From the Editor

Sartori Revisited

Last month's Outpost carried an article on the Israeli elections which drew on Giovanni Sartori's analysis of political systems: Israel, we pointed out, was no longer "exceptional" in having a stable system despite the fact that, structurally, it had precisely the kind of system that elsewhere resulted in a fragmented polity threatened with chaos.

Only a month later, as far as the specifics go, the article is woefully out of date, reinforcing its underlying argument that the Israeli polity is in danger of spinning out of control. Just a few weeks ago, the big question was whether Amnon Lipkin Shahak or Dan Meridor would lead the new "centrist" party (which, as we pointed out, is not "center" at all, merely a collection of individuals with egos and opposing points of view on all the important issues): now it turns out it will be Yitzhak Mordechai, in an overnight transformation from the Likud's Defense Minister. There are already omens of splits to come, for Mordechai promptly curried favor with the religious sector by voting to restrict members in local religious councils to the Orthodox, while Tel Aviv mayor (and former Likud Knesset member) Ronnie Milo, who conceived the whole idea of a center party, has been running on a campaign of "Put down the Orthodox." (Parenthetically, Steven Plaut has argued convincingly that the councils should be abolished: in his words, "they do absolutely nothing religious and their job is to distribute pork and largesse handed to them by the taxpayer.")

Last month, we mentioned Meretz as a supposedly Zionist Party which is coordinating its platform with the anti-state Arab Hadash Party. Largely as a result, Meretz is now splintering, with Shinui, the "good government" party that all but sank into oblivion as a component of Meretz, reemerging to run in its own right. There is still another anti-state Arab party entering the lists, bringing the total up to three (four if you add Meretz). Yet another religious party, the left-leaning Meimad, has formed to further splinter the religious vote.

And then there are the unlikely-sounding single issue and single person parties traditional to Israeli politics. This time, as the New York Times has duly chronicled, there is a pro-gambling Casino Party, a pro-marijuana Green Leaf Party, a pro-meditation Natural Law Party, a gray power party, two new green power parties, a Romanian Party, even a Pnina Rosenblum Party--Pnina is a former beauty queen who went into the cosmetics business and, to quote the lady herself, "made my own party because I'm very independent and by myself, I will have more power."

What makes this election different is not so much the plethora of peculiar parties--in the past most would-be parties did not garner enough votes for a single Knesset seat--but that political analysts predict that as
many as 19 parties will win seats (there are eleven represented in the current Knesset). This is a recipe for chaos, particularly since both the Likud and Labor are all but certain to have even fewer seats than they now have, making them dependent on the favor of ever more wildly disparate, unwieldy (and extortionate) coalitions.

Christians Flee Mideast

If the New Middle East in which Jewish sovereignty disappears--ardently promoted by Shimon Peres and Meretz--comes to pass, it's not difficult to foresee the fate of Jews. Look at what is happening to Christians. The Boston Globe (January 18, 1998) offered a surprisingly candid, in-depth profile of the plight of Copts in Egypt. "Copt" is the term the seventh century Arab invaders applied to everyone in the country, the great majority of whom were Christians. Today there are six million Copts in Egypt, the largest Christian population in the Middle East. But their numbers are dwindling: more than a million have left for Europe and North America in the last decades, and large numbers wait in line each week with visa applications. A fifth of the population in 1975, today they are estimated to be only a third of that.

The pressure is relentless. For example, on August 14 of last year, in Al Kosheh, a remote village on the Nile, two Christian men were killed, their bodies dumped in the center of its Christian neighborhood. There was evidence, presented by the victims' families and local Christian leaders, that the killing was done by a gang of five Moslems. But the local, entirely Moslem, police ignored this and instead rounded up 1,000 Christians for questioning, subjecting dozens to beating and torture to force statements to frame a Christian for the crime--and the Christian now faces the death penalty.

(Continued on p.9)

Outpost               - 2 -               February 1999