Netanyahu is turning Israel into another South Africa

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It is not by mistake that Netanyahu is leading Israel to the lepers' corner where South Africa used to be. For precisely the same racist values, the Declaration of Independence is being trampled in the Knesset.

By Sefi Rachlevsky

Let us imagine Meretz founder Shulamit Aloni as prime minister of Israel. An impish fantasy for some of us. In that case, would it be reasonable to imagine Shas launching a campaign under the slogan "Only the daring will win," calling upon Aloni to gather her courage and transform Israel into a theocracy under rabbinical law? Not really.

And is it possible that in their "Zurich initiative," the leaders of the settlers would submit to Aloni a practical and detailed plan for building 500,000 apartments in the Israeli colony in the territories, with the aim of perpetuating it? This too is not really likely. And not only in Israel. Is it possible to imagine the American right in a campaign advising President Barack Obama to gather his courage and revoke medical insurance legislation or submitting a detailed plan to him for a sweeping prohibition on abortions in the United States? Did the left in the U.S. ever suggest to President George W. Bush a plan for making the country a welfare state and did it bother to urge Nixon to embrace the peace organizations during the Vietnam War?

Even as rhetorical questions, these things look imaginary. And this, strangely and exceptionally, is exactly how the non-right in Israel has been operating for years now. In all the established democracies there is the simple awareness that the role of the alternative is to be an alternative. It has to challenge the regime and its values. Not give advice to the ruler but instead display determination to replace him. The alternative's role is to delegitimize the regime, its ways and its values, and to try to obtain a majority for a different set of values.

Only in non-democratic countries does the head of state derive his power from being perceived as impossible to replace and it seem possible only to advise him. This is the way things have looked in the Arab countries until recently. These simple things are clear to everyone in democratic systems. To everyone, that is, except the non-right in Israel. Only these people - from within what they perceive as good intentions and "responsibility" - look like eunuchs scurrying in an attempt to give advice "from within" to a regime that has chosen the opposite path.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-is-turning-israel-into-another-south-africa-1.357519

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