Barak Goes Off the Reservation

Ehud Barak is the odd man out in Israel’s government. Netanyahu brought him in as Defense Minister to create a stable coalition. Since then Barak has been destroying Jewish homes in Judaea and Samaria, built during the “freeze,” with a dedication worthy of a better cause. Recently he made a fiasco of Israel’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara.


Barak joined Netanyahu’s government last year because he shared the opinion of Netanyahu and 70% of Jewish Israelis: The Palestinians are not interested in peace but in destroying Israel, unilateral withdrawals (Barak was responsible for one, from Lebanon ten years ago) merely encourage terrorist radicals, so all the talk about a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians is just for show. Unfortunately, Barak is just about the only person in his party who’s wised up about the true prospects for “peace.” He’s under a lot of pressure to promote an “active policy,” which means giving up something for nothing—e.g. dismantling Israeli settlements—in order to entice the Palestinians to make peace.

Barak now appears to be going off the Netanyahu reservation. He’s calling for “an assertive diplomacy,” a code word for unilateral Israeli action. Barak’s faith in unilateral actions, of the dismantle-settlements-and-retreat kind, has been restored. He now wants Israel to make unilateral concessions, but not because that will promote peace with the Palestinians. He knows it only whets their appetite for more. He wants to do it because Barack Obama wants Israel to do it, and keeping the United States happy is vital to Israel’s security.

The United States is certainly vital to Israel’s security but that doesn’t mean that Barak’s new policy is a good idea. It isn’t. It’s hard to tell with Obama. He may want Israel to make unilateral concessions because that conforms to his abstract ideals of peace and justice in the Middle East. He’s swallowed the Palestian narrative, hook, line and sinker. Or he may want it because he wants to make the Arabs happy, and squeezing Israel is the way to do it. In practice, he’s acting as the Arabs’ tool.

Israel cannot, for its life, do what Obama wants. To do so is to prove to the Palestinians and the broader Arab world that they can get Israel to make unilateral concessions simply by getting the Americans to demand them. And that way lies the road to Israel’s demise. Barak may talk about “assertive” policies, but the real word for his policy is “appeasement.”

Lookit all the Democrats!

I’m sitting in the library of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, looking at the news on the net. Hizbullah is preparing a flotilla of women to crash the blockade of Gaza. Why, I wonder, would more women want to go to Gaza? Once they get there, they will have to wear burqas.  If they don’t bring male relatives with them on the boat to escort them once they land, how will they get around? Will the Hamas authorities throw them in jail, or sentence them to lashes for indecent strolling?  I don’t know if Hamas has got around to prohibiting women from driving cars, as Saudi Arabia once did.

In the meantime, how’re things going in Europe, that bastion of democracy and civil rights? Today the upper house of the Spanish Parliament passed a law restricting the wearing of the burqa in public. The New York Times article reporting this event reviews Europe’s evolving attitude to the rights of its own Moslem citizens:

• Switzerland bans the construction of minarets.

• One house of Belgium’s Parliament has passed a law that outlaws wearing clothing in public that covers the face. (What are they going to do in six months, when the weather in Brussels drops to 20 degrees below zero Centigrade? Throw everyone wearing a ski mask into jail? At least the jail’s warm).

• France already bans headscarves in the public schools. According to the Times, France is “inching toward” a ban on the burqa, which French President Sarkozy supports.

Wearing a burqa is a personal, "self-regarding" decision.  In the words of John Stuart Mill, in his essay On Liberty, it "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Therefore it's nobody's business but the wearer's.  Legislating against it is illegitimate, at least in societies that pride themselves on being free. Anti-burqa legislation, like anti-minaret legislation, is simply the prejudice and intolerance of the majority made law. It’s discriminatory and violates freedom of religion.

I look around me at the students of the Hebrew University, studying for exams. Two tables over, four of them sit together. Three wear headscarves that cover their hair, neck and ears. One wears a brown hijab. Earlier, I ate my sandwich in the stairwell, watching the students—not a few in headscarves—coming and going.

Who cares? In Israel, nobody--neither individual citizens nor the government. If an Arab woman wants to dress like an Arab woman, that’s her business, and maybe her family’s business, but certainly none of mine. Or yours. Or the State of Israel’s, which to its credit couldn’t care less about burqas. If an Arab woman wants to wear tights and a t-shirt, that’s fine too. Plenty do. One of them sits together with her headscarved sisters, cramming for an economics final.

Sometimes, sitting here at the top of Mount Scopus, I get a weird sense that either we’re crazy or else everyone else is crazy. This burqa business brings the feeling back. We’re surrounded by people who either force people to wear burqas or force them not to. The only thing these people seem to agree about is that Israel is a threat to human rights. Honestly, who’s being nuts?