Transparency is the Fuel of Democracy and the Enemy of a Dictatorship

by Ari Kalker

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation’s decision to approve MK Robert Ilatov’s (Yisrael Beytenu) bill forbidding the photographing of IDF soldiers in the course of their duties shows how badly we need to open our eyes.

Our soldiers and our policemen work for us, the citizens of the state of Israel, they should be afraid of us. Officers and soldiers should know they will be held accountable for their actions, good and bad. The public sphere is a place where no one can assume privacy nor should they.

When we start holding our government accountable for their actions they start to fear our retribution. The law against filming soldiers and police is not for their protection, but for the protection of the ruling politicians. The police and soldiers are merely an expression of the will of the ruling powers. They have no opinion of their own but must simply fulfill the orders they are given. If they beat a citizen, or shoot an Arab, they are acting on the orders from the politicians who sent them. By hiding these actions from the public we are hiding the truth of who our elected leadership is. We are hiding from ourselves the true nature of the people we elected to lead us.

Transparency is the fuel of democracy and the enemy of a dictatorship. It is by seeing the truth that we can judge the men we elected and chose or leadership in the voting booth.

Not only should we be allowed to film our public officials but it should be encouraged. In today’s day and age the only way to maintain the morality of our leadership is to remind them that they are being watched and judged every moment by the people who put them in power. More so elected official and every judge should be required by law to publish their daily schedules in real time, with the names of who they met with. Once someone takes upon himself the yoke of public service they must understand that they are now working for the public and no longer have the same rights to privacy as everyone else. Our public officials are here to serve us and it is only by constantly reminding them of that, that we can bring some morality back in to our politics.