Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

The gag order imposed on media reporting of the Shin Bet treason case against Azmi Bishara has been lifted. Unfortunately, we don’t know much more now than we did before. But at least it has freed Bishara from enough constraints that he has published a sharp rebuttal to the charges (as much as they are known) in the L.A. Times.

Haaretz has reported the case based on anonymous security sources giving their view of the charges. A dubious proposition journalistically, but that seems to be how Israeli media operates giving (too) wide latitude toward government sources. It also would be nice to see a whole lot more “alleges” in this dispatch since otherwise we’re to assume we should accept the Shin Bet’s allegations as truth. Here is what those sources report:

The police and Shin Bet have sufficient evidence to indict former MK Azmi Bishara for crimes such as contact with the enemy, say sources who have seen the evidence in recent weeks.

The sources say it will be very difficult for Bishara to refute the evidence, even if he appears in person to participate in police interviews.

…Most of the allegations involve contact with Hezbollah intelligence agencies, which the police and the Shin Bet say were responsible for collecting intelligence on Israel during the Second Lebanon War. The bulk of the evidence is based on wire taps of Bishara’s telephone conversations with Hezbollah agents. These recordings were authorized by the Supreme Court.

The evidence also suggests that Bishara assisted Hezbollah in broadening the impact of its attacks on Israel by helping direct its rocket barrages and offering recommendations on how to carry out psychological warfare against Israelis. Bishara is also suspected of transferring to Hezbollah military information, but the military censor has imposed a gag order on that information.

In addition to the evidence suggesting that Bishara’s activities were tantamount to treason, investigators are working on an angle involving financial violations.

The investigators are trying to connect evidence to suspicions that Bishara violated the law forbidding the funding of terrorism. The evidence is based on the testimony of a family of Jerusalem-based money changers who say they have delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to Bishara’s home in Beit Hanina. The funds have also not been declared to the tax authorities as required by law.

The investigators have so far been unable to trace the money and are not sure whether Bishara kept the funds or distributed them to other organizations. The police are considering initiating an investigation in a number of countries where the funds are known to have originated or passed through.

I’m glad to say that no U.S. publication, especially after the misinformation it’s been fed by the Bush Administration for the past six years, would ever report a story like this.

So what do we have? The spooks claim they have enough evidence to indict. They claim, without providing any evidence, that he had contact with Hezbollah agents. What’s a real stunner is that Bishara, if the Shin Bet is to be believed, was a sort of civilian “spotter” who phoned in coordinates to the Hezbollah gunners to improve the aim of their rockets and kill more of his fellow Arabs (who suffered high casualties during these barrages). As for “transferring military information,” do you think one of the most mistrusted members of the Israeli Knesset would be trusted with ANYTHING in the way of “military information.” As for “offering recommendations on how to carry out psychological warfare against Israelis,” we’ll just have to see precisely what that means in terms of real actions rather than just allegations.

All of this of course is nothing new for Bishara since the intelligence agency has been after him for years. But what is new is the corruption allegation. They believe he received several hundred thousand dollars from foreign sources. They can’t determine whether he distributed them to Arab political organizations or kept it himself and they can’t determine where he got the money. Sounds like a slam dunk to me.

All the rest is bunk. The treason angle is bunk as far as I’m concerned. Mere ventilating for the sake of the right-wing Israeli constituency which wants Bishara’s hide; and an effort to intimidate Bishara and his movement into scaling back their nationalist demands and aspirations. The Shin Bet recently announced that Israeli Arab nationalism was a grave threat to Israel and that would do everything in its power (and that covers a lot of ground both legal and not when an Israeli intelligence agency makes such a statement) to defeat such an effort whether or not it was pursued legally. When the security services of a democratic nation publicly declare that they will defeat a domestic political movement which is adhering to the rules of that democracy–is that nation still a true democracy??

It’s only fair, since Haaretz in this article basically allowed itself to be a mouthpiece of the Shin Bet, to air Bishara’s rebuttal in his first major article in a U.S. publication since the charges began to fly. He begins with a very apt historical comparison of his own predicament to the Dreyfuss Affair:

in an ironic twist reminiscent of France’s Dreyfus affair — in which a French Jew was accused of disloyalty to the state — the government of Israel is accusing me of aiding the enemy during Israel’s failed war against Lebanon in July.

The reason it is an apt comparison is that Dreyfuss too was a public official (an army officer) and member of a despised minority (a Jew in France) accused of treason. The charges against Dreyfuss were trumped up by anti-Semitic army officers who wished to cover up malfeasance by themselves and others.

Of course, we only know of Dreyfuss’ innocence now. In the moment, I’m sure Dreyfuss and his actions may’ve looked as suspect as Bishara’s do to some Israelis. We will only discover the truth or falsehood of the charges against Bishara in the course of time. Perhaps the Bishara case will not turn out to be as black and white as Dreyfuss was. Or perhaps it will.

Here Bishara responds to some of the basic charges against him:

Israeli police apparently suspect me of passing information to a foreign agent and of receiving money in return. Under Israeli law, anyone — a journalist or a personal friend — can be defined as a “foreign agent” by the Israeli security apparatus. Such charges can lead to life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

The allegations are ridiculous. Needless to say, Hezbollah — Israel’s enemy in Lebanon — has independently gathered more security information about Israel than any Arab Knesset member could possibly provide. What’s more, unlike those in Israel’s parliament who have been involved in acts of violence, I have never used violence or participated in wars. My instruments of persuasion, in contrast, are simply words in books, articles and speeches.

Here Bishara provides a lesson in the history of Arabs in Israel:

When Israel was established in 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in fear. My family was among the minority that escaped that fate, remaining instead on the land where we had long lived. The Israeli state, established exclusively for Jews, embarked immediately on transforming us into foreigners in our own country.

For the first 18 years of Israeli statehood, we, as Israeli citizens, lived under military rule with pass laws that controlled our every movement. We watched Jewish Israeli towns spring up over destroyed Palestinian villages.

Today we make up 20% of Israel’s population…But we face legal, institutional and informal discrimination in all spheres of life.

More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. The Law of Return, for example, grants automatic citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Yet Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to the country they were forced to leave in 1948. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty — Israel’s “Bill of Rights” — defines the state as “Jewish” rather than a state for all its citizens. Thus Israel is more for Jews living in Los Angeles or Paris than it is for native Palestinians.

Here is the crux of the threat that Bishara poses to Israel and the reason why he drives the security apparatus crazy:

I have also asserted the right of the Lebanese people, and of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to resist Israel’s illegal military occupation. I do not see those who fight for freedom as my enemies.

This may discomfort Jewish Israelis, but they cannot deny us our history and identity any more than we can negate the ties that bind them to world Jewry. After all, it is not we, but Israeli Jews who immigrated to this land. Immigrants might be asked to give up their former identity in exchange for equal citizenship, but we are not immigrants.

In other words, just as Israeli Jews have ties to their brethren near and far, so too Israeli Arabs have family, cultural and super-national ties to their brethren living in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. If Israeli Jews maintain solidarity with me here in Seattle, WA–why can’t Bishara maintain solidarity with Arabs of neighboring countries?

This expression of solidarity clearly threatens Israeli Jews and the government. But if we look back on our own history, we find that the 19th century was full of anti-Catholic bigotry which posited that immigrant Catholics owed a greater allegiance to Rome than to America. And what is the dual loyalty canard raised against American Jews but another form of this.

If all Bishara did in these alleged conversations was what he says he did here (”asserted the right of the Lebanese…and Palestinians…to resist Israel’s occupation”) then he has done nothing legally actionable.

In this concluding section, the Arab politician lays out the history of persecution he has suffered at the hands of the Israeli justice system and places it in the context of the Arab nationalist struggle:

During my years in the Knesset, the attorney general indicted me for voicing my political opinions (the charges were dropped), lobbied to have my parliamentary immunity revoked and sought unsuccessfully to disqualify my political party from participating in elections — all because I believe Israel should be a state for all its citizens and because I have spoken out against Israeli military occupation. Last year, Cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman — an immigrant from Moldova — declared that Palestinian citizens of Israel “have no place here,” that we should “take our bundles and get lost.” After I met with a leader of the Palestinian Authority from Hamas, Lieberman called for my execution.

The Israeli authorities are trying to intimidate not just me but all Palestinian citizens of Israel. But we will not be intimidated. We will not bow to permanent servitude in the land of our ancestors or to being severed from our natural connections to the Arab world…If we turn back from our path to freedom now, we will consign future generations to the discrimination we have faced for six decades.

Before one accepts the load of malarkey about treason and indictable offenses in the Haaretz article one ought to ponder the cogency and power of this message. In Azmi Bishara, Israeli Jews have found a worthy adversary, one who will challenge them “where they live.” People may hate this man. They may find him an odious charlatan. But in a way he is the mirror image of Israeli Jews and their attitudes toward their fellow Arabs. Bishara seems to be saying: “if you hate my people I will become an adversary worthy of that hatred.” The Israeli majority, in its smugness and racist notions of Arab inferiority, has found a leader who reflects back at them their intolerance. So, yes, Bishara may be a demagogue. He may be a hot-headed, egotistical show-boater. He may incite Arab anger and even hatred against the State. But what do Jews expect? Have they met their Arab fellow citizens anywhere near halfway?

I hear echoes of Martin Luther King’s FBI harassment in Bishara’s invocation of the American civil rights movement in this passage:

Americans know from their own history of institutional discrimination the tactics that have been used against civil rights leaders. These include telephone bugging, police surveillance, political delegitimization and criminalization of dissent through false accusations. Israel is continuing to use these tactics at a time when the world no longer tolerates such practices as compatible with democracy.

As I wrote above, whatever this man’s weaknesses, this paragraph in particular makes clear Bishara’s ability to invoke references to his audience’s own political history and experience in order to draw them closer to his own. A worthy adversary and one to be reckoned with.

tags civil-rights-movement, dreyfuss-affair, hezbollah, israeli-arab-nationalism, lebanon-war, shin-bet-accuses-bishara-of-treason

The reactions from Israeli journalists and politicians to Azmi Bishara’s Knesset resignation provides a sort of Rorschach test for Israeli attitudes toward democracy. The first lesson you must learn about the attitudes of the majority of the 75-80% of Israelis who are Jews is that both the State and its democracy exists primarily for them and only secondarily for anyone else (that is, the Arab minority which comprises 20-25% of the population). And since the State has accorded citizenship to its Arab minority while according them second (or third) class status, one cannot really call Israel a democracy. Israeli political scientists like Yoav Peled have adopted the term ethnocracy to describe Israel’s peculiar political system. That is, a system that awards superior rights to a majority ethnic group while according vastly diminished status to the ethnic minority.

For most Israeli Jews, Arabs are a royal pain in the ass. The center of the political spectrum tolerates them while the right longs for the day when they can be transferred out of Israel. Most Israelis would vastly prefer a homogeneous state composed only of Jews. A former progressive like Benny Morris is characteristic of this attitude in wishing that Ben Gurion had actually forcibly expelled a much larger proportion of Israel’s 1948 population than he did. Even some on the left adopt a profound mistrust of the Arab minority.

What all of the above neglect to understand is that an Israel shorn of its minority would no longer be a democracy since it would’ve forcibly extirpated a part of its polity. And a State which doesn’t expel this minority but continues to refuse to accord it full equality still cannot call itself a true democracy. A fragmented or not-quite democracy perhaps but not a democracy full stop.

Let’s take a look at a JTA article about Bishara’s resignation and an interview with Yossi Alpher, viewed by some as a center-left analyst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The latter is published at no less progressive a source than the Americans for Peace Now website:

Israeli tolerance for Bishara’s views has been remarkable.

This is quite a remarkable statement considering that the Knesset has twice stripped Bishara of his parliamentary immunity in order to compel him to face criminal investigations, NONE of which resulted in a court case being filed. Remarkable too in light of the fact that the government attempted to prevent his party from running in one election for its refusal to accept the primacy of the Jewish state.

Two elections ago, the High Court of Justice reversed Electoral Commission determinations that Balad’s political platform violated the constitutional demand that all parties recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, thereby allowing him to run. His frequent visits to Syria and Lebanon, including during war-time–where he met publicly with Bashar Asad and Hassan Nasrallah, praised their policies and condemned those of Israel–were also tolerated by the security community, to the extent that some Israeli Arabs concluded that Bishara must be a collaborator.

Notice that a supposedly progressive analyst has the temerity to slip in this imputed charge of “collaboration” without any proof whatsoever of the charges. And to say that Bishara was “tolerated” by a security establishment which has investigated him multiple times seems far-fetched to say the least.

In fact, all this took place in the name of Israeli pluralism and based on the assumption that it was better to have internal critics of Israel’s existence, however extreme, out in the open than to drive them underground. But there can be no mistake that Bishara has become clearly identified by the Jewish public as an enemy of the state. His association with the most reactionary and oppressive of Arab leaders in Syria and Lebanon and his readiness to level outlandish accusations against Israel–e.g., “in the entire history of mankind there have never been acts of plunder like those carried out by Israel”–clearly belie his rhetoric about democracy and equal rights.

Here Alpher has run off the rails. Bishara has identified himself with the two closest Arab neighbors to Israel’s northern Arab communities: Syria and Lebanon. But who is to say that Hezbollah and Syrian leaders are “the most reactionary and oppressive Arab leaders?” Worse than the Saudi dynasty or Egypt’s Mubarak or Iran’s mullahs or Iraq’s Hussein? This is an entirely specious argument. Bishara’s alliance with Hezbollah and Syrian is mostly geographic. And who would Alpher have him make an alliance with who would have him? Doubtless, Jordan’s King Abdullah would not be interested since he values good relations with Israel and wants to wash his hands of continuing intra-Arab strife. So who’s left for Bishara to turn to for support outside Israel?

One useful aspect of Alpher’s interview is that he further confirms information I published here from the Palestinian news agency Maan about the specific nature of the charges against Bishara:

A former associate at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, where he taught for several years before going into politics, told me that Bishara had received large sums of money from Syria and Hezbollah for use by his political party and had apparently kept them for himself: this could explain both the criminal and the security components in suspicions against him.

But I would strongly caution that this is terribly vaguely and inauthoritatively sourced. And even if it is true that Bishara accepted funds from Syria, it is quite another thing to prove in a court of law that he acted corruptly in retaining funds for personal use. That’s the Shin Bet’s job and they’ve by no means proven their case. In fact, in keeping it secret they’ve done precisely the opposite: allowed people to believe that the secrecy conceals a weak case.

Bishara’s legacy in Israeli politics is a negative one: greater polarization between Arabs and Jews and closer ideological proximity between Israel’s Arab community and the most extreme elements in the Palestinian national movement.

Now, that would depend entirely on whose viewpoint you represented. Do you think that Israel’s Arab minority agrees? It is preposterous to blame Azmi Bishara for the polarization between Arabs and Jews in Israeli society. What about the 2000 massacre of defenseless protesting Nazareth Arabs by Israeli Border Police who were never even charged for their criminal behavior? Alpher doesn’t even come close to acknowledging that the radicalization represented by Bishara might stem just as much from Israeli intransigence in the face of Israeli Arab demands for their rights and Palestinian demands for theirs. Yossi Alpher may not be a flaming leftist but he’s no fool as an analyst of Mideast politics. That’s why the blinders he wears in this exchange are very instructive regarding the utter lack of awareness even intelligent Israeli Jews have of the democratic contradictions represented by the Arab minority in their midst.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has a mixed record of Jewish journalism. On domestic issues it publishes solid, reliable reporting. But when it comes to Israel, often it might as well have come from the AIPAC press office. That’s a wee exaggeration perhaps for effect, but not much. Let’s take Dan Baron’s article on Bishara. I tried earnestly to get JTA to write a story about Bishara’s secret Shin Bet investigation speaking with their DC correspondent for some time. Unfortunately, Baron’s article is JTA’s feeble coverage of the story. I’d call the following journalism by sloganeering:

Israeli Arab lawmaker Azmi Bishara has abruptly ended a parliamentary career built on denouncing the Jewish state from enemy capitals and then dodging charges of sedition at home.

That is the extent of Bishara’s career? Not the penetrating slogan: “A state for all its citizens,” which has resonated far beyond the Israeli Arab minority as a reasonable democratic demand.

For many mainstream Israelis, it was goodbye and good riddance.

You’ll notice the lazy man’s ‘many’ used by many to propound a questionable argument. Who are the “many?” What would’ve been far more accurate would be to say that “goodbye and good riddance” was the response of Israel’s far right politicians, one of whom even called for the Shin Bet to kidnap Bishara and return him to Israel for trial on charges of treason! How’s that for democracy??

Bishara stood out for his especially provocative antics.

To how many Jewish politicians would Baron attribute the dismissive label “antics?” And I’d like to remind you that southern Whites labeled Martin Luther King’s Montgomery bus boycott or Malcolm X’s speechifying in precisely the same terms. You dismiss what you fear and do not understand. But you do so at your peril because dismissing it will not make the issue or person go away.

Bishara overcame repeated attempts to have him tried for fraternizing with Israel’s enemies, invoking his parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

This is misleading if not downright inaccurate. Bishara’s immunity was stripped twice by the Knesset thus enabling the legal system to charge and try him. But it never did. Why not? Because they could not build a case. Why blame Bishara for shielding himself from prosecution when the state and its organs have done everything in their power to dismantle his political power?

Some moderate Israeli Arabs also sought to distance themselves from Bishara, so astounded by his temerity as to suggest it was all an elaborate cover for a role as an Israeli spy or covert diplomat.

Isn’t it interesting that we see the “Israeli spy” charge once again. But who gains from circulating such an unfounded charge? The Israeli right and Shin Bet of course. So we have to ask whose bidding are Alpher and Baron doing even if unintentionally? The forces who seek to diminish Bishara and Israeli Arab nationalism. I believe it is shameful journalism to disseminate a charge without having any credible source to back it up.

Baron leaves the most interesting and useful portion of his article for the very end of course. You wouldn’t want to include material favorable to Bishara in any other portion of the article now, would you?

Yaron London, saw in Bishara a sort of latter-day version of the Diaspora’s old political mavericks — the revolutionaries and utopianists.

“I once said to Azmi Bishara that he is more Jewish than I,” London said. “The heart of a Jew, even one who lives among Jews in their state, is the heart of a minority figure, but a Christian Arab who is a citizen of the Jewish state is an island within an island, a minority within a minority.”

“Bishara, a brilliant and arrogant intellectual, bossy and stormy, charming and easily offended, has no time to waste. He realized that the Jews would not accept his vision unless they were greatly weakened — and therefore they must be weakened.”

This is one of the truest and most incisive characterizations I have read in all my research on Bishara over the past two weeks. It is a statement that should be taken to heart by Israelis especially Bishara’s enemies in the Shin Bet and government. Think of all the political insurgents who were hated in their day only to return to glory leading their country or at the least playing a significant role in its political future.

I do not make a judgment on Bishara’s political views one way or the other except to say that they must be grappled with. And to those who falsely believe they have seen the end of Azmi Bishara, I say to you: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Think of DeGaulle in exile, Washington sulking in the snow at Valley Forge, Martin Luther King in the Birmingham jail, Mandela on Robben Island. The list goes on. Their causes eventually triumphed.

Finally, let’s explore the responses of the Israeli right to Bishara’s resignation. Predictably, they are overjoyed. I wrote that Yuval Steinitz wants the Shin Bet to forcibly return Bishara to Israel to face proper justice. What we should learn from all these responses is that the right cares not a whit for democracy. All that matters for them is that Israel is a Jewish State. Israel could be a Jewish version of Putin’s Russia, the People’s Republic of China or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe for all they care. When they talk of rights they are talking of Jewish rights. No other rights matter. Is this the model of a Jewish state which we wish to embrace? Many would say no. But if you take the logic of the Baron’s and Alpher’s to their end point they take you perilously close to the Israeli right. For our two journalists, the only acceptable Israeli minority is one that is quiescent, that accepts its subordinate role, that doesn’t grasp too insistently or aggressively for its rights. But is this a reasonable expectation? No, of course not. And once we accept that Israeli Arabs will no longer be quiescent isn’t the logical end point a Lieberman-Kahane like forced transfer, thus ridding Israel of its “fifth column” and creating a homogeneous Jewish state?

I hope and believe this will not happen. But the only thing to prevent it will be for well-meaning Israelis to realize that the Israeli Arab minority and its rights cannot be dismissed or swept under the rug.

tags azmi-bishara, dan-baron-ynetnews, ethnocracy, israeli-arab-nationalism, peace-now, yossi-alpher