Maligned Israel comes up smelling roses

DAVID SAKS

For the time being, at least, the country remains a bona fide democracy, with all the basic pillars of a free society – judicial independence, freedom of expression and thought and universal suffrage among them – in place. Why it has earned the more ignoble title of “rogue democracy” in certain quarters is because of its morally compromised foreign policy. I think it was Tony Leon who once said that the South African government had yet to meet a dictator it did not like.

So lamentable has been South Africa’s record in opposing global tyranny, that even the leftwing (and, certainly when it comes to Israel, notoriously biased) Human Rights Watch had some sharp words to say about it in its latest report.

While “repeatedly supporting resolutions on Palestine”, it had “abstained on the votes of all other country situations, including on North Korea, Syria, Sri Lanka, and Iran”. Moreover, despite having supported the establishment of the International Criminal Court, it had frequently failed to stand against impunity for human rights violations. For example, it had been in favour of the proposed African Court providing immunity from prosecution for serving heads of state and senior government officials, including war crimes and genocide.

If anything epitomises South Africa’s contradictory foreign policy, it must be how it has three times in five years refused to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama, whereas notorious Arab and Islamic extremists have been able to come and go as they please. In light of this, no-one should be surprised at unrepentant PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled not only being allowed to enter the country, but being given a rapturous welcome by ruling party representatives.

Domestically, at least, South Africa remains solidly democratic, even if certain worrisome inroads have been made. In its latest Countries’ Report, Freedom House, an influential US-based research organisation that monitors democracy, political freedom and human rights around the world, gives it a score of two, based on a scale of one representing the most and seven the least free.

In African terms, this is an impressive rating, given that 88 per cent of African countries were adjudged to be either “Not Free” or at best, “Partly Free”, with scores of four upwards. That it was graded only two (all Western European countries, by contrast, receive a “one”) is because of, inter alia, government encroachment on the editorial independence of the SABC, the pressure under which judicial and prosecutorial independence has come in recent years, the fact that senior-most ANC leaders “generally retained impunity from punishment” and xenophobic violence by police (including torture).

Not that it will make one jot of difference to those bent on believing otherwise, but Israel, with 1,5, scores higher than South Africa. This record is even more striking when compared with the rest of the Middle East, which is something of a horror story.

Only Lebanon (“Partly Free”, with a score of 4,5) escapes being classified as “Not Free”, while Syria and Saudi Arabia are ranked among “The Worst of the Worst” (the others being the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).

The general failure of Islamic societies to operate in a democratic milieu, is shown by the fact that overwhelmingly, Muslim-majority countries fall into the “Not Free” or, at best (and less frequently at that), “Partly Free” category.

Among the very few exceptions are Senegal and Tunisia, with the latter being the only country where the so-called “Arab Spring” resulted in genuine freedom rather than leading to intensifying repression.

Virtually all “Not Free” countries are in Africa and Asia. In Europe, only Belarus and Russia (if one regards it as being part of Europe rather than of Asia, which is an interesting question) fall into that category, whereas in the Americas – both North and South, and including the Caribbean – only Cuba continues to be regarded as “Not Free”.

This certainly surprised me – it was not so long ago that countries like Chile, Bolivia, Columbia, Nicaragua and Haiti were among the most authoritarian regimes on the planet.

The overall import of the latest Freedom House findings is that while the world unquestionably remains a far freer and more democratic place than was the case prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, worrisome trends are afoot that threaten to reverse many of those gains.

The overall picture appears to be one of increasing polarisation, where on four of the inhabited continents, freedom is overwhelmingly the norm whereas in the remaining two (the largest, in terms of population), authoritarianism holds sway and is in fact intensifying.

That Israel, objectively speaking a genuinely free and democratic society (despite being in a situation of continual war) is among the most vilified countries on the planet, speaks volumes about the prejudice and perversity that dominates so much of global human rights discourse.