Canada, Israel, America: Whose Democracy? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Canada, Israel, America: Whose Democracy?
by

It is said that dementia loosens the inhibitions. On a visit to Canada March 24 President Biden made another of his monumental gaffes. To properly understand it the reader may need a bit of context. Justin Trudeau is presently embroiled in the biggest scandal of his career. In recent weeks the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) has been leaking information that China interfered in the last two Canadian elections in favor of the PM’s Liberal Party. Because of the public outcry — and in spite of fierce obfuscation and resistance from the Liberal Party — Parliament, shortly before Biden addressed them, had voted to set up an inquiry into the matter. And it is in this context, in the presence of an embarrassed PM, that Biden declared, “So today I applaud China for stepping up — I apologize, I mean Canada.”

It’s only natural that the ordinary citizens of a democratic nation such as Canada are appalled by foreign interference in their elections. But because China is an authoritarian power trying to spread its influence all over the world the CSIS revelations, though shocking, are not surprising. On the other hand, what if the election interference were being done not by an authoritarian regime bent on ruling the world, but by a fellow democratic one? In a way on the face of it the idea of this happening makes no sense. Democracies have shared values, right? And preeminent among those shared values is the peoples right to choose their own leaders as they see fit, right? So why would a fellow democracy, want to be sticking its nose into that electoral business of another democracy, right? Nevertheless, that is precisely who has happened and is happening to Israel. And in this case the culprit is not authoritarian China but democratic America.

During Obama’s second term the U.S. State Department interfered in one Israeli election, and now, in its reincarnation as the Biden State Department, is helping to fund the protests against the outcome of the last election which returned to power Obama’s nemesis Benjamin Netanyahu. The reason for this interference is well known. Netanyahu is the one who for reasons that are rather self-evident opposed Obama’s “signature foreign policy achievement,” the Iran Nuclear Deal, that unratified treaty that would give Iran a legal and legitimate path to getting the bomb and thereby put the state of Israel in existential danger.

The interference is somewhat complicated, as these things usually are, because under the circumstances a country such as the U.S. will want to preserve plausible deniability. The Obama State Department interfered in the 2015 Israeli election by funding a leftist Israeli NGO called OneVoice to act as its proxy. State gave OneVoice a $315,000 grant in 2014 purportedly to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. OneVoice used that money to build an infrastructure which it then used after the grant had expired in order to campaign against Netanyahu in the 2015 Israeli election. Technically this was legal though it is worth noting that in its grant application OneVoice had stated its intention to do just this yet somehow it escaped the attention of the State Department reviewer. And now, not approving of the outcome of the last election where Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister, was once again re-elected, the Obama State Department in its reincarnation as the Biden State Department is helping to fund the protests that are trying to overthrow him and reverse the results.

Characteristically, the Israeli protesters say that they are trying to save Israeli democracy, much as their American counterparts are constantly claiming that they too are trying to save what they call “our Democracy.” Of course, peaceful protest, in and of itself, is quintessentially democratic, it is the expression of the democratic right of people to assemble and voice their concerns about how they are being governed. But violent protest is anything but democratic. One of the things that defines democracy, as the rigged Democrat Jan. 6 committee tirelessly and hypocritically kept reminding the public, is the peaceful transition of power. But what about, as in the case of the U.S. 2020 election, violence precedes the voting? Or what about, as to a lesser extent but with threats of more and worse to come, as is now the case in Israel following the voting, that violence seeks to overturn the results?

The Left talks about “our democracy” as if the democratic system of government is something that a people or even a particular party can own. But the history of failed democracies teaches us quite the opposite, that you do not own democracy, you just rent it. The rent that a people must pay is in the form of becoming informed, being a participant and voting in one’s own interest. If you don’t pay the rent, you will inevitably be evicted, self-evicted actually, into the system known as Tyranny. And tyranny, for those who live under it, is existentially a form of political homelessness.

The protests in Israel are tearing Israel apart and that country’s enemies are undoubtedly watching with glees just as America’s enemies must be gleefully watching as it tears itself apart by succumbing to the blandishments of Wokery. If enacted the proposed judicial reforms that are the pretext for the protests would simply turn the clock back to what was the norm in Israel until 30 years ago when Aharon Barak, the then Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, unilaterally instituted some forms of judicial activism that are so radical that they exist no where else in the judicially activist democratic world. For example, one can bring a petition to the Supreme Court without having any standing in the matter. The SC has given itself the power to dismiss cabinet ministers that it doesn’t like. It can interfere in any and all civilian and even defense matters that it chooses and all of this on the basis of a vague and conjured principle which it calls “reasonableness.”

The opposition has been invited to sit down at the table and negotiate the government’s proposed reforms of this extraordinary radicalism but has adamantly refused to do so. The protesters are creating the climate of intimidation embodied in the BLM slogan “No Justice No Peace.”

Unlike those that took place in America before the 2020 election, the Israeli protests are indeed mainly nonviolent. Nevertheless, they are disruptive enough to threaten national security in a country that is constantly dealing with terrorist actions that require quick responses. Though the proposed reforms initially had widespread support by now the threat to national security has introduced public panic into the equation which appears to be exactly what the protesters intended in order to get their way and hold on to power through judicial activism.

Meanwhile in Canada, Trudeau claims that he did not know about the Chinese interference until the recent CSIS revelations, but that is risible. No doubt he was glad to have China’s help in winning those elections and also probably believed in his heart of hearts that there was nothing wrong with that. After all Trudeau, like his father before him, is not only an admirer of China but also an ardent globalist (but I repeat myself). Early on in his tenure he declared Canada to be not a country but some sort of post-national entity. And if you’re not a real country, what does it matter if someone or something meddles in your elections? Those elections don’t really mean much of anything anyway, just a troublesome and inconvenient way of convincing the hoi polloi that your rule and everything that you do is legitimate.

It’s not as if the globalists love the globe the way a citizen might love his country. What they love is themselves and the company they keep and the money power and self-conferred prestige they get from hobnobbing with one another while turning a blind eye to the compatriots who they have betrayed in their amoral lust for these things. To a man and woman they are narcissists. They do not love the so-called global community because how can you love and become attached to the blob which is the global community, which taken together, unlike any individual country, is an incoherent hot mess, a Babel of contradictions. You cannot be attached to that, but you certainly can exploit it. The globalists are not the sophisticated cosmopolitans that they fancy themselves as being. They are merely a cult of pompous deracinated individuals. What their love amounts to is flitting around in their protective shells, partaking of the world’s earthly delights while ever exerting themselves to own it, to rule it. This is the lot with whom Trudeau identifies, so why should he mind or even notice if an adversary interferes in his country’s elections?

A few days ago, I spoke with an Israeli friend who happens to be a Leftist. He had been protesting and jokingly claimed to be an anarchist and a terrorist. He said that he had recently had some friends over, some distinguished folks of his own political persuasion who blithely threatened that if the judicial reforms are passed it might lead to civil war. My friend knows that from time to time I have considered moving to Israel so I said to him, “The way things are going I would never move to Israel. Why would I? Why would I move to a country where I might be killed by a coreligionist, perhaps even you, in a civil war. I had rather stay in Canada where anti-Semitism is on the rise and perhaps be killed by some other kind of person who hates me for the accident of having been born a Jew.”

And now I cannot help but keep thinking once you’ve had your civil war and destroyed your country and your real enemies move in to do the mopping up of what is left, what will you do then? And what will then become of “your democracy”?

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