In which Tzipi Livni explains that Israel isn’t a democratic state:
democracy to take root in the Arab world – not merely as a government system but as a values system that embraces nonviolence, coexistence, freedom, opportunity and equality
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February 24, 2011
Livni And Democracy
Comments
How could the Washington Post publish such rubbish? Sure the article is appealing in general tone and optimism, but the flaws are in the details.
democratic nations have enshrined the idea that democracy is more than elections and that those seeking to be elected must commit to key democratic principles. In Israel, for example, parties are ineligible to participate in elections if their platform embraces racist or anti-democratic doctrines
Meaningless words.
No mention by Livni of a constitution protecting individual or minority rights.
Without protections, democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on “What’s for dinner?”
Posted by: Rick | Feb 24 2011 13:18 utc | 1
Live interview On Al Jazeera right this minute – a man called Ali was involved in heavy attacks in a town about 50 km from Tripoli (much gunfire could be heard in the background)- his response when asked what the people wanted – he said a Constitution. He didn’t mention the words “democracy” or “values”. If only Livni was as wise as this man. The world can be proud of these Libyan people. Maybe the Israeli leaders will learn something.
Posted by: Rick | Feb 24 2011 14:15 utc | 2
The shocking hypocrisy of Livni’s article- a daughter of Irgun, the mother of the Gaza massacre, insisting that violence should be renounced- surely qualifies her for a US Passport, should she ever find herself looking for another place to live.
Posted by: bevin | Feb 24 2011 14:44 utc | 3
classic!
“The free world has long recognized that democracy is about values before it is about voting. ”
Posted by: annie | Feb 24 2011 14:53 utc | 4
Shorter Livni:
Israel wants a right of approval over who can run in Egyptian elections.
Current events in the Middle East highlight the urgency of adopting at the global level what true democracies apply at the national level – a universal code for participation in democratic elections.
Good luck with that, Tzipi.
Posted by: Night Owl | Feb 24 2011 16:19 utc | 6
i liked the part about a universal code for participation in democratic elections
Current events in the Middle East highlight the urgency of adopting at the global level what true democracies apply at the national level – a universal code for participation in democratic elections. This would include requiring every party running for office to embrace, in word and deed, a set of core democratic principles: the renunciation of violence and the acceptance of state monopoly over the use of force, the pursuit of aims by peaceful means, commitment to the rule of law and to equality before the law, and adherence to international agreements to which their country is bound.
Such a code could guide election monitors and individual nations in deciding whether to grant parties democratic legitimacy. It would put all societies on notice that electing an undemocratic party would have negative international consequences.
b, weiss just linked to this post
Posted by: annie | Feb 24 2011 16:24 utc | 7
Brilliant commentary from Justin Raimondo:
Danielle Pletka, chairman of Ahmed Chalabi’s American fan club and a big wheel over at the American Enterprise Institute, fumes:
“Have they convened an emergency Security Council meeting? Have they demanded Qadhafi step down? Have they frozen Qadhafi and sons’ assets or called on others to do so? Have they imposed any economic measures? Have they done anything except wait all day and issue a comment at 5 pm? There are no easy answers, but there are clearly wrong things to do and among them is ‘just sit there.’”
Pletka and her fellow neocons can’t live in a world where we “just sit there” while others determine the course of events – and determine their own destiny. A world in which the United States isn’t the Prime Mover is, for them, a nightmare universe – and they’ve been living that nightmare since January, when Tunisia and then Egypt had their lids blown off. Two major American allies in the Middle East inside of less than two months – how could the Empire survive such a humiliation? Libya is their big chance to intervene and save face.
This sums up the Neocon mindset (as well as the mindset of the Neocons’ predecessors, the Trotskyite Communists).
Posted by: Tom | Feb 24 2011 18:57 utc | 8
The quality of her delusion is pretty remarkable, even by Israeli standards.
In truth, the US standard delusion is just as breathtaking, in which most Americans arrogate to themselves the authority to lecture others about the beauty of democracy, even while it is diminished by Citizens United, astroturfing, money.
There is hardly a deeper, and more harmful reification than “democracy.”
Posted by: slothrop | Feb 24 2011 19:14 utc | 9
Night Owl,
LOL! I think your short version is spot on! But I shouldn’t laugh, these people are serious.
Posted by: Rick | Feb 25 2011 0:08 utc | 10
Values?
This Palestinian family is forced to put their house in a metal cage!!!!
The family’s 10 members, four of them children, can only reach the house via a 40-yard (meter) passageway connecting them to the Arab village of Beit Ijza farther down a hill. The passageway passes over a road used by Israeli army jeeps and is lined on both sides with a 24-foot-high (8-meter) heavy-duty metal fence.
The same fence rings the simple one-story house, separating it from the surrounding settlement houses.
…
Sadat al-Ghirayib, 30, said his father built the house in 1978 on about 27 acres of family land, where he planted fruit trees. The Israel army soon confiscated part of the land, he said.
The settlement of Givon HaHadasha was founded in the early 1980s. Al-Ghirayib said the army confiscated more land as the settlement spread. Today, it is home to some 1,100 Jewish settlers, some of their homes no more than two dozen steps from the al-Ghirayib home. Just a handful of trees remain.
Posted by: Rick | Feb 25 2011 6:01 utc | 11
Robot Wisdom (an aggregate blogger) had (or has) a slogan:
No Promised land, No Holy book, No Chosen People
Posted by: Noirette | Feb 25 2011 14:14 utc | 12
Here are details about another democracy that embraces the “values” of nonviolence, coexistence, freedom, opportunity and equality
…
On 16 February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at George Washington University in which she condemned governments that arrested protestors and crushed free expression. She lauded the liberating power of the internet while failing to mention that her government was planning to close down those parts of the internet that encouraged dissent and truth-telling. It was a speech of spectacular hypocrisy, and Ray McGovern was in the audience. Outraged, he rose from his chair and silently turned his back on Clinton. He was immediately seized by police and a security goon and beaten to the floor, dragged out and thrown into jail, bleeding. He has sent me photographs of his injuries. He is 71. During the assault, which was clearly visible to Clinton, she did not pause in her remarks.
…
As the Washington historian William Blum has documented, since 1945, the US has destroyed or subverted more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and used mass murderers like Suharto, Mobutu and Pinochet to dominate by proxy. In the Middle East, every dictatorship and pseudo-monarchy has been sustained by America. In “Operation Cyclone”, the CIA and MI6 secretly fostered and bank-rolled Islamic extremism. The object was to smash or deter nationalism and democracy. The victims of this western state terrorism have been mostly Muslims. The courageous people gunned down last week in Bahrain and Libya, the latter a “priority UK market”, according to Britain’s official arms “procurers”, join those children blown to bits in Gaza by the latest American F-16 aircraft.
The revolt in the Arab world is not merely against a resident dictator but a worldwide economic tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development, the IMF and World Bank, which have ensured that rich countries like Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with half the population earning less than $2 a day. The people’s triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism. [emphasis added]
…
http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/behind-the-arab-revolt-is-a-word-we-dare-not-speak
Posted by: Rick | Feb 27 2011 2:24 utc | 13
& never a word rick of the league of monsters in the high spheres of power in israel ever being put before the international criminal court as they should be for their crimes of humanity against the occupied territories & their crimes of war against lebanon
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 27 2011 2:44 utc | 14