Tyrants at the Gate

The Jerusalem Post has Carolyn Gluck’s latest Column One article up: Bush vs. Democracy. She is one of the few columnists that has had a record more reminiscent of my grandmother - almost always right.

Sharon, with no way to hide the fact that for the past year he has been lying to the Israeli public by claiming that in exchange for the destruction of the Jewish presence in Gaza and northern Samaria he received American support for expanding the Jewish communities in the rest of Judea and Samaria, has simply changed the subject. He has changed the subject by changing the enemy. It is not the Palestinians who worry him anymore, but the Jews. It's the Jews – and in particular his political supporters turned opponents who two years ago elected him on the basis of his declared opposition to precisely the unilateral giveaway plan he is now forcing them to swallow – who are the greatest danger.

In an exclusive interview with NBC TV, which set the tone for his entire visit, Sharon said that Israel "looks like on the eve of a civil war." He then went on to say, "All my life I was defending [the] life of Jews. Now, for [the] first time, security steps are taken to protect me from Jews."

The sheer obscenity of this statement by Sharon, made at the same time that the people he is set to expel from their homes were being attacked by Palestinian mortars that Sharon ordered the IDF to do nothing about, is made all the more clear when one looks at a statement he himself made 10 years ago. Speaking to Kfar Chabad's local newspaper in 1995 of the press accusations at the time that opponents of the so-called peace process were inciting civil war, Sharon said, "Look what happened in Stalinist Russia, for example. In the mid-1930s, the Soviet authorities disseminated stories that there was a plan to assassinate Stalin. They were used as a justification for destroying the high command of the Red Army as well as the Jewish writers and the Jewish doctors. This is exactly what the Rabin government is doing now in Israel Have we gotten to such Stalinist Bolshevism? Where are they leading with the blood libels they are putting out? To the abandonment of the settlers in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and maybe to a civil war. We have to shout out the warning: Tyrants at the gate."

So there we have it: Not only has US policy of safeguarding the PA while insisting on further Israeli land concessions to the PA made terrorism the choice of the Palestinian electorate, but Ariel Sharon's decision to go along with the US has made him chart a policy course that leads, as he stated so well a decade ago, to grave dangers to Israeli democracy.

Minister Natan Sharansky has explained that the true test of democracy is not the test of elections, but the "town square test" – whether an individual can stand in the middle of the town square and freely express his unpopular political opinion without fear of punishment. By this measure, the PA is not now and has never been a democracy. And the only change in democracy witnessed by Holy Land residents in the last year has been the increased danger to Israelis who have taken to the town squares to voice their opposition to Sharon's alarming new policies. Is the Middle East democratizing? Certainly not in our neck of the woods.

The Bush administration maybe preparing the public for a new reality in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict should Hamas win a strong mandate in the elections to be held in Palestinian Gaza come July 17th; which could be the rationale behind this week’s strange statement from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan that an electoral victory for Hamas (designated a terrorist organization for some years by the US government) could evolve into professional business people.

Certainly fears of a Hamas takeover in Gaza in July has the Palestinian Authority suggesting that it may have to post-pone the July elections.

Signs mounted Saturday that the Palestinian Authority was pushing to delay parliamentary elections until after Israel's Gaza Strip pullout - or to hold them on time under an old law benefiting the ruling Fatah party. Hamas, which stands to make a strong showing in the balloting, warned that if the July 17 parliamentary elections didn't take place on schedule, then Hamas would rethink its wobbly, unofficial truce with Israel.

Information Minister Nabil Shaath said "nobody has decided to postpone" the vote. But the election's proximity to Israel's late-July launch of its evacuation of 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank could become an issue, Shaath added. "The question really has to do with the Israeli pullout of Gaza during that time, and our fear that the Israelis might make it difficult for people to do real election campaigns and have real freedom of movement," he said. "This is really the only consideration," he said. "And this consideration will be discussed with Hamas and with everybody." Hamas, which is contesting legislative elections for the first time, says Abbas' ruling Fatah movement wants to postpone the vote for fear Hamas would undercut Fatah's power in parliament.

If Hamas does win electral control of Gaza what will be the Bush Administration still go full steam ahead with promised funding for rebuilding the Palestinian economy? And if so, where will the Bush Administration draw the line: free lunches for Islamic Jihad or Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade members?