Poetry and government

 

"The silent wheels roll through the quiet green," happens to be the first line of a sonnet, a poem written in a highly specific form. The word form here matters: a form, by definition, has a formal definition, one which a poem, or anything else with a formal definition, must fit. A Shakespearean sonnet must consist of exactly fourteen lines, divided into three stanzas and a final rhyming couplet. In the stanzas, each alternate line must rhyme: first with third and second with fourth. A line in a sonnet must consist of exactly ten syllables, or beats, with alternate strong and weak stresses, and each pair of beats must begin with the weaker beat. Like the drumming of Indigenous North Americas, this poetry mimics the beat of a human heart.

Many other formal definitions exist: computer languages have extremely specific formal definitions, many of which make the definition of a sonnet look very loose and informal. In each case, a formal definition acts as a scaffold. It does not define what people who employ the form may express, but it does define, and thus restrict, the means of expression. Above all, the scaffold, by itself, has nothing to say about the quality of the expression. The literary record contains a long list of very bad sonnets: trite, sentimental, poorly expressed, but none the less fitting the formal definition of the sonnet. Conversely, the world contains many magnificent poems that do not fit the definition of a sonnet.

Formal definitions exist, of course, in politics. Of all the formal definitions in politics, none have attracted so many spurious claims as the form we call democracy. In some cases, this takes the form of utterly risible titles, such as the claim of the totalitarian hereditary monarchy of North Korea's official name: the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". The formal definition of democracy has far more flexibility and adaptability than the definition of a sonnet or of a computer language; it takes in practices ranging from the people's assemblies of Swiss Cantons or the traditional New England town meeting, all the way to formal representative structures with periodic elections. It allows for constitutional monarchies such as Canada, parliamentary republics such as the Federal Republic of Germany, and structures with a strong elected executive such as the United States.

With all that flexibility, the definition of democracy, to coin a phrase from the TV show Law and Order, "is not made of taffy; it has limits." In the end, all authority rests on consent, but democracy, above all forms, requires voluntary consent, not simply submission. It requires a means by which the people either govern themselves or select those who represent them. 

This brings us to the recent policies of the government of Israel. Plenty of statements, policies and definitions simply assume the State of Israel fits the formal definition of democracy, or state it as an article of faith. The International Holocaust Memorial Association working definition of antisemitism includes, as an example in relation to Israel:

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Unfortunately, the assumption that Israel belongs in the category of democracy no longer clearly holds. Franklin Foer, the Atlantic writer, recently wrote in a (paywalled) article about the anguish of the American Jewish community: 

Liberal Jews once celebrated Israel as the lone democracy in a distinctly undemocratic region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition of theocrats and messianists seems bent on shredding the basis for that claim. 

Some specifics may help here: the current Israeli government's policy of making unilateral claims to have annexed the land comprising the West Bank, and transferring authority from a military occupation to a fully civil administration, will leave Israel permanently ruling over five million Palestinians, over a third of the total population of the total territory controlled by Israel, with no plans to extend the vote to them. This will mean the State of Israel will have a form of government that does not match the definition of democracy. 

Again, we have to speak clearly. Democracy, as a form, has a formal definition. We cannot simply award it as a title to nations we consider friends. The possibility exists that the divergence of Israeli government and the democratic form has no cure and that nothing could prevent it, but to say a nation has abandoned democracy for a good reason, still means it has abandoned democracy and we cannot call it democratic. Those of us who wish both the both Jewish and Arab communities of Western Asia well can only lament this. We can, and should, denounce attempts to blame the Jewish community as a whole for this situation; many Jewish people, and others who who identify themselves as Zionists, do not endorse the policies of Mr. Netanyahu’s government. However, it does not do to deny the truth, however unpleasant: Israeli democracy ultimately depends on either finding a workable partition, with two states for two peoples, or else finding a way for Jewish Israelis and Palestinians to coexist in a single state.

Successive Israeli governments have failed to arrive at an agreement for partition the Palestinians or their representatives would accept, and a workable single state remains a dream of idealists and human rights activists. The actual policy of Mr. Netanyahu and his government has headed in the opposite direction from democracy for some time, and time has now grown short.