[(Continued from p.10)]
hey-days. Careers are changed, maturity is combined with ambition and exuberance. In contrast, Israel at fifty-two is tired, weakened, and depressed to the point of suicide. At the very time when it should be at the apogee of enthusiasm, an overwhelming sense of loss and defeat has overtaken the nation.The accomplishments of the state are legion. Under the most adverse conditions, Israel became a thriving democracy. Its standard of living, its technological and scientific accomplishments, its cultural and social institutions all rival those of Western democracies. Until Oslo, Israel seemed poised to remain the living memorial to the millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. It symbolized the ultimate victory of the Jewish people after centuries of dispersion, dislocation and genocide.
What should be a happy decade, and a joyous birthday, has become a season of regret and mourning. Israel's enemies, with the cooperation of Israel's political leaders, are on the ascendant. Arab response to Israel's unabated surrender is an escalation of demands and threats and incitements to murder. And so a severely weakened nation marks its milestone decade, not with a triumphant celebration of one hundred years of Zionism, but with a surrender of its national rights, its patrimony and its eternal capital.
Ruth King is a member of the Executive Committee of Americans For a Safe Israel.
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(Continued from p.9)
this moment--at this point in Jewish history.It is a new practice that would say the following: when major policies turn out to be catastrophic and disastrous for the country, involving large numbers of deaths or billions of dollars in damages, then those Knesset members and ministers who had advocated the policy in the first place will be held personally responsible for its failure. Politicians who had spoken out in favor of the most disastrous policy decisions would sacrifice their personal livelihoods and property, and possibly do jail time. This reform would act as an enormous deterrent to the advocacy of foolhardy and poorly thought-through policy to begin with.
Now before anyone jumps up and screams that the above proposal is an anti-democratic abomination, I suggest taking a deep breadth and considering the following fact. Not only is the above idea not anti-democratic, but it is an idea that comes directly to us from the very cradle of democracy, from the people who created democracy and first developed the idea of freedom and direct participation in politics to its highest and most sublime form. It comes from Classical Athens.
In Classical Athens, speakers in public forums were held to be personally responsible, accountable and liable for major disasters caused by the policies in whose favor they had previously spoken. The rule applied not only to elected officials but also to leading public speakers who advocated the said policy in the major public debating forums and assemblies of Athens. Such individuals suffered loss of property, banishment, and sometimes worse when major catastrophes resulted from policies in whose favor they had spoken. Personal liability was not enforced for minor setbacks and failures, only for those resulting in large disasters.
The holding of Athenian politicians personally accountable for disastrous policies they had promoted is reported by Thucydides. The policy was applied to those politicians who had advocated Athens' disastrous invasion of Sicily, led by Alcibiades. In the fifth century BCE, Athens had managed to reach a stalemate with Sparta in the First Peloponnesian War.
Leading speakers in the Athens public Assembly promoted the idea of stirring up trouble for Sparta by sending an expeditionary force to Sicily, to assist towns there to rebel against Sparta's allies.
The expedition landed in Syracuse, but rapidly turned into a disastrous rout of the Athenians. Even worse, it reignited the Peloponnesian War, and this time Athens was defeated decisively by Sparta. Athens lost its position for well over two millennia as the Capital of Greece. Those leaders who had spoken in favor of actions revealed in retrospect to be the height of folly were held personally accountable.
The Israeli government led by Ehud Barak has
[(Continued on p.12)]
May 2000 - 11 - Outpost