The Peace FAQ:

Democracy, Democratic

Frequently Asked Questions:

• What is Democracy?
• What is the relationship between democracy and peace?
• Specifically, how does the lack of democracy in the Arab world affect the chances for a secure peace in the Middle East?
• Can one really call Israel a democracy after the severity with which Israeli soldiers react to Arab violence?

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What is Democracy?

• It is not a democracy [simply] when a man can talk about politics without anyone threatening him. Democracy is when a woman can talk of her lover without anyone killing her.

  - Dr. Sauad M. Al-Sabah, quoted in the Darabi Foundation

 

What is the relationship between democracy and peace?

• War between democracies is unprecedented. A peace agreement between democracies and dictatorships is usually a precarious and delicate situation.

 

Specifically, how does the lack of democracy in the Arab world affect the chances for a secure peace in the Middle East?

• "We can only arrive at peace with the Arabs through an evolution on their part that includes democracy. But wherever I turn my eyes to look, I don't see a shadow of democracy. I see only dictatorial regimes."

  - Golda Meir, in an interview with Oriana Fallaci in Jerusalem in November 1972

• "IS PEACE POSSIBLE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE ARAB WORLD???

  The answer is YES -- But only after mind-boggling changes in the Arab world. True peace can only be made after the Arab world undergoes democratization. Simply put, democracies rarely go to war with one another. All our major wars of the last two hundred years have been between dictators or between democracies defending themselves from dictators. When a ruler is elected by the people, he has a natural restraint preventing him from sending their sons and daughters into combat in an aggressive war. No such restraint exists anywhere in the Arab world.

  - Bernard J. Shapiro, Editor of the Freeman List

• No Democracy, No Peace
  by P. DAVID HORNIK

  (June 2) -- Few things aroused left-wing scorn like Prime Minister Netanyahu's assertion to Congress last summer that real progress toward peace would require the democratization of Arab countries.

  What really bothered the Left, which wants peace now, was not the substance of that argument, but its implication that peace takes time.

  There is, after all, an example of a non-Arab but Moslem Middle-Eastern society that has successfully democratized: Turkey. And recent years have seen democratic experiments in Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, and even Moslem-fundamentalist Iran. The Arab "man on the street" is known to admire Western democracy and long for greater personal freedom.

  So far, to be sure, the experiments haven't yielded anything close to Western-style democracy. But the Left dismisses even the notion of democracy and peace evolving hand in hand - because it doesn't have the patience.

  Not surprisingly, then, it was the Left that accepted the strikingly undemocratic claim that the PLO was the Palestinians' "sole legitimate representative", and Yasser Arafat their sole leader.

  And it was the left-wing Rabin-Peres government that, for the time being, stamped out any hope of Palestinian democratization and instead imposed on the Palestinians the corrupt, brutal regime they're now stuck with.

  We need to hear more from the Left about this situation. We know what it thinks of the Netanyahu government - it has to be toppled, it's wrecking peace, it's awful.

  But what about the Arafat government? As the inconsolable woman in T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock laments: "That is not what I meant, not what I meant at all".

  One might well ask Messrs. Beilin and Peres: Is the Arafat government what you meant?

  Is the Palestinian Authority the sole legitimate representative of Bassam Eid, the Palestinian dissident and human rights activist who has been incarcerated for exposing its abuses? Or of Daoud Kuttab, the Palestinian journalist jailed for a week for highlighting the impotence of the Palestinian Legislative Council? Or of Mahmoud Ali Jamhour and the two other Palestinian land dealers recently beaten and tortured to death by PA goons?

  The architects of Oslo owe us an explanation.

  Was there something moral about their decision to revive the then-moribund PLO and set it up as the Palestinians' government, or was the idea just to get Israel out of the territories by hook or by crook? Did they believe that Arafat would govern the Palestinians humanely and efficiently, or did they believe that it didn't matter?

  When a Palestinian is tortured to death by the PA, do Peres and Beilin take any responsibility, feel any guilt? It was their policies, after all, that led directly to that result.

  Perhaps accountability only applies to right-wing politicians like Ariel Sharon. For his bad judgment leading to the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, Sharon was removed from office by the Kahan Commission and permanently tainted.

  For the bad judgment that led to the deaths of hundreds of Israelis in terrorist attacks and the subjection of a whole populace to a totalitarian regime, the architects of Oslo receive prizes, accolades, and the right to defame those troubled by these developments as enemies of peace.

  Yitzhak Rabin, at least, seems to have had no illusions about the Arafat regime he was setting up. In his famous remark, he assured us that the PA would fight Hamas effectively, without being hindered by human rights organizations or crying parents.

  But Rabin got only part of it right. The PA, no doubt, fights its perceived enemies ruthlessly; it's just that Hamas isn't one of them, but rather an ally in the ongoing struggle against Israel.

  Which brings us back to Netanyahu's point: There might be some connection between peace and the nature of the parties Israel makes deals with.

  It's not, after all, a Netanyahuism, but an established finding of political science: Democracies have a perfect record in settling disputes with each other peacefully; regimes that abuse the human rights of their own subjects are much more likely to be aggressive toward neighbors.

  To all the stories of the PA's atrocities against Palestinians and Israelis, its corruption, and amassing of weapons, the Left seemingly has one reply: More power to 'em.

  Many people ask: Given this record, isn't it both immoral and imprudent to extend the PA's reach still further? The Left doesn't have time for such questions. It's too busy applauding the growth of the Mediterranean Iraq in our midst.

• "Turkey and Israel are the only two countries in the region that have a democratic system. In 1947, Turkey was one of the first five countries to recognise the establishment of the state of Israel."

  - Turkish Defense Minister Turhan Tayan (Al-Wasat, May 26, 1997)

• "In our negotiations and our relations with our neighbours, we have to understand that trust should be proportional to the level of openness or democracy of these regimes."

  - Former Soviet dissident and Israeli Trade Minister Natan Sharansky (quoted in Wall Street Journal Europe, Jan 24)

 

Can one really call Israel a democracy after the severity with which Israeli soldiers react to Arab violence?

• One does not judge a democracy by the way its soldiers immediately react, young men and women under tremendous provocation. One judges a democracy by the way its courts react, in the dispassionate cool of judicial chambers. And the Israeli Supreme Court and other courts-have reacted magnificently. For the first time in Mideast history, there is an independent judiciary willing to listen to grievances of Arabs-that judiciary is called the Israeli Supreme Court.

  - Alan Dershowitz, putting the Israeli legal system in perspective in a speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual meeting (May 23, 1989)

 

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• RELATED SECTIONS:

  Ethical Relativism, Arabs, Islam, War, Peace, United Nations, Automorphism, Women's Rights, Zionism-is-Racism, Apartheid, Jonathan Pollard, Yassir Arafat, Israel, The Frog and the Scorpion, Moral Relativism

• WWW RESOURCES:

• BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
  • The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, by Natan Sharansky, Ron Dermer, Anatoly Shcharansky [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, by Barry Rubin [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World, by Frank J. Gaffney Jr. [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World, by Fatima Mernissi, Mary Jo Lakeland, Fatema Mernissi [VIEW BOOK HERE]

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