it might be even thornier in Turkey given that Turkish official recognition of only three minority religions – Greek Orthodoxy, Armenian Apostolic Christianity, and Judaism – has historically led to real problems for Alevis, Shia, and others. Whatever ends up happening, it bears close watching even though it does not have the potential to lead to a complete breakdown of the constitutional process like the issues of a presidential vs. parliamentary system or Turkish identity.
Thinking About Likud’s Future
May 9, 2012 § 4 Comments
One of the benefits of the unity coalition deal that Bibi Netanyahu struck with Shaul Mofaz and Kadima is that it strengthens Likud. Kadima’s dropping poll numbers and its new participation in the coalition mean that it will likely merge back with Likud before the next elections, which sets up Likud to gain more seats in October 2013 than it would have in September 2012. From an electoral standpoint, Likud is poised to come close to its 1981 highwater mark of 48 seats if Kadima dissolves and it is in an extremely strong position.
From a structural standpoint, however, Likud is not doing so well. Netanyahu presides over a fractious party that contains a serious split between the older generation of Likud princes and the younger generation of hardliners. Bradley Burston noted the sharp change in tone from previous Likud conventions, in which the head of the party was treated like a king, to Sunday’s Likud convention packed with mutineers who excoriated Netanyahu for not being sufficiently rightwing. Bibi was unable to even secure the position of convention chairman, and it must be a haunting irony for him that he strides the Israeli world like a colossus but cannot manage to impose the same iron will over his own party. Potential challengers like Moshe Feiglin and Danny Danon attack him on his right flank and make all sorts of veiled threats over perceived insufficient support for settlements, keeping Barak in the cabinet, and other issues on which Netanyahu is believed to be wobbly and not fully trusted. It is a maxim of Israeli politics that it is the right that brings down the right, and surely this is a fate that Netanyahu does not want to suffer, explaining his current flirtation with a bill that would override the High Court’s order to demolish Ulpana. Part of bringing Kadima into the government is that Netanyahu will have some space to maneuver should he want to tack to the center on selective issues.
Ultimately though, Netanyahu is going to face a choice over how far to go to placate his hardliners, and that may come sooner rather than later as the High Court’s Migron and Ulpana orders come to call. In light of all this, I will not be shocked if at some point before the 2013 elections we see Netanyahu move to kill off his own party and form a new one. This move is of course not without precedent in Israeli political history; Ben Gurion did it when he felt he had insufficient support from his Mapai colleagues leading to the creation of Rafi and then Labor, and more recently Ariel Sharon did it when he broke away from Likud to form Kadima in order to carry out the Gaza disengagement. Netanyahu is in a similar situation to Ben Gurion in that he clearly does not have an ideal level of support within the Likud ranks, and if he decides that he wants to make a serious move toward peace with the Palestinians he will find himself facing Sharon’s dilemma as well. Netanyahu is also now perfectly poised to form a new party from a position of strength since he would take all of the Kadima members with him should he bolt Likud to form a new party and would take more than half of the Likud MKs as well.
I don’t think this is something that anyone should expect to occur as it would be a huge gamble, and Netanyahu is historically not a gambler. The deal with Kadima though demonstrates a newfound propensity toward bold moves, and creating a new party would eliminate the various Likud thorns in Netanyahu’s side. I think the salient question on this issue is how serious Netanyahu is about making real strides on a Palestinian state. As I have noted before, Netanyahu is in many ways a prisoner of his party and his coalition. He has now solved the latter problem, but has not solved the former one. If Netanyahu does indeed have some more moderate inclinations aching to escape, then cutting off his rightwing flank and forming a new party is the obvious, and maybe only, move to make. Again, this is all theoretical at best and a little too pie-in-the-sky to probably occur, but given the utter surprise that greeted all analysts of Israeli politics on over the past two days, nothing can or should be ruled out anymore.
