Thoughts on Avigdor Lieberman

Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home)'s rapid rise is causing a great deal of comment in the West and the Arab world, but also in Israel itself. I already commented a bit on my election night roundup, and will do so some more here, but I suspect that everybody dealing with the region will be discussing him for some time to come. Lieberman is already facing some possible scandals that could impede his political career and a popular TV anchor has called him "[Meir] Kahane's successor" -- he's not the only one to make the link with the late Jewish Defense League organizer whose Kach Party was barred from the Knesset for racism -- so it isn't just Westerners and Arabs who are upset by Lieberman's rise. (Admittedly both articles just linked to appeared in Haaretz, a paper with a dovish Laborite leaning that was once mainstream but may increasingly be left-of-center for the emerging Israeli majority.)

He's certainly a polarizing figure, and seems to enjoy the role. His Wikipedia biography seems relatively fair -- some Wikipedia entries give me real problems, but this one is neither hagiography nor hatchet-job, and will serve as an introduction. Though he does have something of a kingmaker role to play, it's safe to say he will not get the Defense or Foreign Ministries, I think. Netanyahu has explicitly ruled him out for Defense, though he used to run Netanyahu's office, and the Foreign Ministry would seem to be a ludicrous position for so nativist a politician. He's served in Cabinets before, under both Sharon and Olmert, without disastrous results. If they keep him away from posts directly affecting relations with Palestinians (or Israeli Arabs, a fifth of the population, whom he has taunted and suggested they are disloyal), some of the alarm might be assuaged. But where exactly you can put him without difficulty is less clear: the shadow of financial scandals linked to above make the Finance Ministry unlikely as well, but then there are few big Cabinet posts to offer. (And if Netanyahu is the PM, which seems increasingly probable, he'll want to avoid the financial scandals that have plagued Kadima and ended Olmert's Prime Ministership.)

Then again, no one with such polarizing views as Lieberman's has won so many seats in the Knesset before, though the 15 he won gives him less clout than the up to 20 seats some polls suggested he might win. The Kahane comparisons above, though coming from the left, are not all that outrageous: some Israelis on the right (and on the left as well) have always said Kach was banned because it posed a danger of winning too much support.

The historian in me notes that the rapid rise of polarizing radical figures of the right or left in a democracy is usually a sign of fundamental stresses in that society. Lieberman was doing better in some polls several months ago than he did in the elections, and I suspect one reason may be that the establishment parties were largely discredited after the Lebanon War in 2006, but have regained some credibility with the Israeli public since the Gaza operation, though the rest of the world has not shared their assessment of the latter. Livni's late surge in the polls may be due in part to Gaza.

Some have suggested Lieberman's most outrageous and seeming racially-based statements are being exaggerated or misinterpreted. Maybe. But I also remember, in 1979, plenty of Iran-watchers saying that "Ayatollah Khomeini doesn't really want the clerics to control the government." It turned out he meant every word. Other demagogues have been underestimated in terms of meaning what they say.

Similarly, the fact that despite his calls for disenfranchising Israeli Arabs he has been willing to give up the "Triangle" and Wadi Ara Arab areas of Israel in exchange for settlement areas, in a sort of territorial/population exchange, he himself lives in the settlement of Nokdim deep inside the West Bank, which his vaguely defined territorial exchange would be unlikely to include. At some point we need to address the whole "is the two-state solution dead?" question which is so topical right now, but it is complex and needs more time than I can give it at the moment. Suffice it to say that if Lieberman really is looking for a two-state solution that isn't just camouflaged apartheid bantustans, Nokdim won't be included on the Israeli side of the line. (Nokdim is administratively under Gush Etzion, which is a pre-1948 Israeli settlement east of the Green Line, but it is nowhere near Gush Etzion, and shouldn't be confused with it.)

So while I won't express huge alarm at the emergence of Lieberman -- he has 15 votes out of 120 in the Knesset, after all -- I won't dismiss him as a passing fancy either.

There is an easy tendency to dismiss him for his proletarian background: the number of newspaper articles, blogposts and the like I've seen noting that he was a "former nightclub bouncer from Moldova" reminds one of how easy it is to dismiss a short Corsican corporal or a Bavarian corporal who paints, or, this being the 200th anniversary of a great man's birth, a rail-splitter from Kentucky because of their former employment. And no, I'm not suggesting Lieberman is Napoleon or Hitler or (God help me) Lincoln, or that these men have anything in common except obscure or peripheral origins (Bonaparte was semi-noble but provincial), just noting that one's former employment doesn't tell you much. But it does mean that you shouldn't dismiss their potential for greater power, for good or ill.

I also particularly want to try to avoid the obvious and tempting comparisons of a man like Lieberman to, say, the situation in Germany in 1933. The quick tendency of many in the Arab world to compare Israel to Nazi Germany is not only excessive (there are no death camps, no Wehrmacht rolling over the region) but also profoundly offensive to Israelis given the reality and living memory of the Holocaust. But countries under profound economic and political stress can produce demagogues. And demagogues are not good for democracies, whether they are Corsican officers, Bavarian corporals, Italian newspaper editors with military ambitions, Spanish colonial officers or Louisiana politicians with a flair for oratory.

I think I know Israel well enough to say that I personally believe that Lieberman is still a minority taste, but I also recognize that, like most good demagogues, he combines his more disturbing sides (the attitude towards Israeli Arab citizens) with some populist notions (his support for civil marriage and a reduction of the power of the religious parties, for example) which are widely approved in secular Israeli society. (He has apparently gone so far as to say that, just as he feels Israeli Arabs should prove their loyalty or lose their citizenship, that the haredi or ultra-Orthodox who also do not serve in the military should also lose their citizenship if they do not support the state. The idea of an all-right-wing government is hard to realize because Lieberman and the religious parties do not play well together at all.)

In this sense I think if I had to find a parallel he would be less Hitler or Mussolini or Franco, but, perhaps, American populist/demagogic politicians like Huey Long or George Wallace (links provided for those who may not know these regional American politicians of the 20th century). The first was a real populist with some elements of authoritarianism, the second a man with a racial agenda hiding under a populist rhetoric. (And as always opinions expressed here are mine, not those of the Middle East Institute or The Middle East Journal.)

An odd note: Lieberman, for all his toughness, is nicknamed "Yvette" -- Israelis love nicknames for political figures, and his original Russian name was Evet (Эвет) before he became Avigdor -- but I don't think the seemingly feminine nickname has done much to soften his image.

I suspect we will be hearing a lot about "Yvette" Lieberman in days to come.