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Democracy and Israel
Posted by: Wayne Hall (IP Logged)
Date: July 31, 2006 03:51AM

If anyone wishes to claim that this posting is not related to WDDM's task of establishing citizens' democracy, let me just say that the specific realities of geopolitics are not incidental noise. The synergistic mode of operation of the United States and Israel has to be confronted concretely, not schematically.


The proposal I make is framed as a response to an article criticising the reaction of the German Green party to Israel's ongoing attack against Lebanon.


Here is the link to that article, and the text of the article:


[wsws.org]


Joschka Fischer and German Greens defend Israeli
bombing terror in Lebanon
By Ulrich Rippert


28 July 2006
Use this version to print | Send this link by email |


Email the author


At the start of this week, German Green Party deputy
Jerzy Montag travelled to Israel at the head of a
German-Israeli parliamentary delegation. In a press
statement, his office in Berlin declared that a
delegation from the German-Israeli society is also
participating in the trip to Haifa.


The statement declared that the aim of the trip was to
win support for the “military action and the current
policy of Israel” which has been “criticised by many”
in Germany and has met with a “widespread lack of
understanding.”


On Tuesday, Montag, who until now has made a name for
himself by strongly advocating closer cooperation
between the Greens and Germany’s conservative parties,
repeated Israel’s war propaganda word for word. Montag
told Spiegel online: “Israel gave no cause for hostile
fighters from Lebanese national territory to kidnap
and kill members of its army. Israel gave no
inducement for the bombardment of Israeli cities.
Israel has a right to protect its citizens. And it
does.”


The Israeli terror, involving days of continuous
bombardment of southern Lebanon, the systematic
destruction of roads and bridges, power stations,
ports, airfields and entire neighbourhoods in the city
of Beirut—all this is, according to Montag, “actions
in self-defence.”


On Wednesday morning, as millions awoke to hear the
news that Israeli combat aircraft had attacked a
United Nations outpost in Lebanon and killed four UN
workers, Germany’s former minister of foreign affairs
in the previous Social Democratic Party-Green Party
government, Joschka Fischer, published a comment in
the Sόddeutsche Zeitung. His article had appeared in
the Guardian newspaper one day earlier under the title
“Now is the Time to Think Big.”


Fischer began by denying any responsibility on the
part of Israel for the fighting, writing: “By firing
missiles on Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, a
boundary has been crossed. From now on, the issue is
no longer primarily one of territory, restitution or
occupation: instead the main issue is the strategic
threat to Israel’s existence.”


What is taking place, according to Fischer, is a
“proxy war” engineered by Hezbollah’s backers in
Damascus and Teheran “from where [Hezbollah] receives
most of its weapons.” Israel has been attacked,
Fischer fulminates, by a radical “rejectionist front”
which refuses any reconciliation with Israel and
“consists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the
Palestinian side, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and
Iran.”


Fischer’s article says nothing new. Every one of his
Orwellian twists of the truth has already been
repeated many times by Israeli and American propaganda
outlets over the past week. Fischer’s suggestion for a
solution to the problem is also neither new nor
original. He demands that the “Middle East quartet”
(the US, Russia, the United Nations and the European
Union), “led by the US” finally undertake a decisive
engagement and secure “political, economic and
military guarantees” for Israel.


The thrust of Fischer’s appeal boils down to more
American military intervention in the Middle
East—although the current war with its systematic and
massive bombardment of southern Lebanon and parts of
Beirut is precisely a result of the existing
“political, economic and military” cooperation between
Washington and Jerusalem.


To any impartial and objective observer of the
political situation, it is evident that the kidnapping
of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah and Hamas was seen by
the Israeli government as a welcome pretext to begin a
military offensive which had been planned long in
advance and in close cooperation with the Pentagon.


The extent to which the Israeli army functions as a
direct instrument of American war plans was made
patently clear this week by US efforts to block any
criticism of Israel for the bombing of the UN outpost
and the killing of four UN workers. The US government
could not have more clearly expressed its utter
contempt for the UN and international peace efforts.


In fact, the “proxy” character of the present Middle
East war is embodied in the onslaught undertaken by
the Israeli army, which, on behalf of and in
consultation with the Bush government, and armed by
the US, has attacked Hezbollah and Hamas in order to
prepare the way for a future US offensive directed
against Syria and, in particular, Iran.


A glimpse at a world map shows that Iran borders
Afghanistan to the east and Iraq to the west. With
resistance to American forces intensifying in both
countries, military strategists in the Pentagon are
intent on pressing ahead with a military intervention
against Iran.


The strategic significance of this area is well known
to the US political caste. While the national security
advisor to US President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, has differences with the present Bush
government on many questions, it was Brzezinski who
explained the significance of the region most clearly.
In his book published ten years ago, The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic
Imperatives, Brzezinski stressed that following the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the American
government had to undertake systematic steps to assert
its role as the solitary world power. In that
connection, he explained the strategic significance of
Iran.


In the first chapters of his book, he states that such
supremacy requires above all control of the “Eurasian
land mass,” in which Iran, with its large oil and gas
reserves, its pipeline system and, above all, its
strategic location near the Caspian Basin in the north
and the Arabian sea and Indian ocean in the south,
plays a key role.


Brzezinski stresses that Russian supremacy in Central
Asia and the Caspian region can be broken only if “a
pipeline runs from the Caspian sea to Azerbaijan and
from there via Turkey to the Mediterranean, with a
further pipeline crossing Iran to the Arabian sea.”


In the meantime, Brzezinski himself has been forced to
acknowledge that the implementation of his strategic
plans for the US could end in disaster. Just this week
he rebuffed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s
talk of the birth of a new Middle East.


He told the German press: “That was not a very happy
formulation. Labour pains sometimes end in the death
of the infant. One must seek to determine what these
labour pains are actually producing. Otherwise one is
merely speculating and playing a form of Russian
roulette with history. This could all end for the
United States in a disaster in the Middle East.”


Joschka Fischer is also well aware of the strategic
significance of the region, although, at the beginning
of the 1990s and in his capacity as leader of the
Green Party, he was then active in opposing US
hegemony in the region. When the US under the senior
George Bush initiated the first Gulf War in 1991,
Fischer spoke as a pacifist on protest demonstrations
in Germany, demanding, “No blood for oil!” That was
long ago, however. The Greens have long since ditched
their pacifist image and are now lining up
unconditionally behind the US-Israeli aggression in
the Middle East.


There are a number of causes for the despicable
spectacle of Fischer regurgitating Israeli-American
war propaganda. He does not stand alone, but speaks
instead on behalf of a whole layer of former radicals
who have advanced their careers, enjoyed a certain
improvement in their social status, and made their
peace with a society whose social and political
problems assume a far more grievous form today than in
their youthful days of rebellion. Characteristic of
such layers is a growing antipathy for democratic
rights and affinity for authoritarian forms of the
rule.


Fischer and Montag’s glorification of the bombing
terror against the population of Lebanon and the
Palestinian territories is also bound up with a
closing of ranks between the Greens and the German
government led by Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic
Union—CDU), not only with regard to foreign policy but
also on the domestic front.


The former foreign minister Fischer exemplifies the
fact that none of the European powers dares to
challenge the current US-Israeli aggression. The
limitations and half-heartedness of the German
government’s former opposition to the US-led Iraq war
have become increasingly evident. Still, Fischer was
among those who three years ago expressed doubts about
US war policy.


It was Fischer who, at the annual Munich Security
Conference, told US Secretary of Defence Donald
Rumsfeld that he was not convinced by US arguments for
war. “You do not convince me, Mr. Minister,” he said
at the time.


He is now convinced, and not only because he recently
received the offer of a professorship at the renowned
Princeton University (although he failed to complete
his formal education in Germany). The sheer force and
ruthlessness with which the American government has
defied international laws and agreements, and brushed
off all international criticism, has left a deep
impression on European political circles in general,
and has especially impressed the particular breed of
German petty-bourgeois philistinism which Fischer
represents.


Fischer’s support for Israeli war policy and his claim
that only an intensified intervention by the US
government can bring “stability” to the Middle East
amounts to conceding the bankruptcy of his own
political conceptions of a strengthened role for
Europe in international politics.


In May of 2000, Fischer gave what was described as a
“groundbreaking” speech on the future of Europe at
Humboldt University in Berlin. “Thoughts on the
Finality of European Integration” was the pompous
title of his lecture. At the time, a common currency
for Europe had been agreed and prepared but not
completely implemented. In his speech, Fischer
stressed again and again that European integration had
“proven phenomenally successful.”


But as is so often the case in history, Fischer’s
euphoria for Europe reflected an outmoded outlook and
a political period that was coming to an end. The same
fate afflicted the European powers which sought to
unite Europe and extend the European domestic market,
in line with the so-called “Lisbon strategy,” in order
to create a power capable of challenging the economic
and political supremacy of America. They too had to
acknowledge that in the intervening period fundamental
changes had occurred in the situation within Europe.


It is one thing to develop Europe as a common market
with the support of the US and in cooperation with
Washington. It is a very different task to erect a
Europe that acts as a bulwark against the US. As the
American government began to exert increasing
political and economic pressure on Europe, so too did
conflicts within the European community intensify.


The return of imperialist great power politics,
accompanied by military oppression and colonial
exploitation, is not restricted to the US. The current
inability of European governments to counter such
politics will inevitably lead to a further growth of
national egoism and national conflicts within Europe.


The sordid capitulation of the European powers and its
leading politicians to US and Israeli aggression in
the Middle East makes absolutely clear the bankruptcy
of the project to unite Europe on a bourgeois basis.
The only progressive answer to the threat of Europe
being dragged into new wars and military
conflagrations is the unification of the continent by
the working class in the struggle to establish a
United Socialist States of Europe.


(end of article)


Here is my message to Ulrich Rippert:


Would Fischer and Montag support a policy of
integration of Israel and the Palestinian territories
into the European Union? Only in the context of an
initiative of this kind can there be any independent
logic to giving cover to the present degree of
lawlessness of Israeli actions.


Either we must accept the proposition that the whole
history of the German Greens is one of ignominous and
conceptless subordination to mainstream politics. In
this case no-one who ever supported the Greens has any
alternative to doing a mea culpa, admitting they made
a mistake, and seeking forgiveness from those who say
(who have always said) "I told you so".


Or the present stance of Fischer and Montag must be
the prelude to an attempt to integrate Israel (on the
same basis as other member states) into the European
Union and dissolve Israel's special relationship with
the United States.


Much of the anti-war movement in Israel would favour
their country being a member of the European Union.
Uri Avneri has publicly spoken in favour of the idea,
and of the idea of a denuclearized Middle East.


Surely it is time for anti-war forces in Europe to
move beyond failed "solidarity" policies that place
all political and military burdens on the
Palestinians, and take the initiative. Either (i)
Israel comes into the European Union, on the same
terms as other member states, with its present borders
and along with the Palestinian territories, or (ii)
the European Union consents to Israel staying outside
the EU, but within its borders of 1967.


WH
Athens


(end of message to Ulrich Rippert)



Rippert speaks of the "bankruptcy of the project to unite Europe on a bourgeois basis". Doubtless WDDM members could speak of the "bankruptcy of the project to unite Europe on any other basis than genuine citizens' democracy."


In both cases one is responding to a concrete problem with an abstract proposal.
Is there support in WDDM for the entirely concrete proposal I put forward above?
After all, citizens' democracy, if it is going to be judged at all, will be judged from the quality of the tasks it sets itself.


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Re: Democracy and Israel
Posted by: BrEggum (IP Logged)
Date: July 31, 2006 11:34AM

Dear all,


I thank Wayne for his post. I do however want to comment on his initial statement:

If anyone wishes to claim that this posting is not related to WDDM's task of establishing citizens' democracy, let me just say that the specific realities of geopolitics are not incidental noise. The synergistic mode of operation of the United States and Israel has to be confronted concretely, not schematically.


WDDM is a list discussing the infrastructure of governments, not the politics within those governments. I approved this post because Wayne notes properly that by including Israel in the EU democracy, (suggested) it would bring them into a process requiring them to discuss and adhere to those rules of the EU.


Therefore I would like the discussion on this post to evolve around how DD could pull together Nations, to establish infrastructure which allows these Nations to exist together in peace. A part of this also involves exchange of goods, culture, language and values which I believe would also bring each Nation closer.


Can Direct Democracy allow each Nation to maintain it’s own identity, while following those rules of a larger community?
BrEggum

Bruce Eggum Wisconsin USA
www.doinggovernment.com


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Re: Democracy and Israel
Posted by: MiKolar (IP Logged)
Date: August 01, 2006 10:30AM

Two comments:

BrEggum   wrote:
Can Direct Democracy allow each Nation to maintain it’s own identity, while following those rules of a larger community?
BrEggum
- Why not? It's the same as the relations of communities/minorities of a country (nation) and the whole nation. Just on a higher level. Ideally, on each higher level only the matters affecting all should be decided, and everything that affects only the lover levels (countries, nations, minorities, cities, villages) should be decided on that level. DD must also accommodate the principle that somebody's freedom stops where the freedom of others begins (or better: when interest of various groups or individuals overlap, they must be decided together and a compromise accommodating all sought).


W. Hall   wrote:
Either
(i) Israel comes into the European Union, on the same
terms as other member states, with its present borders
and along with the Palestinian territories, or
(ii) the European Union consents to Israel staying outside
the EU, but within its borders of 1967.
- This seems to me an excellent idea/proposal. But it should be addressed to the powers that can do something about implementing it. If you prepare this idea for presentation to the appropriate address(es), you can probably ask WDDM members whether they want to support it as individuals.
I am afraid that WDDM as such cannot do much about it. As Bruce commented, WDDM does not discuss individual politics issues, but what is the best way of governance. I personally think we should try to concentrate on issues that unite everybody.

mk, [democracy.mkolar.org]


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Re: Democracy and Israel
Posted by: BrEggum (IP Logged)
Date: August 01, 2006 10:46AM

I did suggest that Wayne post his proposal on CICDD, which he did. There, the issue could be discussed further and hopefully gain support.
BrEggum

Bruce Eggum Wisconsin USA
www.doinggovernment.com


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Re: Democracy and Israel
Posted by: CommonOne (IP Logged)
Date: August 03, 2006 10:55AM

Yes Bruce,


Theoretically it is possible for nations to exist together, if all are properly structured as DD governments. It would be no more than a mere extension of one government properly structured as a DD. Check out the model and description of a theoretical "America" on my website again. You'll see how such a thing is possible.


Lee


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