Democracy, Free Speech, and Occupation: Coexistence and Contradictions / Prof. Dr. Dov Shinar
The basic question of this presentation is: How can freedoms coexist with occupation, regardless of their obvious contradictions? In terms of Western logics, the contradictions are quite clear. Coexistence is less obvious, but does exist in Middle Eastern terms.
My point of departure is that the term “freedom” refers indeed to speech, but also to freedom of movement, of political and social organization, of artistic expression, and other types of activity.
My arguments result from a relativist view of democratic freedoms that include:
A. Democracy is never absolute, and can be manipulated and tampered with. – It is or can be selective and elastic, with various types of boundaries that affect different freedoms.
B. Also freedoms are selective and elastic. They can be expanded, constrained and limited, within and beyond occupation. In this sense, various scenarios are possible in the context of the Middle East:
On one hand, even though the Israeli occupation imposes severe limitations on all freedoms, it is at the same time paradoxically protecting some freedoms. For example, some Palestinian newspapers are published in Israeli-annexed Jerusalem rather than in the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority. This preference occurs because by operating in Israeli territory, newspapers published in Jerusalem enjoy the protection of the Israeli law and civilian courts rather than the absolute rule of the military government in the occupied territories. Another reason are the limitations on freedom of expression imposed by the Palestinian regimes of Arafat’s PLO and the Hamas movement, regardless of the occupation, in order to consolidate their power.
On the other hand, it is difficult to accept the argument presented by the Israeli right wing and the settlers movements that the occupation regime is more liberal and democratic than most Arab regimes in the region, including the Palestinian Authority. This argument offers little comfort to those subject to the infringements of human rights built into the occupation, to the absurd results of the wall built along the borders of Israel, to the long lines and the humiliating procedures typical of the roadblocks between Israel and the occupied territories, and to the frequent Israeli incursions into the area formally controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
This might explain the three degrees of democracy that coexist in Israel, and why post-1967 Israel has been often called a “nation of masters”:
a. a majority of Israeli Jews enjoy more or less equal democratic rights and freedoms in a business-as-usual climate that has awarded Israel the title “the only democracy in the Middle East”;
b. in order to accomodate their needs, the same majority has been manipulating the democratic rights of the Arab Israeli minority: The recent formal appointment of Arab Israeli ministers, deputy ministers, and ambassadors, (which has not been free from a heated debate over their exposure to classified materials)) has been preceded and accompanied by unofficial codes of conduct — known to both sides — that manipulate Arab Israeli rights and freedoms. They affect land ownership, particularly in the Bedouin sector, equal employment rights, education, etc.as occupiers, the same majority has been applying unlimited might over the freedoms and rights of a large Palestinian population, including freedom of speech.
Media Structures and Democratic Freedoms
Beyond occupation, the constitution and organization of media structures are crucial for democratic freedoms. Decentralized, open media and participatory channels serve broad interests and universal values, democracy, and democratization. On the other hand, centralized media and restricted channels serve narrower interests, particularistic values, and thus lower levels of democracy.
This has been true for Israel within the parameters of the triple-headed structure of Israeli democracy: internal democracy for Israeli Jews, manipulative democracy for Israeli Arabs, and no democracy for Palestinians.
First, processes of Israeli media democratization, particularly in the Jewish sector, have included a tradition of refraining from publishing government-owned newspapers, protecting broadcasting from direct governmental control, multiplying news sources, enhancing a media public sphere, empowering voiceless groups through legal and pirate outlets, and opening windows to the world. Threats to media freedoms have included structural constraints, such as the rule of the ratings, compounded by local expressions of global processes, such as neo-liberal policies, market capacity and the use of political pressures.
The problem of market capacity has been expressed in the public debate over the introduction of the second commercial television channel. This was approved by the government with the formal objective of enhancing the democratization of the media market through increased competition between commercial operators in a market populated hitherto by one public and one commercial channel, peculiarly operated by three organizations who have taken shifts, broadcasting in different days of the week.. Soon after Channel 10 went on the air in 2002, it was realized that the market was too limited to allow for advertising and programming on two commercial channels: the older one lost some of its revenue but not its market command, while the ratings and advertising volume on the new channel remained flat. More recently, this market structure has not changed in principle, although there has been a shift of its components: one of the channel 2 operators did not pass the tenders for renewing broadcasting permits, and its permit was revoked; so, like before the appearance of channel 10, three operators remained in the market, although in a different “division-of-labor”. This process demonstrates some structural limitations of media democratization.
Secondly, within the manipulative structure of the Israeli-Arab sector, broadcasting services in Arabic were until recently in the hands of official channels such as the IBA, under the heavy influence of surveillance and intelligence agencies. Arab entrepreneurs, who took advantage of the relatively liberal laws on the freedom of expression inside Israel, have recently added private organizations to the hitherto partisan printed press. Also, radio and television have been growing, demonstrating once again that there is no way to suppress expressions of identity, even in imperfect democracies.
Finally, the Palestinian media in the occupied territories and in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority have been less fortunate. Before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, Israeli occupation authorities did not allow Palestinian broadcasting and exerted harsh censorship on Palestinian newspapers. Nevertheless, Palestinian owners and journalists preferred to publish in Israeli-annexed Jerusalem because this guaranteed at least some protection by civilian courts, while publishing in the occupied territories put the publishers and journalists under unlimited military control and jurisdiction. Radio and television were introduced when the Authority took charge in 1994. Together with the press, they have been operating under heavy official control.
Thus, in addition to the oppressing yoke of occupation, critical journalists have been intimidated and kidnapped by the authorities, and basic freedoms of expression have been threatened. It seems that under Abu Mazen the situation improved to some extent in the West Bank, and under the Hamas regime, the situation has become worse in the Gaza strip.
Freedoms and “The Spiral of Silence”
Freedom of speech should not be dealt on its own, at least in situations of occupation. Freedom of speech must be considered together with freedom of movement, freedom of employment and property, and even the very freedom of being. For instance, Jewish settlers in the city of Hebron have been consistently and consciously provoking, harassing, threatening, destroying Palestinian property, and employing violence against local inhabitants, with the result that the once flourishing local market is now sealed, and Israeli soldiers must accompany Palestinian children to school in order to avoid settlers hooliganism against them In other parts of the occupied territories, settlers have been damaging and destroying mostly agricultural property, such as olive groves. Likewise, the wall Israel has been building along its “borders” with the Palestinian Authority, has been dissecting Palestinian villages, isolating many dwellings from their owners’ fields and other sources of income, and from schools, health services, and other basic needs. The basic right of being has thus been severely infringed.
Side-by side with limitations on freedom of speech, imposed on the Palestinian population by the occupation and internal oppression, mostly in Arafat’s times, but perhaps no less in the Hamas era, freedom of speech affects the occupier’s population through the process called “the spiral of silence”. The spiral of silence is a mass communication theory propounded by the German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann1 The theory asserts that one is not likely to voice a minority opinion for fear of reprisal or social isolation from the majority. This tends to develop into total passivity. The media play a significant role in determining the dominant opinion. They can dramatically impact an individual’s perception about where public opinion lies. Noelle-Neumann describes the spiral of silence as a dynamic process, in which predictions about public opinion become fact as the mass media coverage of the majority opinion becomes the status quo, and the minority becomes less likely to speak out. The spiral of silence is a measure of protection as much as it is one of oppression. Since it applies to issues that evoke passionate responses in even the most reserved individuals, it can be used to construe realities and/or to contain social unrest over controversial topics.
Thus, when public opinion is used and/or mobilized to a meta-situation such as occupation and other instances of oppression, and when occupation becomes a customary, socially accepted norm, social pressure, in which the media have a large share, make voices of dissent unpopular, quieter and marginal, even among the most conscious members of the occupying society, such as the media. Such voices are not “in”, they make people feel uncomfortable or bored, so that the majority is not interested and often do not even know where and when limitations of freedoms occur. This has been typical of the little and biased coverage given by the mainstream Israeli media to threats and damage to human life and property inflicted by Israeli occupation authorities and by unauthorized persons and groups (such as gangs of fanatic settlers) on the Palestinian population.
Civil and human rights organizations, such as Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel 2, have produced ample evidence for the selective coverage of such events. But Israeli journalists such as Gideon Levy and Amira Hess, and photojournalist Mickey Kartzman, who have been the exception to this “spiral of silence”, enjoy low ratings and become politically correct “fig-leaves” for liberal Haaretz; the omission and marginalization policies characteristic of the spiral of silence, are also typical of other newspapers, particularly the popular and mass-oriented press and television, where such materials do not appear at all or are hidden in almost invisible spots; Jewish demonstrators against the occupation in sites of official and unofficial setllers’ hooliganism do not make the headlines anymore. They barely make “backstage spots”, if at all; the women of Mahsom Watch are called whores by taxi drivers; and both Jewish family and friends elite and popular circles, who gather on Friday nights, prefer to discuss the amorous adventures or the financial blunders of the leadership and the downfall of the dollar rather than pay attention to the their moral collapse vis-à-vis the disaster of freedoms and human rights occurring just in front of their eyes.
An utilitarian, practical comment, and some final questions
Blocking channels of free speech displays an additional dimension: it is simply not practical. With the exception of radical violence, perhaps genocide in its various forms, the limitation of freedoms in situations of oppression and occupation triggers and almost invariably results in a cat-and-mouse game, in which the mouse always wins. From the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution to Khomeini’s revolution in Iran, to the history of Israeli occupation, to the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, research and practice have led to the conclusion that it is impossible to totally block the flow of information or totally shut all mouths and ears. Particularly at present, independent and alternative media, big and small, have advanced to an extent that makes this conclusion even more compelling.
One wonders why supposedly intelligent, capable, learned people and organizations invest so much talent, resources, and imagination in setting boundaries to such freedoms. Important resulting questions are, of course, how long and to what extent will the spiral of silence hold on? How much can a society live with it without paying considerably high prices? How long will it take for the spiral to expand its scope from occupation to internal issues in other sectors of Israeli democracy, such as the “regular” democracy in the Israeli Jewish sector, and the manipulative democracy in the Israeli-Arab sector. Initial signs of such expansion can be recognized already, and might remind some worried observers of the historical reality that allowed Noelle-Neumann to develop her theory.
