Arabs and other Middle Easterners have been known to marvel at Israeli freedom and democracy. This marveling is often quiet, of course. They see an Israeli press that robustly criticizes the government, and they think, “Why can’t we do that?” They see jostling parties — pluralism — and they think, “Why can’t we have that?” They see legislators, some of them Arab, heckling the prime minister, and they think, “What the . . .?”
In my column today, I mention the sentencing of a former Israeli president to seven years in prison — for rape. And I wonder what Arabs and others may make of that. Do they think this demonstrates what a true democracy is? Or do they think the ex-president must have been framed by his political enemies?
Have a letter from a reader in Israel:
Jay,
. . . I don’t normally watch Arab-language TV, but I know someone who does — someone who often participates, as an Arabic-speaking Israeli, on panels for al-Jazeera, etc. He told me that the thing that most caught the attention of the talking heads on Arab TV stations was the fact that the chief judge of the three-judge panel that sentenced Katsav was an Arab: Judge George Kara. . . .
Since it would be unthinkable for a major political figure in the Muslim world to be tried by a Jewish or Christian judge, the trial of the former president of the Jewish state before an Arab judge had stunned them. (Moreover, the other two judges were women.)