In an oft-quoted remark Henry Kissinger observed that “Israel has no foreign policy, it has only a domestic policy.” Israel keeps on proving Kissinger right and by now his bon mot has become a sad truism. But recently the truism has turned to farce as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relentlessly takes apart Israel’s Foreign Ministry and its professional Foreign Service.

In an act of political payoff, Netanyahu did not appoint a Foreign Minister in his new cabinet at the request of Avigdor Lieberman, the former Foreign Minister, who is currently standing trial for Breach of Trust and fraud. Netanyahu has decided to keep the position open for Lieberman until the end of the trial. In the meantime, he himself is acting as the Foreign Minister. Needless to say, the Prime Minister hardly has the time to manage the daily matters of the Ministry, though he started his public career as a diplomat, and a very adept one.

Additionally, to further weaken the ministry, Netanyahu redistributed many of the traditional responsibilities of the Foreign Ministry among other ministries, some of them new and bogus creations, such as the gimmicky Ministry of International Relations. Other related ministries include the Ministry for Regional Cooperation, a Minister for Diasporas, and a Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, who is also responsible for diplomatic initiatives and peace talks with the Palestinians. Considering that Prime Minister Netanyahu keeps for himself and in his office some key aspects of Israel’s foreign relations, what we get is a beheaded and enfeebled Foreign Ministry, lacking political backing, which competes with several artificial and bogus ministries. Why is this so? Why does Netanyahu sacrifice the Foreign Ministry with its years of experience and professionalism?

One may argue that by weakening the ministry and establishing evermore competing entities, Netanyahu is trying to divide and rule, a well-worn strategy of playing all against all, so as to ‎secure his own agenda. However, in my judgment, there is no agenda as it appears that in Israel, everyone is in charge and no one is in command.

There are two possible alternative reasons for the establishment of these “bogus international ministries.” The first is the deep-seated animosity Netanyahu bears towards what is called the “old elite.” This animosity was very explicit in his first administration, between 1996 and 1999, and was targeted at various strongholds of the old elites, like the Supreme Court, national media, and academia. Though more restrained in his second and third administrations, it seems that his stand towards the diplomatic service still echoes with this rancor. The second reason for the proliferation of ministries is related to Netanyahu’s weakness. Contrary to the widespread perception of him as a strong leader (see, for example the May 2012 Time Magazine coverage of “King Bibi”), he is in fact a weak politician who is coerced and arm-twisted rather easily. The political spread of these various “international bogus ministries” is a sure sign of this weakness.

The minister charged with regional cooperation, Silvan Shalom from the Likud is a harsh internal opponent of Netanyahu, who every now and then receives some political goods to keep him at bay. The Minister of International Relations (whatever that may be) is Yuval Steinitz, a close ally and devotee of Netanyahu who had to be compensated for being “robbed” of his post as Finance Minister. The creation of the Ministry of International Relations serves no other purpose. The minister in charge of the Diasporas, Naftali Bennett, is the head of the Jewish Home, the right-wing partner in Netanyahu’s coalition. While Tzipi Livni, on the other hand, is the head of the splinter centrist party, the Movement. Each got his or her share of the spoils. And on top of them all, presides Lieberman who for years now has successfully wrested most of his wants and whims from Netanyahu, including his demand not to appoint a Foreign Minister in his place.

All these facts are a bit tedious, especially to theorists who tend to look at the macro level and examine the structure of global politics. But boring as they are, the facts are crucial in understanding and explaining Israel’s international behavior (think Goldfarb’s The Politics of Small Things and Putnam’s two-level-game). The appointments, driven as they are by various political moves and calculations, create an impossible political mosaic; impossible, that is, in terms of forming and executing coherent agendas and policies.

I doubt anyone can identify Israel’s preferences regarding the negotiation with the Palestinians and what its vision is for a final settlement. I wonder: Does John Kerry think he does today after his recent experiment in shuttle diplomacy?

Prime Minister Netanyahu declares every now and then his commitment to a two-state solution. On June 5^th 2013, for example, he called on Abu Mazen not to miss yet another opportunity, asking him to “give peace a chance.” Yet, the same month it was revealed that more housing plans were being approved and built in the Occupied Territories. At the same time, Likud’s MP and Deputy Minister of Defense, Danny Danon, mocked the idea of a two-state solution. The same goes for many other Likud MPs and other coalition members who oppose any negotiation. This duplicity clearly hampers efforts by international actors, such as Kerry’s. He, like many others, receives mixed, confusing and practically impossible signals to decipher from the Israelis (as well as from the Palestinians).

The same duplicity was evident in a recent attempt to craft a joint Israeli/Polish declaration prior to Netanyahu’s official visit to Poland. Mid-level bureaucrats met and published a very moderate declaration approving the two-state solution. Not a day passed before Netanyahu distanced himself from the statement and effectively voided it. Maybe if the professional and skilled diplomats of the Foreign Ministry had been involved in the process, none of the subsequent diplomatic embarrassment would have occurred. But nowadays who consults the Israeli Foreign Ministry? No wonder the frustrated Israeli diplomats have been on strike for the past three months or so, partly because of their deteriorating salaries and partly as a result of the steady gutting of their ministry. It should not come as a surprise that the Prime Minister (who is also the Acting Foreign Minister) does not even meet with the striking diplomats. It seems that no one in the government really cares.

But then again, how could the diplomats, skilled as they are, solve those problems if no one provides them with a coherent agenda and agreed upon policies? And those agendas and policies will not be formed by themselves. They must be developed by a government that acts as Plato’s Captain of the Ship. And the seas that Israel rides, it should be noted, are rough indeed and full of existential challenges; but also, we should not ignore, of opportunities. The regional seclusion of Israel that has lasted for decades is being challenged now by changing circumstances, for example the Arab uprisings and the recent discoveries of Eastern Mediterranean gas. Thus, there are those in Israel who call upon the government to rethink its position in the region following the Arab Spring, to embrace the Arab Peace Initiative, and adopt a more regional integrationist position. This was, for example, the message of Meir Dagan, former head of the Mossad, in his address at the Israeli Presidential Conference, on June 19th 2013. However, also those calls fall prey to the aimless drifting of the ship.

Without a captain and without a skilled and trusted crew, such as the Foreign Ministry diplomats, the Israeli ship would appear to be hazardously drifting to the shoals. ‎

This post is an abbreviated version of a working paper published by The Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).

In today’s “in-depth” post, Hilla Dayan provides critical insight into the Israeli political landscape, following the recent elections. She paints a stark reality. The elections in her judgment have a “Groundhog Day” quality. Once again, a centrist, anti-religious, patriotic party appeared from nowhere. Once again, the left was not a significant factor, and once again the right-wing ruling party prevailed to form the coalition. Dayan presents a much more radical response than did Michael Weinman in his inquiry into the future prospects following the elections for Israel. Weinman foresees a fundamental challenge to Israeli democracy, worries about theocratic and authoritarian dangers, and sees in the modest quest for a normal society a possible key for a democratic future.

In Dayan’s account, in contrast, the key question is whether the strong anti-democratic agenda of the far right will proceed, whether Israel’s present regime, combining an unsteady and receding liberal democracy for Jewish citizens and second class Palestinian citizens, with dictatorship over the Palestinians in the occupied territories, will be replaced by a more pure authoritarian indeed fascist regime, with the potential of a genocidal approach to the Palestinian other.

While for Weinman hope lies in the internal dynamics of Israeli society, for Dayan hope can be found in the potential common project linking the post if not anti-Zionist left within Israel and in the occupied territories. Both see the elections as indecisive. Both see real dangers. Yet, both also provide some grounds for hope: Weinman in the possibility of incremental steps toward a two state solution, between now and a better then, Dayan in the radical step that must be taken for a just secular one state solution.

My ambivalent response: as a matter of temperament and personal experience, I am attracted to the quest for a normal society as a wise political end in the face of gross injustice.  I know from my experience in Central Europe that this quest involves more than its critics imagine, especially because it can be realized immediately, its self limiting means can constitute its end. This project would be especially powerful if it included Palestinians.

On the other hand, the degree of injustice and suffering among Palestinians, clearly calls for a radical resolution. The peace process over the past decades has only intensified this for many if not most Palestinians, as Nahed Habbiballah has highlighted here. The peace process has led to few improvements for Palestinians, especially when considering their longing for a normal life.

Hilla and Michael are both former students, colleagues and friends. I learn from both of them, in these posts and in their other writings. Their reflections on the election results both require serious and deliberate consideration. My intuition tells me that their shared deep concerns are more important than their differences. More on that in an upcoming post.

To read today’s In-Depth post, “Israel Against Democracy: Post-Elections Analysis,” by Hilla Dayan, click here.

The massive vote for Lapid, riding on a general discontent with politics, made it painfully clear how sectorial the “social justice” protest in the summer of 2011 was after all, which drew primarily on middle-class frustrations with dwindling economic prospects for future generations. The amazing creativity and energy of many young and more radicalized 2011 protestors dissipated much too soon. Difficult yet promising alliances forged at the time between Mizrahi neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and Palestinian activists in Jaffa found no political expression. The summer of 2011 was a moment when hundreds of thousands poured to the streets to demonstrate against the rule of the so-called “tycoons,” Israel’s business oligarchy. This seemed to have the potential to lead to an even broader, more threatening mobilization against the existing order. It didn’t happen. No serious opposition to the reign of the neoliberal hawkish right emerged from this outburst. The 2011 protest did not generate any visible crack in the tectonic structures of Israeli politics. The main players on the Israeli political map remain Netanyahu-Liberman, a spineless, inflated center, and a disproportionately strong settler-dominated extreme right. Together, and with the ultra- orthodox parties in opposition for the first time in decades, they form the next coalition government. The so-called capital-rule [Hon-Shilton] nexus is under no serious threat, at least for the time being.

What remains to be seen is whether Yesh Atid, with its newcomers plucked from the media, cultural and business elite will manage to prevent this Knesset session from finishing off the attack on the liberal foundations of the state. In the past four years, the Israeli parliament has orchestrated a legislative blitz, introducing dozens of anti-democratic bills undermining basic rights, attacking minorities and civil society organizations in particular. The anti-Zionist left was the focus of concerted persecution. The vicious campaign was utterly disproportionate, considering how tiny, fragmented and largely politically disorganized the anti-Zionist left is. The new MKs of Yair Lapid, although a significant block, are inexperienced in dealing with the extreme-right legislators’ tactical use of the law as a tool for political persecution and will have a difficult time matching their political cunning. Yair Lapid himself, in a gesture complacent with the extreme-right agenda, mocked Palestinian Member of Knesset Hanin Zoabi immediately after the elections, denouncing her as a political pariah. And so the question remains: will this patriotic center save the Israeli liberal order by pushing back racist legislation? Will it cooperate with political persecution or choose to protect the Palestinian minority against its own ethnocentric inclinations, merely for the sake of maintaining some semblance of the rule of law?

If the de-democratization trend continues, it would be interesting to see what impact it will have on the twin pillars of the Israeli system of rule, namely, the Israeli dictatorship. I am referring here to the political system that the ‘average Israeli’ perceives as something external to themselves, existing in the twilight zone of the occupation, when in fact it is integral to the political order in Israel/Palestine as a whole. The 45-year-old denial of voting rights and rule over the Palestinian population was of course irrelevant to the Israeli media covering the elections. Mainstream US and international media, devoting pages towards the Jewish-Israeli ‘left’, ‘center’ and ‘right’, also completely ignored it. The irrelevance of the occupation to the Israeli voter in these free and democratic elections must be understood as being painstakingly manufactured. The occupation grinds on as if taking place in an unrelated, autonomous universe. During the week of the elections several so-called ‘shooting incidents’ occurred, in which four innocent civilians were killed in the West Bank. One of them was a 16-year-old boy, who was shot point-blank by soldiers near the separation wall south of Hebron. And just before the elections the army violently evacuated hundreds of Palestinian activists from the so-called ‘E1 zone’ in the West Bank, where they had erected a makeshift settlement to protest Netanyahu’s plan to build more illegal Jewish settlements.

This new non-violent method of resistance in the occupied territories not only gave rise to a new social category – the Palestinian ‘settler’ – but more profoundly tore the mask of hypocrisy off the Israeli regime of separation, with its rigidly separate mechanisms of ruling over citizens (Jews and the Palestinian citizen minority) and disenfranchised out-groups (Palestinians in the occupied territories). The methodology employed by the Bab Al Shams activists draws attention to this dual system of rule specifically and makes its existence impossible to deny. The few times the state orchestrated an evacuation of Jewish settlers from “illegal outposts,” these were media spectacles showing soldiers shedding tears (rather than shooting tear gas) and hugging settlers in broad daylight. The violent beatings and mass arrests of the Palestinian settlers in the Bab Al Shams outpost, conversely, were conducted in the dead of night, and not before the army had first removed all Israeli and foreign journalists from the area in the usual dictatorial fashion.

Israel’s regime of separation must continuously separate the democratic from the dictatorial and conceal their relations of dependence, and ultimately their systemic unity. What would happen, however, if the gradual erosion of the liberal order continues, and the democratic space for both Jews and Palestinians, who are luckily still somewhat protected by the democratic order, continues to shrink? Will it take its course until there is no liberal order to speak of? What would happen to a regime, whose entire edifice leans on the two pillars of democracy and dictatorship, if the democratic pillar collapses? Ironically, the de-democratization process, which is marked by anti-democratic legislation, a sustained attack on basic civil liberties, the repression of dissent, the denial of cultural autonomy for minorities and the decimation of organized opposition, is a serious threat to the stability of the regime. It is threatening because it logically leads to a regime collapse, but what exactly would this regime collapse scenario entail?

Critics of the Israeli regime argue that the occupation, combined with the ethnic cleansing ideologies and the racist agendas touted by candidates in the Israeli elections, make it difficult to call the Israeli “democracy” anything but a façade for an apartheid system. Skeptics of Israeli democracy rightfully point out that a democracy for Jews only cannot be seriously called a democracy. But, what this perspective fails to appreciate is exactly how critical it is to the Israeli system of rule to maintain both democracy and dictatorship in tandem. What is lost is how democratic legitimization enables the permanent dictatorship, not as a mere façade but as a fundamental logic of the state, a raison d’état. What follows then from the fact that liberal institutions and above all the parliament and elections are being turned into mere instruments of brute force is some sort of a totalitarian fascist mobilization. In such a scenario there is no room for disagreement, no vaguely centrist middle ground, and only one shade of extreme right. We are then faced with a sovereign that declares itself to be beyond the law, representing directly the “will of the people.” Israel indeed puts the demos above the law often enough to deserve the label of crypto-fascist state. But my idea is that what this analysis ultimately entails is different from what defines the current regime of separation, operating within the logic of inclusive exclusion, the logic of control and containment. For, when Israel becomes a truly fascist state, it is likely to transform itself into a regime operating with a totally different logic: the logic of cleansing, and taken to its most logical extreme – of genocide. In my careful estimation, notwithstanding the indiscriminate shooting of civilians and the killing of 140 civilians in Gaza this October, we are not quite there yet.

Sure enough, the scenario of mass fascist mobilization (perhaps as a backlash of the progressive mobilization of the summer of 2011) is not entirely implausible. Yet, it seems remotely likely also because the white middle-class Yair Lapid voters, the everyday type of “salt of the earth” patriots, are all major beneficiaries of the status quo. Any change to the status quo is going to be perceived as unfairly aggravating their “share of the burden” to use a Yesh Atid-like slogan. It will be resisted as unnecessarily steering the country away from what this rather homogenous group covets for securing a Western OECD-level quality of life. So there is reason to believe that with their 17 seats in the Knesset, Yesh Atid will be compelled to put up a strong fight for maintaining the status quo if only to block the deterioration of the liberal order and the collapse of the regime of separation. More than anything, this election proved that Israeli society is not yet ready for the alternative scenario, one in which society enters the permanent crisis that Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci identified as “terminal,” a trigger for “crossing a regime threshold.” Mass mobilization in 2011 did not generate such a political crisis. It did not lead to the emergence of new resistance to the powers that be or to new power blocs. In fact, the recent elections buried the existing chance of hegemonic change, though hopefully not for good.

For the majority of Jewish-Israelis the recognition that the current regime of separation is evil and unsustainable and that a more just and inclusive democratic order must come about is beyond the pale, not something that in Gramsci’s terms they can “identify” with. Instead, in this election, despite strong undercurrents of criticism directed at the current socio-economic order, perhaps the most radical to date, many more chose to passively accept the existing political order as fait accompli.

This is not to say that there is no alternative reading of the political reality. It does exist, and is largely shared within the milieu of Israeli civil society organizations, but it is not widely shared beyond its narrow confines. This alternative reading demands that Jewish-Israelis give up their special privileges as Jewish citizens of the Jewish state. Most Israelis cannot identify with this, not simply because they are too racist, crudely put, but because they do not consider themselves as particularly privileged. As Israeli sociologist Nissim Mizrahi succinctly put it, for many, the only card they can play to better their situation is the claim that the state is theirs. We have to ask why: why is Israeli civil society perceived as representing nothing but itself, and the socio-economic privilege of its members? Why are the critical perspective and the democratic alternative it promotes so vehemently rejected? Why has civil society played such a minor role in the summer of 2011 protests, and why have we not managed to connect the popular struggle for social justice to the struggle to end the occupation? Why have we not been able to produce entrepreneurs of hegemonic change with an agenda that can actually convince the majority that dismantling the dictatorship and truly democratizing Israel/Palestine is the way forward?

I have no clear answer to these questions, only some painful realizations. Firstly, that progressive forces in Israel need to find a more authentic language for political opposition than the lofty language of universalisms and human rights, which rings hollow to so many ears. Secondly, that Israeli civil society must look critically at its own usefulness and contribution to the separation regime and the maintenance of the status quo. Finally, and most devastatingly, we must consider that even while undergoing this process of self-reflection, a future scenario of a terminal crisis leading to a process of genuine democratization may not involve Israeli civil society in any meaningful way.

I do not wish to paint here a picture of Israeli society and its civil society as immune to change and under the firm grasp of the current regime. One should always consider the opposite: that the regime is relatively stable but that there are already social undercurrents strong enough to constantly threaten its stability from within. I believe that we can speak of a movement in the direction of “terminal crisis” in the Gramcian sense only if and when opposition from within Israeli society joins that from out-groups in the occupied territories. Moreover, it is imperative that we look at the state of the Israeli liberal democracy as a sort of seismographic indication for the stability of the regime. At the moment, it seems that the incurable contradictions of democracy and dictatorship have not matured yet into a full- blown crisis, a political earthquake.

To end on a more hopeful note, in case the process of elimination of Israel’s liberal democracy continues after the elections, this process will inevitably bring us closer to the moment of truth. If the extreme right in power successfully completes its mission, it will unwittingly bring down the separation regime. This will be a clear wake-up call for mass mobilization. This time for a whole new order, fascist or not.

In the immediate aftermath of the latest elections in Israel, my (somewhat snide, but really felt) response was “good thing there is a future; there’s surely no present.” Meaning, I suppose, something like: nice to see that folks really made a statement that the current political system is fundamentally broken (by voting in droves for the newly-minted Yesh Atid [i.e., there is a future] party), but that doesn’t mean that anything has actually changed, or can be expected to change, any time soon. I had wanted to try to develop that reaction into a sustained thought, but failed. Then, in the build-up to Obama’s visit and the drama of Netanyahu’s troubled, but ultimately (and predictably) successful, attempt to forge a coalition, I thought that there was a real moment to expand on my initial response. I failed again. Obama’s visit itself would have been a nice occasion to revisit my thesis and see how it was holding up against “facts on the ground.” But, alas, that moment passed as well.

Who would have thought that the “critical mass” would have been reached through a seemingly benign, almost anodyne, gesture by Yair Lapid (head of the afore-mentioned party) in saying that any structural changes to Israeli economic and fiscal policy—and such changes, it is universally agreed (and, seriously, now, how often is universal agreement reached on anything in Israel?)—must first of all resolve the difficulties faced by the “ideal typical” family of “Riki Cohen” who (it so happens) is said to hail from Hadera, the suburban semi-city between Tel Aviv and Haifa where my wife’s parents have lived for 25 years.

So, I am sitting here in their house in Hadera, looking over the pages and pages devoted to “Rikigate” in the thick Friday [think: Sunday] editions of Yediot Ahronot and HaAretz (including prized positions on the front covers thereof), and I realize: this is the evidence that the January version of me would have wanted to rip from the near future and point to in making my comment about the lack of a political present in Israel. Basically, it seems to me, the situation is like this: a relatively (and surprisingly) broad swath of Israeli society got together to say that while there is no organized left worth voting for anymore in Israel, and while the centrist parties of the 1990s and 2000s have shown themselves to be equal parts feckless and selfish opportunists, the domestic policies of the right and further-right are fundamentally disastrous for the modern, liberal Israel these folks believe themselves to live in and be a part of. These people agree about this, and this is not nothing, but it is by no means the basis of a platform around which the kind of structural reformation of public policy and economic development that was the demand of the massive protest movement in the summer of 2011. And so, to the extent that Lapid and his party have been given more or less a free hand to set the domestic policy of the current government—a costly but necessary concession given that he and the nationalist “Bayit HaYehudi” [Jewish Home] party leader Naftali Bennet formed an “in government together or in opposition together” pact, which meant that Lapid effectively controlled as many seats as Netanyahu at the time of the coalition negotiations—he now gets to face the same stalemate we saw in the time of the Trajtenberg Committee. Israelis know that the current state of affairs is untenable, but there remains no consensus about the concrete steps that need to be taken in order to stand the country on legs that can actually carry it to the future. “Yesh atid,” you might say, but we have no (shared) idea of how to get there.

And this brings us to Riki Cohen from Hadera. Maybe you haven’t heard of her, but she’s been the beginning and/or the end of news broadcasts here in Israel throughout the week I’ve been visiting. (Pretty impressive for someone who doesn’t exist!) Basically, Lapid said this: there are a number of families in this country like this imaginary case I have for you. You have a pair of working parents with, say, two or three children. They are professionals and successful. They earn well above the average annual income in Israel (which includes the far too many un- and under-employed), and a decent amount more than the average income for families with two working adults. (This turns out to be the source of much of the controversy, but it is critical to Lapid’s thought experiment.) They bring home enough to keep paying down the house, to keep their cars on the road (fuel is very expensive in Israel, remember), to feed the family, and (and here, again, much controversy) to travel once every two years to a destination outside Israel. But they have no chance to buy a house for any of their kids, and no security for their retirement. The economic and fiscal policy of this government, said Lapid in the meeting where he introduced this character, will first of all take into consideration the need to improve the situation for families like this.

And what followed? In the phrase of my dearly departed mother: a shitstorm. A shitstorm that perfectly shows why there is no present in Israel. All kinds of different constituencies jumped on this one. There are those (and there are many) who assail Lapid (from the left, I suppose) for speaking about people who bring home something like3500 USD/month after tax, when there are many working families that bring home something like 2000 USD/month after tax. There are those (and there are many) who assail him (from the right) for speaking about trips abroad and buying a house for the kids, when we are at war and always at war, and people have sacrificed and will sacrifice much more than a trip to Venice for the sake of the continued existence of Israel. Both of these responses are predictable: they are the source of the stagnation of the past generation. And both of them fundamentally miss the point.

Let me be clear: I am no fan of Lapid, I wouldn’t have voted for him in January had I had the chance, and I haven’t liked him on Facebook, either. But I do recognize that he represented and represents the hope of many young and youngish people that Israel can be “a normal country.” These people don’t all agree (maybe even: don’t agree at all) about the conflict with the Palestinians, or about “the Iranian threat,” and they might very well disagree about tax and spending policy if they were transplanted to the US or to a European country. But they agree that, given Israel’s current realities, people who are more or less advocates of a limited government (neo-) liberal economic model and people who are more or less advocates of a continental European-style social democratic economic model need to make common cause to “rescue” the state from (on the one hand) its vastly too great financial commitments to some sectors (read: the ultra-religious and the settlers, two populations with a fair amount of overlap, but less than you would think) and, on the other hand, from its vastly too advanced (under Netanyahu I and Netanyahu II) program of “economic liberalization” with respect to other sectors.

At the risk of seeming tendentious, I’d like to call these people (the Lapid voters and, say, the people who see why the Lapid voters voted for Lapid) “the adults.” The adults face a stiff challenge: political discourse in Israel is rich and multifarious. All those statements about Israel being a flourishing democracy (albeit with the horrific stain of the occupation, which must end “speedily, speedily in our days”) are true. But the discourse is also often beside the point. If there’s one thing that can come and must come from the most recent election, it is progress on the path toward economic and fiscal normalization. And that will demand that political actors don’t return to bromides about Israel being a socialist country (on the one hand) or nonsense about the perpetual endangerment of tiny Israel meaning that “we all have to make sacrifices.” Both the left, at least in the current form of Avoda (the Labor Party) and its populist-nonsensical-obstructionist rhetoric, and the right are wrong about the future of Israel: where Israel needs to be in 25 years is neither returned to its solidarity-bootstraps (“Socialist-Zionist youth”) roots of the 1948-67 period—with “khol ha-kavod” to those “Pioneers”—and certainly not in some bizarre semi-theocracy of a center-right political faction joined together with a nationalist right and a theocratic faction. It needs to be, as the adults say (and say rightly), “a normal country.”

What is “a normal country”? In this case, at least, it must mean something like this: Israel as a moderate, perhaps somewhat (right or left) populist-leaning liberal democracy standing alongside an at least nominally independent (but economically and militarily coordinated) state of Palestine. That this is Israel’s only sustainable future is clear.  The problem is that there is next to no connection between the present and that future. A significant step in that direction would be to secure the economic future of families like Lapid’s “Riki Cohen from Hadera.” If these people (and they are the sector of Israeli society with which I am the most familiar, I confess) can’t live a life that is analogous to people living and working in economies of similar size whose educational backgrounds and career trajectories are similar to their own, then (even leaving aside “the security issue,” as one can do only ever do in abstraction), contra the name of Lapid’s party and all the interest it generated, there is no future for the State of Israel.

Not, in any case, as a liberal democracy.

Carl Schmitt (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) is alive and well. Thank you for asking. As a matter of fact, he is walking the streets of Jerusalem nowadays, taking notes that confirm his understanding of politics as the realm in which the friend-foe distinction rules. If he were really alive today, he would notice that his distinction permeates everyday life as a series of racial confrontations. Last week, this culminated in an attempted lynching by a mob of Jewish Israeli teenagers of a few Palestinian youth.

On the Friday night of August the 17^th, four Palestinian young people from East Jerusalem strolled the city center, trying to enjoy its night life, relaxing after a day of Ramadan fasting. They were attacked by the mob shouting racial slogans, beating them, and leaving one of the Palestinians unconscious and seriously wounded. The attack took  place in the open public, viewed passively by hundreds of people. Only a few intervened, saving the lives of the Palestinians. The rest of the crowd feared for their own life, or worse, supported the mob.

The attack is the latest example of escalating racial violence conducted by both sides. In April this year, another mob, fans of the Jerusalem football club Beitar Jerusalem, violently confronted Palestinian workers in a Jerusalem shopping mall. And on November 2010, a group of Jewish students who mistakenly entered the streets of Al-Issawiya, a Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood, were stoned almost to death, narrowly escaping with the help of the police.

The latest attack aroused a public uproar in Israel. Chief of the Israel Police, Yohanan Danino, acted decisively, denouncing the attack, establishing a special investigating team that soon arrested the suspects, who confessed participating, justifying themselves with a racist agenda. Many of them were seen as teenage drop-outs. Also politicians joined in the denunciations, first among them: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, and the Speaker of Parliament Rubi Rivlinwho visited the wounded Palestinian teenager in the hospital.

It seems that the alarming lessons of what happened in Tel Aviv on May 22th, which I analyzed in my last post, has affected the political system. The political leadership uttered the appropriate words, sincerely. Though, as criticized by Eyal Megged, the form of denunciation was not public enough. Netanyahu should have summoned a special address to the nation, condemning the racial violence, pointing out the moral danger we as a nation face. While I think that Meged’s criticism is sound as far as it goes, I don’t think it goes deep enough.

Indeed, speech can act and words have illocutionary power. And yet, words require certain conditions to be able to act, and even then, they are not enough by themselves. The words of denunciation should be accompanied by amending deeds, and not only police enforcement deeds. And amending deeds are nowhere to be seen, to the contrary.

Take the education system as an example. Following week of the mob attack, the Israel education ministry revealed some alarming data concerning the matriculation success rates in Israel in different municipalities. The matriculation results show a growing gap, the strong leaving the weak way behind. Thus, Arab, Haredi (ultra orthodox Jews), and peripheral municipalities are falling behind, with their youth immersed in structural ignorance and poor prospects in advancing their life plans.

This is specifically true in Jerusalem, with its large percentages of Arab and Haredi populations, and with a matriculation success rate of about 42%, less than half of the strongest municipality. This structural ignorance, the result of a gross failure by the State of Israel to allocate resources equally and supervise core curricula, maintains and fuels racism and creates the breeding ground for the escalation of Schmittian racial violence.

And it is not just the general education in the poor municipalities that has such detrimental effects on the Israeli public and Israeli youth (especially the drop-out youth). The civic and democratic education for engaged and pluralist citizenship has suffered a blow under Minister of Education Gideon Saar, who advances Jewish tradition studies at the expense of civic and democratic education. Moreover, in a very controversial decision, supposedly made autonomously by Minister Saar’s Director General Dalit Stauber, the civic supervisor, Adar Cohen, was dismissed.

While the official grounds for dismissing Mr. Cohen were some professional mistakes, unofficial reports disclose a rightist political crusade against him. The right, apparently, considers Mr. Cohen as not sufficiently Zionist, as advancing a too cosmopolitan, pluralist, and critical agenda. Almost replicating the accusations against Socrates, Mr. Cohen is seen as corrupting the minds of the young. (This decision has been suspended for the time being by Minister Saar following the appeal of Mr. Cohen to the ‎Labor Courts.) Under those conditions, it is no wonder that Israeli youth, suffering from structural ignorance and lack of civic and democratic education, is moving from an engaged pluralism into a Schmittian life of racial violence.

Time and again, we have turned to Jerusalem as a source of Western morality, “A Light Unto the Nations.” I grew up in a Jerusalem, thriving with such a potential. I work in such a Jerusalem university, and I believe in her ability to be such a moral light. But as long as Schmitt inhabits her streets, I see no chance of making this dream a reality.

History is a reservoir of teachings. For example, fusing together xenophobia, social unrest, racial stereotyping and sexual hysteria is especially explosive, endangering the marginalized others, the social fabric, and the political system as a whole. Looking at the rise of the xenophobic right in Europe,  it sometimes seems that many Europeans have forgotten the lessons they so painfully learned. I fear that Israel, on the other hand, has not learned those fundamental teachings at all.

In the last couple of years Israel faced a steady inflow of Africans, smuggled in through its borders. Their numbers are hard to know accurately, but the estimation is in the tens of thousands. Most of them are from Eritrea and Sudan; countries torn by wars and hunger. Many of them are asylum-seekers, who apply for refugee status. But the state authorities mostly refuse to examine their requests, as is required by the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), of which Israel is party. On the other hand, they are not deported, and thus remain in a purgatory state in which they are legally banned from work, do not enjoy any social rights, and are pushed into lives of misery and poverty at the margins of society.

Hardly any asylum-seeker is granted the status of a refugee because Israel fails to fulfill its legal responsibility to examine their requests. Hence, they remain as asylum-seekers and are perceived as illegal immigrants. Many of them are crowded in the streets of southern Tel Aviv alongside poor sectors of Israeli society, sectors that themselves suffer from marginalization, alienation, and a host of economic and social problems. Seeing their streets crowded by foreigners, who allegedly steal their jobs and affect their standards of living, alienates those sectors further and flairs their anger at the government. Nothing new in the stratification of racial hate, unfortunately.

Recent weeks have witnessed a worsening of this explosive situation. Some asylum-seekers are reported to be involved in property crimes. Driven to hunger, they seize whatever survival method they possess, including theft. Worse, during May, two gang rapes of Israeli young women by asylum-seekers took place, very cruel and violent ones. And these rapes broke whatever restraints Israel society had. Racial and hate discourse erupted, and with it, violence against the asylum-seekers and those individuals and civil society organizations that help them. Molotov cocktails were thrown at apartments of asylum-seekers, violent attacks were directed at them, and a violent demonstration took place in southern Tel Aviv on May 22^nd.

The racial dynamic took an even uglier turn. Politicians rode on the racial wave and participated in the hate discourse. Some of them participated in the demonstration, leading the hate speech that resulted in more violence, lynch-like. Members of Parliament Miri Regev (Likud), Danny Danon (Likud), and Michael Ben-Ari (Eretz Yisrael Shelanu), participated. Regev called the asylum-seekers a “cancer,” and the others blamed them, and those who stand by their rights, as a threat to the national identity of the state of Israel. Ben-Ari accused asylum – seekers of spreading diseases and terrorism. And it is not only back-benchers who participate in this hate carnival. Minister of Interior, Eli Yishai (Shas) has been leading this campaign for a long time, demanding the deportation of all asylum-seekers. Yishai is the minister who is responsible for forming the non-existent policy towards them. Politicians, so it seems, identified the populist wave and decided to ride it to divert the blame for their failure to form a policy, hoping further to gain popularity by being responsive to the plight of society. Rather than restraining public discourse, these politicians decided to ride the dragon spewing hatred.

Well, there is nothing unique to Israel in populist politicians either. But Israel’s history is weaved with that of the Jewish people (and hence also Israel’s special role in the making of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees). That should have made the Israeli authorities more sensitive and responsive to the call of refugees and to the dangers of racial hate speech. Yet, these sensitivities were silenced by the xenophobic hysteria that came to dominate public discourse, a public discourse which has been filled with adjectives echoing a long tragic past, resembling other racial hate discourses. If one would only change the nouns from Africans to Jews, one could easily be reminded of racial propaganda directed toward Jews, resulting in the worst atrocity in human history. From words to deeds: no wonder violence against asylum-seekers has erupted so forcefully.

Following the violent events of May 22^nd, the political leadership at long last woke up and started to speak up against racism, violence and those politicians who participated in the carnival. President Shimon Peres condemned them, and he was soon to be followed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Speaker of Parliament Rubi Rivlin, and many others (mute until then). May 22^nd might well be a positive turning point to a more responsible Israeli leadership and more sober and sane Israeli public discussion about the question of asylum – seekers. Yet, it might prove as another stepping stone in unearthing a history that ought to remain a warning signal, not a road map. History is a reservoir of teachings. But the lessons must be learned and re-learned.

Gilad Shalit is home today, after five years and four months as a captive of Hamas. My initial reaction, as an Israeli, reflecting on these developments in Berlin, looking mostly at Israeli written press online: I think it is wonderful that Shalit’s mental and physical condition is good enough for him to be able to appreciate his return.

As for the “home” he will find, others have written about the Israeli society he left in contrast with the one to which he returns. I wish instead to comment on two significant symbolic questions: Was the “price” paid for his return justified? And, the more difficult question which requires the help of a philosopher to address: what is the nature and meaning of his homecoming?

The first issue concerning the “price” paid for the safe return of a soldier seems to me and to most of the Israeli public as a no- brainer: one has to save the life of a soldier sent in one’s name.  This issue has been covered in the German press I follow in Berlin, praising the commitment of the Israelis to their own people. However, the Israeli press’ apparent need to declare Hamas inhuman concerns me.

I am happy that Shalit is healthy, and recognize that the call in the Palestinian street today to capture other “Shalits” so that other prisoners will be released is obviously morally wrong. Yet, the parallel Israeli use of “price tag” to refer to the urge to hurt Palestinians, as well as the attacks upon what is conceived as the memory of left wing and secular Israel, specifically focused upon the Rabin Assassination, are no less morally wrong.

The attacks, about which Vered Vinitzky Seroussi has extensively written, seem to appear at moments of peaceful interaction and are deeply problematic. Last week, graffiti on the memorial site read: “free Yigal Amir” [Rabin’s assassin]. Perhaps the positive lesson from the discourse on “prices” is that it cannot be read in a vacuum: talking about costs involves agents, past and present, besides its seemingly benign metaphoric suggestion of the economy of life and death.

On the nature of the homecoming and its meaning: the first thing to note is the orchestrated take-over of Shalit by the state of Israel, which manifested itself, as was expected, in the swap of Shalit from the Hamas to the hands of the Egyptian state, and from Egypt to the Israeli state (the army was the first to greet him and dress him in uniform) and only then back to his family. It was significant that Shalit, the 25-year old captive soldier, wore his uniform and saluted Prime Minister Netanyahu, Security Minister Ehud Barak and the Chief of Staff upon his return, as he did. The Israeli collective partook in the state ceremony, in consuming the constant news reporting: flying flags and slogans greeting the returning soldier, and playing songs on radio, some were written for the occasion. Motti Neiger in a short Facebook status update suggested all this is proof that the Israeli media is used first and foremost for maintaining the cohesion of the Israeli collective. It was a classic media event in the sense of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz. It made things expected, almost already rehearsed and habituated, like any other ritual, combining a memorial ceremony with holiday festivities.

But the return of specific young man, Gilad Shalit’s homecoming, his return to his family, reveals complexity and perhaps hope, beyond the meaning of the official ceremony.

In a short article published in March of 1945 in the American Journal of Sociology entitled “The Homecomer,” the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz wrote that the homecomer differs from the stranger in that he returns to a place that used to be his home, yet, it cannot be the home he left. Schutz reflected on returning veterans of WWII, but one cannot help but think of the relevance to his personal history, a German émigré scholar in America, who was forced to leave home in Europe for political and ethnic reasons and could never find the home he left behind.  Merging dimensions of time and space, Schutz writes: “home is a starting point as well as a terminus.”

Two year ago, Shalit’s father, Noam, took the Israeli flag off the roof of his house, demonstrating against what he saw as the lack of action to return his son. A few days ago, he was photographed flying the flag again, after the decision to return his son home in a swap for 1027 Palestinians accused in terrorist action and kept in Israeli jails. Shalit, the father, signified the key symbol of the starting point and terminus of home: the flag on the roof. More, we learned that its mere existence is not enough—it had to be removed and re-placed.

Life at home means intimacy and familiarity. Upon his return, PM Netanyahu greeted Shalit with a citation from an old, well known song: it is so good to have you back home.  To his parents he said: I returned the boy back home. This tension between the public homecoming (the song refers to a traveler returning home) and the homecoming of the child to his parents was no small part of the discussions of whether to “pay the price” for Shalit’s return. The other part, the national commitment to do everything to return prisoners home, played a large role in the public pressure to release Shalit, as it is one of the premises of obligatory conscription.

Yet about the young man, the homecomer himself: upon his release, Shalit told the Egyptian Press: “I am happy for the Palestinian prisoners to be released, hope that they won’t return to fight Israel. I hope that this deal will help advance peace.”

May the home he comes to find make his hope realizable.

The Israeli summer: Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in one demonstration after another. Hundreds erected tents in the middle of cities and other public places and lived in them. Protests were not about war and peace, but social concerns, a strong, angry and frustrated cry against the high cost of living and the quality of life. The demonstrators were particularly concerned about the price of housing (both for purchase and rent), low salaries, and the retreat of Israel from its previous social welfare commitments and the transformation of the state into what has become known as a “swine capitalism.” In July and August of this year, the unprecedented happened. Irit Dekel has already reported and appraised at Deliberately Considered earlier developments. Here, I consider a hopeful sign, and suggest how the concerns of the protestors might be addressed, even though I think this is unlikely, given the nature of the present government of the country.

A Hopeful Sign

As the massive civil protests were taking place, supporters were concerned that the sharp edge of this genuine social and political protest may be neutralized if a military threat suddenly erupts. Possible scenarios included President Assad of Syria or Hezbollah in Lebanon igniting Israel’s northern border in order to deflect international attention from Assad’s brutal suppression of the revolt against him. While this did not happen, in mid August, Israel’s southern border was ignited as Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza exchanged fire. This heightened military tension immediately set the agenda for the news. Coverage of the protest by the media all but disappeared. Yet, the protest did not abate.

Given this persistence, the political authorities are under great pressure to respond. Yet, Netanyahu and his government, at best, will try to placate the protestors, making minor changes, merely alleviating some of the despair, stress and misery that fueled the protests.  A significant response to the Israeli summer would require changed national priorities. Although I don’t think there is a political will for this by the ruling parties, important changes are possible, practical policy changes that could free resources, making major social change possible.

Possible Practical Remedies

A first candidate is the national settlement project in the occupied territories. Since 1967, the state has invested in building settlements, constructing roads, tax breaks for the settlers, and allocating military resources to defend the settlements, and probably some more expenses I am unaware of. In fact, the cost of the settlement project is hidden in so many items in the national budget that some researchers refer to this cost as one of the top secrets of the country. Many experts have pointed out that the “defense value” of these territories has become questionable, as was revealed during the second Lebanon War. Moreover, Israel’s public commitment to compromise with the Palestinians on the West Bank requires a serious decrease of the investments in the settlements.

Another expense that can be cut significantly is the financial support to religious institutions. Interestingly, Israel has a social welfare policy for some groups of its population. The religious agendas of many parties in past Israeli coalition governments managed to prioritize the allocation of resources to institutions such as Yeshivot, building Mikves (purification baths), as well as support a very large number of Haredi, ultra orthodox, males to devote their entire life to study sacred scriptures. The side effects of this policy are that large numbers of Haredi males are excluded from the job market, and that the relatively little amount of support has forced many traditionally large Haredi families into poverty. While Yeshivot and the study of the scriptures are important and fascinating parts of Jewish cultural tradition, the state can no longer completely subsidize this large a population. One way to save money is to change to a merit based system and only grant state benefits to the best scholars. A smaller number of scholars in Yeshivot could even benefit from the newly freed resources, as some of the money could be dedicated to a larger stipend to lift them out of poverty.

A third location to free up resources is the military budget. To give just one glaring, illustrative area: the retirement age of professional soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces which was 45, has increased for some to 50. But why not increase it to 65? As an illustration, some of the best generals and salient military men during WWII were not teenagers. In 1943, at the height of the war, George Patton was 58, Bernard Montgomery 56 and Douglas MacArthur 63. They endured much harsher field conditions than today’s generals. General Norman Schwarzkopf, the military man behind the 1990-1 operation Desert Shield, was 56 years old at that time. Currently, Israel maintains two armies. One is the regular army, the other is an army of retired military personnel, of whom many are relatively young, have no desire to sit on the porch and bathe in the sun, and are actively engaged second careers. The military thus loses able soldiers with much valued accumulated experience while the civilian job market is dealing with an army of eager competitors for a variety of jobs that should indeed be filled by civilians. It has actually led to a situation where many civilian positions have been filled by ‘military’ people whose formative years and way of thinking were shaped and imprinted by military training that helped to shape their cognitive maps, their social networks, and their ways of conceptualizing issues. Another military saving lies in reducing the length of the compulsory service (three years for males now).

Political Implications and Prospects

Once resources are freed, money can be allocated to items that the protesters have asked for. First, resources need to be directed towards Israel’s Arab population, which constitutes about 20% of the Israeli population. Generally, the Arabs are being discriminated against and alienated in ways that are unbecoming for a democratic regime. The democratic legitimacy of Israel requires this reform.

And to further address the major norm of the protests, to truly accomplish a more equal distribution of resources, a reduction in the cost of living and more welfare, another significant change in the political structure is required. Israel, generally, has been ruled by coalition governments. These have been deeply flawed. They have been, as many Israelis have come to call them “Goalitzia.” This is a combination of two words in Hebrew: “Goal Nefesh” meaning “disgusting” and “Coalitzia” meaning “coalition.” This diabolical form of government is incapable of effective rule. Many decisions of Israeli governments are never carried out, nor does anybody feel responsible for the decisions that are made. This form of government simply means that any politician, or group of politicians, can promise voters the moon, sky and maybe the whole galaxy. but once they form a coalition with others, politicians, does not keep their election promises. They have the ultimate excuse for why not – the coalitional government. Each coalition party can blame one or more of its partners for not delivering on the promises it has made, freeing the party leaders from any responsibility. On top of this, this type of government has an almost built-in tendency to give small parties the power and resources way above and beyond their size, fundamentally distorting the will of the vast majority. A more democratic form of government would go along way in answering the democratic demands of the summer.

Now, the probability that any of the above listed suggestions will be applied is close to zero. Netanyahu appointed a committee of experts in response to the demonstrations. Its mandate is limited (e.g., to tax reforms) and it probably cannot, and perhaps should not, make recommendations for such significant social and political changes as I am proposing here. This should be done politically, not bureaucratically. For major political changes, one does not need a committee of experts. One needs politicians with a positive, democratic vision and a passionate drive to accomplish such a vision. Of course, a political solution of the conflict with the Palestinians and other Arab countries would not just release resources for civilian expenses, but, more generally, enable Israel to orient itself toward a more civil, liberal democratic society.

Given present political realities a resolution of the conflict, along with the practical reforms I have examined here, is difficult to imagine – even for this science fiction fan.

Finally! Finally there is a row between the US and Israel over the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Obama found the steel in his backbone to tell off Prime Minister Netanyahu. The formula Obama used was not new, but, significantly, one put forth most recently as part of the Mahmoud Abbas-Salam Fayyad plan to request the recognition of the UN for a Palestinian state within the 1967 boundaries. Obama zeroed in like a hawk on the borders issue and, lo and behold, he ruined most of Netanyahu’s week in Washington.

It has already been pointed out that Obama himself mocked the Palestinian UN plan as leading to only symbolic results. Or that he left the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees to a later stage of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. And, finally, that the 1967 borders is a red herring, a non-issue, since Obama also recognized that the final Israeli-Palestinian border will involve territorial swaps. In fact, it has been suggested that by now even Netanyahu wishes to hang on only to “settlement blocs” and is ready to concede the rest of the West Bank.

This, then, appears to be no more than a spat between those who view the glass empty and those who see it as full. We seemed to be asked: should we focus on the land to be kept or ceded? Focusing on the words, however, would be misleading. It is the tune that makes the music.

Obama has been looking since his inauguration for a formula to jolt to life the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. His first, unsuccessful, formula was a settlement freeze. He received bad advice: experience has shown the settlements can either expand or shrink, but cannot be put in the freezer. This time, he wrapped the settlement issue within the borders controversy and created the possibility for real traction. Obama has broken the ice and herein resides the significance of his statement on the 1967 borders.

Netanyahu’s response was that the 1967 borders are indefensible; hence Israel will not consider them. But let’s consider for a minute the notion of “defensible borders,” or for that matter “natural borders” – these are concepts from an era of static warfare long gone. Netanyahu’s willingness to conjure them demonstrates his brain-freeze. Even the 1973 Israeli-Egyptian “defensible borders” were anything but. To attach the term to the long fingers of settlement that extend Israel’s borders by jutting into the West Bank in Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel shows contempt for even the most minimal military logic.

Netanyahu’s refusal to work with the President brings into the open his immobility. No matter how much hoopla will surround his Congressional address, Netanyahu’s talk of commitment to peace has been revealed as empty. This should have consequences.

Last time the Security Council called on Israel to freeze its settlements, echoing Obama’s own call, the US vetoed the resolution and exposed the gap between its words and actions. For the new formulation to carry real weight it needs to be attached to a concrete political move. I suggest that Obama’s call for using the 1967 cease-fire lines as the starting point for solving the territorial aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute opens the door to US support for the UN’s expected September resolution. It is time for the US to walk through that door.

A US vote for, or even abstention from, such a UNGA resolution, would fit well with the reasons Obama provided for his new approach. The President explicitly pointed out his intention of saving Israel from itself, from the demographic, technological, and democratic deficits it is likely to incur the  more  it remains in the occupied territories. Similarly, a UN General Assembly resolution in favor of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders serves Israel’s interests first and foremost.

The UN resolution would privilege the two-state solution to the conflict, the only outcome that would allow a Jewish-majority Israel to find its legs again and flourish. This would focus the peace-process on real political outcomes and away from the recently-invented insistence on Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Making the two state-solution into the internationally favored and sanctioned option would also marginalize the slowly rising tide of one-staters and bi-nationalists. To wit, the latter options are intellectual constructs that never had deep roots and command only partial support even among their adherents. After all, the vast majority of Palestinians do not espouse it, and the overwhelming majority of Israelis view it as a threat. They direct attention away from the solution most Palestinians and Israelis favor, two states, side-by-side.

Will the US match words with action? We will be able to tell the seriousness of President Obama’s new formulation from his attitude toward the expected September UN General Assembly resolution.

President Barack Obama gave a powerful speech today, one of his best. The president was again eloquent, but there is concern here in the U.S. and also abroad in the Arab world, that eloquence is not enough, that it may in fact be more of the problem than the solution. The fine words don’t seem to have substance in Egypt, according to a report in The Washington Post. There appears to be a global concern that Obama’s talk is cheap. Obama’s “Cairo Speech” all over again, one Egyptian declared. Now is the time for decisive action. Now is the time for the President of the United States to put up or shut up. (Of course, what exactly is to be put up is another matter.)

This reminds me of another powerful writer-speaker, President Vaclav Havel. Havel is the other president in my lifetime that I have deeply admired. Both he and Obama are wonderful writers and principled politicians, both have been criticized for the distance between their rhetorical talents and their effectiveness in realizing their principles.

Agreeing with the criticisms of Havel, I sometimes joke about my developing assessment of him. I first knew about Vaclav Havel as a bohemian, as a very interesting absurdist playwright. I wrote my dissertation about Polish theater when this was still his primary occupation, and I avidly read his work then as I tried to understand why theater played such an important role in the opposition to Communism in Central Europe.

I then came to know him as one of the greatest political essayists and dissidents of the twentieth century. At the theoretical core of two of my books, Beyond Glasnost: The Post Totalitarian Mind and The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times are the ideas to be found in Havel’s greatest essay, “The Power of the Powerless.”

However, as president, Havel was not so accomplished. He presided over the breakup of Czechoslovakia, a development he opposed passionately, but ineffectually. He sometimes seemed to think that he could right a political problem by writing a telling essay, often translated and published in The New York Review of Books. He expressed a moral high ground in these essays, but he did not address the tough and messy side of politics. This is a real weakness of the intellectual as politician, the temptation to think if one can put a solution into words, one has solved a problem.

Does this problem apply to Obama, specifically to his speech today? Many on both the left and the right have heard enough of his speeches. They want action.

I watched a PBS News Hour discussion last night in anticipation of the speech today, and this was the consensus of the expert observers. Therefore, I think it is significant how much of this speech pointed in the direction of specific policy developments. Yet, they were placed in a broader historical and moral context. And the words were important. They did politics. They acted. They were speech acts in Austin’s sense.

I was particularly moved by the way the president told the story of the Arab Spring. He gave it great significance. He alluded to the killing of bin Laden, but didn’t dwell on it. He started with the politics of small things and pointed to civilizational transformation.

“On December 17th, a young vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi was devastated when a police officer confiscated his cart. This was not unique. It’s the same kind of humiliation that takes place every day in many parts of the world -– the relentless tyranny of governments that deny their citizens dignity. Only this time, something different happened. After local officials refused to hear his complaints, this young man, who had never been particularly active in politics, went to the headquarters of the provincial government, doused himself in fuel, and lit himself on fire.

There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat. So it was in Tunisia, as that vendor’s act of desperation tapped into the frustration felt throughout the country. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets, then thousands. And in the face of batons and sometimes bullets, they refused to go home –- day after day, week after week — until a dictator of more than two decades finally left power.

The story of this revolution, and the ones that followed, should not have come as a surprise. The nations of the Middle East and North Africa won their independence long ago, but in too many places their people did not. In too many countries, power has been concentrated in the hands of a few. In too many countries, a citizen like that young vendor had nowhere to turn -– no honest judiciary to hear his case; no independent media to give him voice; no credible political party to represent his views; no free and fair election where he could choose his leader.”

The president maintained that this power as it spread throughout the Arab world can no longer be easily repressed, and he expressed a conviction that given the media world we now live in the protestors’ “voices tell us that change cannot be denied.”

But that was it for the moving rhetoric. Obama then turned sober and practical. “The question before us is what role America will play as this story unfolds.” And he described what might very well become known as the Obama Doctrine.

“The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region. (Applause.)

The U.S. supports a set of universal rights. These rights include free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders – whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or Tehran.

And we support political and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa that can meet the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people throughout the region.”

This all sounds quite good, but perhaps empty, as some have maintained. However, the substance of the matter is in the details. It is noteworthy that when the president referred to the importance of universal rights he mentioned not only easy targets, but also Sanaa, increasing the pressure on Ali Abdullah Saleh, our ally in “the war on terrorism” to resign. And later when he criticized regimes that violently repress their citizenry for engaging in peaceful protests, he included not only Libya, Syria and Iran, but also the important American ally Bahrain.

“Bahrain is a longstanding partner, and we are committed to its security. We recognize that Iran has tried to take advantage of the turmoil there, and that the Bahraini government has a legitimate interest in the rule of law.

Nevertheless, we have insisted both publicly and privately that mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens, and we will – and such steps will not make legitimate calls for reform go away. The only way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.”

He spoke to the people and not only to the rulers of the region. He understood that the problem was not only political, but also economic, offering assistance and engagement in economic development as it addresses the needs of ordinary people. Moreover, he promised to listen to diverse voices coming from the region.

“We will continue to make good on the commitments that I made in Cairo – to build networks of entrepreneurs and expand exchanges in education, to foster cooperation in science and technology, and combat disease. Across the region, we intend to provide assistance to civil society, including those that may not be officially sanctioned, and who speak uncomfortable truths. And we will use the technology to connect with – and listen to – the voices of the people.”

He gave a forceful commitment to support religious minorities and strong support to the centrality of women’s rights.

“History shows that countries are more prosperous and more peaceful when women are empowered. And that’s why we will continue to insist that universal rights apply to women as well as men – by focusing assistance on child and maternal health; by helping women to teach, or start a business; by standing up for the right of women to have their voices heard, and to run for office. The region will never reach its full potential when more than half of its population is prevented from achieving their full potential.”

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama was careful but took a strong position. There was a little to warm the heart of those on both sides, but also much that would concern both.

Obama made news and earned the wrath of his domestic opposition by declaring, “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” This earned him an immediate protest by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But he also expressed concerns about the recent Hamas – Fatah agreement and about “symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state.” Thus, the Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri denounced the speech completely.

To my mind, Obama was not tough enough on Netanyahu, but he did move forward. Clearly, something other than complete support for the Israeli right’s position is necessary, contrary to Obama’s hysterical Republican critics. Obama advanced the U.S. position a bit. He said the obvious. The future border between Palestine and Israel will be based on the ’67 borders with negotiated adjustments. That has been the implicit assumption of the peace process for decades. Saying it bluntly, as President Obama did, provides some grounds for progress, suggesting a real response to the Arab Spring.

In his speech this morning, the president gave an account of a rapidly changing political landscape, showing an appreciation of the dynamics driving it and presenting a role for the U.S. to play. It was a broad and impressive depiction of our changing political world. He revealed an understanding of the role of the U.S. in this changing world, and he started playing the role when he turned to the all-important details. He staked out a position.

We will get a sense of how full or empty his rhetoric was today, when he meets Prime Minister Netanyahu tomorrow.