Judging Lieberman by his Actions not his Words

The global Left wing media has widely and predictably reviled the elevation of Avigdor Lieberman to foreign minister.  Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent, compares Lieberman to Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and mentions Lieberman's "racist comments."  Al Jazeera, not unexpectedly, refers to him as "a racist settler living on usurped Palestinian land."  The Nation implies that Lieberman is "fascist."  The Left wing blogosphere, awash in anti-Israel rhetoric generally, is far more severe.  Lieberman is referred to as a "thug," "racist," and "demagogue," while Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com asks of Lieberman, "A Jewish Hitler?"  Many of the mainstream press' profiles of Lieberman discuss the labeling of him as racist, which perpetuates the association of Lieberman with racism.  In this piece I have two major points.  The first is that Lieberman's alleged racism is irrelevant.  The second, related point is that we should judge him, as we should judge all politicians, by what he does, not by what he says.

Lieberman's alleged racism is ultimately irrelevant.  The flawed idea that you must like your negotiating partners has been most recently advanced by the first George W. Bush administration, perhaps the worst administration for foreign policy in American history.  Indeed the United States frequently employed racist rhetoric in WWII, but that did not stop us from rebuilding Germany and Japan after the war.  Lieberman does not have to like the Palestinians (or any Arabs) in order to negotiate with them.  Even if Lieberman hates all Arabs, and it is not clear to me that he does, all that we should be concerned about is if he is willing to negotiate a final (or preliminary) agreement and what the terms of that agreement might be.  It is on this subject that I find that the Left wing press and blogosphere misses the mark on Lieberman.

Lieberman is on record as supporting a two-state solution.  The controversial aspect of his particular plan is that he would give Israeli Arab towns to a Palestinian state in exchange for the major settlements.  Philosophically, this seems to me quite reasonable (though Kant would disagree). I have never understood why a Palestinian state must be Judenrein while Israel is supposed to remain about 20% Arab.   The problem is that the Israeli Arabs would almost certainly not want to join a Palestinian state, and why would they?  Despite the fact that this plan is almost certainly a nonstarter, it is important to note that Lieberman's plan does not uproot a single Arab.  It merely changes their national identity, and many Israeli Arabs identify as "Palestinian" anyway. This plan need not necessarily alter their citizenship.

Lieberman is committed, quite rightly, to maintaining a Jewish majority in Israel; and it stands to reason that he would, as a pragmatic and skillful politician (qualities even the blogosphere attributes to Lieberman), be willing to negotiate about this issue.  Based on his history it would surprise me if he would not ultimately support the arrangement most scholars and politicians believe will happen anyway; land swaps trading the major Israeli settlements for equivalent, uninhabited, Israeli territory.  Lieberman's support for what Yoav Sivan calls in the Guardian "purer Israel" over "greater Israel" makes this concession perfectly reasonable within his own worldview.

Much of the vitriol aimed at Lieberman focuses not on his position vis-à-vis the Palestinians, but on his position regarding the loyalty of the Israeli Arab citizens.  As has been widely reported, Lieberman has called for a "loyalty oath"; citizens who do not swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state would be stripped of their citizenship.  Firstly, it should be said that stripping citizens of their citizenship would almost certainly be illegal under international law; in the United States exile is unconstitutional according to the eighth amendment.  Second, the Hitler comparison is not at all accurate.  Lieberman actually wants to include the Arabs in Israeli society even more than they have already been included.  He wants to remove a major barrier to further integration between Israeli Arabs and Jews: the lack of a Palestinian state.  And by making national service mandatory for Arabs he would alleviate the difficulties that arise in Israeli society from the failure to serve and would give the Israeli Arabs a greater stake in the Jewish state.

Lieberman is a politician adept at compromise and there are other ways to alleviate his legitimate concern about the Israeli Arabs, many of whom, though by no means all, belong to parties that effectively oppose the existence of the state; and some of who have supported organizations that call for the destruction of Israel.  This situation is almost unique to Israel, and attempting to address it should not be automatically construed as racist (unlike the Palestinian position on Jews in the territories and on Jews' biblical ties to the region).  Indeed there are a number of potential (and legal) compromises on the issue of Israeli Arab loyalty to the state, which I may explore in a future post on this blog.

My purpose in bringing up this issue is to point out that, like every political issue, this one can be negotiated and a compromise can be reached.  It could even be dropped entirely in exchange for concessions on another issue.  Additionally, we all know that not all campaign promises are followed through on. 

Lieberman is a pragmatist and should be treated as such.  We should hail the fact that he supports a two state solution and supports continued negotiations with the Palestinians rather than pigeonhole him as a racist extremist.  His personal feelings about Arabs are irrelevant, it is his ability to do his job that we should judge him on; and on that subject it is too early to tell, but I for one believe that he has the potential to do a lot of good.  Let's hope that he, and the new Israeli government, is successful in achieving peace for both sides.

The author is visiting assistant professor of political studies at Bard College in Annandale, NY.