Israel’s leadership truly is in chaos. Not only are there all the messy recriminations, charges, and counter-charges over the unsuccessful handling of the war. But in addition we have:
(1) The Chief of Staff’s stock-selling at a time of crisis scandal, as noted here.
(2) “Justice” Minister Haim Ramon reportedly about to be tried for sexually harrassing a female employee. Ramon, who came into Kadima from Labor, was one of the loudest voices in the cabinet calling for a large-scale ground incursion of Lebanon. Was this belligerence a way to deflect attention from what he must have known was an increasing threat of such prosecution?
(3) And now, this report from the usually excellently informed Ari Shavit, stating that Ehud Olmert and his wife,
- will be summoned to an investigation in the State Comptroller’s office within a few days.
The prime minister and his wife will be presented with these findings: The price they paid for their new house on 8 Cremieux Street in Jerusalem is lower than its market price by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The difference between the sum they paid – some $1.2 million – and the house’s value – $1.6-1.8 million – is hard to explain. It raises suspicion that the prime minister and his wife illicitly received about half a million dollars.
There is another suspicion: The house the Olmerts bought had been earmarked for preservation. Converting a house marked for preservation into a house that can be torn down, rebuilt or expanded requires special and irregular permits from the Jerusalem municipality. There is evidence to support the suspicion that Olmert’s confidants helped the contractor who sold Olmert the house obtain those irregular permits. If this is the case, the real estate deal was probably a bribery deal. The prime minister and his wife will be questioned about that.
Presumably, the questioning of the Olmerts by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss’ investigators and his adviser on corruption, retired detective Yaakov Borovsky, will wrap up the comptroller’s investigation.
The comptroller will present the attorney general with a slim but weighty document. It is very likely that the document will leave Attorney General Menachem Mazuz with no choice but to open a criminal inquiry against the prime minister and his wife.
It is highly doubtful that Olmert could even temporarily survive such a police probe considering the present public mood. Chances are that within about two months he will no longer be Israel’s prime minister.
I’ll just repeat what I put at the end of my most recent post here:
- I do note… that the disunity in Israel’s national command authorities could allow some devastating military adventurism to arise there. This, in a country with (by conservative estimates) some 100 to 200 nuclear warheads…
Please, will the adults in the international community pay attention to this risk and exert all possible efforts to end the long-festering irresolution of three vital strands of the Israeli-Arab conflict before things get even worse?
The collapse of decent public values in Israel that I noted here earlier, and the resulting political chaos, leadership fracturing, and all the big risks attendant thereto all seem much worse than I had earlier thought. It is truly time for the adults in an international community that gave this deeply troubled state its original birth certificate back in 1947 to step in and take responsibility for restoring sanity, peace, and hope to a region that has seen none of these qualities in the past few years.
“I do note… that the disunity in Israel’s national command authorities could allow some devastating military adventurism to arise there.”
Uri Avnery makes a similar point in a column here
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery08172006.html
where he writes:
…And that is exactly the new slogan of the fascist Right that is now raising its ugly head.
After World War I, in similar circumstances, the legend of the “knife in the back of the victorious army” grew up. Adolf Hitler used it to carry him to power–and on to World War II.
Now, even before the last fallen soldier has been buried, the incompetent generals are starting to talk shamelessly about “another round”, the next war that will surely come “in a month or in a year”, God willing. After all, we cannot end the matter like this, in failure. Where is our pride?
Gaaawlee, gee. In’it jess great!
So Haim Ramon is accused of having kissed an aide. Dan Halutz, apart from appearing to be, in general, and ass, sold a vast $28,000 portfolio when he should have been worrying about other things. And Olmert may or may not be called in for questioning about his real estate dealings. You forgot to mention that there is also an investigation of sexual harassment against President Katzav, and Olmert associate MK Tzahi Hanegbi has just been indicted for power brokering. (And need I point out that all of these people are entitled to the same protection under the law and the same presumption of innocence as the British Muslims being held for alledgedly plotting to murder thousands of people!)
All of these are potentially serious scandals – certainly as serious as Bill Clinton’s little parties in the oval office. But they are purely internal Israeli matters that, as far as I can see, have absolutely nothing to do with Lebanon or Hizballah’s aggression. To suggest otherwise is simply horse pucky, and a journalist who would suggest such connections would probably be better off looking for a column in one of the papers they sell at the super market checkout stand!
“they are purely internal Israeli matters that, as far as I can see, have absolutely nothing to do with Lebanon or Hizballah’s aggression.”
Is it a coincidence that these scandels are emerging after this war fiasco? It seems to me that when a politician’s fortunes are down people start pulling their knives out. I remember Seymour Hersh commenting one time that leaks start to occur when a policy is not going well. It is also a fact, in the U.S. at least, that the news media is more willing to criticize a politician when they are unpopular.
“they are purely internal Israeli matters that, as far as I can see, have absolutely nothing to do with Lebanon or Hizballah’s aggression.”
Is it a coincidence that these scandels are emerging after this war fiasco? It seems to me that when a politician’s fortunes are down people start pulling their knives out. I remember Seymour Hersh commenting one time that leaks start to occur when a policy is not going well. It is also a fact, in the U.S. at least, that the news media are more willing to criticize a politician when he or she is unpopular.
JES, Ramon is being charged with indecent assault. I take it you’re a male? (And you seem to imply that engaging in on-the-job sexual harrassment of younger female co-workers is “just good fun”, or “part of the job”, or whatever?)
I guess you never read what I wrote about Bill Clinton’s terribly abusive antics back in the day. You should have.
Anyway, I think there is a link to the war-and-peace issues that affect Israel and its neighbors since Ramon certainly was someone with a particualrly bellicose view of what needed to be done during the war.
Does that come with having a bullying-women-ish type of propensity, I wonder?
You’re right that of course all these many accused Israeli government leaders are entitled to the presumption of innonence until their cases have been tried. But I am glad the young, female Israeli complainant in question is not being silenced or– so far– humiliated or ridiculed in public and is able to tell her side of the story, too.
How alike Conservatives in the US and Israel are-incompetent and venal.
What it shows is that, even in times of war, Israel has a media that is willing to expose unrelated scandals of politicians and that there are public processes that hold them to account for it. Frankly, I think it’s about time, there has been too much of this going on. I wouldn’t mind at all to see some indictments and/or resignations, not having anything to do with the war.
Helena again made her obnoxious comment about Israelis “sipping lattes.” This past month, the residents of the north were not sipping lattes but instead holed up in bunkers and evacuating their towns. And their comrades in other parts of the country graciously and generously took them in. Seems like the spirit of egalitarianism and pioneerism is alive and well in Israel.
It seems like Lebanon that is the country suffering a true fractured leadership. Even before the ink was dry on the UN resolution, Hezbollah announced that it will not disarm and the government said it will take no steps to do so. But the establishment of an occupation regime in southern Lebanon is ok for Helena if the occupiers hate Israel.
Oh, Joshua, did I indeed make a “latte-sippers” reference here? I don’t think so. Indeed, I first made that observation– regarding a certain portion of North Tel Aviv society that he may or may not be familiar with– back in March. Some, um, four months before the recent war broke out. And then I referred to it elsewhere, more recently (but not here), as an example of what has been changing in Israel’s public values over the decades.
But I guess the observation touched a raw nerve with you, eh, Joshua?
Lebanon– fractured leadership? Where’s the evidence?
Ditto, “occupation”, which as you should certainly be aware, Joshua, is a technical term in international law referring to the situation where a foriegn belligerent army finds itself in control of a chunk of land not its own, and then has responsibilities as defined under Geneva-IV for fairly administering that land and its residents.
Hizbullah is in no way “foreign” to South Lebanon.
You seem a little emotional in your argumentation these days, Joshua… Sorry about that. (You know what, though, if you met some of the Hizbullah people face-to-face, you might like them. Open yourself to that possibility, perhaps?)
It seems that my previous attempt didn’t post.
To make a long story short. Helena, I am a male, but your assumption is entirely incorrect and uncalled for. I was simply stating the offence as publicized. As a man (or male, if you prefer), I find the type of behavior that Haim Ramon is accused of reprehensible. I also say this as the father of a female soldier at the time of the alleged offence.
This is not the first time that you have presupposed based on your own prejudices rather than any facts. I gladly accept your apology.
For you and edq. With the exception of Dan Halutz, all the scandals that you have brought up were fully publicized in the press well before the war. The Ramon affair has been in the news since the beginning of July. The Olmert investigation has been publicly underway since before his election. If you were here and understood Hebrew perhaps you’d know this.
Re. Halutz, I think that the worst he can be accused of is crass behavior and a dereliction of duty. He did not make money on his “insider trading”, and he had already lost money prior to selling his $28,000 portfolio.
A stand by by earlier statements. These are internal matters that are fully being taken care of within the appropriate legal channels. If you cannot provide any evidence to support it, I suggest you refrain from making such outlandish correlations between these cases and these people’s activities during the war.
Really, Helena? And would those same Hezbollah people be equally open to the possibility of “liking” a pro-Israeli, pro-Zionist Jew? Or is it always only a one-way street with you, Helena? Actually, “liking” or “disliking” is totally irrelevant here. One does not have to like someone to develop a modus operandi for living adjacent to them. That is what is required here, not for either Hezbollah or Israel to fall into each others arms.
Incidentally, if the democratically-elected government of Lebanon chooses to allow Hezbollah’s militia to be responsible for defense in southern Lebanon, that is entirely up to them. The real question is would Hezbollah’s political wing be willing to cede control over that force to the central government, even if that government is not dominated by Hezbollah? Only time will tell.
Is it a coincidence that these scandels are emerging after this war fiasco?
Except that they didn’t. The questions about Olmert’s apartment sale have been around for years, and the issue was raised during the recent election campaign. The sale may or may not have been shady, but if so, nobody’s been able to prove it – if we’re comparing Olmert to Clinton, then the apartment deal might be his Whitewater. The allegations about Ramon broke a couple of weeks before the war, and would likely have been headline news much earlier if they hadn’t been pre-empted. And as far as I know, there’s never been a time when Hanegbi was free of scandal.
More to the point, however, the Israeli political system (like most parliamentary systems) has established mechanisms for getting through rough patches. There will be some resignations – Ramon has already quit – and a general reshuffle. At a guess, Peretz will be moved to another senior ministry to which he’s more suited, Mofaz (or someone else who can ride herd on the generals) will go to Defense, and the vacancies left by Ramon, Hanegbi etc. will be filled by people like Dan Meridor, Meir Sheetrit or Marina Solodkin who have a reputation for probity. Solodkin would have the additional virtue of broadening the government’s social base. If things get bad enough, then Olmert himself will step aside or be pushed out, likely by another senior person from his own party.
(If Olmert were really smart, he’d give this lady a portfolio as well, but that would require him to think outside the box, which he isn’t really good at doing).
At any rate, the bottom line is that at no point during this process will Israel be without a functioning government, and at no point will the generals be able to start a war on their own. For heaven’s sake, we’re not talking about Pakistan here – whatever may be said about Israeli militarism, a failed-state scenario involving nuclear weapons is pure fantasy.
Re the “Tel Aviv latte-sippers” issue, my objection, both now and when Helena first used the phrase, was that our hostess was generalizing about an entire country based on one of its toniest areas. Judging Israel by North Tel Aviv is roughly equivalent to judging the United States by the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
I sometimes get the impression that Helena views Israel through elite eyes – or, more specifically, the eyes of a particular subset of the elite. Her Israeli friends and acquaintances tend to come disproportionately from the old kibbutz-movement and Mapainik elite, and she seems to have absorbed some of their jaundiced view of the newer urban business elite. (For an American analogy, imagine a turn-of-the-last-century Boston Brahmin’s view of Carnegie and Mellon.) That isn’t a bad thing – elites are part of the country, and their opinions and values are no less “real” than those of other people – but it doesn’t always provide an accurate picture of the conditions and values that exist elsewhere in the country, and in this case I think it may have led Helena to miss a significant part of the picture.
One more thing: I wouldn’t necessarily take Ari Shavit’s word on Olmert’s future. He’s been calling for the PM’s head for at least a week now, and the article quoted in the main post is more advocacy than journalism. His prediction that the comptroller will recommend indicting Olmert is at least two parts speculation and three parts wishful thinking, which doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t happen but does mean that it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Jonathan,
The issue of “latte sippers” is simply that Helen implied that these people didn’t care about what was going on in Gaza or the West Bank (or, probably anywhere else for that matter). This is just another generalization based on prejudice rather than fact, and the reference to “latte” was chosen because this has become the popular symbol in the US of self-centered superficialism. And I believe that she reintroduced it here in the hope that maybe proving to herself that Israeli society was really doomed, even if it hadn’t crumbled under the weight of four weeks of Hizballah shelling. (BTW, just so that Helena understands, we don’t call the beverage “latte”. We cal it kafe hafukh, and we have been drinking coffee this way and calling it such since the 1940s. The folk explanation for this is interesting.)
You are correct that she is trying to generalize from the elites of North Tel Aviv to the rest of the country. It is not the generalization that is the issue, however, it is what is being falsely generalized. I don’t think that Helena took into consideration the fact that these very same North Tel Aviv “latte sippers” would have been taking their lives into their own hands a year or so prior to be sitting in the same cafe sipping kafe hafukh. And, Jonathan, there is a key difference between generalizing from this particular elite and doing so based on New Yorkers in the Upper East Side. The most tragic example is that David Grossman’s son, Uri, was killed last week in Lebanon, but there are many others, and all of us “latte sippers” either served or had sons or daughters who were serving, or had friends and co-workers who were called up to serve. That’s a major difference.
So I suggest we stop making generaliztions here based on the beverage that one prefers. After all, I recall Helena mentioning that she was posting from a wine bar while listening to jazz and getting pissed. What kind of generalizations do you think that we could make about “Chardonnay suckers”?
I recall Helena mentioning that she was posting from a wine bar while listening to jazz and getting pissed.
You do? When?
Re my original latte-sippers reference, back in March, let me give the gist of it:
Here in the Gaza Strip, almost every day brings the thud of incoming Israeli artillery shells or air-launched rockets, some of which have killed Palestinians, including children. There’s also a tightening economic siege, with Israel blocking the entry of many necessary goods. Meanwhile, residents in southern Israel suffer the almost daily arrival of makeshift Palestinian rockets… the biggest contrast between Gaza and Israel is not in the standard of lawlessness. It’s in the standard of living. Here in Gaza, donkey-carts are a common conveyance for both people and goods, many roads are unpaved, and unemployment tops 40 percent. (Only around 3,000 Palestinian laborers currently work in Israel.) In Israel the per-capita income is 20 times higher. Many areas of North Tel Aviv look like the San Fernando Valley. High-tech entrepreneurs sip lattes in lavish shopping malls as conflict with the Palestinians seems comfortably distant.
I think it managed to convey the point that, while some people in southern Israel were suffering from the incoming rockets– though not as much as the people in Gaza were– once you got to other areas of Israel there were some, including “Many areas of North Tel Aviv” where “conflict with the Palestinians seems comfortably distant.” That was certainly my strong observation at the time. Many of the people in these areas, incidentally, are members of the “new business elite”, including many former leaders in the Israeli military and their families– not surprising, given the degree to which Israel’s export boom since the Oslo Accords has been driven by worldwide military sales.
Of course, since July 12, the conditions of life in North Tel Aviv have changed. I never denied that. But back in March, the more individualistic, comfortably off, on occasion ‘get-rich-quick’, and pleasure-seeking qualities of the general Israeli social ethos– as compared with earlier decades when the ‘pioneer’ ethos was much stronger– seemed very evident to me.
Now, there are already signs of a new, post-July consideration of steps like postponing planned tax cits or even raising taxes, to pay not just for rebuilding but also for retooling the country’s military. That might have some broad economic (and social?) effects.
But as I wrote at the end of this JWN post, the younger Israelis might just emukate their Portuguese predecessors and decide that a pretorian life of guarding colonial outposts is actually less worth living than a modern, conscription-free, European lifestyle in one’s own country, while letting those colonial outposts go… Let’s hope so!
I’ll note finally that during and after a research trip to Israel in March 1998, I was already writing about some of the above-mentioned changes in the country’s social ethos and celebrating the new diversity of opinions and lifestyles there…
Except that the Israelis have found that their withdrawals doom them to a praetorian existence of defending the 1949 borders against a continued irredentist Islamic offensive, against constantly improved armaments and tactics that negate Israeli conventional superiority through the clever use of propaganda, infant human shields, and absolutely inhuman thirst for martyrdom. Helena’s analogy, like the French-Algeria one that people tried to fob off on Jonathan on his blog, is invalid. Jewish nationhood is STILL contested by military means by all of its neighbours except those whose false “piece-by-piece” treaties preclude their immediate involvement in hostilities.
“The prevailing wisdom now is that not only is there nobody to talk to, there is nothing to talk about. Not only did we withdraw from Gaza and get Hamas and Qassams, we withdrew from Lebanon and got Hezbollah and rockets. The conclusion: no more withdrawals. Just before Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman translate this cognitive erosion into electoral achievements, one must ask: Where are they leading and where are we going?”
The opposition to Israel’s existence is monolithic, constant, static, grass-roots and unchangeable. Yielding territory only worked temporarily to the extent that it engaged state actors (Egypt, Jordan) with their interests stated in terms other than that of Islamic ideology–al-Qaeda’s Jordan and the Egypt of the Ikwan will have no difficulty abrogating their treaties and making war upon Israel with the American military equipment the previous government, like the Shah’s, will have bestowed on the Islamic Republics (of Jordan, of Egypt) with the caveat that the time gap between internal revolution and foreign war will be even briefer than in the case of Iran.
It’s odd that movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah and thinkers such as Ahmedinajad should favor apocalyptic phraseology, would-be millenarians (if millenarianism were not, per se a Christian ideology…). Zionism, in contrast, is a decidedly utopian movement, which features apocalypticism as the darker, unacknowledged underside of its utopianism.
Yes there’s a far too much in the ME that is “monolithic, constant, static, grass-roots and unchangeable. As for utopians the ones I’ve met tend not to be ideal people.
I agree with Condi, the status quo is unsustainable. I just don’t think, whatever the world views or phraesiology of the protagonists, that war is the inevitable answer. In fact, I’m sure it provides no solution. Also there seems to be some issue in the logic, that we can’t have attempt to negotiate peace, because if we do, war may ensue.
Some Israeli musings on the need for a new way here