Demophrenia: Israel and the Malaise of Democracy

In my book Demophrenia: Israel and the Malaise of Democracy (1994), I subject to critical analysis the mentality of some of Israel's political and intellectual elites. To contend, as I do, that they are suffering from demophrenia is to say they suffer from a syndrome which is more or less evident in every democracy. For demophrenia is a compulsive and antilogical application of the democratic principles of equality and freedom to ideological conflicts in which one party denies those principles.

Typically, the democratic principle of equality is imposed on unequal, indeed, radically different, political regimes or ideological realities. For example, during the "Cold War," various theorists of international relations assured us that the conflict between American democracy and Soviet tyranny would fade as the two superpowers "converged" ideologically into some comfortable conformity of opinions, interests, and institutions. As in schizophrenia, these theorists assiduously avoided the stressful reality of ideological conflict and substituted their own "fixed ideas" or calming illusions for perception. "Convergence," is one, "conflict resolution" another. Evident here is the moral egalitarianism of demophrenia.

The world recently saw, however, that the end of U.S.-Soviet conflict required some partial democratic transformation of a communist dictatorship. It should therefore be obvious that a salutary end to the Israel-Arab conflict will require a democratic transformation of the Arab-Islamic dictatorships of the Middle East. Yet, despite the sudden and shocking collapse of Soviet tyranny--which no "convergence" theorist could possibly anticipate--political scientists (and policy-makers) in the free world continue to impose their fixed ideas about "conflict resolution" and "confidence-building measures" on the even greater ideological antagonism that underlies the Israel-Arab conflict.

Now, "confidence-building measures" between Israel and her Arab neighbors implies moral equality between these ideological adversaries. But since Arabs are not pacifists and do not suffer from the moral egalitarianism or relativism underlying demophrenia, confidence-building measures inevitably leads to unilateral concessions on Israel's part, which means appeasement. This is the consequence of applying democratic principles to ideological conflicts in which one party rejects those principles.

As George Orwell and Winston Churchill understood in the 1930s and 1940s, one cannot oppose totalitarianism--rightist, leftist, or Islamic--with indiscriminate egalitarianism and libertarianism that never gets ready to stand up and fight against the enemies of democracy. Indeed, demophrenics busy themselves inventing apologies for their enemies--explaining Arab stoning and stabbing of Jews as mere "frustrations," rather than as manifestations of implacable hatred, let alone of evil. By ignoring evil, those afflicted by the moral egalitarianism or relativism of demophrenia diminish love of country and a willingness to sacrifice for it, which is indispensable to any decent nation.

When the founders of the American republic proclaimed, in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, they also affirmed, in word and in deed, that all ideologies (e.g. Toryism) are most emphatically not equal. Only a "genial orthodoxy" based on truth, something not subject to negotiation, can enable a people to combine, in right proportions, kindliness and severity. Neither kindliness nor severity can exist in a mind steeped in democratic relativism--only sentimentality and animosity.

The relativism that by turns tries to tolerate enemies of democracy and malign democracy's non-relativistic friends or friendly critics is perhaps the most prominent symptom of demophrenia among the educated, especially in Israel. The mentality of Israel's post-Zionists, so many of whom hate Jews and Judaism, yet fawn over Arabs, has been conditioned by the cultural relativism long-propagated by Israel's secular universities. Therein is the explanation for Ariel Sharon's demoralizing statement-uttered while suicide bombers were reducing Jews to human debris- that he does not think in terms of "black and white."

And then there was Ehud Barak's inanity that had he been born an Arab he would have been a terrorist!

With demophrenic prime ministers like this, is it any wonder that Israel is going down the Road Map to oblivion?