New Letter in the Guardian
A
letter on the Palestinian elections in the Guardian. For some reason, the Guardian didn't put a link to it on its Israel page, so I missed it until now.
The letter summarizes how I feel about elections. Don't get me wrong; elections make me happy. In truth, I would change one thing; democracy is contingent on more than Abbas making reforms. It should be an effort of the entire Palestinian leadership, not just the efforts of one man. Anyway:
Though the Palestinian elections should be welcomed, the international community should wait to see Mr Abbas's governing style before pronouncing the Palestinian Authority a democracy. Yasser Arafat's so-called democratic election ushered in an era of corruption and despotism. If Mr Abbas does not make the necessary reforms, the PA will be no closer to democracy than it was during Arafat's time. Democratic elections do not a democracy make.
Michael Brenner
New York
Evaluating Sharansky
Natan Sharansky, as I wrote a few days back, is my choice to become the next Israeli Prime Minister. It's becoming apparent to me that he's very misunderstood.
AngryArab asserts that he's opposing Sharon from the right, which makes him a right-wing fanatic. Barry Freedman, who is a right-wing fanatic, wrote in the Jewish Star, a Long Island paper, that he's all for Sharansky because Sharansky insists that the Palestinians democratize before Palestine becomes a state. Then he says he's completely opposed to a Palestinian state under any circumstances.
It's a shame, but Sharansky's image as a right-winger is pretty much solely based on his pro-democracy stance. His criticism of Sharon is not the Barry Freedman-brand, the simple call for Greater Israel. It is that Sharon does not care enough about what is going to happen in Gaza after the Israelis leave. Sharansky's core belief is that a Palestinian entity that is non-democratic is not worth making peace with because the peace will not last. But unlike the right-wing fanatics, he's not a rejectionist. And contrary to the assumptions of the anti-Zionists, being against Disengagement (which many of them are anyway, which should clue them in) does not a right-winger make.
Two things that Sharansky could do to help his case though:
1. He should criticize the Bush administration for its soft stance on Saudi Arabia. The place is a fascist state.
2. He should explain better how Israel can help the Palestinians develop democratic institutions. His op-ed pieces, which are rightly critical of Israel's position of not caring what kind of government the Palestinians have, should now explain, with specifics, what Israeli leaders should do to help Palestinian democracy along.
New Letter in the Jewish Press
I had a letter in the Jewish Press last week, but for some reason they forgot to put the January 19 letters on the website. The letter criticizes the Press's chastisement of Senate Democrats for occasionally using the filibuster to squelch particularly ideological Bush nominees. As I point out, Republicans did exactly the same thing during the Clinton administration, and far more often too, except that because they had a slight majority, they could bottle nominees up in Committee. This was done to the point of leaving Appeals Courts short of judges.
Anyway, here's my letter:
To the editor:
The Jewish Press is incorrect to join conservative hacks in
complaining about the Democratic use of the filibuster to deny
President Bush a few radical judicial appointments. The truth is that
Republican leaders blocked far more appointments during the Clinton
administration. The difference is that these nominees never made it
to the floor for a vote; Republicans used their majority on the Seante
Judiciary Committee to make sure that never happened. I could be
wrong, but I don't recall the Jewish Press complaining about use of
antidemocratic procedures like these before 2000.
The vast majority of President Bush's judicial nominees have been
overwhelmingly approved. The few that were not were highly partisan
appointments, judges with reputations for being judicial activists
rather than temperate interpreters of the law. Since Democrats do not
have the power to misuse the Senate Judiciary Committee as Republicans
did in the 1990s, the filibuster is the only tool left to them to stop
the President from politicizing the judiciary with conservative
activist judges. Judicial nominees should be uncontroversial enough
to get 60 votes from a body that normally gives judicial nominees far
more than that.
While it is true that the filibuster was used to quash civil rights
legislation through the 1960s, it is also true that the passage of
civil rights with the two-thirds majority to gain cloture of debate
and defeat the filibuster made clear the overwhelming support of
Americans for comprehensive civil rights legislation in 1964. Had
such important legislation passed with a close majority, it might very
well have denied the President the political capital necessary to
enforce the Civil Rights Act properly in Southern states, and we might
have had a continuation of Jim Crow policies. When the Brown v. Board
of Ed decision was handed down by the Supreme Court, Chief Justice
Earl Warren worked hard to make sure that the decision was unanimous,
because he realized the risk that a close decision might be ignored in
the South, undermining the rule of law.
A final note: regardless of Bush's reelection in 2004, it is utterly
disingenuous to suggest that this signalled public approval of
Administration policy on treatment of detainee at Guantanamo Bay and
Abu Ghraib. The overwhelming majority of Americans were outraged by
the Abu Ghraib pictures, and it is more than fair to surmise
Gonzales's role in forming policy on the detainees. Many Democrats,
and conservative Republicans such as Lindsay Graham and Chuck Hegel,
want are straight answers to fair questions on these issues, and Mr.
Gonzales has rightly garnered criticism for not providing them.
Michael Brenner, Woodmere
The original editorial is
here. It starts around the middle of the page.
