Perpetuating conflict

The Age, May 16, 2007
John Howard's acceptance of a Zionist award will not help bringabout Middle East peace, writes Maher Mughrabi.

On May 20, Prime Minister John Howard will receive the Jerusalem Prize from the State Zionist Council of Victoria, the Zionist Federation of Australia and Israel's World Zionist Organisation "for his support of the Jewish community and Israel".

It's no secret that Israel enjoys support from both sides of the political establishment; Labor and Liberal leaders compete to secure the favour of Australia's Jewish community, but the matter goes deeper than that. From Kevin Rudd's stories of an ALP government casting the first vote at the UN for partition of Palestine to Tony Abbott's proclamation after Bali that "we are all Israelis now", Australian leaders promote the notion that this country is bound to Israel by shared democratic values against the backdrop of an undemocratic Middle East.

The truth of the matter is that democracy is an elusive and easily damaged aspiration, a system of snakes and ladders that many Middle Eastern countries tumble down and climb up. No sensible analysis of the region can possibly rest on the illusion that Iran - which elected first the reformer Mohammad Khatami and then the radical populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - is no more a democracy than Syria.

Israel is at odds with the Palestinian Authority, which has existed for little more than a decade and has already held numerous fair elections. Yet Israel has long been at peace with Egypt, a police state, and has full diplomatic ties with Uzbekistan, an out-and-out dictatorship.

To say, then, that Israel is "a democracy in good standing" is a bit like saying Philip Ruddock is a member of Amnesty International - as a statement of fact, it leaves too much out.

If you want to know how much, read The Age's Saturday crossword. On March 31, it contained this clue: "What is the nationality of someone from Haifa? (7)"

The answer is "Israeli". It is also incorrect. You see, there is no such thing as Israeli nationality. In 1970, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that there was such a thing as Jewish nationality, and such a thing as Arab nationality, but not Israeli nationality. And while Israel's Arab citizens have the vote, the state - defined by law as Jewish - discriminates against them when it comes to immigration, state resources, where they can live and even who they can marry.

It is strangely appropriate, therefore, that Howard will receive his award at a function of the Jewish National Fund, which identifies itself as "the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners - Jewish people everywhere". Try imagining an Australian version of this: "The Aussie National Fund is the caretaker of the land of Australia, on behalf of its owners - Anglo-Celtic people everywhere."

See the problem? This formula makes Israel the land of many people who are not its citizens, and denies the land to many who are its citizens. Democracy? Not as Australians know it. As the Israeli scholar Bernard Avishai puts it: "It was impossible to tell . . . whether Israel's founders were building a (mainly) Jewish democratic state or a (mainly) democratic Jewish state. The confusion was, and is, unsustainable."

Yet even in the years of the Middle East peace process, this "confusion" was not only sustained but amplified. Regardless of progress or setbacks, the number of Israelis building in occupied territory and claiming it as an eternal part of their homeland has increased steadily. In "established" towns, such as Ariel and Ma'ale Adumim, this goes on with Government funding and support, in "disputed" areas such as Hebron and Homesh with Government's acquiescence, but always with Israeli guns and Israeli law to buttress the Jewish population and cow the Arab population.

So when Howard tells the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne that he supports Israel's "courageous defence of her territorial integrity", we are once again in crossword-puzzle land. As anyone who has been to the West Bank in the past 40 years can tell you, there is no such thing as Israeli territorial integrity. To quote Avishai again: "On June 24 (of 2002), President Bush challenged the Palestinian people to 'build a practising democracy based on tolerance and liberty'. Israel is far ahead of the Palestinians on that score, but in crucial respects America's challenge is for Israel, too, and Israeli settlements reveal how well it is met."

Israel's decision to hold an inquiry into last year's invasion of Lebanon has been cited as further proof of its democratic superiority. But even here, appearances can deceive. From the secret Olshan-Dori Commission in the 1950s and the Kahan Commission after the Lebanon War in the 1980s to the Or Commission findings published in 2003, what such inquiries have shown time and again is a state in which the military operates without proper political oversight and the defence minister can conduct acts of war and even terrorism without keeping the prime minister or cabinet fully informed.

The Agranat Commission, held after a war the Arab states started on Yom Kippur in 1973, described Israel's military as in the grip of a "conceptzia" - or mindset - that saw a concerted attack by Arab states as impossible, and criticised Israel's elected leaders for not questioning that mindset. Today, Israel's conceptzia is that talks with its Palestinian neighbour are rendered impossible by terrorism and that unilateral military measures are the answer.

As Shuki Mairovich wrote recently in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the Winograd report is already being read by Israelis not as proof that last year's war was unnecessary but that it was wrongly conducted, "and public discourse is preparing for the demand that will come, sooner or later, to bring former generals back to steer the ship of state".

In stoking the militarist mindset, and the notion that the Middle East can be divided into "good guys" and "bad guys", Australian politicians such as Howard, Rudd and others may receive many honours from Israeli and Jewish organisations. But they should also know that they are helping to perpetuate conflict and in doing so neglecting not only the question of Palestine but also that of Israel's truest interests.

Maher Mughrabi is a staff writer.