Is Netanyahu turning us into bad old East Germany?

The dictatorship that ran East Germany, with its notorious Stasi secret police — rumoured to have a spy in every apartment building — was a 41-year reign of terror that was notorious the world over. But though the Soviet-aligned German Democratic Republic (GDR) lasted from 1949 until 1990, that’s already 36 years ago. Memories fade. So, curious, on a recent visit to Berlin I visited the museum of the GDR, and some of what I read there, about that terrifyingly repressive dictatorship, stunned me. Because, in some respects, I might have been reading about Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel — or at least, about where Netanyahu is trying with all his might to take Israeli society, now, in this very week, fateful as it is with the raft of anti-democratic legislation being rammed though the Knesset. If you’d have been with me in that GDR museum, seeing what that society became, you’d be as unnerved as I am.

The museum had various exhibits, with various explanatory notes alongside. And note after note seemed eerily familiar. Take this one, next to a mock-up of a voting booth:
“You could either vote for the candidates of the National Front, or not. Either way, nothing changed. Nevertheless, not going to vote was a dangerous choice. The model citizen was open in his acceptance of the candidates, only those with something to hide used [the confidentiality of entering] the polling booth. In this way, it was very easy to see who was voting ‘no’. Why take the risk, when the whole affair was rigged?”

Obviously we are not yet at a place where Israeli General Elections are “rigged”. But what did we see in the past month? The Knesset vote for the State Comptroller, stipulated by law to be a secret ballot, and in the second round Government MKs suddenly and mysteriously started photographing and filming themselves casting their vote in the polling booths. Rumours abounded that they had been pressured to make their votes public, and lo and behold, Netanyahu’s favoured candidate — his own lawyer, Michael Rabello — won, where he had lost the first round. The Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling that the secrecy of the vote was compromised, so the vote must be held again, and Justice Minister Yariv Levin (who seems to be against the very principles of law and justice that he is supposed to be upholding) said publicly that the Government should ignore the ruling.

This aspect of the Government’s attempts to sideline and neuter the Supreme Court could, if they win, take us closer to that East German reality where the confidentiality of the voting booth becomes effectively a thing of the past. Of our once-democratic past.

This attempted snubbing of the judiciary — with the entire Government also just declaring that they would not respect a further Supreme Court ruling to do with the functioning of the watchdog committee deliberating on media ownership of Channel 13 — is suspected by some to be designed to normalise the ignoring of Court decisions. So that if the coming General Election doesn’t go the way they want it to, they will have established de facto legitimacy to similarly ignore any judicial ruling that the election was legitimate and will simply refuse to accept the results. And then we really could be in GDR “Either way, nothing changed” territory.

Back to my museum visit. There was an eye-catching large display of East German newspapers and magazines, many of them beautifully designed. And indeed the GDR boasted a heady 39 daily newspapers and around 1,700 periodicals. Their Government believed in self-education. But only within certain strictures. “Every printed word was subject to sometimes ridiculous censorship,” a sign informed us, “Opinions that deviated from the state’s SED Party were banned, and the language used in politics or ideology was dreadfully monotonous.” Monotonous and, clearly, reflecting a single voice, the voice of the Party.

What bells does that ring here in Israel? The media bill we see being rushed through Knesset this week is likely to give the Government the power to fine any media outlet their self-appointed committee decides is offensive, and it seems there would be no limit on the scope of those fines. In other words, “opinions that deviate from” — let us say, what this Government committee decides is right and proper, for whatever reason — could be, if not banned, then fined out of existence. This media bill was originally supposed to contain a clause allowing the Government to shut down media outlets during election periods, but that was too much even for this group of anto-democracy lawmakers to risk, so that particular clause was removed. All in good time, I suppose…

Obedience to the Party leader was expected, we were informed. and there were no term limits. So only three men held that office during the GDR’s four-plus decades. Hmm. What was it Netanyahu is reported to have told his Cabinet again, upon returning from a visit to US President Donald Trump? That he expected absolute obedience, to him personally above all else. A reminder that Israel is, officially, a Constitutional Democracy, not a Presidential system. The Prime Minister is not an autocrat, and nobody votes for him by name. A reminder also that, like the GDR, Israel does not have term limits.

East Germans, generations of them, had to suffer under a system where they had only the pretense of democracy (its name, the German Democratic Republic, was a funny-not-funny part of that sham), where the most talented people moved abroad when they could and it took 14 years for a new car to be delivered because the industry and economy were disasters (does that sound so very remote? Channel 12 just reported on the malfunctioning of Hadassah Medical Centre because, they allege, Likud have allegedly been misusing it for party favourites and to repay favours). And of course, there were the half a million or so who were imprisoned or seriously harassed by the Stasi for ‘crimes’ including ‘agitation’ (which often meant simply expressing anti-regime views).

Israel is not there yet. Much as I give this Government credit for very little (OK, nothing — nothing good, anyway), I doubt that many of them would ever truly contemplate wanting to take Israel to the kind of horrendous dictatorship that can be seen at the GDR museum. But. If they pass these anti-democratic laws, and if those laws stick, and if they get away with ignoring Supreme Court rulings, our judiciary will have been suborned, the rule of law will have crumbled, the media will become government marketing materials and nothing more, and it seems to me, all that will constitutionally keep us from the grim fate of those GDR citizens locked away behind the Berlin Wall, will be the merciful whims — or otherwise — of our leaders.

Unless of course, there’s some kind of huge upheaval on the streets, and who wants to go there?

But in some ways Israel’s dangers are worse than those of the GDR (you might have limited sympathy for the early citizens of the GDR, given Germany’s recent history at that time, but for the sake of my argument, indulge me). As Soviet puppets, the GDR was under reliable Russian protection, and anyway they weren’t really under existential threat. Israel is. If we lose the best of our soldiers, the best of the businessmen who create the profits that fund our army (those are often the same people, by the way), our enemies will see us as weaker and we will be weaker. And then, again, they will pounce.

So this pyromaniac government risks our democracy, our freedom, our way of life, and our safety. With all that in mind, wondering to what extent we could become the GDR seems academic. But there, in that museum of East Germany’s horrors, the thought was itself horrifying. It should be, for us all.