D for Damage (Power to the People)

Politicians out of touch with the public will, protests banned and dropping bombs. Now is the time for civic politics in a Citizens' Assembly.

With varying degrees of success, anti-Israel protest has been suppressed across Europe on the basis that demonstrations are or may become anti-Semitic. This fallacy denudes public freedoms and highlights the need for a move towards a civic democracy.

In the past week across Germany, pro-Palestine demonstrations have been banned. There have been multiple arrests of people for simply holding a Palestinian flag or shouting ‘Free Palestine’. 

Demonstrations are banned in France and the British prime minister has called them anti-Semitic.

Germany's minister for Jewish Life and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, said recently that to call Israel an apartheid state is to be anti-Semitic.

This is in stark contrast to former IDF commander Amiram Levin, who said that there has been "absolute apartheid" in the West Bank for the past 57 years, as reported by the Jerusalem Post.

Speaking to Die Welt in August, Klein said, “To accuse Israel of apartheid delegitimizes the Jewish state and is, therefore, an anti-Semitic narrative”.

At the time of the interview, this quote was widely characterized as I have above. Klein suggests that his reasons for deeming this anti-Semitic are not because Israel is not an apartheid state, but because it adds to criticism of an oppressive, racist Israel and this, in his view, is a criticism of Judaism. 

Equating a far-right Israeli government to the predominant religion of the state changes the definition of what anti-Semitism is and removes the legitimate ability to genuinely criticize the inhumane actions of Israel. 

Western leaders are mostly united in support for Netanyahu’s deadly aggression, all the while people in Israel, and Jews around the world abhor what looks likely to be the second Nakba.

The brilliant Jewish Voice for Peace has described the latest escalation as a declaration of “a genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza” by the Israeli Government.

An Israeli government minister, on a visit to a hospital, was shouted at and forced to leave — the accusation that her government’s actions caused the troubles. The view of the relatives of the sick and doctors is that Israel’s aggression and persecution of the Palestinian people led to the attacks by Hamas and the murder of innocent people. 

The people of Palestine are born in a prison and will die by genocide was the message from Stefanie Fox’s piece for the Boston Review. 

Protest and action in Israel and across the world, while here in Germany holding a Palestinian flag will see you arrested.

Germany’s history puts it in a difficult place. Even conversations with German friends are uneasy. Any criticism of Israel is caveated with but I’m German, so it’s difficult to talk about. 

There’s a lot to be admired about how Germany has dealt with its dark past, particularly when compared to the UK and the US. However, this history affects German ability to be objective when confronted with crimes against humanity. Crimes not dissimilar to those carried out in pursuit of Ayrianism.

That the law, morality and logic can be ignored because of past shame leaves Germany exposed to again being on the wrong side of history. It too exposes the fragilities of democracy in its current form.

It is the same in Britain too, though it is populism and the weakness of leadership that causes the prime minister to parrot whatever the boomers on the right of his party text him in ALL CAPS.

Politics needs to change. The soft participation of voting every few years and being stuck with Governments uninterested in public opinion outside the election cycle is not good enough. 

Governments act in the interest of political survival and populism, politicians leverage their elected position in order to earn large sums of money. 

The system does not work for the people politicians are there to represent. Public participation in politics through a Citizen Assembly could be one solution. 

A Citizen Assembly takes a representative group of the public and gives them the power and authority to assess and advise on Government policy to help shape a better society.

Selected in a similar way to jury duty, people would form an upper house of individuals who take up paid positions for a set period of time.

Non-party political, the proposals for the role citizens have in an assembly is the subject of debate. The most powerful would be to have a Citizens’ Assembly act as a Senate, an upper body with the power to amend legislation proposed by the elected parliament and introduce legislation of its own.

A pragmatic approach would be for countries to introduce a Citizens’ Assembly and over time transfer more power to it as the legislative process improves.

This has been tried in different countries, mostly for specific campaigns, such as climate change, in the Netherlands to consider electoral reform, and in Denmark, where the modern-day concept began in the 1980s.

There was also a trial in Scotland, which was beset by party political infighting, but Common Weal, Sortition Foundation and newDeomcracy wrote a good paper on it, which you can read here.

There is a certain futility about protesting on the streets. It is a display of public revolt against an action by yours or another government. It instills a sense of community and common good, but it rarely changes much. 

However, the right to protest is something that cannot and should not be lost in society. The voice of the people must be heard on the streets, in bars and cafés, on buses and online. 

If action and change are what we need and want, then better representation in politics is what we must have.

Events like we are witnessing now in Gaza leave a dark stain on time and have the potential to have an impact on all our lives. How countries respond to crises of such magnitude cannot be left to politicians alone.

Politicians are fallible: the nature of their title makes them vulnerable to the whims of their party; the savage click-hungry media that makes or breaks them; the cries of populism or the gilded promises of international investment. 

Politics is too important to be left to politicians. Politics needs the minds and voices of the layperson to lend a perspective absent from the well-trodden path into professional politics. Politics needs civic involvement at every level, a Citizens’ Assembly to truly represent the public voice.