Having lived in Romania in the 1990s, I know that many Romanians admire the successes of Israel, follow closely its affairs, and might even draw lessons from its actions. And as a person whose parents hail from Romania, I have always found this pleasing. These are two countries I love and wish to see as friends.
So it is with some sadness that I must urge readers to pay no respect to the messages coming out of the current government of Benjamin Netanyahu and to take no example from its actions. The only lesson to be learned from this cabal is that they go in a certain direction one should run for the hills the other way.
And that applies to the unfortunate meeting on Monday between Ambassador Reuven Azar and George Simion, president of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, together with Yossi Dagan, the chairman of the Samaria Regional Council, an organization of Israeli settler leaders.
The danger, of course, is that Romanians might conclude Israel no longer believes the far right in Romania is anti-Semitic and best avoided. Learning of the warm meeting, Romanians perhaps might conclude that the AUR is not really a conspiratorial, damaging, far-right organization rife with anti-Semitism.
With such a seeming stamp of approval, the AUR might gain in strength, complicating an already complicated electoral picture in Romania and making things difficult for the current centrist government for which it cannot be a partner.
With elections scheduled for next year, this is unconscionable. Moreover, it would have once been inconceivable for an Israeli government to be courting such characters, helping them gain legitimacy in the eyes of the local electorate.
One might therefore ask what on Earth has gone so wrong. Why is this Israeli government normalizing the AUR? Why enable a party that flirts with lionizing the WWII era dictator Antonescu, an anti-Semite?
There is an easy answer.
The world was once divided between democracies and countries that to various degrees were autocracies. Some were military juntas, some were communist dictatorships, some were run as fiefdoms by tribal warlords – but they generally did not pretend to be democracies. Not in the sense of free and fair elections. Despite countries like East Germany attaching the word “Democratic” to their official name, no one was really fooled and any effort to mislead was half-hearted.
This has changed. There is a virus spreading around the world today which might be labelled “elected autocracy.” Some will compare it to the fascists of the 20th century, a few of which were somehow elected, though naming them explicitly is not considered so polite. Their successors are a bit more subtle.
They use modern tools – from social media to bot armies – to disseminate simplistic messages mean to rile up the masses, stir up and anger and invent enemies, which are critical to the sense of grievance upon which they feast. They delegitimize and demonize experts and professionals, which is useful because they are the minority.
They aim to come to power via a majority vote, and then they claim to represent “the people” as they usurp as much authority as possible for themselves. Because mainly the uneducated are susceptible to this trick, they turn on the intelligentsia. At the height of their ambition, they seek ways to engineer future elections so as to guarantee their permanence in office. Until the generally bitter end.
If they are not careful they slide into full dictatorship, as has occurred in Russia. But more often they remain in a sort of system interregnum, a netherworld of fake news, nonsense, and newspeak typified by weakened courts and gatekeepers, domesticated media and limitless patronage, cronyism and corruption.
This is the kind of government Israel currently has. The prime minister, a criminal defendant on trial for bribery and other charges, leads a Cabinet packed with criminals, fanatics and rank incompetents appointed on the basis of slavish loyalty.
Key constituencies of the government are united by a desire to eliminate judicial overview. One of them is the nefarious West Bank settler movement represented by Dagan, which wants freedom from the courts for the oppression of the non-citizen Palestinians who are far greater in number and who share that territory.
That’s why the government – which stumbled into power last year with 49% of the vote for its disgraceful constituent parties – has proposed replacing the carefully balanced judicial appointments system with direct government control. That’s why the government is also seeking the power to easily override court decisions when its puppets forget to be puppets. There are over 200 laws in process that would Putinize the country. And that is why millions have been protesting weekly all year and all polls show the opposition would crush the government in new elections.
Governments of this kind are almost always hyper-nationalistic, and so Netanyahu’s natural partners around the world are leaders like the ones in Hungary and Poland. They are the ones Netanyahu is courting, and to make it look like he has global allies he has made the strategic decision to look the other way about the antisemitism that is rife in such circles.
That is why they are courting the AUR – to project back to Israel that they have allies and are not isolated, and also to strengthen the backbone of a global movement to undermine true democracy. To undermine the liberal democracy in which governments are not omnipotent and the people have guaranteed rights.
Romania’s democracy is not perfect, but its current system is a variant of liberal democracy. It would be terrible for Romanians if parties like the AUR came to power, or became part of a coalition that they could influence.
Anti-Semites do not just hate Jews. They are a negative force for humanity and they will ultimately turn on their own people in their quest to stay in power.
Monday’s meeting has been widely criticized, and it has put the government in an awkward position because it looks like it was approved by the Israeli foreign ministry. Officials in Bucharest are loath to be seen as criticizing good relations by Israel with Romanian politicians, perhaps risking a diplomatic incident.
Honestly, they should risk it. They should risk it if only to do the people of Israel a favor by clarifying to the electorate what the world thinks of their government.
That might hasten the its collapse – all it takes is five legislators to switch sides – and bring about elections in which the right will probably receive the punishment it so richly deserves. If Romania is a friend of Israel, it should be wishing for nothing less than that. Then the countries can be friends again, without the shame, bad order and terrible karma that currently prevails.
