Friday, March 16, 2012

Dimi Reider Gets A Free Ride in the NY Review of Books

The New York Review of Books hosts Dimi Reider on "Israel: The Knesset vs. Democracy".

He writes about:

...a far-reaching series of laws now pending or already passed by the Knesset suggests Israel is moving in an alarmingly anti-democratic direction.

...[a] sustained assault on such fundamental democratic principles as the right to asylum, the right to free association, the right to freedom of speech, and the right to an independent judiciary?

...it has been the Knesset itself that has become the primary engine of Israel’s turn away from democratic values.

...Some say the undemocratic system established for these Palestinians is now seeping back across the Green Line.

...the decline of Israel’s independent press

...Israel’s dual identity as a democracy for its citizens and a Jewish state is undergoing a momentous change, with the current coalition increasingly willing to sacrifice the former to preserve the latter.

I left this comment there (for after all, they'll never give me a platfrom to adequately respond):-

In writing "They portray civil society NGOs as agents of foreign influence, the Supreme Court as an unelected clique that grossly obstructs the democratic process, and news organizations that question government policies as left wing and unpatriotic. These allegations find a ready audience in an increasingly nationalist electorate; even those skeptical of some of the more radical proposals have shown little readiness to engage in organized opposition", Reider, one of the more extreme left-wing progressives here in Israel, summarizes what is the only truths in his otherwise misrepresentation of Israel's societal discourse and incorrect assertions in his flawed piece.  Earlier he wrote that what is supposedly happening is an "sustained assault on such fundamental democratic principles" but what has happened since the mid-1980s was a takeover of central power focii by the three main elitist groups: the judicial, the media and the 'humanist' associations (funded by liberal Jews) who seek, with each one's support, to alter Israel's ethos into a "state of all its citizens" (while one group of citizens denies any allegiance to or current/future idenification with the state), to de-Judaize the public square, to supplant basic values with post-modern reinterpretations and, most of all, to implant a feeling of remorse and guilt in Israelis for being Jewish, Zionist and zealous in desiring to be...Jewish, Zionist and zealous about our security, our identity and our just cause in a surrounding Middle East which is undemocratic, fanatic and dangerous.  Almost a death wish.

^

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