Arab revolutionaries look to Israel for inspiration

[shira]

CAIRO - "We want a democracy like in Israel." I heard this sentence twice in January, once in a shopping center in Tunis and a second time on a street near Tahrir Square in Cairo. When I tell people that neither of the men who said this to me were aware of my being a reporter for an Israeli newspaper, I am usually greeted with disbelief.

I would give you their names, but they are in two different notebooks buried somewhere in a stack back home. So you can choose whether you want to take my word for it. Not only were they not aware of my Israeli identity, but the young Tunisian man, an Islamist in the local laid-back fashion, after extolling Israeli democracy, immediately launched into a tirade against the Jewish state's treatment of the Palestinians.

If it seems strange at first that Arab demonstrators are using the hated Zionist entity as their democratic ideal, rather than say Sweden or Holland, it is only because they have no experience of living in a society where freedom of expression is guaranteed and members of the government are accountable to parliament and the law courts. Israel is constantly on the news agenda of Al Jazeera and the other Arab news channels, and while most of what they broadcast is soldiers shooting at Palestinians, over the last few years they have also seen the Katsav and Olmert trials, generals and ministers being hauled in front of civilian commissions of inquiry following military failures, and the wave of social protest on Rothschild Boulevard last summer.

While we are full of anger and shame at our politicians' incompetence, corruption and venality, Arabs see a state where a president and prime minister are held to account for their crimes and failures, and hundreds of thousands can take to the streets calling for their removal without fearing they will not return home alive. And while the Arab broadcasters do not work in Israel totally unhindered - their crews are often subjected to humiliating body searches before prime ministerial press conferences - their offices have not been shut down and their employees targeted and attacked in the way they have been in just about every Arab country.

None of this will make Egyptians or Tunisians support Zionism instead of the Palestinian cause, but it does trickle through. To many of us "the only democracy in the Middle East" may be a cliche, but for those who have never enjoyed any form of freedom, it resonates.

more...
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/arab-revolutionaries-look-to-israel-for-inspiration-1.397554

[shira]

1. More money quotes WRT the difference between Israel and its Arab neighbors...

Consider the fact that almost all the founding fathers were born and raised in totalitarian or authoritarian societies, many of them openly admiring the Soviet model until the Stalinist myth was shattered in the 1950s. Neither did the absolute majority of immigrants who flocked to the new state from eastern Europe and the Arab lands have any prior experience of democracy. And yet every election held in Israel has been free and after 29 years of Mapai hegemony, power finally changed hands from left to right, and has continued to flutter from side to side every few years since as the electorate changes its tastes and views.

...

Maintaining a democracy, with all its faults, through over six decades of conflict in the Middle East is no mean feat.

...

When you have been born and lived all your life in a democratic society, you take it for granted and do not realize what a fragile creation democracy can be.

...

When thousands are daily endangering their lives in the countries around us to achieve some degree of freedom, we cannot allow our own freedoms to be questioned.

[vminfla]

2. As the only progressive country in the Middle East, Israel *should* serve as a role model

No other nation in the Middle East does a better job protecting individual freedoms and guarantees rights in a free and open democracy.

[shira]

3. One reason mideast leaders loathe Israel is because of its liberal/progressive values...

...which are a great threat to far rightwing extreme mideast dictators whose rule depends on denying their citizens of basic rights.

[vminfla]

5. Absolutely, democracy is anathema to tyrants and despots

That is why they keep the UN busy with one silly anti-Israel resolution after another.

[shira]

6. Not just tyrants and despots but also their Western supporters...

...who are cheering on more reactionary regimes taking over due to the Arab Spring.

More of the same will happen at the UN, as the humanitarian situation will only get worse for hundreds of millions of people worldwide while Israel is disproportionately condemned for building apartments in their nation's capital.

[vminfla]

8. Hope springs eternal

Certain "progressives" believe that if things just change, they will naturally change for the better. They rarely make the right connections between the root causes of tyranny and shared idealogy.

[demicritic]

4. Hated by tyrants loved by democracy

A lone democratic country encircled by neighboring tyrant governments. That is why Israel is feared and threatened by these nations. Now the Arab revolutionaries are awakening to the truth of real democratic governance.

[vminfla]

7. True, but as we are seeing in Egypt

there may be a preference by the populace for thugs and tyrants.