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Moshe Feiglin is head of the Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud and can be reached via the web site.
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By Moshe Feiglin
September 20, 2004
Do you remember the human chain, from Gush Katif to Jerusalem? About 200,000 people took part in it. that represents about 4% of the Jewish population of Israel. Imagine if someone in the US had organized a similar demonstration, of proportionate dimensions, on any issue.
The number of participants would come to about nine million Americans, and they could hold hands, without difficulty, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts. Those who know what simpler demonstrations in the US led to, in which a million blacks took part, understand that such a demonstration of strength could achieve anything in the democratic superpower.
However, in Israel the situation is somewhat different. Who remembers that demonstration, which took place only a month ago? Who remembered it after a week? What does this say about our "democracy," about the methods of the struggle waged by the belief-based public? In the Israeli people's democracy everything works in the opposite way.
The more the people expresses its views in a clearer, nobler, more democratic way, the more the government ignores it. Take, for example, the recent Likud Conference. This was a wonderful demonstration of real democracy in action: A popular ruling party defending itself against a ruthless leadership that wished to destroy every vestige of its beliefs.
On one side stood the party machine, with intrigues, threats, bribes, deception, vote fixing, changing the volume of the microphones depending on the identity of the speaker, organized transport for supporters, pressures, good jobs in Mifal Hapayis for the right people, all orchestrated by the shaven-headed son of the leader, who controls everything and of whom all the small fry in the party go in dread.
On the other side were the ideologues, the founders, Manhigut Yehudit people, ordinary Likudniks who hadn't forgotten where they came from, and seven veterans of the Lehi and Etzel underground movements, who came in wheelchairs and on crutches at risk to their health.
Who won? Democracy, the people, the ideology? Of course not! Ben Caspit, a journalist from Ma'ariv, said that victory went to the "extremists, fanatics, the unenlightened". We can see that those who are supposed to be the watchdogs of democracy are really the Dobermans of dictatorship. Again and again the journalists refuse to allow themselves to be confounded by facts. The referendum held amongst all members of the largest party in Israel, the voting by members of the Likud Central Committee, all these represent only a small number of fanatics who have gained control. Real democracy is needed, they explain to us. In other words, we need an absolute regime, which will dismantle, expel, and destroy, without the Supreme Court and without citizens' rights organizations, without Likud conferences and without all those primitive Likud Center members. Who counts them, anyway?
The media seek a deluxe democracy: democracy without the people.
The Likud Conference is of course only a small example of the Israeli people's democracy in action. We could give numerous other examples, but there are too many of them to do so.
I have personally drawn three conclusions from this issue:
The first is that we, Manhigut Yehudit, are located at exactly the right point. I don't mean from the political aspect but regarding the understanding of the processes taking place in the nation. We have understood that those who least represent the people are members of the Israeli media. We have come to understand, and this was proved in the referendum, that if you come to Israelis with a spark of belief, they associate themselves with this very easily. If there are still Israelis who have not placed themselves in a specific sector -- neither Haredim, religious people, anti-religious, fellow travelers, nor groups of interested parties. These are the Likudniks.
If there is a party that really represents a microcosm of Israeli society, it is the Likud. Those who speak of the disintegration of the Likud fail to understand this real issue, which in my humble opinion will continue to hold this party together despite its leaders. When the Likud opposes Sharon, this is because the Israeli public opposes Sharon and his Leftist plans of destruction and retreat. The people saw the results of the Oslo Agreement, realized what was happening, and drew the correct conclusions.
To those who think otherwise I propose holding a national referendum.
However, I'm sure that Ben Caspit & Co. won't trouble to consider this option. The people in Ma'ariv only read what they themselves write. Nothing else concerns them.
The second point is that no demonstration, however impressive, will be of any use. It doesn't matter how many demonstrators turn up, or how logical and beautiful we are. The bulldozers of the Left (of which the media are only one of many) are constantly pushing us towards a reality of dictatorship.
That which was achieved by three demonstrators from the movement for quality of government against Tzahi Hanegbi, with the backing of these bulldozers, can never be achieved by a million demonstrators acting against those same bulldozers. Let's face it ? we have here a kind of selective, Greek, democracy, for the elite only.So what can we do? After all, the refusal to listen to the warnings of the Right led to the Oslo disaster, whose fruit we ate again yesterday in the massacre in Beersheba. Should we just give up?
The device known as "non-violent civil disobedience" is designed specifically for this twilight state between democracy and dictatorship. Zo Artzeinu employed it in the 1990s. Now it's the turn of someone else to take up the gauntlet at the beginning of the 2000s.
The third point is that we are winning. Sharon's haughty attitude to all the unambiguous democratic messages he is receiving; the fact that his picture of reality is based solely on the illusion created by television announcers Haim Yavin, Ayala Hason and Eyal Arad. All these create a situation in which Sharon is totally divorced from reality. Those who have lost contact with reality will inevitable make one mistake after another until they fall in the end.
It will be painful, but he will inevitably fail.
The question is of course what will the price be and, even more important, what will come after him. Not who, but what.
Manhigut Yehudit is working on this.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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