How much democracy can democracy tolerate?

Christina/ July 22, 2011/ Ideas of philosophy

Granted, times are confusing. On the one hand Mumbai witnesses its severest bombings since 2008, on the other side our female chancellor delivers tanks to Angola and Saudi-Arabia. At first sight, these facts do not seem to be linked to each other. Then, there is a civil war under way in Libya and is not the NATO involved in it? And finally there is a not so small, brave group of people that makes for Israel to point out to the difficult situation of the Palestinian people. A lot of movement in and around the Arab World.

This group just mentioned that traveled themed “Welcome to Palestine” got caught in Isreali custody pending deportation. Press-sided there is a courageous article by Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, the daughter of the late chairman of the of the “Jewish Central Committee” in Germany. In her report about the “hypocritical country” Galinski talks about the sacking of the activists of the said peace initiative. Apparently the Israelis government made use of the social networks to make and distribute a list of 352 unwanted persons in the run-up of the activity to airlines. This information inclosed the demand not to carry those passengers or otherwise any costs arousing from their immediate would have to be bore by the airlines. Vernacular would call it mere blackmailing.

Hecht-Galinski calls it a “political gag order”, issued by the Israeli government on Germany: “German foreign policy is meanwhile determined by the United States and Israel”. In this context it does not come as a surprise that the “Deutsche Welle” published only a couple of days later an article on the visit of the German defence minister de Maizière in Israel entitled “The Arab Spring also bears risks“. Did we like the Arabs better when we were – indirectly – in control of them?

A certain subsidence slop also developped at a different front-line. The former „shellproof“ relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia cracked open. The circumstances however remain contradictory: Even though the desert state seems to be distressed by the development of the Arabic brother states, the dynasty does not like the States attitude towards the Arab Spring either. This can be extracted from an article of the Saudi Arabian former Chief Security Officer Turki al-Faisal published by the Washington Post in June this year. The bone of contention was a disrespectful speech given by the Israeli head of state Netanyahu on the Palestinian-question in front of the US-congress. Suddenly, it seems that the kingdom discovered its affection for the Palestinian brothers and want them to have their own independent state. One question, however, remains unsettled: Where does the sudden change of mind come from? On political floors such statements and attitudes are perceived as an external „re-orientation“ of the kingdom that seems to be build on the co-operation of „like-minded powers“ in the Middle East. Is that why the Jordanian and Moroccan monarchies have been asked to join the GCC? Is it about the establishment of a regional centre of power as a counter balance against Iran or a protective barrier against the extensions of the Arab Spring? Finally, the question how much democracy the world can bear respectively to whom it is granted, remains.

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