The Likud Central Committee this past week provided yet another installment in the annals of ridiculous spectacles in Israeli politics when it met to discuss and vote when to hold the party's leadership primary election. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his supporters narrowly won their choice for April, while his contenders Binyamin Netanyahu and Uzi Landau lost their campaign to hold the vote in November.
All of the leadership candidates, and Sharon in particular, touted the vote as a determining factor in who will lead the party. That is nothing more than political posturing because it is the primary leadership vote which will determine who will lead the party into the next election, and the result of that vote will likely be the same, regardless of when it is held. Neither the anger in the party over Sharon's Gaza pullout and his ignoring the party's will on that issue, nor the belief among his supporters that he is the only one capable of winning the next election for the Likud, will change much over the next several months.
The stakes in this week's vote were inflated beyond all proportion, with all of the tension, anger, and mud-slinging that are prevalent in the heat of political battle. But the Likud spectacle at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds revealed a much deeper peril for the Israeli body politic. After Landau and Netanyahu and the others made their speeches, Sharon rose to speak. Someone sabotaged the microphones, making it impossible for him to deliver his speech, and he walked out in a storm of anger.
Such vitriol and idiocy is not restricted to the Likud. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has infamously jumped on the stage at Labor party meetings and grabbed the microphone away from whoever was speaking to scream and rant about some long-forgotten issue.
Like Sharon or hate him, the childishness of these pranks must leave every Israeli or supporter of Israel very worried. The people who behave in such childish ways are running our country, both in ideology (or what's left of it) and in practice.
In a democracy, the rules are not made by the parliament. A democracy is a society in which the entire people rule by electing a representative body to make decisions. That body in turn either elects or affirms an executive group charged with formulating policy.
In democratic republics, either the executive branch is nominated by the president as elected head of state and is affirmed by the parliament, or in representative forms of state such as Israel, the president or prime minister is elected by virtue of being the leader of the largest party in the parliament to which he is subservient. In either case, the members of parliament are ultimately accountable to the people who elected them.
In Israel, however, there is a dissonance between what democracy should be and what the situation actually is. Knesset members are responsible solely to the members of their own party's governing body, be it a central committee, a rabbinic leadership or the nominal head of the party. The public which elected the party members have no power to recall any member of Knesset for any reason.
As much as the Likud is the most powerful party in Israel, the 3000 members of its central committee ultimately decide policy for the entire country. When Ariel Sharon turned his back on their decision following the May 2004 internal referendum that rejected the Gaza expulsion plan, he further narrowed the determining of national policy to just one person, himself.
This past week's vote on when to hold the primaries only reasserted the dangerous oligarchy that Israeli "democracy" has become.
It is dangerous because the members of the Likud Central Committee are in their positions not for the good of the country but largely for the political payoffs and patronage that come with the positions. It is dangerous because no person in the Likud Central Committee has any idea what ideology is any longer, no idea why they should pursue one policy over another and no idea who the best person is to lead this country. And it is dangerous because the members of the Likud Central Committee proved that they are some of the most childish people in this country.
To leave decisions of national, historical and even international importance in the hands of 3000 ignorant, corrupt, and juvenile people who can think of nothing better to do than pull childish pranks speaks of a very uncertain future for us all.
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
All of the leadership candidates, and Sharon in particular, touted the vote as a determining factor in who will lead the party. That is nothing more than political posturing because it is the primary leadership vote which will determine who will lead the party into the next election, and the result of that vote will likely be the same, regardless of when it is held. Neither the anger in the party over Sharon's Gaza pullout and his ignoring the party's will on that issue, nor the belief among his supporters that he is the only one capable of winning the next election for the Likud, will change much over the next several months.
The stakes in this week's vote were inflated beyond all proportion, with all of the tension, anger, and mud-slinging that are prevalent in the heat of political battle. But the Likud spectacle at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds revealed a much deeper peril for the Israeli body politic. After Landau and Netanyahu and the others made their speeches, Sharon rose to speak. Someone sabotaged the microphones, making it impossible for him to deliver his speech, and he walked out in a storm of anger.
Such vitriol and idiocy is not restricted to the Likud. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has infamously jumped on the stage at Labor party meetings and grabbed the microphone away from whoever was speaking to scream and rant about some long-forgotten issue.
Like Sharon or hate him, the childishness of these pranks must leave every Israeli or supporter of Israel very worried. The people who behave in such childish ways are running our country, both in ideology (or what's left of it) and in practice.
In a democracy, the rules are not made by the parliament. A democracy is a society in which the entire people rule by electing a representative body to make decisions. That body in turn either elects or affirms an executive group charged with formulating policy.
In democratic republics, either the executive branch is nominated by the president as elected head of state and is affirmed by the parliament, or in representative forms of state such as Israel, the president or prime minister is elected by virtue of being the leader of the largest party in the parliament to which he is subservient. In either case, the members of parliament are ultimately accountable to the people who elected them.
In Israel, however, there is a dissonance between what democracy should be and what the situation actually is. Knesset members are responsible solely to the members of their own party's governing body, be it a central committee, a rabbinic leadership or the nominal head of the party. The public which elected the party members have no power to recall any member of Knesset for any reason.
As much as the Likud is the most powerful party in Israel, the 3000 members of its central committee ultimately decide policy for the entire country. When Ariel Sharon turned his back on their decision following the May 2004 internal referendum that rejected the Gaza expulsion plan, he further narrowed the determining of national policy to just one person, himself.
This past week's vote on when to hold the primaries only reasserted the dangerous oligarchy that Israeli "democracy" has become.
It is dangerous because the members of the Likud Central Committee are in their positions not for the good of the country but largely for the political payoffs and patronage that come with the positions. It is dangerous because no person in the Likud Central Committee has any idea what ideology is any longer, no idea why they should pursue one policy over another and no idea who the best person is to lead this country. And it is dangerous because the members of the Likud Central Committee proved that they are some of the most childish people in this country.
To leave decisions of national, historical and even international importance in the hands of 3000 ignorant, corrupt, and juvenile people who can think of nothing better to do than pull childish pranks speaks of a very uncertain future for us all.
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.