Monthly Archives: March 2010

Semi-Authoritarian Regimes

This sounds familiar:

    “‘Semi-authoritarian regimes’ have political parties and NGOs, hold elections, and look on paper as though they at least have some democratic attributes. But behind the scenes the power elite makes sure it remains in power and reduces the ‘democratic’ activities to a shadow play for the benefit of a restless domestic public and for that of international bureaucrats.”

Middle East expert Juan Cole thinks that American policy in recent years has encouraged the formation of semi-authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East. Those that were pure dictatorships in the past have learned to hold elections without putting at risk the monopoly of their ruling elites. As Israel hardens its nature as an apartheid state, it is moving toward authoritarianism and away from democracy. In Iraq and Palestine, where the U.S. experimented with democratization but didn’t like the results, semi-authoritarian regimes have become the more comfortable path for U.S. interests. America’s clumsy attempt to support democratizing forces in Iran has led to more authoritarianism, not less. In the two cases he mentions where movement has been in the other direction, Turkey and Pakistan, greater popular control at the expense of the military is “disturbing the world status quo,” creating awkward relations with the U.S.

Cole concludes:

    “You have to wonder how committed most Washington elites really are to democratization, and have to wonder whether semi-authoritarianism in Middle Eastern allies might not be perceived as holding benefits for the U.S.”

The book to which he refers in this post, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism by Marina Ottaway, can be found here.

Let’s Talk About Israeli Racism

Just yesterday, I wondered to a friend if maybe Benjamin Netanyahu is disrespecting Barack Obama in part because he is black? And lo and behold, David Bromwich wrote today in the Huffington Post:

    “Racism as much as fear drives the Israeli policy toward Palestinians. This has always been known. But who now will deny that there is also, in the Israeli distrust and visceral ridicule of Barack Obama, an undercurrent of racism?”

He goes on to point out the parallel between racism against Palestinians by the Israeli settler movement, and racism against blacks by their staunchest supporters in the U.S., the white evangelicals he calls Christian Zionists. It is almost as if, their segregationist fantasies defeated here at home, the religious right is projecting them onto the Holy Land by helping the settler movement to build an apartheid state.

    “The operation of Israeli racism against a black American president is powerfully enforced by the settler movement and by its American allies, the Christian Zionists. … Settler racism and Christian Zionist racism (associated with the ‘birther movement’ in the U.S.) converge in a belief in the political and the social superiority of Israeli Jews over Palestinians — a superiority that for the Christian Zionists corresponds (in ways that need no comment) to the natural superiority of American whites to blacks.”

He calls on Americans to become aware of the racist nature of the Israeli settlement project, and its implications for American security interests.

    “Will Americans now stop calling the annexation wall — which cuts off West-Bank Israeli colonists from their Palestinian inferiors — ‘the security fence’? It is a wall. Its function is only partly to secure. It is there also to separate, to mark off, and to overawe. … The separation produces…a condition of constant inequality. It seems too weak to call the result ‘segregation.’ Ehud Barak, a solid authority one would have thought, has recently called it apartheid, and language that is accurate in the eyes of the defense minister of Israel should be good enough for Americans. …
    “The existential threat in the vicinity of Israel is not extermination but expulsion. And Israel is the agent rather than victim of that threat. The project is being carried forward by legalized acts of dispossession, by harassment, by deprivation of useful work, and by the deliberate infliction of misery.”

Fortunately, he feels that Americans are starting to become aware of these ugly truths. Beginning with the war in Gaza, and continuing through the diplomatic crisis surrounding Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, forty years of self-imposed silence in the American media, which have prevented a frank discussion of Israel’s policies, are starting to fray.

    “So the door to an honest discussion of Israel and Palestine has been opened wide. Too wide for AIPAC, and all its journalistic outlets, to close with their usual dispatch. We are in possession now of the realistic knowledge that Israel’s policies endanger American troops and American interests; that by creating new terrorists, those policies also threaten the security of the United States. …
    “It is one thing to sacrifice yourself for a friend in the cause of justice; another to sacrifice yourself for a friend in the cause of injustice.”

Finally, America vs. Israel

What Joe Biden told the Israelis:

    “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

What Hillary Clinton told CNN:

    “The announcement of the settlements the very day that the vice president was there was insulting.”

What Hillary Clinton told the Israelis (paraphrased by State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley):

    “The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security.”

What a senior U.S. official told the Washington Post:

    “We think the burden is on the Israelis to do something that could restore confidence in the process and to restore confidence in the relationship with the United States.”

What Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren told his colleagues:

    “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975…a crisis of historic proportions.”

What General David Petraeus told his superiors back in January (paraphrased by Mark Perry in Foreign Policy):

    “The message couldn’t be plainer: Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives.”

So American interests and Israeli interests are not identical? Finally, a confrontation where it counts!