Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, October 1, 2019

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ALLISON PUJOL | COLUMN
U.S. complicity in Bahrain’s human rights abuses
W

hile 
the 
United 
States has stated its 
commitment to the 
advancement of human rights 
abroad for decades, the historical 
record often indicates otherwise. 
Nearly a year ago, the death of 
journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 
Saudi Arabia (which is widely 
believed to be the result of a 
Saudi-led 
operation) 
sparked 
plenty of political conversation 
about the United States’s foreign 
policy relationships with human 
rights violators. In particular, 
much has been written about the 
United States’s desire to continue 
providing military technology to 
Saudi Arabia in the wake of Saudi 
Arabian intervention in Yemen. 
The Saudi-led effort in Yemen 
has resulted in the bombing of 
schoolbuses and hospitals as 
well as the deaths of thousands 
of civilians, and the conflict has 
been prolonged by U.S. weapons 
funneling into Middle Eastern 
countries. While there is a 
limited ceasefire as of less than a 
week ago, the road to peace still 
looks long. The war has led to 
widespread famine and disease 
outbreaks, and the attacks have 
displaced many Yemen civilians. 
However, little attention has 
been paid to another country 
that the United States continues 
to 
arm 
despite 
horrendous 
human rights abuses: Bahrain. 
Much like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain 
is also arming belligerents in the 
Yemen civil war and using U.S. 
weapons to fight in the conflict. 
And much like Saudi Arabia, 
Bahrain’s domestic human rights 
record is anything but positive. 
The suppression of protests 
and free speech in Bahrain 
is a relatively new political 
development. 
During 
the 
Middle East’s wave of popular 
movements in the spring of 
2011, protests for democratic 
reform in Bahrain were quickly 
crushed by the Bahrain Defense 
Forces (along with some Saudi 
Arabian intervention assistance) 
in a way that has proven to be 
efficient as well as brutal. Since 
the end of protests in Bahrain, 
thousands 
of 
demonstrators 
have been jailed and tortured. 
In the past two years, Bahrain’s 

government has embarked on 
an extensive campaign to crack 
down on political opposition. 
Alongside the recent increase 
in imprisonment of citizens 
for tweeting about abuse, Shi’a 
clerics have also been targeted 
and stripped of their nationality.
The United States is not the 
only country that has funded 
Bahrain’s human rights abuses. 
In 2018, a report from The 
Guardian alleged the British 
government was funding the 
torture 
and 
executions 
of 
dissidents in Bahrain. Human 
rights 
organizations 
have 
accused the British government 

of being opaque about the 
purpose of the U.K.’s foreign 
aid toward Bahrain, and a 
spokesman from the British 
Foreign Office admitted as much. 
While 
many 
suggest 
the 
United States should cease its 
current military and economic 
support for Bahrain’s campaign 
against protesters and dissidents, 
it would also be beneficial to 
stipulate future U.S. aid on 
ensuring that Bahrain take steps 
toward comprehensive human 
rights reform. Shortly before 
leaving office, President Barack 
Obama had conditioned the sale 
of fighter jets to Bahrain on a 
set of “reform benchmarks” to 
address human rights abuses; 
Bahrain’s government ultimately 
refused to comply with Obama’s 
request with the confidence 
that the U.S. government would 
eventually cave and complete 
the sale anyways.
Sure 
enough, 
President 
Donald Trump’s administration 

has been more than eager to 
complete the sale despite “the 
Bahrainis taking even more 
steps backward … including 
the dissolution of yet another 
peaceful 
opposition 
party, 
restoring arrest powers to a 
domestic intelligence agency 
and legalizing the use of 
military courts for civilians,” 
according to the Forum on 
Arms Trade. Rachel Stohl, a 
senior associate at the Stimson 
Center, argues that the Trump 
administration’s 
decision 
to 
lift the ban is indicative of the 
United States’s global arms 
sales strategy: “prioritization of 
short-term strategic objectives 
over 
long-term 
democratic 
governance.”
Trump’s 
administration 
and its proponents — much 
like the U.K.’s government — 
have argued that arms sales 
to Bahrain actually promote 
regional stability by allowing 
the United States to monitor 
Iran. While it’s true that U.S. 
arms sales allow the United 
States a geostrategic position 
in the region, that position is 
inherently destabilizing. Even 
the economic benefits of arms 
sales are underwhelming for 
the United States, as Trump has 
outsourced the United States’s 
production of the arms it sells. 
This, in turn, has minimized the 
number of U.S. jobs created by 
arms exports from the United 
States. 
In short, the United States’s 
decision to continue arms sales 
to Bahrain is exacerbating the 
crisis in Yemen as well as aiding 
a government that prioritizes 
political power over the lives 
of its own citizens. Absent 
pressure 
from 
the 
United 
States, weapon sales to Bahrain 
can 
only 
further 
entrench 
the authority and ability of 
Bahrain’s 
government 
to 
oppress its citizens. The United 
States should cease current 
arms sales to Bahrain and agree 
to resume sales only if Bahrain 
shows marked improvement in 
its treatment of citizens. 

Allison Pujol can be reached at 

ampmich@umich.edu.

A time for unity in Israel

NOAH ENTE | COLUMN

MAX STEINBAUM | COLUMN

Grand Old Polarization
B

y mid-April 2016, the U.S. 
presidential election was 
starting 
to 
take 
shape. 
Candidate Donald Trump, having 
won the Republican primary race, 
held a commanding lead over a field 
that had been whittled down to 
himself, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and 
Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Meanwhile, 
former Secretary of State Hillary 
Clinton was cruising to her expected 
coronation 
as 
the 
Democratic 
nominee. As the primary races 
solidified and public attention turned 
to November, America became 
gripped by a campaign season that 
bitterly divided the nation and gave 
way to the most hostile presidential 
election in recent memory.
Americans were at each other’s 
throats. A mid-April Pew poll found 
that 45 percent of Republicans 
considered the Democratic Party a 
threat to America’s well-being; 41 
percent of Democrats felt the same 
about Republicans.
The findings were telling of a 
deepening fault line between the 
two parties. Washington Post writer 
Aaron Blake said of the poll: “Believing 
it is a threat to your country...probably 
connotes something approaching an 
active hatred.”
But that poll was taken prior to 
the explosion of Nov. 8, 2016, without 
knowledge of the impact Trump’s 
election and presidency would have 
on political polarization. A Pew poll 
from July 2019 found that 85 percent 
of Americans feel the political debate 
in the country has become more 
negative and less respectful, and 
over half of Americans point their 
fingers at the president for this. These 
findings are also revealing: If things 
were bad in 2016, America’s profound 
divisions are not healing.
Americans’ 
perception 
of 
increasing 
political 
polarization 
is not imagined — it’s also rooted 
in a congressional reality. While 
America has experienced a steadily 
widening partisan gap since World 
War II, congressional polarization 
has seen a marked increase in the 
past decade. As a 2016 Washington 
Post article conveys, Congress is 
ideologically partisan to a degree not 
witnessed since Reconstruction.
Take it straight from the elephant’s 
mouth. Then Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. 

— who retired from politics last 
year as something of a Republican 
renegade — spoke to how partisanship 
overrides better judgement in an Oct. 
2018 interview with 60 Minutes. In 
the interview, Flake said that there 
was “not a chance” he would have 
supported an FBI investigation into 
the allegations of sexual misconduct 
leveled 
against 
Supreme 
Court 
nominee Brett Kavanaugh “if he had 
planned to run for re-election.” 
Calls to investigate Kavanaugh, 
which reached a fever pitch last 
September, came almost exclusively 
from Democratic House members. 
When pressed as to why he wouldn’t 
have supported an investigation, 
Flake 
lamented 
that 
rampant 
partisanship has prevented cross-
party cooperation, lassoing would-
be-free-thinkers back to the party 
line. “There’s no value in reaching 
across the aisle,” Flake said. “There’s 
no currency for that anymore. There’s 
no incentive.”
Flake’s commentary reflects an 
upsetting congressional rule: When 
your moral convictions would guide 
you otherwise, ignore them and 
act in the interest of your party. 
Going against your party is a sin in 
the relentlessly zero-sum game of 
congressional hardball.
While partisanship isn’t a new 
actor on the American political 
stage, today’s seemingly hopeless 
polarization of Congress and the 
American public is also unique. If 
partisan divisions haven’t always 
been so fanatical, what is responsible 
for the feverish polarization we’re 
experiencing today?
The best explanation is found in 
the rightward and leftward drifts of 
the two parties, which have left much 
more ideological real estate between 
them. While the leftward drift of the 
Democratic Party is evident in the 
rhetoric of its presidential hopefuls, 
the Republican Party has, in my view, 
become decidedly more conservative 
than the Democrats have liberal in 
the past decade. 
The GOP’s bolt to the right can 
be seen in the ideological makeup of 
the party’s supporters. Per The New 
York Times, while nearly a quarter 
of Republican voters were self-
described “moderates” in 2018, that 
contingent has shrunk to 16 percent 

within the past year. Additionally, 
the Evangelical base — an especially 
conservative demographic — grew 
from 26 percent to 32 percent in that 
time frame. 
The Republican Party has also 
continued to promote increasingly 
unpopular policy positions on 
increasingly 
important 
issues. 
According to a 2019 U.S. News & 
World Report article, 89 percent 
of Americans support expanded 
background 
checks 
for 
gun 
purchases, and 62 percent favor a 
wholesale ban on the sale of semi-
automatic weapons. The majority 
of the GOP hasn’t budged in its 
opposition to gun control. Pew 
found in Oct. 2018 that 60 percent of 
Americans believe ensuring health 
care coverage is a government 
responsibility. The GOP hasn’t 
budged in its opposition to health 
care reform. The same can be said 
for issues like abortion. While 
it seems as though Americans’ 
priorities and opinions are shifting, 
the Republican Party is stagnant. 
It is not the responsibility of 
the Republican Party, of course, 
to change its platform in response 
to changes in public opinion. If a 
Republican feels that their party no 
longer advocates for their interests, 
they don’t have to vote Republican; 
the same is true for a moderate 
Democrat who may not favor 
tbei party’s leftward drift. But, in 
addition to being poor electoral 
strategy, the GOP’s reluctance to 
entertain policy evolution as national 
opinion changes only entrenches 
outdated and unwanted positions in 
our country’s political discourse.
The Republican Party defines 
itself as conservative, but conservatism 
isn’t defined by aversion to change. 
Conservatism 
in 
the 
theoretical 
sense — a sense once employed by 
the Republican Party — champions 
prudent, measured progress. Until 
the Republican Party returns to the 
conservative principles it ostensibly 
cherishes, Americans will have to 
indefinitely tolerate our sorry state 
of politics: grand old polarization, 
courtesy of the Grand Old Party.

Max Steinbaum can be reached at 

maxst@umich.edu.

E

arlier 
this 
month, 
followers 
of 
Israeli 
politics 
bore 
witness 
to 
the 
second 
round 
of 
national 
elections 
in 
2019, 
the 
culmination 
of 
an 
unprecedented 
display 
of 
political theater. In a close 
contest, 
incumbent 
Prime 
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 
fell short to his challenger, 
former 
Lt. 
General 
Benny 
Gantz, the Israel Defense Forces 
chief of staff from 2011 to 2015, 
in a race that was intended to 
finally determine who would 
win control of the government.
However, the election took 
a strange turn, and despite 
Netanyahu 
garnering 
fewer 
votes and therefore fewer seats 
for his party in the Knesset — 
Israel’s parliament — he has 
been granted the first chance 
to form the new government by 
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. 
If Netanyahu succeeds, he will 
continue to serve as Prime 
Minister with the potential for 
a full, four-year term. This is 
the life in the complex Israeli 
political system.
In the election, the two main 
candidates carried a significant 
share of Israeli votes, with 
Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s 
Blue and White party earning 
31 and 33 of the 120 seats in the 
Knesset, respectively. While 
Netanyahu and his leading 
opponent predictably became 
heads of the Knesset’s two 
largest 
individual 
parties, 
Netanyahu will face difficulties 
in 
creating 
a 
governing 
coalition of 61 or more Members 
of Knesset, or MKs.
Netanyahu’s main challenges 
stem from a set of corruption 
charges that range from alleged 
offers of interference in the 
Israeli media in order to boost 
positive coverage of himself 
in a prominent newspaper to 
providing tax benefits and other 
special privileges to friends. 
Ever 
since 
February, 
when 
Netanyahu-appointed Attorney 
General 
Avichai 
Mandelblit 
recommended that the prime 
minister be indicted, he has 
faced many repercussions in his 
reelection campaigns. 
Perhaps most directly, other 
politicians 
have 
expressed 
resistance 
to 
joining 
a 
Netanyahu-led coalition if he 
will be on trial during a future 
term. The most significant of 
such proclamations came from 
Gantz and his party’s co-leader, 
former journalist Yair Lapid, 
both of whom promised not to 
enter a Netanyahu coalition, 
even before April’s elections 
that 
saw 
Likud 
originally 
emerge with the most seats. 
Though Gantz’s party shares 
many policy positions with 
Likud, they were determined to 
appear as a true alternative to 
the prime minister throughout 
the election cycle. However, 
additional political factors have 
played a role in the Knesset’s 
opposition 
toward 
joining 
Netanyahu.

For Netanyahu, his history 
of 
appeasing 
former 
ultra-
orthodox coalition partners has 
carried major consequences. 
The 
most 
recent 
cycle 
of 
elections began in late 2018, 
when longtime Netanyahu ally 
and former Defense Minister 
Avigdor Lieberman withdrew 
his party from the already 
fragile coalition of 61 MKs. 
In his decision not to join 
Netanyahu’s government after 
the April elections, Lieberman 
cited Netanyahu’s willingness 
to 
allow 
exemptions 
from 
otherwise mandatory military 
conscription for ultra-orthodox 
18 year-olds. Exemptions for 
Israel’s most religious Jews, 
who claim that their youths 
cannot serve due to a variety 
of supposed justifications from 
Jewish tradition, have irritated 
much of Israeli society for quite 
some time. 

Lieberman 
seized 
his 
opportunity to create desired 
policy change and send the 
prime minister a clear warning. 
With Lieberman’s right-wing 
party winning eight seats and 
refusing to join in a coalition 
led by his former colleague, 
he has made Netanyahu’s path 
back to his old office even 
more difficult. His firmness 
in his position, along with the 
many other roadblocks that 
Netanyahu has faced, are likely 
to make his attempts to form a 
government extremely difficult, 
if not impossible altogether.
Even as Rivlin has decided to 
give Netanyahu an opportunity 
to 
form 
a 
government, 
Lieberman has instead pushed 
for a “unity government” of 
Likud, Blue and White, and his 
party, yielding a strong 72-seat 
coalition. Under this model, 
Netanyahu and Gantz would 
split a four-year term in the 
prime minister’s office. Varying 
forms of unity governments 
have been established in Israel 
before, but only once in its 
history has such a direct power-
sharing model been reached. In 
1984, Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud 
partnered with Shimon Peres’s 
Alignment party to form an 
85-seat coalition, with each 
holding the premiership for 
two years. The government 
remained intact for its full 
term, and showed that leaders 
with competing philosophies 
can unite, serve and forestall 

the frustrations of further 
elections and instability.
While this form of a coalition 
would not completely please 
the Israeli electorate, given 
the current circumstances, it 
appears to be the best, most 
realistic option available. A 
rotating 
unity 
arrangement 
would give Netanyahu a chance 
to either quietly finish his 
career as prime minister and 
possibly retire with a plea deal 
if found guilty, or time to fight 
the case being built against him 
while Gantz takes his turn as 
prime minister. Gantz would 
get a chance to prove himself 
as a competent political leader 
and give Israelis a fresh face 
and personality in the nation’s 
highest office. 
Supporters of each major 
party could find satisfaction 
from a government with little 
policy 
disagreement 
within 
its ranks. It would prevent 
Netanyahu from going through 
the near futile effort of trying to 
form an effective government 
that would be acceptable to 
his base and to most of the 
country. It would also stop him 
from calling a vote for another 
round of elections, just as he 
did in May after April’s results 
presented him with a difficult 
road to the premiership.
Outside the Knesset, most 
Israelis would likely be relieved 
that 
ultra-orthodox 
parties 
would no longer be part of a 
governing bloc. A majority of 
Israel’s citizens disagree with 
the Haredi parties on questions 
about 
public 
transportation 
over the Sabbath and ultra-
orthodox 
exemption 
from 
military service. Perhaps most 
of all, Israelis would hope to 
avoid a third round of elections 
in one year. The first two have 
been unusual enough.
In a country with so many 
competing demographics and 
agendas, it would be impossible 
for 
Israel’s 
government 
to 
satisfy all its people’s desires. 
However, when weighing the 
choices available to the newly-
elected Knesset, it becomes 
clear that a unity model would 
be best equipped to give Israelis 
what they truly want: a strong 
government 
committed 
to 
ensuring freedom and security, 
and markedly less bound by 
unpopular religious constraints 
from inflexible politicians. 
Though 
partisans 
may 
complain of their failure to 
achieve a complete victory, 
those who care most about the 
prosperity of Israel and the 
wishes of its civilians can look 
to this potential government 
not as a last resort, but as an 
opportunity. At this point, such 
an outcome appears unlikely, 
but for a significantly divided 
Israeli society, a measure of 
unity — just in time for the 
Jewish new year — may go a 
long way.

Noah Ente can be reached at 

noahente@umich.edu.

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A unity model 
would be best 
equipped to give 
Israelis what they 
truly want

The economic 
benefits of 
arms sales are 
underwhelming 
for the United 
States

