Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Zack Blumberg
Emily Considine
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman
Krystal Hur
Ethan Kessler
Magdalena Mihaylova
Max Mittleman
Timothy Spurlin
Miles Stephenson
Finn Storer
Nicholas Tomaino
Joel Weiner
Erin White
FINNTAN STORER
Managing Editor
Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.
MAYA GOLDMAN
Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA
AND JOEL DANILEWITZ
Editorial Page Editors
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
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.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION
Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. Letters should
be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send the
writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.
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