The silent settler coup that took over Israel

Tricky business, democracy. For confirmation of that, if he were still alive we could ask Edmund Burke, the 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher who did much to establish the tenets of modern conservatism.

Burke is no longer with us, obviously, but fortunately his words live on. And what words they are: his maiden speech in the House of Commons in 1765 was “spoken in such a manner as to stop the mouths of all Europe,” according to William Pitt the Elder.

In November 1774, having been elected member of Parliament for the Bristol constituency in southwest England, Burke delivered what became known as the “Speech to the Electors of Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll,” in which he told them what they might expect of him as he carried out his duties.

Having promised voters that their views would always carry great weight with him, Burke then gave it to them with both barrels. An MP’s “unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living,” he said. And in case his meaning was unclear, he continued: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

In political science terminology, Burke was rejecting the constituent-imperative form of democracy in favor of the representative mandate version. In plain English, he told voters: “If you think I’m going to Westminster to do your bidding, you have another think coming.”

Netanyahu is in hock to the people who elected him. And they have made it crystal clear what it is they expect him to do

Ross Anderson

For 250 years, Burke’s brave words have been used by democratic idealists in support of the “perfect” representative assembly, populated by people of intelligence and integrity beholden to no vested interests, and therefore empowered to enact laws for the benefit of the whole of society rather than only those who elected them.

It is a noble thought. However, such idealists rarely mention what happened to Burke. What he had done, in effect, was to offer the voters of Bristol a choice at any subsequent election: either elect an MP who would do what they told him or elect an MP who would do what he thought was right. Overwhelmingly, at the next general election in 1760, they opted for the former and the hapless Burke was booted out of office.

Now, you may think there is little in common between Burke, a man of profound wisdom, erudition and integrity, and the shameless reprobate currently masquerading as the prime minister of Israel. In fact, they are connected by a 250-year-old historical thread. Leaving aside for now his venality, his corruption and his bloody-minded determination to cling on to power and office like some sort of malign barnacle regardless of the damage caused to other people and his own country, Benjamin Netanyahu — like Burke before him — is in hock to the people who elected him. And they have made it crystal clear what it is they expect him to do.

Not only that, but they have also elected a couple of enforcers to hold Netanyahu’s feet to the fire should his resolve weaken, in the form of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Of the two, Ben-Gvir is the pantomime clown. He is a man who once hung a portrait on his living-room wall of the Jewish extremist mass murderer Baruch Goldstein and then wondered why he was arrested and convicted of inciting support for terrorism. Smotrich is another matter altogether. He is that most dangerous of creatures — an intelligent fundamentalist religious bigot.

It is easy to be appalled by people such as Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu, but they are easy targets, low-hanging fruit

Ross Anderson

While Ben-Gvir craves and obtains publicity with his interminable, provocative stunt marches through Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, Smotrich is quietly using his ministerial power to get on with his life’s work: in his own words, this is “flooding the areas of Judea and Samaria with settlements and Jewish settlers. When this happens, the Palestinians are supposed to understand that they have no chance to get a state of their own, and they would have to choose between one of the three options — a life of subjugation under Israeli rule, emigration, or a martyr’s death.”

It is easy to be appalled by people such as Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu, but they are easy targets, low-hanging fruit. Israel’s tragedy, I think, is not that such grotesque figures hold public office: as Burke showed, elected representatives can swiftly be unelected. My question is, what possessed the people of Israel to elect them in the first place?

Part of the answer may lie in a devastating report in The New York Times last month, entitled “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel.” It describes “a sometimes criminal nationalistic movement that has been allowed to operate with impunity and gradually move from the fringes to the mainstream of Israeli society … how voices within the government that objected to the condoning of settler violence were silenced and discredited … and how the occupation came to threaten the integrity of Israel’s democracy.”

In other words, in a silent coup, Israel has effectively been taken over by the settler movement, using the tools of the country’s own democracy to do it. It has been a coup a long time in the making and I fear it will take a great deal more than the removal from office of Netanyahu to reverse it.

• Ross Anderson is associate editor of Arab News.