译者 迩東晨
THREATENED by David RemnickMARCH 12, 2012
大卫•莱姆尼克 2012年3月12日
Democracy is never fully achieved. At best, it’s an ambition, a state of becoming. In America, it took generations for blacks, women, and gays and lesbians to win the rights of citizenship—rights that, in many instances, remain incomplete. (Various contenders for the Presidency are now competing to scale back such rights.) The twenty-first century began with a fraudulent Presidential election. And this is in the luckiest of nations. Elsewhere—in Russia, in Hungary, in Zimbabwe—the fragility of democratic aspiration is a brutal fact of history.
民主从不会圆满地实现。它至多是一种雄心勃勃的梦想，一种不断发展和演变的形态。在美国，经过几代人的不懈努力，黑人、妇女和同性恋者才逐渐获得公民权——在众多情况下，这些权利仍不完整。（如今，总统职位的各个竞争者，却在争相压缩这种权利。）一场含有欺诈成分的总统选举开启了21世纪。这还是在世界上最幸运的国度里发生的事。相比之下，在俄罗斯、匈牙利和津巴布韦之类的地方，只能说，民主梦想的脆弱性是写在历史上的残酷事实。
To revisit the Arab Spring, one year later, is to celebrate popular awakening but also to acknowledge the distance between the ecstasy of rebellion and the realization of democratic institutions. In Egypt, autocratic military officers vie for power with varying shades of Islamists. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad has responded to the demands of his people by slaughtering them, many hundreds each week. In the Persian Gulf, sultans and emirs stifle potential protest with petro hush money.
当我们在一年以后回顾“阿拉伯之春”时，我们不禁要为大众的觉醒而欢呼雀跃，但我们同时也要承认，从群情激昂的抗争到民主体制的践行，任重而道远。在埃及，专制军人与形形色色的伊斯兰主义者陷于权力之争。在叙利亚，巴沙尔•阿萨德面对人民的呼声，却以屠刀与民众相向，每周造成数以百计的平民死亡。在波斯湾，苏丹和酋长们用石油金钱收买人心，阻遏任何抗议活动的发生。
There is another state in the region that is embroiled in a crisis of democratic becoming. This is the State of Israel. For decades, its citizens—its Jewish ones, at least—have justifiably described their country as the only democracy in the Middle East. Although Israel as imagined by Theodor Herzl and built by the generation of David Ben-Gurion was never intended to be a replica of the Anglo-American model—its political culture, even now, is closer to that of the European social democracies—its structures of governance are points of pride. And yet, as an experiment in Jewish power, unique after two millennia of persecution and exile, Israel has reached an impasse. An intensifying conflict of values has put its democratic nature under tremendous stress. When the government speaks daily about the existential threat from Iran, and urges an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, it ignores the existential threat that looms within. Reactionary elements lurk in many democracies. Ask the Dutch, the British, the Austrians, the French. The Republican Party has flirted with several in this election cycle. But in Israel the threat is especially acute. And the concern comes not only from its most persistent critics. The former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert have both warned of a descent into apartheid, xenophobia, and isolation.
该地区还有一个国家，深陷民主孕育而生之前的阵痛当中。这个国家就是以色列。过去几十年里，它的公民——至少是它的犹太公民们——将自己的国家描述为中东唯一的民主国家，这种认识不无道理。无论是在西奥多•赫茨尔设想之时，还是在大卫•本•古里昂完成建国大业之际，他们从未想过要建设一个以英美模式——即使在今天看来，它的政治文化更接近欧洲大陆的社会民主理念——为蓝本的国家，但以色列的治理体制可圈可点，值得自豪。在经历两千年备受迫害并遭流放之后，犹太人进行了展现自身力量的实验，然而，这个史上绝无仅有的实验进行到今天，却令以色列走入进退失据的困境。不同价值观之间不断升级的冲突，使其民主秉性承受着前所未有的压力。在以政府不断言及来自伊朗的现实威胁，并极力主张打击伊朗核设施的同时，它却对潜伏于自身的威胁视而不见。在众多民主国家，一直存在伺机而动的反动势力。问一下荷兰人、英国人、澳大利亚人和法国人，你就可以得到明确的答案。在本轮总统竞选的过程中，美国的共和党已经与这类势力轻松过招。但在以色列，威胁迫在眉睫。对此深为忧虑的并不仅限于那些永不言弃的批评者。前任总理埃胡德•巴拉克和埃胡德•奥尔默特都曾警告说，以色列存在堕入种族隔离、仇外和孤立的危险。
The political corrosion begins, of course, with the occupation of the Palestinian territories—the subjugation of Palestinian men, women, and children—that has lasted for forty-five years. Peter Beinart, in a forthcoming and passionately argued polemic, “The Crisis of Zionism,” is just the latest critic to point out that a profoundly anti-democratic, even racist, political culture has become endemic among much of the Jewish population in the West Bank, and jeopardizes Israel proper. The explosion of settlements, encouraged and subsidized by both Labor and Likud governments, has led to a large and established ethnocracy that thinks of itself as a permanent frontier. In 1980, twelve thousand Jews lived in the West Bank, “east of democracy,” Beinart writes; now they number more than three hundred thousand, and include Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s wildly xenophobic Foreign Minister. Lieberman has advocated the execution of Arab members of parliament who dare to meet with leaders of Hamas. His McCarthyite allies call for citizens to swear loyalty oaths to the Jewish state; for restrictions on human-rights organizations, like the New Israel Fund; and for laws constricting freedom of expression.
毫无疑问，政治衰败发端于占领巴勒斯坦领土——镇压巴勒斯坦男人、女人和儿童——并且持续了45年。作为批评人士的最新力作，彼得•贝纳特在其《犹太复国主义的危机》中，进行了激情洋溢的论辩，明确指出：在约旦河西岸的大部分犹太人定居者中，流行着一种反民主，甚至带有种族主义倾向的政治文化传染病；它将以色列本身置于杀机四伏的境地。在工党和利库德集团政府的纵容和资助下，犹太人定居点呈现出爆炸式的增长，这导致该地大规模“一族统治”的既定事实，并依此将他们所居认定为永久的边境。彼得•贝纳特写道，1980年，1万2千犹太人居住在约旦河西岸，即他们所称的“东方民主之地”，如今，他们的数量急剧膨胀至30万人以上，其中包括极端排外的以色列外长阿维格多•利伯曼。利伯曼主张处死那些胆敢与哈马斯领导人会面的阿拉伯议员。他的麦卡锡主义同仁则号召公民们盟誓效忠犹太国家；主张对“新以色列基金会”这类人权组织加以限制；并为立法限制言论自由摇旗呐喊。
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Herzl envisioned a pluralist Zionism in which rabbis would enjoy “no privileged voice in the state.” These days, emboldened fundamentalists flaunt an increasingly aggressive medievalism. There are sickening reports of ultra-Orthodox men spitting on schoolgirls whose attire they consider insufficiently demure, and demanding that women sit at the back of public buses. Elyakim Levanon, the chief rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus, says that Orthodox soldiers should prefer to face a “firing squad” rather than sit through events at which women sing, and has forbidden women to run for public office, because “the husband presents the family’s opinion.” Dov Lior, the head of an important West Bank rabbinical council, has called Baruch Goldstein—who, in 1994, machine-gunned twenty-nine Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs, in Hebron—“holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.” Lior endorsed a book that discussed when it is right and proper to murder an Arab, and he and a group of kindred rabbis issued a proclamation proscribing Jews from selling or renting land to non-Jews. Men like Lieberman, Levanon, and Lior are scarcely embittered figures on the irrelevant margins: a hard-right base—the settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, Shas, the National Religious Party—is indispensable to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.
西奥多•赫茨尔所向往的是多元宽容的犹太复国主义，在他设想的国中，拉比（译注：犹太教士）“不享有任何特权”。观之今日，犹太原教旨主义者大肆鼓噪中世纪精神的言行，愈演愈烈。极端正统派令人厌恶的举动不断见诸报端，他们朝一些在校女生吐口水，原因是她们着装不够端庄，并要求妇女们在公交车的后排就坐。艾尔亚基姆•莱文农是建于纳布卢斯附近的艾龙•摩利定居点的大拉比，他声称，正统派战士们宁可面对“行刑队”，也不会坐视女人们在一些场合发声，他还禁止妇女竞选公职，理由是“丈夫乃一家之主”。作为西岸一个举足轻重的犹太教委员会的主席，多夫•里奥盛赞巴鲁赫•格斯坦——1994年，他在 希伯伦的“始祖墓穴”所在地用机枪射杀了29个巴勒斯坦人——并称其表现出“超乎所有‘大屠杀’殉道者的高贵”。里奥曾力荐一本书，该书探讨的主题是，在何种情境下杀掉一个阿拉伯人是正当和适宜的。他还与一些同道阿比发表联合宣言，禁止犹太人向非犹太人出售或出租土地。利伯曼、莱文农、里奥这类心怀怨恨的人物远非处在社会边缘、无关紧要的角色：因为极端右翼势力，是本雅明•内塔尼亚胡总理领导下的联合政府赖以生存的根基，而定居者、极端正统派、沙斯党以及国家宗教党等则是这个根基的重要组成部分。
A visitor to Tel Aviv and other freethinking precincts might overlook the reactionary currents in the country, but poll after poll reveals that many younger Israelis are losing touch with the liberal, democratic principles of the state. Many of them did their military duty in the Occupied Territories; some learned to despise the Occupation they saw firsthand, but others learned to accept the official narratives justifying what they were made to do.
徜徉于特拉维夫和其它充溢自由气息地区的游客，未必能够察觉反自由民主潮流在这个国家的涌动。但接踵而至的民意测验表明，大批以色列年轻人正与这个国家秉持的自由民主原则分道扬镳。他们中有不少人曾参与在“被占领土”的军事行动；有些人在亲历“被占领土”后开始痛恨那里发生的一切，而另一些人则逐渐接受了官方的论调，确信他们受命执行的是正当行动。
Last year, a poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute found that fifty-one per cent of Israelis believed that people “should be prohibited from harshly criticizing the State of Israel in public.” Netanyahu encourages the notion that any such criticism is the work of enemies. Even the country’s staunchest ally, the United States, is not above suspicion. The current Administration has coöperated with Israeli intelligence to an unprecedented extent and has led a crippling sanctions effort against Iran, yet Netanyahu, who visits Washington this week, has shown imperious disdain for Barack Obama. In fact, the President is a philo-Semite, whose earliest political supporters were Chicago Jews: Abner Mikva, Newton and Martha Minow, Bettylu Saltzman, David Axelrod. He was close to a rabbi on the South Side, the late Arnold Jacob Wolf. But to Netanyahu these men and women are the wrong kind of Jew. Wolf, for example, had worked for Abraham Joshua Heschel, the rabbi most closely associated with the civil-rights movement and other social-justice causes. Wolf brought Martin Luther King, Jr., to speak in his synagogue, marched in Selma, and, in 1973, helped found Breira (Alternative), one of the first American Jewish groups to endorse a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
去年，“以色列民主学会”进行的民众调查问卷结果表明：51%的被调查者相信，人们“应被禁止在公共场合严厉批评以色列国”。对此观点，内塔尼亚胡大加鼓励，声称这种批评应属敌人所为。即使是它最坚定的盟友美国，也不无可疑。美国现任行政当局与以色列情报部门的合作，达到了前所未有的程度，并主导了对伊朗造成重大打击的制裁工作。即便如此，在本周访问华盛顿期间，内塔尼亚胡却对巴拉克•奥巴马表现出傲慢和不屑。实际上，奥巴马总统对犹太人满怀敬意，在他从政之初，首批支持他的便是芝加哥的犹太人，其中包括阿伯纳•米克瓦、牛顿•米诺和玛莎•米诺父女、贝迪璐•萨尔兹曼，以及大卫•艾克斯罗德等。他还与芝加哥南区的拉比过从甚密，他就是已过世的阿诺德•雅各•沃尔夫。但在内塔尼亚胡眼中，这些男男女女不过是犹太人中落入歧途的另类。以沃尔夫为例， 他曾协助亚伯拉罕•约书亚•海斯希尔的工作，而后者身为拉比，却与民权运动和其它社会公正运动有着千丝万缕的联系。沃尔夫曾邀请马丁•路德•金在他的犹太教堂演讲，在塞尔马参加示威游行，并在1973年帮助创立了宣传左派观点的政治组织——“另类选择”，成为首批出现在美国，支持巴勒斯坦在约旦河西岸和加沙地带建国的犹太社团之一。
Netanyahu has distaste for such associations; his gestures toward Palestinian statehood are less than halfhearted. (After he spoke of giving Palestinians their own state, his father, the right-wing historian Benzion Netanyahu, shrewdly observed, “He supports it under conditions that they will never accept.”) To Netanyahu, the proper kind of ally is exemplified by AIPAC and Sheldon Adelson—the longtime casino tycoon and recent bankroller of Newt Gingrich—who owns a newspaper in Israel devoted to supporting him. Netanyahu knows that young American Jews are split, with the growing Orthodox community solidly in his corner, and the less observant and secular majority—a majority that is increasingly assimilated and uninterested in Jewish learning—losing their attachment to Israel. The Prime Minister clearly feels that the fervor of the few offers him more than the disillusion and drift of the many.
内塔尼亚胡厌恶此类组织，对于巴勒斯坦建国之论，他流露出的何止是不屑一顾。（在他谈及让巴勒斯坦建立自己的国家后，他的父亲，即右翼历史学家班思昂•内塔尼亚胡尖刻地评论道：“他支持建国的前提条件，让他们永远无法接受。”）对内塔尼亚胡来说，如果想知道谁才是以色列真正的盟友，美以公共事务委员会和谢尔登·阿德尔森便是最佳例证。阿德尔森是资深赌王，并在最近出资支持纽特·金瑞奇参选美国总统；他在以色列拥有一份报纸，全力支持内塔尼亚胡。内塔尼亚胡知道，年青一代美国犹太人分成两派，坚定地支持他的正统派队伍尚待扩充；而站在另一边的是漫不经心、看重世俗生活的大多数——他们不断地被同化，对犹太传统不再感兴趣，从而失去了与以色列的情感联系。这位总理清楚地感受到：少数正统派以他们的热诚所能带给他的精神鼓励，远大于那些失去理想、随波逐流的大多数。
“The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation,” Obama has said. Netanyahu and many of his supporters believe otherwise; too often, they consider the tenets of liberal democracy to be negotiable in a game of coalition politics. Such short-term expedience cannot but exact a long-term price: this dream—and the process of democratic becoming—may be painfully, even fatally, deferred. ♦
“不能指望一个犹太人的民主国家的梦想，会在永久占领中实现，”奥巴马如是说。内塔尼亚胡及其众多支持者则不以为然；他们往往将自由民主的原则，视为可在结盟政治中用来交易的筹码。这种短视的后果必是长久的代价：这个梦想的实现，以及民主孕育降生的过程，或将痛苦，甚至致命地拖延下去。
ILLUSTRATION: TOM BACHTELL
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/03/12/120312taco_talk_remnick#ixzz1obY6ZCON
from 译言-每日精品译文推荐 http://article.yeeyan.org/view/235338/257559
