Israeli opposition fails to oppose controversial bills
The packaging of three controversial Israeli laws — the governability, sharing the burden and referendum laws — in a single coalition bundle caused a tempest in the political and media swamps. The opposition parties boycotted debates and votes on those laws, claiming that bundling them together was an assault against the principles of democracy. Members of the coalition responded that the boycott brought disgrace on the legislature, which was the sanctuary of democracy. Both sides were right. This parliamentary event will hardly go down in the golden book of Israeli democracy. However, it is just a symptom of a more serious disease that has affected the spine of Israeli society and its institutions over the past few years, or to be more precise, Israel’s Jewish society.
Not a day goes by without us hearing the prime minister calling on the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. But is it possible to recognize Israel as a democratic state, as a state that makes every effort to treat all of its citizens as equals, regardless of religion, race, nationality or gender? Just last week on March 6, Amir Levi, who is in charge of budgets at the Finance Ministry, admitted that there are significant gaps in the allocation of budgets to the Arab sector for education, the construction of daycare centers, public transportation lines and all matters pertaining to sources of business income for the Arab localities — compared to Jewish localities. Levi told this to the ministers of finance and science during a rare ministerial visit to the Arab town of Sakhnin in the Galilee. The most senior official in the Finance Ministry's budget department recommended a “root canal” to deal with the disease of discrimination facing non-Jewish localities, or in Levi’s more euphemistic terms, “unequal budgets.”
The Israeli Democracy Index for 2013, published by the Israel Democracy Institute, reveals that 48.9% of the Jewish interviewees believe that the country’s Jewish citizens are deserving of more rights than its non-Jewish citizens, and 43.7% disagree. The situation was completely different just five years ago. The number of respondents who agreed that Jews should receive more rights was 35.9% then, whereas the number who disagreed was 62%. This finding, writes the author of the index, Tamar Hermann, “is extremely problematic in terms of democracy, since the essence of democracy is the principle of equal rights for all citizens and this principle is enshrined in Israel's declaration of independence.”
Furthermore, 51.5% of Jews “absolutely agree” with and “quite support” a policy by which the government would encourage only Jews to build new localities. According to 66.7% of interviewees, momentous decisions by the state on matters of peace and security should be made by a Jewish majority. Only 20.1% completely disagree with this approach. However, when it comes to non-political issues, it is worth noting a change in the general public regarding “non-Jewish citizens of the state.” Last year, foreign workers replaced Arabs at the top of the ''undesirable neighbors'' chart, with 47.6% of Jews saying they would feel uncomfortable having an Arab family as its neighbor and 56.9% saying they would feel uncomfortable having foreign workers as neighbors. (Arab respondents were deterred first by gay neighbors, then Jews and finally foreign workers.)
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/knesset-opposition-democracy-minority-rights-bills-boycott.html#ixzz2w9dTIcTF