Daisyima's blog

Police officer by day, and criminal by night...

2007-01-01T11:07:00.000-02:00

Israeli police officer living in illegal outpost
Yediotnews, January 1, 2007
Efrat Weiss
Published: 01.01.07, 11:52

Peace Now organization reveals that police superintendent living in illegal outpost in southern Mount Hebron. Year and-a-half after issue raised with police, reported that officer will leave his house, but only at end of 2007. Peace Now: 'Illogical that someone can be police officer by day, criminal by night'

Who will enforce the law on the law enforcers? The Peace Now organization turned to the Police Investigation Unit to investigate how it can be that a police superintendent is living in the illegal outpost Mitzpeh Yair, in southern Mount Hebron.

After a year and a half of correspondence with various officials, the police recently announced that if the law has not changed, the police officer will leave his house, but not before July 2007 when his children finish the school year at their current schools.

About a year ago, Peace Now found out that one of the illegal outposts is home to a police officer. Subsequently the organization approached to the Police Investigation Unit demanding a clarification of the issue.

"It is unthinkable that a police officer lives in an outpost that the State defines as illegal," said Director of Peace Now's Settlement Watch Program Dror Etkes.

According to Etkes, Peace Now has been in correspondence with the Police Investigation Unit for a year and-a-half, but only recently succeeded in getting a response from them.

Three days ago, the police disciplinary department responded, "In light of the material that was collected, investigated, and considered, the officer will be asked to cease residence at the locality after July 2007 (at the end of the current school year)."

In their letter of response, the police noted, "The collection of material on the legal status of the structure in which the officer lives was only recently concluded."

It was added in the letter that the order for the officer to evacuate his house will stand as long as the legal status of the structure is not changed by July 2007.

In a response to Ynet, Etkes said, "The fact that the Israel Police has been trying for a year and a half to evade the issue gives expression to the general evasion of the State of Israel of enforcing the law on the settlers in the settlements. This is yet another expression of the collapse of the rule of law in the West Bank. It is illogical that someone can be a police officer by day, and a criminal by night."

Unprofessional police conduct

2006-12-25T11:02:00.000-02:00

The police above the law
Haaretz, December 25, 2006
By Ze'ev Segal

The massive police performance that was broadcast live on television at peak viewing time effectively labeled Roman Zadorov as the murderer of Katzrin teenager Tair Rada. This grossly and unnecessarily infringed on his human dignity and his right to due process. The care that the police took in formulating their statements did not soften the earlier "police label," even after Zadorov's confession and reenactment of the murder. Even if his guilt is proven in a court of law, that will not lessen the culpability of the police, who are responsible for the dignity of an individual under investigation at the stage when he enjoys the presumption of innocence.

The sub judice offence, which prohibits the publication of information that may prejudice a trial or its results, and which applies, inter alia, to the police, is problematic, and it is doubtful whether it should be on the books. But there is no doubt that human dignity must be preserved, one way or another. In any case, the very existence of this offence deprives the police, which enforces the law, of the right to break it.

Thus an interview given by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to Channel 10's "London and Kirshenbaum" - an interview that has now been aired again on Channel 2, in which he analyzed the indictment against Haim Ramon a few days before a verdict was handed down - was improper. And more than a decade ago, in response to a petition submitted by Aryeh Deri against the prosecutor in his trial, Yehoshua Resnick, the High Court of Justice criticized the interview that the prosecutor gave the press, in which he praised the evidence collected.

The criminal code, as it was amended in 2002, limits the sub judice ban to criminal cases in which the publication of information involves an "almost certain" possibility of influencing the trial. A case is considered "pending" before the court from the moment an arrest warrant is requested. The Knesset expressed itself then in favor of keeping sub judice on the books, despite calls to abolish the law.

The State Prosecutor's Office has the power to enforce the law as it sees fit against journalists or others who make information public. Not using this power to prosecute does not ensure that this will also be the case in the future. In any case, in a country ruled by law, it is inconceivable for the police to be considered immune from the law.

Because of their power, the police need to exercise greater care at both lower and senior ranks. Poor judgment by the police can seriously impair an individual's dignity and privacy, as was the case with Zadorov and in the arrest of Benny Sela. The insufferable carelessness with which the police treat the rights of the individual is conspicuous in the matter of wiretapping, for which the police are authorized to request permission of the president of a district court in order to prevent or uncover a crime.

State Comptroller's reports reveal that police requests for wiretaps, sometimes even with the approval of the state prosecutor, are submitted without proper and serious consideration. The parliamentary committee of inquiry on wiretapping, headed by MK Menachem Ben-Sasson (Kadima), which is now at work was established following the unreasonable wiretapping in the Haim Ramon affair. Its necessity becomes even clearer when considered in light of the multiple facets of the need to protect a person's dignity even while he is under investigation, in the spirit of the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom.

The police brass today can "defend themselves" only with the claim that in the past, too, their contempt for the rights of those under investigation was conspicuous. In 1984, for example, harsh criticism was leveled at a well-attended press conference at which senior police officers announced the arrest of Yona Avrushmi for the murder of Emil Grunzweig, a murder of which he was subsequently convicted.

The wave of publicity at that time - which, like today, stemmed from police sources - led to advancing the moment when the sub judice law takes effect: from the moment when an indictment is submitted, as used to be the case, to the moment when an arrest warrant is requested. But the lessons of the past have not been learned.

The police have also released information that was harmful and unnecessary in other cases that engendered public interest, such as the murder of a young woman, Hanit Kikos, from Ofakim. The public's outrage and its demand to discover the murderer in serious cases cannot justify impairing the basic right to due process, nor can it justify colorful media coverage of the immediate suspect while trampling his dignity underfoot - no matter what the crime of which he is suspected.

And now for some good news...

2006-12-21T07:34:00.000-02:00

Interior Ministry plan will protect urban natural areas
Haaretz, December 21, 2006
By Zafrir Rinat

In the coming days, the large field south of the Glilot intersection will become covered in a thick blanket of daffodils. It is a small piece of nature that has survived in the heart of an urban area, and contains many additional species of plants, as well as wild animals such as hares, which have become rare in other areas due to large-scale hunting. Thanks to two environmental activists, at least a part of the field may gain protected status in the future.

The Interior Ministry Tel Aviv District's Planning Office announced several weeks ago that it intends to prepare a comprehensive plan for urban natural areas that will be integrated into the district master plan. This is the first initiative of its kind and scope in Israel, and is being advanced by Interior Ministry and Environmental Protection Ministry planners Nili Yugev and Naomi Angel.

The comprehensive plan might very well not have come about had it not been for the efforts of Green Party member Dror Ezra and Ramat Hasharon environmental activist Amit Mendelson. The two repeatedly told various planning committees that the new Tel Aviv District master plan does not protect urban natural areas. Some of the sites were designated for construction and others were absorbed by parks, where grass and trails are preferred to natural fields, winter pools and sand dunes. In recent years Mendelson independently mapped all urban natural areas in the Tel Aviv District, telling the district committee, among other things, that the district is home to 11 rare species of wild plants. He also relied on environmental experts such as Tel Aviv University Professor Avital Gazit, who wrote an opinion paper calling for the preservation of a winter pool that is in an area that is designated to become a park in Herzliya. Gazit said the unique variety of life in the pool is in danger of becoming extinct.

"The pool's value will only increase in the future due to the diminishing number of similar habitats in Israel," wrote Gazit. If it is not adequately preserved, said Gazit, "some of the natural elements ... such as water fowl, will disappear." Plant researcher Dr. Uzi Golan also has discovered several rare wild plant species in the pool.

The Interior Ministry's planning office in Tel Aviv decided to formulate the comprehensive plan for urban nature due to Mendelson and Ezra's petition against the the district master plan. The comprehensive plan published by Yugev and Angel calls for a thorough identification of natural sites, views, and heritage, which will include mapping of habitats and rare and unique species that characterized the region and thus should be protected. Specific instructions for preserving urban natural areas will be formulated on the basis of the maps.

Mendelson and Ezra have already noted several sites in the Tel Aviv District that potentially could be designated as urban natural areas, including the Herzliya and Glilot sites, as well as the natural sands in Holon and a sycamore grove north of Zahala.
The new Tel Aviv District comprehensive plan follows in the footsteps of the Jerusalem Municipality, which has already recognized urban natural areas in its master plan. The Jerusalem plan, which is currently being approved, recognizes five urban natural areas in the capital and gives explicit instructions on how to preserve them.

Large cities throughout the world have already recognized the importance of preserving urban natural areas. There are over 100 such sites in London, for example, and urban natural areas have been designated in New York and Barcelona as well.

Stripping individuals of their basic rights

2006-12-20T13:17:00.000-02:00

Moving on to the next scandal...
Haaretz, December 20, 2006
By Uzi Benziman

A month ago, Haaretz ran a sensational story on its front page: Reporter Nadav Shragai gave a detailed description of the findings of a Peace Now report, which said that close to 40 percent of the land under the control of West Bank settlements is privately owned by Palestinians. The report was based on an official state database that Peace Now leaked.

Haaretz was the only Israeli media outlet that adequately covered the report. The Maariv daily gave a synopsis of the report on page six; Israel Radio announced it in its midday broadcast; and it stayed on various electronic news sites for about a day. The remaining media outlets, including Yedioth Ahronoth, the television stations and Army Radio, completely ignored it.

The media was not alone in underplaying the findings of the report and avoiding its implications (except for Haaretz, which ran follow-up analyses by Shragai, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff). The key subjects of the report also adopted a tactic of minimizing it: No official government response was issued, the Civil Administration put out a statement saying, among other things, that "an initial review of the report shows that it suffers from serious inaccuracies," and the Yesha Council of settlements claimed that there was nothing new in the report and that Peace Now would use any means to fight Jewish settlement.

In contrast to the low-profile response to the report offered by the state and the Israeli media, it received a great deal of attention abroad: The New York Times published it as its lead story, and other large newspapers followed suit; and the report's authors, Dror Etkes and Hagit Ofran, were interviewed by dozens of radio and television stations throughout the world. Etkes and Ofran estimate that their findings were covered by hundreds of media outlets. Etkes was also interviewed by Israel Radio – along with Benny Kashriel, mayor of the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement – but only as a result of a report by the station's Washington correspondent, Yaron Dekel, about the buzz that the findings had produced in the United States.

What is more interesting than the extent of the coverage that the report received in Israel is the impression it left on Israeli public opinion: A day after the modest announcement of its findings, the report disappeared entirely from public discourse, except for one more announcement by the Yesha Council challenging its reliability. The parties on the left did not address it, the Knesset did not deliberate it, the press did not deal with it, the government ignored it, and the justice, defense and prime ministers were not asked to explain the findings that it exposed.

What the Peace Now researchers found is that state organs stole private lands from Palestinians living in the West Bank. The report found that state bodies broke the law, ignored Supreme Court decisions and behaved dishonestly, and certainly unethically. Peace Now claimed that 130 settlements were established, fully or partially, on private lands. Note: These are properties that the state recognized as private land, not private properties that were declared to be state land. This involved the systematic and blatant violation by state agencies of the property rights of thousands of Palestinians. This is the same repugnant, underhanded and apparently criminal modus operandi that attorney Talia Sasson detailed in the report she wrote on the establishment of the illegal outposts.

Israel's conscience is entirely black. Scandal follows scandal, and today's injustice wipes away yesterday's injustice in our consciousness. Israeli society's heart is so hard when it comes to Palestinians in the territories that it remains unmoved even when confronted with a scene of continuous injustice that strips individuals of their property.

The malice, deception and aggression embodied in the way the state took over lands belonging to private individuals, even if they are Palestinians, ought to stir up every honest person, even if he is a settler. This method has nothing to do with the ideological dispute over the establishment of the settlements: The issue at stake is that individuals have been stripped of their basic rights. The settlements could have been set up solely on state land. However, a society that is not shocked by the killing of innocent Palestinians will also not be moved even slightly by the sight of land stolen from any individual Palestinian.

Fillibustering, Israeli Legal Style

2006-12-20T13:11:00.000-02:00

The Migron disgrace
Haaretz, December 20, 2006
Haaretz Editorial

In response to a petition filed by the Palestinian owners of the property on which the illegal settlement outpost of Migron was established, the State Prosecutor's Office asked the court to delay its deliberations on the case for four to five months, in order to give the state time to submit an "update." The justification offered for this request was that Defense Minister Amir Peretz had ordered the Israel Defense Forces to hold talks with the settler leadership in an effort to reach an agreement on the voluntary evacuation of the illegal outposts "in the near future." If the talks fail to bear fruit, Peretz plans to order the evacuation of Migron within six months.

The outpost of Migron was set up on the sly in May 2001. First, an antenna was set up; then a container, in which a guard lived; and since then, 60 caravans and two permanent homes, housing 43 families, have been erected. In view of the fact that their property was stolen, the owners of the land repeatedly applied to the Civil Administration, seeking its help in getting their property back. The authorities turned a blind eye and the construction and population of Migron went on. Two months ago, the owners of the land filed a petition demanding that the army raze the structures, against which final demolition orders had already been issued.

On May 16, 2006, the defense minister announced that he would allow two weeks for negotiations with the settlers in the illegal outposts on evacuating of their own accord, and if no results were achieved, the IDF would begin evacuating them by force in early November. The defense minister did not keep his word, and the illegal outposts, including Migron, are still standing. Now, Migron - and probably the other illegal outposts as well - has been given a further extension that will last at least "four or five months." In practice, the procrastination could continue endlessly, because the State Prosecutor's Office said in its statement that the timing of the evacuation depends on coordination with the prime minister, the circumstances and various other constraints.

The failure to evacuate the illegal outposts, despite the Talia Sasson report, is an unacceptable scandal. But the case of Migron is especially shameful for the state authorities and the rule of law. The demand to evacuate Migron requires no political justification; the fact that it was built on clearly private land - not lands that were appropriated for various uses by the state, but lands for which documentary proof of private ownership exists - is enough to justify evacuating the trespassers without hesitation or delay. In a law-abiding state, the owners of the land ought to be able to expect the authorities to aid them and restore their property to them. But the government of Israel repeatedly relies on excuses and makes promises that no one believes it intends to keep.

Migron is not the sole illegal outpost built on private land (see the article by Uzi Benziman on this page, which cites Peace Now's findings that 130 settlements were fully or partially set up on private land). But it sticks out due to the cunning and fraud that led to its establishment and the authorities' embarrassing and continued failure to remove it. And it also raises serious doubts about who really rules the territories - the law or the settlers.

'Dead' Bnei Brak child turns up alive and well in Canada

2006-12-12T15:19:00.000-02:00

Investigation launched into alleged kidnapping of haredi baby whose parents were told he died at birth
Ynet, December 12, 2006

Chaim Levinson

A storm is raging throughout the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel and the US following testimony that a boy from the Hasidic Satmar community in NY was allegedly kidnapped from his parents more than 50 years ago and adopted by a Christian Canadian couple.

The most popular ultra-Orthodox weekly, "Family" is conducting an in-depth investigation into the mysterious story. According to findings so far, some 50 years ago a Hasidic family from Bnei Brak gave birth to twins. One of the twins died immediately after birth and doctors later informed the couple that the other child had also has passed away and had been buried.

Doctors told the family that the baby had become ill and his condition deteriorated until he met his death. The stricken parents had no choice but to accept the news, however reportedly they always bore a persistent doubt as to the circumstances of their child's death. This doubt was reinforced some 18 years later when the "dead child" received a military induction order. The shocked family attributed this to nothing more than an unfortunate error.

About a month ago, in a Canadian city, thousands of kilometers from Bnei Brak, an only child opened his mother's will after she passed away. The words darted in font of his eyes and almost made him faint.

"You are a Jewish child from the city of Bnei Brak in Israel," it was written in the will. "We adopted you when you were just a few days old and we raised you without revealing your true identity. You are now entitled to know the great secret we kept from you."

Brother found story hard to believe

The surprised son, who was raised as a non-Jew, didn't waste time and set out on a voyage to trace his biological parents.

The man in question, who works at one of the important intelligence agencies in a Western country, was quick to find his Jewish family at the Satmar community in New York, where they moved to from Bnei Brak.

The mother passed away four years ago and the father is now 85-years-old. Besides the twins, the couple had an additional 11 children throughout the ensuing years.

Two weeks ago, the man made contact with one of his biological brothers in New York, he recounted his story and asked to meet. At first, the shocked brother found it hard to believe the story, but ultimately agreed to meet his "brother." Upon their meeting it became quite clear there were clear physical similarities between the two.

For the past few days the man has been undergoing a series of genetic tests to determine his true identity and his connection to the family in question. Only after receipt of the final results will the brother tell the elderly father that his lost son has been found after an absence of 50 years.

It will also become apparent whether this man's story is the Satmar version of the missing Yemenite children in Israel.

Courts administration tender won by contractor paying less than minimum wage

2006-12-11T13:52:00.000-02:00

Haifa court janitorial tender will pay less than minimum wage
Haaretz, December 13, 2006
By Ruth Sinai

The Courts Administration has decided to employ a contractor in the Haifa courts even though his bid is so low he will not be able to pay janitorial staff minimum wage. In a highly unusual move, the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce demanded over the weekend that the tender in which the cleaning contractor was chosen, be canceled.

"The pricing of the bid does not allow the winner to uphold both the demands of the tender and the demands of the law regarding workers' rights," attorneys Michal Pereg and Dror Atari wrote to the courts' tenders committee.

Veteran cleaning company Moria, which submitted an unsuccessful bid that accounted for all mandatory wage costs and social benefits, obtained documents pertaining to the tender.

The tender requires the contractor to supply 28 janitorial staff from 6:30 A.M until 6 P.M. in most places, and until 10 P.M. in some places. The winning bid was for NIS 6,384 per day, which translates into NIS 25.33 per hour for the cleaning staff. This sum is supposed to cover wage costs, cleaning supplies and profits for the supplier. However, calculations of minimum wage and social benefits amount to NIS 25 per hour for the first hour, rising to NIS 27.57 for later hours. Cleaning supplies are valued at a minimum of 75 agorot per hour and an 8 percent profit margin means NIS 2 per hour.

The winning bid is at least 15 percent below the minimum cost and does not calculate for any workers after 6 P.M.

"Either the contractor will be unable to perform the necessary work or will employ more workers without paying them properly. The miserable reality indicates it is easier to take the second route," Pereg and Atari write.

The pair also highlighted the fact that other bidders calculated additional jobs like windows and roofs that would be cleaned using repelling techniques and polishing large floor spaces, pricing these at tens of thousands of shekels. The winning bid covered them at NIS 7,400.

The Courts Administration stated it had not examined the charges in the letter over the weekend and was unable to comment for this report.

Fancy a nice walk all the way round Kinneret? One day, perhaps....

2006-12-08T09:27:00.000-02:00

An open path to Lake Kinneret
Haaretz, Friday, December 8, 2006
By Haaretz Editorial

It does not happen often that clerks in the Interior Ministry and in the country's planning bodies respond positively to an initiative with mass appeal. It happened Tuesday, at a meeting of the National Council for Planning and Construction - the country's supreme planning body. The council approved an amendment to the National Master Plan for Beaches for the construction of an open, contiguous walking path along the shores of Lake Kinneret, without fences or gates. Its decision marked the completion of an initiative launched by youth under the aegis of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, which began forging such a path about two years ago.

This is an important achievement for the country's environmental organizations that proves that concerted action with an educational character can effect change even within national institutions. It complements the recent success by "green" organizations to suspend construction projects in West Jerusalem, in which the public also played a large role.

The sad state of Lake Kinneret is known to all, and the environmental organizations have done much to change it. Its shore has become a string of beaches to which entry fees are charged. Fences have been erected in defiance of the law and the collection of fees was carried out without the supervision of the Interior Ministry, and frequently in violation of legal guidelines regarding the collection of fees.

In effect, the state ceded its responsibility over the beaches of the Kinneret, despite the fact that there is no argument over its significance as a national resource. In addition to failing to enforce the Planning and Construction Law, the state suspended its financial aid to the local authorities for cleaning the beaches. The local authorities exploited this situation to charge entrance fees on the grounds that it was necessary to keep the beaches clean.

The attitude of the state began changing over the past two years in response to the public battle waged by environmental organizations and harsh criticism of its actions in the State Comptroller's Report. Nevertheless, the change appears to be slow and incomplete. A few fences have been removed and legal steps have begun against those who built them and charged fees illegally. These measures, however, have not yet changed the situation around the lake. Open and free access is still nearly impossible to find.

The national council's decision to adopt the Round the Kinneret initiative proves that at least the country's planning bodies realize the importance of free access to the beaches and that this path is a convenient way to open up many of them.

However, it must be remembered that creating the path is the real test. To do so, the state will have to provide financial resources. In addition, the enforcement authorities will have to be active in every place where the construction work is challenged by those who seek to preserve the fences and obstructions.

The law enforcement agencies must step up their prosecution of construction scofflaws even in places where the path does not pass, and resume giving money to the local authorities to keep the beaches clean. This will lessen the economic burden on the local authorities and take away their excuse to charge people to enter the beach.

The Cab Ride - making the world a little kinder

2006-12-08T04:57:00.000-02:00

Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, and then drive away.

But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.

So I walked to the door and knocked. "Just a minute", answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

"Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing", I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated".

"Oh, you're such a good boy", she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, "Could you drive through downtown?"

"It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.

"Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice".

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. "I don't have any family left," she continued. "The doctor says I don't have very long." I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

"What route would you like me to take?" I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now"

We drove in silence to the address she had given me.It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

"How much do I owe you?" she asked, reaching into her purse.

"Nothing," I said.

"You have to make a living," she answered. "There are other passengers," I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

"You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," she said.

"Thank you."

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life

I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift?

What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT 'YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, ~BUT~THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.

You won't get any big surprise in 10 days if you send this to ten people.

But, you might help make the world a little kinder and more compassionate by sending it on.

Thank you, my friend...

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.

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"Gazelle Valley" in Jerusalem to remain!

2006-12-07T16:34:00.000-02:00

Jerusalem urban park may protect free-roaming gazelles
Haaretz, December 7, 2006
By Zafrir Rinat

After defending the little valley next to their homes against development, the residents of the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Givat Mordechai and Katamonim will now become partners in the plan to turn the valley into an urban nature park, the first of its kind in Israel.

A few weeks ago, a group of environmental organizations, headed by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and the residents' committee of the two neighborhoods presented the plans for the park to the planning and construction commissions.

A herd of gazelles has made the park its home. "The sight of these gazelles moves me every time," Michal Regev, a resident of Katamonim, says. "Sometimes you sit at the bus stop and watch them in their natural surroundings."

Some years ago, real estate developers sought to take over part of the area to build 1,200 housing units. They were staved off by a successful grassroots campaign following which the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Commission withheld its approval for the plan.

The residents and the ecological groups have now initiated a plan that will seek statutory protection for the area in the future and open only part of it to visitors.

"We had meetings and handed out flyers to the residents with the plans," Regev says, "There were tough discussions between those who thought the area shouldn't be touched and those who thought it should be opened so people could enjoy it," she said.

Regev says the residents were given a number of options, and the one ultimately chosen conserves most of the area in its present state, but creates a city park in one section.

"The idea of an urban park is known elsewhere in the world, but it is new in Israel," SPNI Jerusalem landscape architect Yael Hammerman says.

The park will have paths and bike trails, as well as a periphery trail, with lookouts on the gazelles, which now number 22 and have managed to persevere despite the small area they inhabit. The park will also have a cafe with a view of the valley. Ancient agricultural terraces will be conserved and restored in part of the park.

Several obstacles still threaten the plan, among them desire by developers to build along edges of the valley. The city planning commissions have recognized the urban park in the new Jerusalem master plan, defining it as an area set aside for the protection of urban biodiversity.

According to the plan, five different sites in the capital have been pinpointed to protect the capital's flora and fauna and strengthen the concept that human beings are a part of a wider natural system; "gazelle valley" as it is known to the locals, is one of them.

If the park is approved, its founders will face a major task: ensuring that large numbers of visitors do not wreak chaos and make it impossible for the gazelles to continue living in the area in tranquillity.

In another location in Israel, gazelles that inhabited a small area in the Sharon Beach National Park were killed by dogs whose owners let them run loose in the park.

"The main threat to the herd of gazelles in the valley are the jackals that roam all over the city, " Amir Balaban, the SPNI expert on urban nature sites, says. "The city has tried to keep them from getting into the valley, so far with only partial success."

Balaban says the main advantage of the establishment of the park is the ability to manage the area. The park will contain buffer zones between the areas inhabited by the gazelles and those open to visitors. With regard to the risk to the herd from dogs, he says, "we will do what we do now. We will explain and ask people not to come near the herd with their dogs. We have been holding activities in the park for six years, and we only had to call the police once when somebody came into the park with a dog clearly for the purpose of hunting."

"Perception of rot" - corruption in Israel"

2006-12-07T14:58:00.000-02:00

Poll: Four percent of Israelis say they've paid bribes in last year
Haaretz, December 7, 2006
By Asaf Rothem

Four percent of Israelis claim that they themselves or a member of their households paid a bribe during the last 12 months. That's double the rate in the U.S. and Britain, according to a Transparency International survey of corruption.

The survey measures the perception of rot in various countries. It also seeks to elucidate how well citizens feel the authorities in their countries fight corruption.

The survey, now in its fourth year, covered 59,661 adults aged 15 and up in 62 countries.

Susanne Tam, general manager of Shvil - the Transparency International organization in Israel - defined corruption as "abuse of political or other power to advance personal interests".

The Israeli part of the survey questioned 500 adults. It found that 66 percent feel the government isn't doing enough to stamp out corruption, or that it isn't doing it effectively.

No less than 16 percent of the respondents feel the government actually encourages corruption, and 55 percent felt that corruption impacts their lives personally.

81 percent feel that corruption influences the business environment, and 86 percent say it influences politics.

Despite the problems in the last wear and the gargantuan defense budgets, most Israelis feel that the army is the least corrupt organization in Israel, despite the absence of transparency in use of its huge budget. One has to wonder how the people think the budget is used, and compare it with the reality.

This year too, the political parties were considered to be highly corrupt, with a mark of 4.2 out of 5 (that being rotten to the core). After it comes the Knesset with the disheartening score of 3.8.

Religious institutions are also not highly respected, with a score of 3.6. The police force got a score of 3.3.

Israel is one of 78 countries that refused to ratify the UN anti-corruption treaty, partly because of its section against corruption in international deals, which could hamper the Defense Ministry's arms business, which often involves bribes.

Thoughts on dogginess and dog "owning" from New York

2006-12-05T18:45:00.000-02:00

My Life as a Dog
By JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
New York Times, November 27, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor

FOR the last 20 years, New York City parks without designated dog runs have permitted dogs to be off-leash from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Because of recent complaints from the Juniper Park Civic Association in Queens, the issue has been revisited. On Dec. 5, the Board of Health will vote on the future of off-leash hours.

Retrievers in elevators, Pomeranians on No. 6 trains, bull mastiffs crossing the Brooklyn Bridge ... it is easy to forget just how strange it is that dogs live in New York in the first place. It is about as unlikely a place for dogs as one could imagine, and yet 1.4 million of them are among us. Why do we keep them in our apartments and houses, always at some expense and inconvenience? Is it even possible, in a city, to provide a good life for a dog, and what is a “good life?” Does the health board’s vote matter in ways other than the most obvious?

I adopted George (a Great Dane/Lab/pit/greyhound/ridgeback/whatever mix — a k a Brooklyn shorthair) because I thought it would be fun. As it turns out, she is a major pain an awful lot of the time.

She mounts guests, eats my son’s toys (and occasionally tries to eat my son), is obsessed with squirrels, lunges at skateboarders and Hasids, has the savant-like ability to find her way between the camera lens and subject of every photo taken in her vicinity, backs her tush into the least interested person in the room, digs up the freshly planted, scratches the newly bought, licks the about-to-be served and occasionally relieves herself on the wrong side of the front door. Her head is resting on my foot as I type this. I love her.

Our various struggles — to communicate, to recognize and accommodate each other’s desires, simply to coexist — force me to interact with something, or rather someone, entirely “other.” George can respond to a handful of words, but our relationship takes place almost entirely outside of language. She seems to have thoughts and emotions, desires and fears. Sometimes I think I understand them; often I don’t. She is a mystery to me. And I must be one to her.

Of course our relationship is not always a struggle. My morning walk with George is very often the highlight of my day — when I have my best thoughts, when I most appreciate both nature and the city, and in a deeper sense, life itself. Our hour together is a bit of compensation for the burdens of civilization: business attire, e-mail, money, etiquette, walls and artificial lighting. It is even a kind of compensation for language. Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness? And why does it make one feel, in the best sense of the word, human?

It is children, very often, who want dogs. In a recent study, when asked to name the 10 most important “individuals” in their lives, 7- and 10-year-olds included two pets on average. In another study, 42 percent of 5-year-olds spontaneously mentioned their pets when asked, “Whom do you turn to when you are feeling, sad, angry, happy or wanting to share a secret?” Just about every children’s book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

In the course of our lives, we move from a warm and benevolent relationship with animals (learning responsibility through caring for our pets, stroking and confiding in them), to a cruel one (virtually all animals raised for meat in this country are factory farmed — they spend their lives in confinement, dosed with antibiotics and other drugs).

How do you explain this? Is our kindness replaced with cruelty? I don’t think so. I think in part it’s because the older we get, the less exposure we have to animals. And nothing facilitates indifference or forgetfulness so much as distance. In this sense, dogs and cats have been very lucky: they are the only animals we are intimately exposed to daily.

Folk parental wisdom and behavioral studies alike generally view the relationships children have with companion animals as beneficial. But one does not have to be a child to learn from a pet. It is precisely my frustrations with George, and the inconveniences she creates, that reinforce in me how much compromise is necessary to share space with other beings.

The practical arguments against off-leash hours are easily refuted. One doesn’t have to be an animal scientist to know that the more a dog is able to exercise its “dogness”— to run and play, to socialize with other dogs — the happier it will be. Happy dogs, like happy people, tend not to be aggressive. In the years that dogs have been allowed to run free in city parks, dog bites have decreased 90 percent. But there is another argument that is not so easy to respond to: some people just don’t want to be inconvenienced by dogs. Giving dogs space necessarily takes away space from humans.

We have been having this latter debate, in different forms, for ages. Again and again we are confronted with the reality — some might say the problem — of sharing our space with other living things, be they dogs, trees, fish or penguins. Dogs in the park are a present example of something that is often too abstracted or far away to gain our consideration.

The very existence of parks is a response to this debate: earlier New Yorkers had the foresight to recognize that if we did not carve out places for nature in our cities, there would be no nature. It was recently estimated that Central Park’s real estate would be worth more than $500 billion. Which is to say we are half a trillion dollars inconvenienced by trees and grass. But we do not think of it as an inconvenience. We think of it as balance.

Living on a planet of fixed size requires compromise, and while we are the only party capable of negotiating, we are not the only party at the table. We’ve never claimed more, and we’ve never had less. There has never been less clean air or water, fewer fish or mature trees. If we are not simply ignoring the situation, we keep hoping for (and expecting) a technological solution that will erase our destruction, while allowing us to continue to live without compromise. Maybe zoos will be an adequate replacement for wild animals in natural habitats. Maybe we will be able to recreate the Amazon somewhere else. Maybe one day we will be able to genetically engineer dogs that do not wish to run free. Maybe. But will those futures make us feel, in the best sense of the word, human?

I have been taking George to Prospect Park twice a day for more than three years, but her running is still a revelation to me. Effortlessly, joyfully, she runs quite a bit faster than the fastest human on the planet. And faster, I’ve come to realize, than the other dogs in the park. George might well be the fastest land animal in Brooklyn. Once or twice every morning, for no obvious reason, she’ll tear into a full sprint. Other dog owners can’t help but watch her. Every now and then someone will cheer her on. It is something to behold.

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author, most recently, of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”

An inspiring tale about Itzhak Perlman

2006-11-30T15:58:00.000-02:00

Work with what you got - and then with what you have left

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight.

He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.

The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.

Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before. When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

Don't talk to me about justice... Israel's "black hole"

2006-11-30T15:48:00.000-02:00

Justice / The railway station ministry
Haaretz, November 30, 2006
By Yuval Yoaz

More than any other ministry, the Justice Ministry has suffered in recent years from an insufferable turnover, with ministers coming and going at a train station tempo. Haim Ramon put his finger on it in the speech he gave when taking office, just seven months ago, telling senior ministry officials that "this is the fifth inauguration of a justice minister in seven years. Ministerial handovers at that pace harm the government's ability to perform." Since then, there has already been another inauguration - for acting minister Meir Sheetrit.

Moreover, in appointing Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is essentially announcing not one, but two, new justice ministers. Cabinet members declare they are waiting for Ramon to return to office, if and when he is acquitted. But not every acquittal will let him walk back through the doors of the ministry.

So formally Livni has only been appointed for one month, leaving us questioning why Sheetrit - who is familiar with the office - didn't just stay on. The conclusion seems to be that even Olmert's circle is not entirely convinced that Ramon will be back, making this an important appointment: not a one-month job until the Ramon verdict, but a minister for the next four years.

But Livni is the only cabinet member of whom "four more years at Justice" cannot be said: while Sheetrit and Isaac Herzog could hold the portfolio in conjunction with their other functions, Livni can clearly not serve both at the justice ministry and as well as Israel's foreign minister. She doesn't even want to.

In this sense, Olmert demonstrated his loyalty to his friend, handing the portfolio to the one member of his cabinet who isn't interested in holding it more than a month. Ramon benefits from this, the public and the professional performance of the ministry benefit less when the cabinet really does appoint a permanent minister in another month. Not to mention the criticism from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz of the "black hole," in which no one held the portfolio for a full week.

The great unknown is what kind of justice minister Livni will be as the sand slips through the political hourglass. Will she take an active stance and, for instance, appoint her kind of Supreme Court justice? From her last stop at the justice train station, we learned that Livni decided to push appointments just when she found the timing to be inappropriate.

New strategy - first provide your own service...

2006-11-29T19:10:00.000-02:00

No clinic? No school? We'll open one
Haaretz, November 28, 2006
By Aryeh Dayan

At the end of the period of Jordanian rule in East Jerusalem, and even during the early years of Israeli control, many Palestinians referred to Kafr Aqab as "millionaires' row." The neighborhood has deteriorated since then. Today, three years after the construction of the [security] wall there, the signs of neglect and disorder are clearly apparent, even at the entrance of the neighborhood, which is right after the Qalandiyah checkpoint. That checkpoint, and the wall that runs south and north of it, give the once-fashionable Palestinian suburb the look of a slum in a Third World city.

Kafr Aqab, with its current population of 25,000, is officially within the municipal jurisdiction of Jerusalem, and is supposed to receive services from the city. As part of the Israeli decision in 1967 to annex East Jerusalem, the redrawn northern extremity of the municipal boundary was the northern edge of Kafr Aqab, giving those who lived there the status of Jerusalem residents. As a result, they hold "blue" Israeli identity cards, pay taxes to the city of Jerusalem, are eligible for the services of the National Insurance Institute, and are entitled to travel and work anywhere in Israel.

The separation fence has left Kafr Aqab outside Jerusalem. To reach other parts of the city, its residents need to go through the Qalandiyah checkpoint. They can get to the West Bank cities of El-Bireh and Ramallah, on the other hand, without encountering any Israeli checkpoint. In this way they have fallen between the cracks: the Jerusalem Municipality (and the State of Israel) have stopped providing services to a neighborhood that is beyond the wall; while the municipality of El-Bireh to the north, whose jurisdiction borders Kafr Aqab, refuses to provide services to a neighborhood that is part of Jerusalem.

The reaction of the residents of Kafr Aqab to the situation in which they found themselves was completely different from that of other Palestinians in similar situations in other areas. Initially they did exactly what the others did: appealed the land-seizure orders for the construction of the wall, petitioned the High Court of Justice against its construction, organized demonstrations, sent demands to the Jerusalem Municipality and organized various lobbying activities. They soon realized, however, that they could expect to gain no benefit from all that, and opted for a different strategy.

At the initiative of several groups of young residents, a new neighborhood committee was established, which elbowed aside the existing, more conservative representative body. The new committee established a new organization called "the Kafr Aqab Development Company," officially registered it in Israel, and set about raising funds within the neighborhood (which is still home to quite a few well-heeled Palestinian businessmen).The company forged a connection with two associations that deal with matters concerning Arab residents of Jerusalem (the Israeli Ir Amim and the Palestinian Media and Development Institute), put its plans on a business basis, and began to promote several basic projects in fields that usually fall under the responsibility of the municipality and of government ministries.

Less than two years since the company was founded, many Kafr Aqab residents already see the results of its activity. Some 500 local children who, in the previous school year, had to be at the checkpoint before 6 A.M. to make it to school before classes began at 8 A.M., now study in a school established by the company in the center of the neighborhood.

Thousands of residents who regularly pay into the NII, and are entitled to medical attention under the National Health Insurance Law, were forced to traverse the checkpoint every time they needed to exercise their rights. Now they have at their disposable a clinic that the company has set up in the neighborhood, which operates as a licensee of the Clalit Health Services. Hundreds of local youngsters, who until recently aimlessly wandered the streets of the neighborhood, now come daily to the community center the company created. Dozens of houses, which for years the Jerusalem Municipality had refused to connect to the city's sewage system, have been connected by the company (without authorization), employing residents who work or have worked in the past for the municipal company that manages the system.

"After the wall was built, we understood we had only two choices: to live in a garbage dump or to take matters into our own hands," explained Samih Abu-Rumeileh, the moving spirit behind the neighborhood committee and the Kafr Aqab Development Company. "The wall created an entirely new situation here. Before it was built we received only a small part of what we were entitled to. After it was built, we got nothing. And the daily crossing at the checkpoint to get to school or to a clinic was simply destroying our lives."

License from Clalit

"We have no intention of giving up on the city and the state's fulfilling their obligations toward us," says Fawaz Tamimi, Abu-Rumeileh's colleague in the leadership of the residents committee, and appointed by him as vice-principal of the school. He is 38, the son of a jewelry merchant, and studies business administration at a college in Ramallah. "We pay municipal taxes like every Jerusalem resident, and the city has to give us the same services it gives everyone else. We simply decided to reverse the order of things. Instead of waiting until the government gives us services, we first provide the services ourselves and then make demands of the government."

In the many meetings they had with the municipality regarding the education system, they repeatedly heard the claim that most of the buildings in the neighborhood were illegally built, and the government is prohibited from renting an illegal structure for establishing a school.

"We have no problem renting a building that was erected without a license," says Tamimi with a smile. And that is exactly what they did. With contributions from the parents, and a large endowment from the Ford Foundation (through the mediation of Ir Amim), the Kafr Aqab Development Company rented a three-story building on the main street of the neighborhood, renovated it, furnished it and turned it into a school. Today it boasts 497 students in 15 classes, from first to 12th grade. The teachers were drawn from educators who live in the neighborhood, and who, in the past, were compelled to deal with the checkpoints to go to work. Only then, just as the school year was about to begin, did they turn to the Education Ministry and to the municipality with a demand for recognition and funding. The recognition has been given; the funding, they hope, will start coming through next month.

That is, more or less, the way they handled the clinic. The Kafr Aqab Development Company organized a group of businessmen and a few doctors from within the community. They invested $100,000 in procuring equipment for a clinic that would be able to provide most of the services that most HMO clinics provide. After they had rented an appropriate building, they approached the Clalit HMO and requested a license to operate the clinic in its name. Clalit operates several clinics on this basis elsewhere in Israel. The licensee receives a monthly payment for every member of the HMO living in its district, and the HMO determines the medical standards and supervises the professional operation of the clinic. "Economic calculations show that a clinic that serves 3,000 members can maintain itself," says Abu-Rumeileh, who once renovated buildings, then drove a truck, and is today the clinic's administrative director. "There are 3,000 members of the HMO in Kafr Aqab, so I hope it will start showing a profit in another few months."

Even if there was not a direct political motive, the "declaration of independence" of the residents of Kafr Aqab is not divorced from political considerations. "Kafr Aqab is part of Jerusalem, and we are all part of the Palestinian people, and we all oppose the occupation," says Abu-Rumeileh. "But there is no reason for us to suffer the occupation in silence, and just wait for it to go away." He believes that Israel is moving in the direction of a "long-term transfer" of Palestinian residents [out of] Jerusalem, that it hopes the Palestinians will break down and move away. He says that everything they have done in Kafr Aqab has been intended, among other things, to fight that trend.

It is a new strategy, and both Israel and the Palestinian organizations still have difficulty assimilating it. "At the beginning they accused us, especially Fatah, of collaborating with Israel," Abu-Rumeileh relates. "Later both Fatah and Hamas began to understand our activity is for the benefit of the people."

The response of the Jerusalem Municipality was that "the municipality gives the residents the best services it can under the present circumstances," and that it is the intention of the municipality "to integrate the Kafr Aqab Development Company and other local organizations in its activities.”

Discoveries beneath the Hurva...

2006-11-29T16:13:00.002-02:00

Byzantine arch found at renovated Jerusalem synagogue
Haaretz, November 29, 2006
By Nadav Shragai

A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.

The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.

Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.

"This arch is unique, because in excavations there so far only wide domes that walled the shops along the Byzantine Cardo were found," says Geva. "It shows where the street split from the Cardo, and has been recovered intact."

Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), also believes "this is a rare and important finding."

The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.

The diggers also found a small weapons arsenal, where defenders of the Jewish Quarter stashed mortar shells and grenades during the Independence War.

The Hurva's renovation ended a prolonged architectural argument about how to reconstruct the synagogue, which was the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer's plan to reconstruct the original synagogue was adopted.

The courtyard was purchased 306 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (Segal), who arrived from Poland with 300 of his students. It sat adjacent to the Ramban Synagogue, built some 430 years earlier, and was closed by the Ottomans in 1589. The Ashkenazi community in the Old City numbered a mere few hundred people in those days and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid and his students' coming caused much commotion. He died five days later.

His followers began building a yeshiva and synagogue in the courtyard, but the construction was not completed. The Jews were late returning the loan to the Arabs for the project and in 1721 the Arabs burned the uncompleted synagogue and the 40 Torah scrolls it housed. The site remained desolate for 140 years, thus acquiring the name "hurva" (the wreck). A new synagogue was built there by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1864.

The Hurva then became the most splendid synagogue in Israel and hosted important Jewish events until the 1930s. Two days after conquering the quarter in 1948, the Jordanians bombed the synagogue and the Jordanian commander reported to headquarters: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."

Discoveries beneath the Hurva...

2006-11-29T16:13:00.001-02:00

Discoveries beneath the Hurva...

2006-11-29T16:13:00.000-02:00

And now for something completely different - "Panda Porn"

2006-11-23T07:17:00.003-02:00

Experts test "panda porn"
Sky News, Nivember 23, 2006

Scientists in Thailand think they may have discovered the key to the notoriously difficult business of getting pandas to mate - panda porn.

Experts in Chiang Mai say the unusual initiative has led to a baby boom among one of the world's most beloved but endangered animals.

Zhang Zhihe, a leading Chinese expert on the giant panda, said the boom was down to showing uninitiated males DVDs of other pandas mating.

Mr Zhang said: "It works."

The panda porn is one of many techniques tried over the decades to get captive pandas to mate.

The efforts to understand and simulate conditions for mating and raising cubs have paid off in China, the panda's native habitat.

Now comes the next test - getting the trick to work outside China.

The day of reckoning will come in January, when Prasertsak Buntragulpoontawee hopes to bring off a successful mating between male Chuang Chuang and partner Lin Hui in Thailand.

The saucy audio-visual approach "is the same idea as chimpanzees seeing people smoke and then copying it", says the Thai researcher.

Among the roughly 20 pandas outside China, no cubs were born this year through mating, Zhang said.

But, at a US zoo in September, artificially inseminated sperm yielded an offspring.

Settlements built on private Palestinian lands

2006-11-23T07:02:00.001-02:00

Blow to settlement movement
Haaretz, November 23, 2006
By Nadav Shragai

If the data published in the Peace Now report yesterday are true, the settlement movement yesterday suffered a severe blow. This is true both from a public relations point of view - for years the movement has claimed that the settlements have never stolen land - and from a legal point of view, although this has yet to be examined.

For many months now, the state prosecution has been clashing in the High Court of Justice with Peace Now over its duty under the Freedom of Information Law to publish data about ownership of land on which settlements were built. The state requested to refrain from revealing the data on the grounds that "the subject of the petition is a complex and sensitive one, and questions of the country's security and foreign relations are tied up with it. " Its representatives asked for more time. Now it seems that time is up.

The material which Peace Now wanted the state to publish was apparently leaked to it. Attorney Talya Sasson appears to have used the same database for her report on illegal outposts. Sasson's mandate was the outposts and Peace Now expanded the mandate to include settlements.

What appears to be the most significant and surprising revelation is that about the building on private Palestinian lands after 1979 - the year in which the High Court of Justice handed down what is known as "the Elon Moreh ruling. " Until that time, Israel would set up settlements by seizing lands "for urgent military purposes," which is congruent with international law. This leaves the official ownership of the lands still in the hands of the original owner and it is valid for a limited period. In order to continue holding the lands, the army must issue notification every few years, that it has taken over the lands again.

This was the custom until 1979 and dozens of settlements were built in this way. In that year, the army seized 700 dunams belonging to the villagers of Rujeib, south of Nablus, for the establishment of Elon Moreh. The land owners petitioned the High Court of Justice and the state responded that one reason for the land seizure was an urgent security need.

At that point, the settlers stated that this was not a passing security need and that the settlement was built as a permanent site that served religious Zionist, and political, ends. As a result, the court accepted the land owners' petition and canceled the seizure orders. From that point on, the state stopped issuing seizure orders when settlement building.

Now it appears from the report that settlements continued to be built on private Palestinian lands after 1979 - even the large urban settlements inside the "blocs," such as Ma'aleh Adumim, Givat Ze'ev and Ariel.

When the permanent borders of the state of Israel are drawn, and the government wants to annex these blocs, this new information could be a severe stumbling block.

The Gaydamak system and making the government provide for its citizens

2006-11-23T06:53:00.000-02:00

How to stop Gaydamak
Haaretz, November 23, 2006
By Uzi Benziman

In 1977, Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, a new immigrant and a kooky businessman, was elected to the Knesset. He paved his way to the legislature by promising acts of charity and telling stories of good work for the Jewish people in which he was supposedly engaged in the past. Despite his strange character, the cloud of doubt hanging over his head (in France he was considered an escaped felon) and his garbled Hebrew, he managed to win the votes of more than 35,000 people. At the time, his election was considered an insult to Israeli democracy. Since then, it has been viewed as an oddity.

Thirty years later, the state is facing a similar phenomenon, but this time the potential for damage is far greater. As things look now, it is doubtful if it will go down in the annals of Israeli parliamentarianism as a mere anecdote.

Arcadi Gaydamak is a new immigrant who spreads his money around in what seems to be philanthropy for its own sake. Unlike Flatto-Sharon, the suspicions against Gaydamak did not translate into an indictment. He has even avoided directly tying his generosity to real political moves. Flatto-Sharon failed in that he was found guilty of giving bribes that helped him get elected to the Knesset. Gaydamak gives charity to a population in distress, ostensibly with no intention of political gain.

However, Gaydamak stumbled, revealing a small portion of his intentions. In an interview with Yediot Ahronot on Sunday, he spoke of his ability to get elected to the premiership, because of his distinguished personal attributes in contrast to the operational failures of the current leaders, and about the large-scale support he enjoys among the public. "If I decide to run, I will get 40 seats in the Knesset," the lord was quoted in the paper. "Politicians know it and they are afraid.”

Gaydamak did indeed gain purchase in wide sectors of the public - among football and basketball fans, the population exposed to terror in the north and the south, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, evacuees from the Gaza Strip, and others. He buys himself amity with money, and this conduct challenges the rules of the game by which Israeli democracy has so far existed.

Even in a 60-year-old country that long ago lost its innocence, the basis for the fight over the voter's ballot has so far not been about money. Parties vied with each other over their positions, their interests, and their ways of operation.

Even an unrealistic society is aware of the connection between money and power, recognizes the custom of governments to lavish favors on election eve and knows the twisted ways by which the candidates fund their campaigns. However, even in such a society, it has not so far been considered legitimate to buy public support outright with money.

Gaydamak seems to be undermining the existing system; the question is if Israeli democracy can protect itself from him.

The solution will not come from the legal realm: there is no legal flaw in Gaydamak's conduct. It is his right to contribute money as he sees fit, and he does not link his generosity to actual political activity. Reading his statements in Yediot Ahronot, one might suspect that he is casting his bread on the water, but he can claim that his generosity is no different than that of the Joint Distribution Committee.

The law protects society from crooked fund-raising for political campaigns only when such activity is connected to elections. If the individual separates lavishing favors on the public from expecting a return on his chivalry, he has committed no infraction. Moreover, Gaydamak sets no conditions and has promised nothing to those he treats well. Thus, the component of recompense that would turn his favors into bribery is lacking. However his statements in the interview ostensibly show his intention to enter the political arena and to build himself up on the gifts he hands out to his potential voters.

The way to thwart Gaydamak's system is to make it redundant: to make the government fulfill its obligations and provide for its citizens, who are in need at this time of a patron.

It still doesn't feel like the government is governing

2006-11-23T06:48:00.000-02:00

Olmert vs. Everyone
Haaretz Editorial, November 23, 2006

Amir Peretz is no junior official who allowed himself, despite the rules of good governance, to speak to the Palestinian Authority chairman about a cease-fire in Gaza. This is the defense minister of the State of Israel, who is supposed to deal with everything connected to security, including a halt to shooting – if only he had the prime minister's trust. Israel reacted scornfully to Hamas' stated readiness to hold its fire only because that readiness had its roots in a telephone call between Peretz and Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), which was mediated by MK Mohammed Barakeh

The petty power struggle over a success that has yet to take place, and is genuinely intended to save lives, indicates failure in the way burning issues are treated, and an excessive focus on prestige and small-time politics, when cooperative and responsible leadership is what's needed.

It appears that Ehud Olmert's dissatisfaction with Peretz's independent initiative is actually an example of the prime minister's chronic dissatisfaction with all who surround him. These are people whom Olmert himself appointed and with whose assistance he is supposed to be running the country. The prime minister is signaling to the public that he himself does not see his government as suitable. If the defense minister is slated to be replaced, then Olmert must replace him. If the current acting justice minister is not to his liking, then Olmert should have chosen someone else for the job. If Avigdor Lieberman doesn't have authority on strategic affairs, as has been implied, then there was no need for Olmert to hand over these matters to him. The prime minister argues that the cabinet is not an open debating club, and in so doing buries any political initiative that arises – even if the one who suggests it is the foreign minister, a key part of whose role is to set policy.

The Qassam fire targeting Israel has not stopped, and the rockets appear likely to become ever more advanced and reach areas still further north than Sderot and Ashkelon. Talk of a cease-fire, no matter who is doing the talking, is the order of the day. It is impossible to safeguard the entire State of Israel – house by house, classroom by classroom – against threats from the north and the south, nor can citizens' safety be assured by development and acquisition of more and more weapons systems, each of which generally has its answer in some primitive and irritating response

Since even an extensive military operation in Gaza, like that which the opposition warmly recommends, will not prevent a renewal of hostile activities via new creative means, we must ceaselessly and tirelessly strive for a cease-fire. We cannot stop the use of knives, suicide bombers, Qassams or tunnels through assassinations or tanks, but only through agreements. No weapon has yet been found that is more effective than a mutual cease-fire.

In order to lead the State of Israel, one needs more than the ability to survive. The prime minister must bring together a team of ministers he trusts, and give them status and authority. A year has passed, a war has passed, and it still doesn't feel like the government is governing.

The Leica Freedom Train

2006-11-22T16:55:00.000-02:00

Here's a piece of history that I hadn't heard before.....and if you want to find more about this, go to Google..and enter "the Leica Freedom Train".

Subject: A timeless example of character
The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera.

From a nitpicking point of view, it wasn't the very first still camera to use 35mm movie film, but it was the first to be widely publicized and successfully marketed. It created the "candid camera" boom of the 1930s. It is a German product - precise, minimalist, utterly efficient. Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty.

E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous photographic product, saved its Jews. And Ernst Leitz II, the steely eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm, as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the title, "the photography industry's Schindler." As George Gilbert, a veteran writer on topics photographic, told the story at last week's convention of the Leica Historical Society of America in Portland, Oregon, Leitz Inc., founded in Wetzlar in 1869, had a tradition of enlightened behavior toward its workers.

Pensions, sick leave, health insurance - all were instituted early on at Leitz, which depended for its work force upon generations of skilled employees - many of whom were Jewish. The 'Leica Freedom Train As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country.

As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities. To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "the Leica Freedom Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas. Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States.

Leitz's activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany. Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry. Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom - a new Leica.

The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press. The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders. By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitzes' efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?

Leitz Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market for optical goods was the United States.

Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe. Leitz's daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of questioning. She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s.(After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d'honneur des Palms Academic from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the European Academy in the 1970s.)

Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the "Leica Freedom Train" finally come to light. It is now the subject of a book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a California- born rabbi currently living in England.

Thank you for reading this little known story, and if you feel inclined, as I did, to pass it on to others, please do so. It is a excellent example of character, human kindness and bravery.

Israel's legal system and its abuse of the young victim of abuse

2006-11-22T12:45:00.000-02:00

10 year-old waits four years for hearing on alleged abuse
Haaretz, November 22, 2006
By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz Correspondent

Almost four years have passed since the sister of a ten-year-old boy filed an abuse complaint on her brother's behalf against their uncle who regularly beat and emotionally abused him. The legal proceedings in the case have been continually delayed and the uncle has not yet been tried.

The girl also claimed that she had suffered abuse at the hands of the uncle.

The uncle was charged three years ago, but a series of delays, some initiated by the defendant and some due to court foot-dragging, have put the now 14-year-old boy through a rigorous ordeal lasting years.

The uncle was charged with assault in November 2003, some ten months after the complaint was originally filed. The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court scheduled a hearing for March 27, 2005, one year and four months after the indictment.

In February 2005, the defendant asked to postpone the hearing until after the Jewish holiday of Purim, so that he could properly celebrate the holiday. The court rescheduled the hearing for April 10. The hearing took place as scheduled, but the defendant did not have proper representation, so the proceedings were again postponed.

The following hearing was scheduled for November 20, 2005, exactly two years after the indictment. On the day of the hearing, the prosecution and the defense requested another delay in order to attempt to reach a settlement. The hearing was again postponed, this time for December 6, 2005.

This hearing was also delayed because it was scheduled for the same day that the Jerusalem District Prosecutor's office was slated to participate in an education program. The hearing was once again delayed.

The next hearing was scheduled for April 24, 2006. Shortly after the date was set, the defense attorney in the case recused himself and the hearing was postponed until May 22.

At this hearing, the defendant denied the allegations against him and a hearing for the presentation of the evidence was scheduled for October 24, 2006. After the victim underwent preparation for his testimony, he was barred from testifying at the hearing due to another postponement, this time because the defense attorney had fallen ill and lost her voice. The next hearing is set to take place on December 25.

Dr. Yitzhak Kedman of the National Council for the Child in Israel wrote in a letter to the head of the court system, Justice Moshe Gal in which he condemned the repeated delays.

"One can only imagine what this boy must be going through,” Kedman wrote. "He is a victim of a crime and his interests have been postponed and pushed aside regularly by the judicial system, and his childhood is passing him by in tense anticipation of the trial."

Kedman also mentioned that children are naturally hesitant to report abuse, and the "inconceivable torture" suffered by the victim is detrimental to efforts to encourage other children to come forward and report abuse.

He asked Gal and the judicial system to find a way to expedite proceedings when minors are involved, especially in cases of sexual and physical abuse within the family.

Settlements violate property rights of many Palestinians

2006-11-21T10:47:00.000-02:00

40% of settlements built on Arab land, study finds
Haaretz, November 21, 2006
By Yair Sheleg, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

A new study conducted by left-wing group Peace Now has found that approximately 40 percent of settlements, including long-standing communities, are built on private Palestinian land and not on state-owned land.

In a press conference held in Jerusalem on Tuesday, the group presented a report asserting that out of a total area of 157,000 dunams used by West Bank settlements and industrial zones, 61,000 dunams (approximately 38 percent) are privately owned by Palestinians.

The report singles out the two largest settlements, both of which have city status. It says that 86.4 percent of Ma'ale Adumim is built on Palestinian land, and 35.1 percent of Ariel.

The group says that the data presented in the report "demonstrates that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building."

State-owned lands amount to 87,000 dunams (including 2,000 dunams soon to be declared as owned by the state) and just 2,000 dunams are Jewish-owned.

The leaders of Peace Now said at the press conference that the report is a serious indictment of the entire settlement movement.

"Israel has violated even its own norms and laws in the West Bank, through the confiscation of private Palestinian property and the building of settlements upon them," the report says.

According to the group, the data shows that settlers are guilty not only of larceny, in stealing collective assets of the Palestinian people, they also disinherit Palestinian residents from their privately-owned property.

The report also cites the case of the settlement of Elon Moreh, which was established in 1979 on 700 dunams of land belonging to a village near Nablus, which had been seized by Israel for military purposes.

The order to seize the land was, according to the report, issued by the then-commander of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who is now minister for infrastructure.

Cat not to be allowed to guard the cream?

2006-11-21T08:19:00.000-02:00

Mazuz to turn down PM request to take on Justice portfolio
Haaretz, November 21, 2006
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz will not allow Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to hold the justice minister portfolio in addition to his other duties, legal experts said.

The main reason for the likely opposition to such a development is the series of ongoing investigations of alleged corruption involving the prime minister.

Even though Mazuz has still not been asked by the Prime Minister's Office to offer a legal opinion, the matter is gaining in importance as acting Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit is due to relinquish the post by Thursday.

Olmert is seriously considering taking over the justice portfolio to avoid tension with Haim Ramon, who held the post and resigned in August when charges of indecent assault were brought against him. It is believed the portfolio will be returned to Ramon once the trial is over, on the assumption he will be acquitted.

Meanwhile, Sheetrit has threatened to resign from the cabinet, surrendering both the Justice and Housing ministries if he is not permanently appointed justice minister.

Sheetrit was named as a temporary replacement for Ramon on August 23. However, the duration of this appointment cannot exceed three months according to the Basic Law on the Government.

In a legal opinion written by Mazuz a year ago, commenting on Olmert's status as a temporary replacement of Benjamin Netanyahu at the Treasury, the attorney general wrote that the temporary post could not be extended beyond the three-month limit.

Mazuz also wrote that the prime minister was not entitled to appoint a different person as a temporary replacement, nor could he hold the portfolio as a caretaker.

The implication of such a legal opinion is that the government will have to appoint a permanent minister over the Justice Ministry after the three-month period ends.

Upon his appointment as acting justice minister, Sheetrit said he would gladly leave the post in favor of Ramon, if he is acquitted. Sheetrit added that even if he is appointed permanently to the post, he would relinquish it if Ramon comes back.

A similar announcement was made on Monday by Sheetrit's office.

However, sources close to the acting justice minister said he had not been approached by Olmert, and it is not known whether Olmert intends to give Sheetrit the post permanently.

The State's betrayal of its citizens

2006-11-20T08:45:00.000-02:00

The day Gaydamak reaps the harvest
Ha'aretz, November 20, 2006
By Daniel Ben Simon

From now on let every Hebrew mother and every Hebrew father know that the state of Israel has become a holding company. The sovereignty for which Jews longed for hundreds of years and for which generations of Israelis have struggled, has begun to take on the character of a Jewish village. In recent years, it has shed its responsibility for the welfare of its residents and transferred it to private bodies.

The residents of the North know this very well. In the summer, they became aware of the new substitutes for the state. In the most difficult hours there was no state official to heed their calls for help. Tens of thousands held out during the war thanks to dozens of private companies and voluntary organizations that provided food, drink, medicines, blankets, sweets, buses and money, as well as attention and sympathy.

The residents of Kiryat Malachi also know this. The city, which is a 30-minute drive from the center of the country, has known only one growth industry over the past decade: from zero soup kitchens a few years ago, it now has five and counting. Hundreds of families are receiving hot meals once a day thanks to voluntary organizations and commercial enterprises. The existence of almost the entire city depends on contributions, grants and charity. Under the state's stewardship, Kiryat Malachi, a significant city in Israel, home of its president and 20,000 other residents, has become one big soup kitchen. The state has left the arena.

Now comes Sderot to join the circle of communities dependent on the goodwill of others. For years its residents bewailed their poverty and distress. Political leaders took advantage of their innocence to win their votes. They promised industry, livelihood and security before the elections, and disappeared after them. Over the past five years, since the first volley of Qassams, the residents have hoped to receive some protection from the state. With time and more volleys, the protection wore down along with faith in the country. But the rockets did do one good thing for Sderot that its 50 years of existence did not manage to do: they opened the hearts of philanthropists, companies, organizations, better-off communities and of ordinary people who wanted to ease the residents' plight.

In the switching of roles between the state and the philanthropists, one lord stands out above the rest. It does not matter who Arcadi Gaydamak is and his motives are not important. It does not matter what he is aiming for and how he made his money; the worrisome fact is that in abdicating its responsibility, the state has turned this man into one of the most influential individuals in the country.

He is the true welfare minister where there is no welfare minister. The great extent of his generosity has outstripped that of the Diaspora Jews, high-tech tycoons, wealthy brokers, banking chiefs, the heads of the insurance companies and all the bodies that have recently entered into the vacuum created by the state.

The sight of the buses that took the children from Sderot on vacation to Eilat should have all of us in a panic. Hundreds of children were pushed by their parents to grab an empty seat on the buses the lord brought to their town. Those who did not get on wept bitterly.

How ironic that the man who could have granted a weekend, or two or three, of fun for the bombarded children of Sderot is a Sderot resident himself, and by coincidence also Israel's defense minister. Is it a problem for the Defense Ministry to organize 100 buses, or even 1,000 buses? Is it a problem for the defense minister, who controls more than NIS 50 billion, to organize a few hundred thousand shekels for this purpose? It is hardly the monetary equivalent of a few cluster bombs out of about a million we left in southern Lebanon as a vengeful souvenir of the failed war. Amir Peretz, who preached involvement of the state in the welfare of its weaker segments, also bears the burden of responsibility for the culture of the lords establishing itself in our lives.

Therefore, let no Hebrew mother nor Hebrew father be surprised if in a few years, Gaydamak takes advantage of the state's betrayal of its citizens to reap the profits of his philanthropy business. Let no one in Israel be surprised that during elections, there will be masses who will want to reward him for his great generosity - whether as president, prime minister, or party chief. It does not matter whether he knows Hebrew or not. It does not matter who his backers are. On the day the Israelis conclude that their country has become a village, they will pave the way for the famed philanthropist to stand at its head.

Former PLO terrorist visits Flatbush yeshiva

2006-11-09T16:12:00.000-02:00

Bethlehem’s Disciple Of Peace
Walid Shoebat, a onetime PLO terrorist, brings message of Jewish pride to Brooklyn yeshiva.
Steve Lipman - Staff Writer, The Jewish Week, November 10, 2006

The message delivered to a group of Jewish teens at the Yeshivah of Flatbush one afternoon this week was typical: study Torah, be proud Jews, speak up for Israel.

But the messenger was a little unusual.

Walid Shoebat was for several years, as he introduced himself to 500 day school students, “a Palestinian terrorist.”

A native of the West Bank town of Bethlehem, a Muslim by birth, a product of Palestinian schools that taught the inherent inferiority of Jews, he threw stones at Israelis, severely beat an Israeli soldier, threw a bomb atop a Bank Leumi in Israel and later served as a Palestinian activist in the United States.

Then he underwent a rare spiritual turnabout more than a decade ago, renouncing violence, embracing Christianity and touring the United States to preach his message of tolerance to Jewish and Christian audiences.

“What made you change?” asked one Yeshivah of Flatbush student, junior Joshua Twito, at the start of Shoebat’s presentation.

Over the next two-plus hours, Shoebat answered that question.

With graying hair and a middle-aged paunch, dressed in an open-collar beige shirt and brown jacket, alternating between shouts and whispers, quoting the Quran and Hebrew scriptures, Shoebat described how he tried to convert his Christian wife to Islam; how he read the Jewish Bible and the New Testament in order to find unfavorable depictions of the Jews; how he came away convinced that his Muslim upbringing had lied about Jews and Judaism and how he has spent the last decade in synagogues, churches and university auditoriums.

And he explained why.

“I fell in love with the Tanach,” he said, using the Hebrew acronym for the entire Jewish scripture. “I fell in love with Jewish heritage. I fell in love with Jewish art.

“I wanted,” he said, “to fight the Hamans of the world.”

Shoebat said he found enough truth in the New Testament to accept Christianity, but he became a devotee of Judaism, studying Jewish philosophy and watching tapes of “Fiddler on the Roof” more than 350 times.

Shoebat is now a U.S. citizen.

He is vague about his age (“middle 40s”), the number of years he has lived in the U.S. (“about 25”) and the location of his home (somewhere in California, under an assumed name). Shoebat travels with no apparent security detail or accompaniment, but is understandably circumspect about his whereabouts and travels. He refers in his writings to threats against his safety but offers no details.

With angry, still-Muslim relatives in the West Bank, too much openness about his life “is very dangerous to your health,” he said.

“I lost my family, my friends, my community, my culture, my money and my land,” he wrote in “Why I Left Jihad,” his 2005 book (Top Executive Media) that is part autobiography, part political polemic, part religious tract. “I am branded as a traitor by Arab Christians, by my own family and by the Muslims in my community.

“I choose to speak out because I know what is wrong,” he wrote.

“The Israeli Arab conflict is not about geography but about Jew hatred,” Shoebat states on the Web site (www.shoebat.com) of the foundation he established to further his work.

“The problem” in the Middle East “is not an issue of land,” he said at the Yeshivah of Flatbush. “It’s not an issue of occupation [of Arab lands by Israel]. It’s an issue of the occupation of minds of millions of Muslims.”

In other words, the teachings of the Quran, that “infidels” or individuals who leave Islam should be killed.

“What part of ‘kill’ doesn’t the West understand?” Shoebat asked rhetorically. “There are no allegories in the Koran.”

One member of the audience asked Shoebat if he could have reached his accommodating positions about Jews and Israel if he had remained a Muslim.

No, Shoebat said. “You don’t see the word ‘love’ in the Koran. It would have been impossible for me.”

Shoebat said he usually encounters more approval among Christian audiences than among Jewish, often liberal Jewish, audiences.

They are suspicious of him as a self-declared onetime terrorist, as an up-front Evangelical Christian, as the putative recipient of financial support from sympathetic Jews.

Yes, he was a terrorist.

Yes, he is a Christian.

No, he doesn’t receive any money from Jewish organizations, he said.

“All the opposition I got was from Jews,” Shoebat said, especially from Jews who favored the land-for-peace formula of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

“Giving land goes against the will of the God of Israel,” he said. “Giving land creates confidence for the enemy.”

Shoebat said he has met few like-minded Arab Muslims, and has not been able to change any minds.

“I am always asked, ‘How come you don’t speak to the Arabs?’” he said. “I answer, ‘It doesn’t work that way. You don’t go planting seeds on stones.’” Most Muslim Arabs, “blinded” by years of anti-Semitic teachings in schools and mosques, will not listen, he said.

“Our job is to change the Jews and the Americans,” Shoebat said.

Rabbi Avner Taler, faculty adviser of the Yeshivah of Flatbush Israel Awareness Committee and chair of the school’s Tanach Department, said the yeshiva brought Shoebat as a speaker to “present a person who’s been on the other side” of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. “He’s a chiddush [a new twist]. He presents a point of view that the kids don’t hear much.”

The program was brought to the Yeshivah of Flatbush through the efforts of alumnus Joey Sasson, who had heard Shoebat speak and felt his message was important for the Jewish community to hear. Sasson contacted YOF faculty member Rachel Winkler and her husband Nachum, who then served as liaisons in making the arrangements for the interaction between students and Shoebat and the community program later that night.

Joshua Twito, whose Israeli-born father lost a cousin in a terrorist attack near Beersheva about two years ago, said he was initially skeptical about hearing Shoebat. “We have the once-a-terrorist, always-a-terrorist mentality,” he said.

“He’s good,” Twito said afterwards. “He addressed the issues in a way that is conducive to the situation.” That is, Shoebat deals with anti-Semitism in Arabic and Islamic society.

But Twito said he left with no more optimism after listening to Shoebat.

“There’s only one of him,” he said.

Military foul-ups and the political echelons

2006-11-09T11:00:00.000-02:00

'Strategic corporal' is in charge
Ha'aretz, Thursday, November 9, 2006

By Aluf Benn

The series of military foul-ups that has not stopped since the war in Lebanon, and reached a peak yesterday with the deadly shelling in Beit Hanun, is an indication that something is amiss in the political echelon's supervision over the Israel Defense Forces.

Time after time, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz have been forced "to express regret" for indiscriminate strikes on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, or dangerous friction between the Israel Air Force and German naval vessels off the Lebanese coast.

The defense minister's aides explain that in many instances, Peretz functions as a moderating influence by blocking IDF operational proposals and demonstrating willingness to take risks to alleviate the distress of the Palestinians. According to the aides, however, Peretz does not approve every act of shelling by IDF artillery units or every scrambling of IAF aircraft. His job, they say, is to determine policy.

One can understand this, but the outcome is that practical policy is being determined and implemented by the commander of the artillery battery, the officer in the field or an even lower-ranking military official. Ehud Barak called this phenomenon "the strategic corporal," whose shortcomings could ignite the entire Middle East.

Olmert and Peretz hurry to take responsibility, apologize and promise investigations and conclusions; but this is not enough. It would be best if they were to first think of the strategic objectives, and then formulate Israel's security policy and the operational directives for the IDF.

The problem is that it is difficult to identify such a strategy when one is so wrapped up in the ever-increasing frustration from the Qassam rocket fire. Olmert was questioned last week during a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the situation in Gaza and the Qassam rocket fire.

Customarily, the right-wing MKs blamed it all on the disengagement, to which Olmert replied: "There is unprecedented international consensus for our actions. Three hundred terrorists were killed, and no one in the international community said a word. One can rant and rave and shout, but if we act wisely, we will be able to maintain our achievements and strike at more and more terrorists."

When national strategy boils down to counting the bodies of the enemy, it is a sure sign of failure. Olmert makes do with the world's silence, and fails to explain the objective of the IDF's operations in Gaza beyond the killing of "more and more terrorists."

If the prime minister's political objective is the toppling of the Hamas government, he would have been better off keeping a closer eye on the military and suspending the use of high-risk measures such as artillery fire on the eve of his trip to Washington, while Palestinian Authority officials negotiated replacing the Hamas government with a government of "technocrats."

But Olmert allowed the middle ranks of the army to dictate the shelling policy, and the "strategic corporal," or the artillery battery's faulty computer, have given the Hamas government a few more months in office.

David Grossman: Squandering its miracle

2006-11-05T20:16:00.001-02:00

David Grossman's speech at the Rabin memorial
Ha'aretz, November5, 2006

The annual memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin is the moment when we pause for a while to remember Rabin the man, the leader. And we also take a look at ourselves, at Israeli society, its leadership, the national mood, the state of the peace process, at ourselves as individuals in the face of national events.

It is not easy to take a look at ourselves this year. There was a war, and Israel flexed its massive military muscle, but also exposed Israel's fragility. We discovered that our military might ultimately cannot be the only guarantee of our existence. Primarily, we have found that the crisis Israel is experiencing is far deeper than we had feared, in almost every way.

I am speaking here tonight as a person whose love for the land is overwhelming and complex, and yet it is unequivocal, and as one whose continuous covenant with the land has turned his personal calamity into a covenant of blood.
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I am totally secular, and yet in my eyes the establishment and the very existence of the State of Israel is a miracle of sorts that happened to us as a nation - a political, national, human miracle.

I do not forget this for a single moment. Even when many things in the reality of our lives enrage and depress me, even when the miracle is broken down to routine and wretchedness, to corruption and cynicism, even when reality seems like nothing but a poor parody of this miracle, I always remember. And with these feelings, I address you tonight.

"Behold land, for we hath squandered," wrote the poet Saul Tchernikovsky in Tel Aviv in 1938. He lamented the burial of our young again and again in the soil of the Land of Israel. The death of young people is a horrible, ghastly waste.

But no less dreadful is the sense that for many years, the State of Israel has been squandering, not only the lives of its sons, but also its miracle; that grand and rare opportunity that history bestowed upon it, the opportunity to establish here a state that is efficient, democratic, which abides by Jewish and universal values; a state that would be a national home and haven, but not only a haven, also a place that would offer a new meaning to Jewish existence; a state that holds as an integral and essential part of its Jewish identity and its Jewish ethos, the observance of full equality and respect for its non-Jewish citizens.

Look at what befell us. Look what befell the young, bold, passionate country we had here, and how, as if it had undergone a quickened ageing process, Israel lurched from infancy and youth to a perpetual state of gripe, weakness and sourness.

How did this happen? When did we lose even the hope that we would eventually be able to live a different, better life? Moreover, how do we continue to watch from the side as though hypnotized by the insanity, rudeness, violence and racism that has overtaken our home?

And I ask you: How could it be that a people with such powers of creativity, renewal and vivacity as ours, a people that knew how to rise from the ashes time and again, finds itself today, despite its great military might, at such a state of laxity and inanity, a state where it is the victim once more, but this time its own victim, of its anxieties, its short-sightedness.

One of the most difficult outcomes of the recent war is the heightened realization that at this time there is no king in Israel, that our leadership is hollow. Our military and political leadership is hollow. I am not even talking about the obvious blunders in running the war, of the collapse of the home front, nor of the large-scale and small-time corruption.

I am talking about the fact that the people leading Israel today are unable to contact Israelis to their identity. Certainly not with the healthy, vitalizing and productive areas of this identity, with those areas of identity and memory and fundamental values that would give us hope and strength, that would be the antidote to the waning of mutual trust, of the bonds to the land, that would give some meaning to the exhausting and despairing struggle for existence.

The fundamental characteristics of the current Israeli leadership are primarily anxiety and intimidation, of the charade of power, the wink of the dirty deal, of selling out our most prized possessions. In this sense they are not true leaders, certainly they are not the leaders of a people in such a complicated position that has lost the way it so desperately needs. Sometimes it seems that the sound box of their self-importance, of their memories of history, of their vision, of what they really care for, exist only in the miniscule space between two headlines of a newspaper or between two investigations by the attorney general.

Look at those who lead us. Not all of them, of course, but many among them. Behold their petrified, suspicious, sweaty conduct. The conduct of advocates and scoundrels. It is preposterous to expect to hear wisdom emerge from them, that some vision or even just an original, truly creative, bold and ingenuous idea would emanate from them.

When was the last time a prime minister formulated or took a step that could open up a new horizon for Israelis, for a better future? When did he initiate a social or cultural or ideological move, instead of merely reacting feverishly to moves forced upon him by others?

Mister Prime Minister, I am not saying these words out of feelings of rage or revenge. I have waited long enough to avoid responding on impulse. You will not be able to dismiss my words tonight by saying a grieving man cannot be judged. Certainly I am grieving, but I am more pained than angry. This country and what you and your friends are doing to it pains me.

Trust me, your success is important to me, because the future of all of us depends on our ability to act. Yitzhak Rabin took the road of peace with the Palestinians, not because he possessed great affection for them or their leaders. Even then, as you recall, common belief was that we had no partner and we had nothing to discuss with them.

Rabin decided to act, because he discerned very wisely that Israeli society would not be able to sustain itself endlessly in a state of an unresolved conflict. He realized long before many others that life in a climate of violence, occupation, terror, anxiety and hopelessness, extracts a price Israel cannot afford. This is all relevant today, even more so. We will soon talk about the partner that we do or do not have, but before that, let us take a look at ourselves.

We have been living in this struggle for more than 100 years. We, the citizens of this conflict, have been born into war and raised in it, and in a certain sense indoctrinated by it. Maybe this is why we sometimes think that this madness in which we live for over 100 years is the only real thing, the only life for us, and that we do not have the option or even the right to aspire for a different life.

By our sword we shall live and by our sword we shall die and the sword shall devour forever. Maybe this would explain the indifference with which we accept the utter failure of the peace process, a failure that has lasted for years and claims more and more victims.

This could explain also the lack of reaction by most of us to the harsh blow to democracy caused by the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as a senior minister with the support of the Labor Party - the appointment of a habitual pyromaniac as director of the nation's firefighters.

And these are partly the cause of Israel's quick descent into the heartless, essentially brutal treatment of its poor and suffering. This indifference to the fate of the hungry, the elderly, the sick and the disabled, all those who are weak, this equanimity of the State of Israel in the face of human trafficking or the appalling employment conditions of our foreign workers, which border on slavery, to the deeply ingrained institutionalized racism against the Arab minority.

When this takes place here so naturally, without shock, without protest, as though it were obvious, that we would never be able to get the wheel back on track, when all of this takes place, I begin to fear that even if peace were to arrive tomorrow, and even if we ever regained some normalcy, we may have lost our chance for full recovery.

The calamity that struck my family and myself with the falling of our son, Uri, does not grant me any additional rights in the public discourse, but I believe that the experience of facing death and the loss brings with it a sobriety and lucidity, at least regarding the distinction between the important and the unimportant, between the attainable and the unattainable.

Any reasonable person in Israel, and I will say in Palestine too, knows exactly the outline of a possible solution to the conflict between the two peoples. Any reasonable person here and over there knows deep in their heart the difference between dreams and the heart's desire, between what is possible and what is not possible by the conclusion of negotiations. Anyone who does not know, who refuses to acknowledge this, is already not a partner, be he Jew or Arab, is entrapped in his hermetic fanaticism, and is therefore not a partner.

Let us take a look at those who are meant to be our partners. The Palestinians have elected Hamas to lead them, Hamas who refuses to negotiate with us, refuses even to recognize us. What can be done in such a position? Keep strangling them more and more, keep mowing down hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are innocent civilians like us? Kill them and get killed for all eternity?

Turn to the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert, address them over the heads of Hamas, appeal to their moderates, those who like you and I oppose Hamas and its ways, turn to the Palestinian people, speak to their deep grief and wounds, acknowledge their ongoing suffering.

Nothing would be taken away from you or Israel's standing in future negotiations. Our hearts will only open up to one another slightly, and this has a tremendous power, the power of a force majeur. The power of simple human compassion, particularly in this a state of deadlock and dread. Just once, look at them not through the sights of a gun, and not behind a closed roadblock. You will see there a people that is tortured no less than us. An oppressed, occupied people bereft of hope.

Certainly, the Palestinians are also to blame for the impasse, certainly they played their role in the failure of the peace process. But take a look at them from a different perspective, not only at the radicals in their midst, not only at those who share interests with our own radicals. Take a look at the overwhelming majority of this miserable people, whose fate is entangled with our own, whether we like it or not.

Go to the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert, do not search all the time for reasons for not to talk to them. You backed down on the unilateral convergence, and that's a good thing, but do not leave a vacuum. It will be occupied instantly with violence, destruction. Talk to them, make them an offer their moderates can accept. They argue far more than we are shown in the media. Make them an offer so that they are forced to choose whether they accept it, or whether they prefer to remain hostage to fanatical Islam.

Approach them with the bravest and most serious plan Israel can offer. With the offer than any reasonable Palestinian and Israeli knows is the boundary of their refusal and our concession. There is no time. Should you delay, in a short while we will look back with longing at the amateur Palestinian terror. We will hit our heads and yell at our failure to exercise all of our mental flexibility, all of the Israeli ingenuity to uproot our enemies from their self-entrapment. We have no choice and they have no choice. And a peace of no choice should be approached with the same determination and creativity as one approaches a war of no choice. And those who believe we do have a choice, or that time is on our side do not comprehend the deeply dangerous processes already in motion.

Maybe, Mr. Prime Minister, you need to be reminded, that if an Arab leader is sending a peace signal, be it the slightest and most hesitant, you must accept it, you must test immediately its sincerity and seriousness. You do not have the moral right not to respond.

You owe it to those whom you would ask to sacrifice their lives should another war break out. Therefore, if President Assad says that Syria wants peace, even if you don't believe him, and we are all suspicious of him, you must offer to meet him that same day.

Don't wait a single day. When you launched the last war you did not even wait one hour. You charged with full force, with the complete arsenal, with the full power of destruction. Why, when a glimmer of peace surfaces, must you reject it immediately, dissolve it? What have you got to lose? Are you suspicious of it? Go and offer him such terms that would expose his schemes. Offer him a peace process that would last over several years, and only at its conclusion, and provided he meets all the conditions and restrictions, will he get back the Golan. Commit him to a prolonged process, act so that his people also become aware of this possibility. Help the moderates, who must exist there as well. Try to shape reality. Not only serve as its collaborator. This is what you were elected to do.

Certainly, not all depends on our actions. There are major powers active in our region and in the world. Some, like Iran, like radical Islam, seek our doom and despite that, so much depends on what we do, on what we become.

Disagreements today between right and left are not that significant. The vast majority of Israel's citizens understand this already, and know what the outline for the resolution of the conflict would look like. Most of us understand, therefore, that the land would be divided, that a Palestinian state would be established.

Why, then, do we keep exhausting ourselves with the internal bickering that has gone on for 40 years? Why does our political leadership continue to reflect the position of the radicals and not that held by the majority of the public? It is better to reach national consensus before circumstances or God forbid another war force us to reach it. If we do it, we would save ourselves years of decline and error, years when we will cry time and again: "Behold land, for we hath squandered."

From where I stand right now, I beseech, I call on all those who listen, the young who came back from the war, who know they are the ones to be called upon to pay the price of the next war, on citizens, Jew and Arab, people on the right and the left, the secular, the religious, stop for a moment, take a look into the abyss. Think of how close we are to losing all that we have created here. Ask yourselves if this is not the time to get a grip

Once a chained woman, always a chained woman..

2006-11-05T20:13:00.001-02:00

Rabbis cancel conference on 'chained women'
Ha'aretz, November 5, 2006

By Amiram Barkat

Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar last week canceled the conference on women whose husbands refuse to grant them a divorce (agunot), which was due to take place in Jerusalem on Tuesday, at the order of ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

Amar had obtained Elyashiv's approval for the holding the Chief Rabbinate's first conference on this issue. However, ultra-Orthodox figures in the Rabbinic Courts persuaded Elyashiv to withdraw his approval.

Dozens of chief rabbis, rabbinic court heads and rabbinic judges from the Diaspora had been invited to the conference, and some have already arrived in Israel.

Rabbi Amar had initiated the project to find ways of helping women whose husbands refuse to divorce them, and women who cannot divorce because their husbands are missing and not proven dead. Conference participants were to debate whether to impose economic and social sanctions on divorce objectors without infringing on halakhic principles.

Three months ago, Amar persuaded the Haredi sage Elyashiv to approve the conference. Elyashiv conditioned his consent on banning women from the conference.

Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, head of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women's Status in the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University, was shocked by the decision to cancel the conference, she told Haaretz, although she doubted it would be a turning point in the rabbinical courts' treatment of women. "The conference's importance was in its existence - and canceling it indicates more than anything else the sorry state of Orthodox Judaism, which cannot deal with such a basic and humane issue," she said.

Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, the director general of Israel's rabbinical courts, who coordinated the preparations for the conference, was also displeased by the conference's cancelation. "It was a blessed initiative. It's sad that months of efforts will be lost," Ben-Dahan said.

He said he did not know who caused the conference's cancelation and why. However, Haaretz has learned that it was dictated by rabbinic court figures, who object to the efforts to improve the circumstances of women who cannot get a divorce. Supreme Rabbinical Court judges Rabbi Hagai Izirer and Rabbi Avraham Sherman both advocate strengthening the husband's and rabbinical court's status in divorce cases. Izirer even supports authorizing the rabbinical court to cancel a divorce. Thus children born to a woman after she has divorced could turn, retroactively, into bastards.

Izirer and Sherman spearheaded a campaign to pressure Diaspora rabbis to refuse the invitation to the conference.

Elyashiv's consultant, Haim Cohen, is also believed to have had a part in changing the rabbi's mind.

Another snafu during the Second Lebanon War

2006-11-03T05:52:00.000-02:00

Key data withheld from army officers during Lebanon war
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents, November 3, 2006

Senior Northern Command and Division 91 officers were not privy to essential intelligence information regarding Hezbollah's deployment prior to the second Lebanon War.

The intelligence, which was available to the Israel Defense Forces, included accurate information about the locations of Hezbollah bunkers and positions, as well as the internal structure of such positions.

The officers were aware that such information existed, but were prevented from accessing it by the Intelligence Directorate's Committee on Source Security, arguing that the information was secret. Military Intelligence decided that the information would only be made available in the event of a war.

Officers' demands to gain access to information on routine security preparations that could counter Hezbollah raids inside the border fence were also rejected, and led to repeated and heated arguments among various units.

The information on Hezbollah positions was also withheld from the units during the war itself. Although there was a plan to transfer the data, which was stored in sealed boxes, to relevant units during a war, it was not carried out in time.

The initial boxes of intelligence reached the division command only a week after the initial encounter between an elite IDF unit and Hezbollah guerrillas inside a bunker (on July 19). But even then, it was difficult to adapt the intelligence to the immediate needs of the unit fighting there.

Ruthie - the giraffe - looking for a mate...

2006-11-02T11:49:00.000-02:00

Qalqilya singleton looking for Israeli stud
Yediot, Ronny Shaked Published: 11.02.06, 14:18

Ruthie the giraffe has been wandering around with a broken heart ever since her mate died in 2002. The Ramat Gan Safari is full of eager candidates but due to administrative squabbling poor Ruthie is still waiting

They say it's hard to find a good man. Apparently it's even more difficult to find a good giraffe. Just ask Ruthie, the Qalqilya Zoo's resident female giraffe.

"I don't know who named her Ruthie," said chief veterinarian Sami Hadjar, "I got her six-seven years ago. She was born in 1995, we paid

15,000 dollars to bring here from South Africa. We also brought her a mate, named Brownie."

But then, at the height of the Intifada in April 2002 the IDF launched operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank. Brownie panicked from the noise and started running around his cage hysterically, eventually banging his head on a metal rod and collapsing. "When we came to the zoo the next afternoon we found Brownie dead and Ruthie standing next to him, sad," said Hadjar.

he Qalqilya Zoo was given to the Palestinians by the Civil Administration in the late 1970's and since its establishment maintained good relations with its Israli counterparts, especially the Ramat-Gan Safari. However since the breakout of the Intifada cooperation between the establishments has declined.

"An adult giraffe costs 20,000 dollars," says Hadjar, at a loss for how to cheer Ruthie up, "who has that kind of money these days? So I called the Ramat-Gan Safari and they said 'sure, no problem, send Ruthie over for a few months, our males will know what to do.' But their condition was that they weren't to be held responsible if Ruthie became ill. We said no and asked to bring one of their giraffes here, they said no."

And so for now Ruthie must wait alone, anyone who happens to know a nice, well-read single male giraffe (no smokers please) who's ready to settle down and likes sunsets and Acacia leaves please contact the Qalqilya zoo for a shiduch.

Our legal mess - background

2006-10-20T11:16:00.000-02:00

The collapse of Israel's legal system
Daniel Doron, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 27, 2006

The recent transition at Israel's Supreme Court has generated kudos for its outgoing president Justice Aharon Barak, a legal genius, it is said. But even among those praising him one could hear voices warning of a crisis that threatens the viability of the legal system he led.
As in all our public systems, too ambitious an agenda, too many tasks (many conflicting) and the consequent dependence on huge inefficient, wasteful and sometimes corrupt bureaucracies lead to disarray. Unfortunately, our legal mandarins took ages to recognize the crisis, either because they are so preoccupied with mending the world or are blinded by hubris. They are now moving so slowly to address the crisis that it is becoming acute.
If you sue someone for breaking a contract or inflicting harm, you should prepare for years of litigation at a huge cost. If you win, the judgment is often unenforceable. Excessive legislation, judgments that encourage further litigation and gross inefficiency block the legal system with millions of cases. Delay in delivering justice increases contempt for the law and encourages lawlessness. Lawyers make a mint from this and have no incentive to reform. The economy, however, is paying heavily in damages and risk premiums.
It is not only justice Barak's insistence that everything is judicable and that practically everyone is entitled to standing on any matter that swamped the courts with cases submitted by a people that is already too litigious. The root of the problem is in our legal elite's Greco-Christian legal philosophy (reinvigorated during the Enlightenment and given populist sanction by The French Revolution) that conceives of human rights in vague Platonic abstractions. It then tries to concretize and enforce these abstractions through the coercive instruments of the state.
But "The State's" power rests on politics. It therefore represents not a mythical "common interest" (mythical because communities are marked by their different interests - hence politics - rather than by "communality") but mostly particular, vested interests. These tend to encroach on individual rights. Therefore courts are asked to intervene so often to protect them.
DESPITE THEIR protestations our jurists seem to confuse the enforcement of law with doing justice. Barak allowed judges to interpret the meaning of contracts rather than stick to their language, presumably because such interpretation would be more "just." But this only increased uncertainty and confusion at great economic cost.
Moreover, under the guise of interpreting the basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty judges often promote a private conception of justice. Since all Jews, and especially our Knesset members, are equally eager to pursue justice, small wonder that our legislators and our Justice Ministry enact laws in quantities that no sane society or its legal system can absorb or enforce.
Our jurists also tend to believe that laws can cure all of society's ills. Little thought is given to their suitability to their purpose, to their unintended consequences and to whether they can be enforced economically and evenly. Cost and practicality are generally considered vulgar when it comes to the pursuit of justice.
The abstract human rights that our jurists adore are a chimera really. Governments have habitually interpreted and perverted such rights as those embodied in the Law on Human Dignity and Liberty. Only property rights can give real substance to human rights by granting individuals and their voluntary associations economic power to resist the law's delay and the insolence of office.
UNFORTUNATELY, our legal system either neglects or is contemptuous of concrete property rights, while adulating an ill defined abstract notion of "equality." The remarkable framers of the US constitution (inspired in part by the Jewish tradition that was embodied in the institution of the Jubilee, and by our sages insistence that "a poor man is like a dead man" because he lacked the real rights granted by property) wisely considered property rights as the most fundamental, concrete right on which all other rights must rest. For only in economic prosperity can a civil society fashion and maintain the voluntary associations that counterbalance the coercive power of The State, so readily abused.
This is why the American framers, especially James Madison insisted that a society that wants to protect freedom of choice must oppose a mechanical conception of equality (a Sodom's Bed really) and nurture a creative inequality and its outcome: property rights.
Such protection, Madison insisted, is "the first object of government."
Justice Barak and his esteemed colleagues do of course acknowledge the importance of property rights. But Barak considers them as deriving from "the central" abstract right of "Human Dignity and Liberty." Our basic law does not, Barak affirms, "define such a right" as property rights. Therefore the protection of such rights is dependent on judges who are mostly hostile to them and to competition. Many judges also lack the economic understanding to realize that without firm property rights and competition there can be no market exchange or a useful mechanism of pricing, the two essential attributes of a modern economy. Worse, most are infected with the socialist Zionist ethos that considered profit exploitation and property iniquitous. They are therefore not eager to protect such rights.
It will take a great educational effort to change these basic attitudes that made Israel economically lame. Meanwhile there are several managerial and procedural reforms that can be pursued to make our legal system a bit more efficient.
But first we must acknowledge that the crisis is severe and costly.
Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

The state of justice in Israel....

2006-10-17T15:09:00.000-02:00

2 former justice ministers stand trial
JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 17, 2006
MK Tzahi Hanegbi "saw the nomination of Likud members for positions in the service of the state in a positive light," his lawyer said on Tuesday, responding to charges that he had inappropriately appointed members of the Likud to the Environment Ministry while serving as minister.
According to Hanegbi's lawyer, "he reasoned that there was nothing wrong with this action, provided that the professional appointment system in the Environment Ministry made its own professional considerations."
Hanegbi was one of two former justice ministers on trial on Tuesday, as the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court reviewed evidence in the case against Haim Ramon and heard the testimony of the young woman accusing him of sexual harassment.
Ramon resigned from his post as justice minister some three months ago after a female soldier who had worked in his office complained that he had tried by force to kiss her.
Meanwhile, Hanegbi's trial commenced in the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court with the reading of his indictment for fraud, breach of trust, election bribery, attempting to influence a voter, perjury and making a false oath.
The events referred to in the indictment occurred between March 7, 2001, and February 27, 2003, when Hanegbi served as minister of the environment. He was charged with appointing 49 workers to the Environment Ministry and another 20, 'who belonged to the Likud Central Committee or their relatives, and several others who were close to the minister personally,'to jobs in bodies connected to the ministry.
Hanegbi currently serves as chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

A Special Place in Hell

2006-10-14T18:02:00.000-02:00

Peace Never
By Bradley Burston, Haaretz, October 14, 2006

A little over 40 years ago, in another one-issue corner of the world, in another place that was too stiflingly hot, too historically traumatized, too politically paralytic to comfortably support human life, it was the question of racial segregation that occupied every cell of the resident subconscious.

So overwhelming was the issue, that protest signs and lapel buttons for opposing sides needed bear no more than a single word. For civil rights activists, Now was more than enough. For segregationists, it was Never.

If the past week is any indication, we here in the Holy Land can now make do with even less. At this point, a little under 40 years since the war many believed would be the Mideast conflict to end all Mideast conflicts, Never appears to be the only button left.

Unlike its well-established dovish counterpart, the Peace Never movement does not have mailing lists, officers and offices, a familiar logo, researchers, a website.

Nonetheless, Peace Never can boast wide support on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

Given the bleak diplomatic and security landscape, it is safe to say, and easy to comprehend, that sizable numbers of onetime believers in peace, among them adherents to Peace Now, have tacitly decamped to Peace Never.

For many, the allegiance to Peace Never is nothing new. For some, Jew and Arab alike, secular intellectuals, religious fundamentalists, white collar or blue, Diaspora or domestic, the ideology of Peace Never is a congenital given: There can never be peace between Jews and Arabs in historical Palestine, and thus there never will be.

For others, among them, politicians, settlement activists and real estate developers, Peace Never serves an additional, functional role. For them, Peace Never means no conceivable need for future concessions. Peace Never assures that life can go on as it is, forever.

In a wider sense, there has always been something about Peace Never that appeals to Israelis and Palestinians both. Something about Peace Never makes many on both sides feel righteous, empowered, it gives them a stronger sense of self, of belonging, of historic mission, of place. It is not only the primordial pleasure inherent in the understanding that Real Men Never Make Peace. After all, women are very well represented among the fanatics on both sides.

The appeal also comes from this firm belief: If our side says Never long enough, the other side will eventually cave, and our side will be the winner who takes all.

On the Palestinian side, the primary exponent of the Peace Never movement is currently Ismail Haniyeh. In a speech that saw him faint from the combined effects of a Ramadan fast and the Gaza City heat, Haniyeh felt it so crucial to stress that Hamas would not recognize Israel, that he said it three times in succession.

On the Israeli side, the sudden leader of Peace Never is none other than the Chameleon of Cremieux Street. It was only two months ago that Ehud Olmert predicted that Israel would leverage a victory in the Lebanon war into a further withdrawal from the West Bank. By this week, his transformation was such that the prime minister was talking partnership with Avigdor Lieberman, perhaps the standout segregationist of the Israeli far-right.

Does the popularity of Peace Never mean that there will never be peace? Ironically, no. Just listen to Hamas' purported chief rejectionist, Khaled Meshal, quoted this week as saying he could live with a Palestine along the pre-1967 war borders. Lieberman, also, has been expansive in drawing possible lines for separate states for Israel and Palestine.

In the interim, though, who can blame the convert to Peace Never? How much can you expect believers in peace to take?

Our militaries, Palestinian and Israeli, have beaten peace to a pulp. Year after year, we cluster bomb it from the air, suicide bomb it from buses, pick it off with sniper rifles, pulverize it with Qassam after Katyusha after Fajr after Zelzal. We settle it to death. We strangle it with walls, we crush it with bulldozers, we smother it by refusing to recognize the other side, talk to the other side, budge from our mental bunkers.

You can't blame many believers in peace for giving in and going to Peace Never.

How many years can you be expected to hold your breath, waiting for change, demonstrating for change, voting for change?

How many peace plans can you watch go unaddressed?
How many special envoys, Secretaries of State, Gulf state princes, can you watch leave with that same look on their face?
How much fury can you swallow?
How much disheartening can you stand?
How many generations have been raised hoping that the next will be the first not to go to war?

How many years can you hold your breath?

Small is beautiful - but who will listen?

2006-10-12T13:29:00.000-02:00

A small Jerusalem is better
Haaretz, October 11, 2006
By Moshe Amirav

On October 17, the National Council for Planning and Construction is supposed to discuss a new plan that will change the face of Israel's capital. At issue is the construction of 20,000 residential units west of Jerusalem, which will dramatically change the direction of the city's expansion and will weaken it economically and politically.

The public uproar surrounding the new plan, which has led to the submission of 15,000 objections, stems from fear that the planning mistake of the 1970s is repeating itself. At that time, Israel invested huge sums in the construction of about 40,000 residential units in East Jerusalem. These turned into seven neighborhoods, including Ramot, Gilo and Pisgat Ze'ev, which today house about 180,000 Jewish residents.

The plan, which was initiated by Golda Meir's government in order to "strengthen the capital," was severely criticized by all the experts. Thirty years later, its destructive consequences have become evident: From a compact city of 37 square kilometers, Jerusalem has turned into a huge metropolis that covers 120 square kilometers, twice as large as the area of Tel Aviv and Haifa combined. Instead of channeling government investments into infrastructure, industry and tourism, they were channeled into the construction of these neighborhoods, which led to the flight of businessmen and the economic elites from the city.

During the past two decades, about 300,000 Jews have left the city, most from the middle or upper class. Jerusalem has turned into the poorest city in Israel, and today, Jewish neighborhoods comprise only one-third of the city's eastern part. The other two-thirds house about a quarter of a million Arabs, who have upended the demographic policy designed to reduce their proportions. The Jewish majority has shrunk to only 66 percent, and there is a fear that in another 20 years, the city will be binational - half its residents will be Palestinians.

The idea that a "bigger Jerusalem" would strengthen the city turned out to be mistaken. A "small Jerusalem" is preferable. Now, the National Council for Planning and Construction is about to repeat exactly the same mistake, but the consequences are liable to be far worse. A group of wealthy businessmen and a world-famous architect, Moshe Safdie, have joined forces to convince the municipality and the government that Jerusalem is not big enough, that it lacks built-up areas, and that 120,000 Jews must urgently be brought to it. Here lies the trap of the mistaken idea: There is no need to enlarge the city; just the opposite - it should be made smaller.

The solution is to strengthen the downtown area and invest in employment infrastructure, on one hand, and to relinquish the Arab neighborhoods, on the other. All the studies have proven that these two steps would strengthen the city economically and politically. They would raise the city's economic level from 90th (last) place, where it is now, to a respectable place in the top decile of Israeli cities. They would also increase the city's Jewish majority from 66 percent to 96 percent and ensure Jewish hegemony in the Israeli capital. But who listens to experts when wealthy businessmen promise the magic formula: the construction of 20,000 residential units on the slopes of the mountains west of the city?

The consequences of the Safdie plan, which calls for these thousands of new apartments, are liable to be a disaster for the capital. The plan would destroy the green landscape west of the city, while the economically strong population that the entrepreneurs promise to bring from the coastal plain to Jerusalem will not come. Tens of thousands of Jerusalemites will migrate from the city to private homes and cheap apartments in the luxury neighborhoods that will be built. The percentage of Jews in the city will decline to 50 percent within the coming decade, and Jerusalem will collapse economically and politically.

But now, just like 30 years ago, the experts' warnings will apparently be rejected under pressure of the entrepreneurs. Dozens of Knesset members from Labor, Yisrael Beiteinu, the National Religious Party and Meretz have signed a manifesto against the plan. But unless the interior minister and the prime minister intervene to stop the plan, or at least to downsize it, Jerusalem will continue on its planning march of folly, which holds that a "big Jerusalem" is the solution for strengthening the city.

The author served in the past as a member of the Jerusalem Municipality's administration

Dr. Doolittle's legacy in Israel - wildlife university

2006-10-11T06:51:00.000-02:00

Animals in captivity / Third in a series : A wildlife university - for study and protection
Haaretz, October 11, 2006
By Zafrir Rinat

It has no elephants or lions, and no cars lined up at its gates. Nonetheless, it is a zoo. Tel Aviv University's Garden for Zoological Research in Ramat Aviv is an important center for the preservation of Israeli wildlife.

The research area is closed to visitors. Here the Yarkon Acanthobrama fish live in special aquariums - this fish is not particularly impressive, but it is extremely rare, found nowhere except in several Israeli coastal streams.

When the Yarkon dried up in the drought a few years ago, the Acanthobrama faced total extinction, so a breeding nucleus was established at the zoo. Recently, attempts have begun to reintroduce the fish into the streams.

Among the Acanthobrama's neighbors are a pair of Lappet-faced Vultures who are among the last remaining in Israel. According to the zoo's academic director, Professor Arnon Lotem, the birds tried to nest but failed to breed.

The zoo also has a female White-tailed Eagle, who is the mother of many of the eagles reintroduced into nature in recent years to prevent the species' extinction.

University zoos are not found routinely anywhere in the world. As is often the case in Israel, this, too, was the initiative of a small number of individuals, particularly one of the university's founders, the late zoologist Heinrich Mendelssohn.

He saw to it that the zoo that operated even before the university's founding would accompany it, move to its present home in Ramat Aviv and receive the official name "Garden for Zoological Research."

Not open to the public

The zoo is not open to the public per se, but it annually hosts thousands of school children, and various professional groups hold seminars there.

All tours are guided and families can visit only by prior appointment.

The staff prepares the food for the animals and sells some of it to other zoos as a source of additional income.

"The main objectives of the garden are research, teaching and promoting conservation," Lotem says. "The animals have no names because the goal is primarily to observe them and not to bond with them - as caretakers do in ordinary zoos."

At the heart of the garden is a small green park, a congregation point for passing birds and for some of the zoo's animals. "This area allows for observing various types of animal conduct, so we placed cameras that broadcast directly to the Internet," Lotem explains. "There are also animals such as peacocks, which are simply a good model for understanding behavior."

In one corner of the park there is a group of endangered Hawaiian Nene geese. Several breeding nuclei were dispersed throughout the world, including Tel Aviv. One of the males in the group is taking no chances and exhibits intimidating behavior toward human visitors who approach the gaggle.

The zoo also attracts visiting animals from the area. Mongooses drop by regularly and recently six vipers showed up. Permanent tenants include such denizens of urban nature as the fruit bat, which is revealed upon close observation to be friendly and nothing like its superstitious reputation.

Personal responsibility (not...)

2006-10-10T13:12:00.000-02:00

Yes, heads must roll
Haaretz, October 10, 2006
By Moshe Negbi

It is not only the reserve soldiers who have difficulty considering the Winograd committee to be a reliable substitute for a state commission of inquiry. The judges sitting on the High Court of Justice have also showed their displeasure with the situation in which a person who is to be investigated appoints his own investigators. Justice Ayala Procaccia expressed doubts about whether a committee of inquiry could examine "so large a failure of the mechanism, such a colossal event," when the central object under investigation is the government that appointed the committee.

This criticism from the High Court is not surprising. Last month, Supreme Court justices bid farewell to Aharon Barak and swore allegiance to his heritage. A central element in this heritage was the determination to ensure that responsibility is taken by senior officials who have transgressed. This was reflected in the so-called Buzaglo test: as when Barak was attorney-general, and he insisted on bringing such senior people to trial even if this would lead to their being deposed; in his series of rulings as a justice, when he stated that such officials had to leave office if they were no longer able to show "honesty and integrity"; and when he stated, in the state commission of inquiry following the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, that public office-holders should be removed if they have failed in their judgment.

Barak didn't accept the claim that he lacked the right to make politicians' heads roll because that was the prerogative solely of the voters. "The judgment of the public," he declared, "is not a substitute for public law." But the political establishment ignores this ethical heritage. President Moshe Katsav has lost his ability to project honesty and integrity, but neither he nor the Knesset is taking the matter to its logical conclusion. And this, of course, is true also for the behavior of those who led us in the second Lebanon war.

Ehud Olmert's refusal to have a state commission of inquiry seems to be like a targeted assassination of the possibility that justices will serve on its panel of the caliber of Barak, Mishael Cheshin and Dorit Beinisch - who have proved that they are not afraid of demanding that responsibility be taken by senior officials. But this time it is clear that an existential price might have to be paid for trying to evade responsibility, and that taking responsibility is vital not only so that those responsible can be "punished," but also to prevent them from continuing to perpetrate further disaster.

This time, we are not merely witness to an unusually crude form of lack of accountability but, for the first time, a cynical attempt has been made to turn this weakness into an "ideology." We are told that indeed lessons must be learned, but there is no possibility of allowing "heads to roll" because this would prevent necessary rehabilitation. But is it indeed at all possible to learn lessons, and is there any chance of rehabilitation, if heads do not roll and if the option of failing once again is not ruled out?

And this brings us back to the Barak legacy. In the report by the state commission of inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Barak explained that the political and military echelons must not be freed of having to "face up to public scrutiny of deeds and omissions that indicate a lack of efficacy ... or lack of appropriate attention ... or deeds that were done in haste, with negligence, with lack of wisdom and without trying to foresee their future effect."

How can personal responsibility be imposed? It is best, of course, for the person who has failed to resign. If he does not do so, the public should demand that of him. But the public's awareness of the necessity for taking personal responsibility has also been eroded. We could have realized this even before the disappointing appearances at the protest encampments of the Movement for Quality Government and the reservists. The fact that Ariel Sharon had been condemned by a state commission of inquiry for his failure during the first Lebanon war, and even the strengthening of the claim that Sharon had misled Menachem Begin, on the part of the courts, did not prevent the public from electing him prime minister twice.

If one cannot rely either on the leaders themselves or on the public, then there is no other recourse than a state commission of inquiry that will force personal responsibility to be taken. There are indeed those who feel that the remedy lies in educating the leaders and the public about taking personal responsibility. The problem is that education is a long, drawn-out process and we cannot permit ourselves to put our fates in the hands of faltering stewards until such a process is completed.

In addition, there is not necessarily a contradiction between educating people to take personal responsibility and imposing this responsibility through a state commission. On the contrary: Only persistent efforts to force people to take personal responsibility by a legal body will make it possible to grasp that it is insufferable that in a well-ordered democracy, those responsible for fatal failures continue to serve as our leaders, and that we have an inherent need to free ourselves of them.

The writer is the legal commentator of Israel Radio and a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Israel's culture of government

2006-10-09T18:37:00.000-02:00

A crooked line between two points
By Uzi Benziman, Haaretz, October 9, 2006

Tzachi Hanegbi called on no less than Benjamin Ben-Eliezer in an interview in last week's Haaretz Magazine: Ben-Eliezer, he said, told him that if the authorities were to pick on him, Ben-Eliezer, or on Sharon, the way they are picking on Hanegbi over alleged political appointments, they would have to execute them and not just try them. That is Hanegbi's defense - everybody did it, even if there is a normative defect in his actions [RM: even if what he did was wrong]. As evidence he does not bring up public figures like Benny Begin, Dan Meridor, Haim Oron or Yossi Sarid, but Ben-Eliezer. Not for nothing did the swallow go to the crow [RM: birds of a feather flock together]

Hanegbi's remarks are enlightening not only in themselves but because of the direct, albeit crooked, line between his moral world and attitude to public life as he reveals them in the interview, and those of Ehud Olmert and the members of his cabinet. The Hanegbi that floats between the lines recorded by Gidi Weitz is a person who says it is his right, in the area of political appointments, to do anything he wants in the ministries entrusted to him. He is a public figure who claims that he was not elected to his position to be the civil service commissioner and therefore he is exempt from ethical and moral considerations and the rules of proper administration. He is a politician who justifies hiring those he wants to reward with senior positions in the civil service, even if they come with a proven can of worms, including criminal convictions. He is a minister and MK who claims that it is his right to ignore High Court rulings when they contradict his political needs.

The court will decide Hanegbi's case and will clarify among other things the veracity of the facts he shared with Haaretz readers, including his claim that then-state comptroller Eliezer Goldberg ostensibly had a personal motive for criticizing the system of political appointments in the Environment Ministry during Hanegbi's tenure. The mood in the interview reflects Olmert's attitude (and that of most of his ministers) to the demand to place the investigation of the war in Lebanon in the hands of a state commission of inquiry.

Like Hanegbi, Olmert also claims that proper public norms are not what will dictate his behavior, but rather his arbitrary will. Like Hanegbi, Olmert also relates to the authority with which the state has entrusted him as his own private property with which he can do as he pleases. Like Hanegbi, Olmert also ignores precedents and accepted procedures in similar cases, in order to avoid an appointment that will let control over the composition of a committee or its work slip out of his hands. Like Hanegbi Olmert, too, prefers that the issues involving his conduct be examined by people he appoints, and not by an external state body.

Nothing in this analysis should cast any aspersions on the members of the Winograd committee. Its purpose is to highlight the cynical and arrogant culture of governing to which Hanegbi and Olmert are party.

To escape a credible external examination of his conduct and the functioning of the bodies under his authority during the Lebanon war, Olmert became entangled in a frenzy of actions, motivating the High Court to demand that within five days he explain why a state committee of inquiry should not be established. It is too soon to know how the justices will rule, but it is enough to look back at the leap-frogging decisions the prime minister made in this matter to be filled with shame and concern over the way the state investigates its failures in areas of prime importance. Readers of the Hanegbi interview can crack the code of Olmert's behavior: L'État, c'est moi.

Medical interpreter training - Israel

2006-10-08T07:02:00.000-02:00

Accurate translation can be a matter of life and death
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Jerusalem Post, October 8, 2006

The first-ever course in medical interpreting took place just before Rosh Hashana, and the 18 graduates will serve as telephone interpreters between Hebrew and Amharic, taking calls from physicians and other healthcare professionals throughout the country. All participants in the recent course are originally from Ethiopia and trained as healthcare professionals, mostly registered nurses. The program was the result of a successful collaboration of the Tene Briut project at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera and Bar Ilan University's department of translation and interpreting studies.

Open communication, free of language gaps, has been shown to be essential to the delivery of healthcare. A recent study of Ethiopian immigrants showed significant gaps in the extent to which they make effective use of medical services compared to the rest of the population. The study pointed to a clear need for better communication and overcoming misunderstandings stemming from cultural differences.

One of the responses to these unsettling findings was the decision to launch a program designed to train professional interpreters. The course consisted of lectures on linguistic and cultural issues, professional ethics, the challenge of remote interpreting, as well as a review of medical terminology in the two languages. The main part of the course, however, comprised open discussions concerning the role of the interpreter (whether as a "transparent tube," culture broker, language mediator, patient advocate or ad hoc social worker). Each of the participants also took part in simulated sessions, playing an interpreter between an Amharic-speaking patient and a Hebrew-speaking physician. The simulations, which were filmed in a real health fund clinic, were then analyzed to evaluate the interpreters' performance and effectiveness.

The program was initiated by Dr. Anat Jaffe, chief of the endocrinology department at the Hadera hospital, and Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, head of the BIU translation studies department. They worked with Tene Briut coordinator Pekkado (Yossi) Gadamo; epidemiologist Dr. Eltchee Seffefe; linguist Dr. Embesse Tabbere and Michal Schuster, a BIU doctoral student whose work centers on intercultural issues in healthcare delivery. They are hoping to launch the service soon, once the technical arrangements have been completed and funding has been secured.

As for the recent graduates, who are all too familiar with the hardships encountered by non-Hebrew-speaking immigrants, they too are eager to begin placing the members of their community on an equal footing in accessing medical care.

Judge decides on basis of videtape evidence - criticizes police behavior

2006-10-07T16:52:00.000-02:00

Judge: Police officers lied while testifying against left-wing activists
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz October 3, 2006
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/769956.html
Tel Aviv Magistrate`s Court revealed Tuesday that police officers lied while testifying against 11 left-wing activists accused of violent acts during anti-fence demonstrations in the West Bank village of Bil'in. The court acquitted the activists. The presiding judge viewed video footage filmed by both police officers and members of the group 'Anarchists Against the Fence' that did not reflect evidence of violent acts. Judge Muki Landman harshly criticized the police's behavior in his ruling.
'A feeling of serious discomfort has arisen from the mighty gap between the officers' testimony and what is seen in the video tapes,' Landman wrote. 'I cannot rule out the possibility that had it not been for the videotapes, I would have reached a different result regarding the defendants.'
The 11 activists were indicted following a demonstration in February 2004, on the day the International Court of Justice in The Hague began deliberations on the West Bank separation fence. The activists sought to protest against the fence in the West Bank but later moved their demonstration to a location opposite the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. The activists sat on the road, causing severe traffic jams. The prosecution filed serious charges against the activists that included charges of violent unruliness and of interfering with police officers. An additional indictment of attacking a police officer was erased from the charge sheet before a verdict was issued.
Landman rejected the majority of the prosecution`s claims but also rejected claims made by the activists that police officers acted violently when breaking up the protest. Landman also rejected the defendants' claims that their behavior was protected by international law as a legitimate means of opposing the occupation and the separation fence.
The judge convicted nine of the 11 activists on a minor charge of illegal congregation. Two others were convicted of vandalism after spray painting graffiti on the walls of the Kirya defense compound in central Tel Aviv. Sentencing is scheduled for February 2007.
(A.K.)

People power against Agrippas bus plan?

2006-10-04T05:28:00.000-02:00

95% of Hot's News viewers against the Agrippas bus plan

Last night, the Hot news programme started with a report about plans to put three bus routes both ways through Rehov Agrippas, the narrow but main road on the south side of the Mahane Yehuda market. In 2002, shortly after we came to the neighborhood, there was talk of a plan to run three or four infrequent bus routes west down Rehov Agrippas. But about six months ago, suddenly this became 800 buses a day, running both ways. And the buses are, we are told, in response to a survey carried out by Egged, the bus company, which showed that the residents of certain neighbourhoods refuse to change on to the light railway which will run through the centre of town (Jaffa Road) and insist on "door-to-door" service to the market. How democratic of Egged...
Gradually even our local community centre's management has come to understand that they have been stabbed in the back by the JTMT, the Jerusalem Transportation Master Plan ("Tochnit Av"). As their person responsible for "public relations" told me back in May, although they are informing all the different neighbourhoods about the plan, this is a one-way communications exercise. The fact that a plan dated 2003 has been found on the Internet showing a totally different scenario is cited as proof that "you knew about the plan all along". But nobody changed the information which was given not just to the residents, but also to the management.
Watch this space for further developments...

The City That Isn't (and isn't Chelm...)

2006-10-03T19:05:00.000-02:00

Sweeping the Halls
Peggy Cidor, Jerusalem Post, October 3, 2006

Mayor Uri Lupolianski probably does not plan his schedule according to the Gregorian calendar. Yet this week seemed to be a typical "end-of-the-year-clean-the-desks" type of week.
First, the Finance Committee presented the 2006 budget, balanced for the first time in years, and then the final city council meeting for the year 2005 approved it.
The balanced and approved budget may have provided temporary relief to our mayor, since the last few weeks have been really tough.
The newest round of difficulties started three weeks ago with the municipal "buzz" over the mayor's problematic decision to override his general manager, Eitan Meir, in order to undo the tangle between the workers' committee and the municipality.
Zion Dahan, head of the workers' committee, had two meetings with the Mayor - and Meir wasn't present at the first of them. After the second meeting, Dahan finally achieved what he's been trying to achieve for over a year, despite Meir's opposition. In a somewhat irregular decision, the mayor agreed to transfer large sections of the social affairs department's budget to Dahan's protege, Shemi Amsallem, thus making Amsallem head of one of the largest and best-budgeted departments in the municipality.
As usual, Lupolianski meant well. But Meir took Lupolianski's decision as an expression of a lack of confidence in him. The city council opposition angrily denounced the "improper procedure."
And then the municipality's legal advisor declared the decision illegal and void.
Dahan went to court to uphold the decision. He lost - so the mayor did, too. And even the municipal spokesman was criticized for issuing a rather impolite spokesman's reaction.
Meir, often known for his own maneuvers and machinations, has come out of the incident as the "righteous man whose work is done by others."
And Lupolianski? He's still hoping that the issue will be resolved - somehow.
Next, the mayor had to contend with the resignations of Municipal Engineer Uri Shetrit and Micha Bin Nun, head of supervision and enforcement in the engineering department.
Bin-Nun, by the way, has, for the moment at least, decided to stay. But he has made it clear that he has yet to have the last word. And sources in Kikar Safra are already predicting that at least two other high-ranking officials might be announcing their resignation soon.
And Lupolianski? Dreaming that things will improve.
They haven't. Next, our mayor was summoned, earlier this week, to a police investigation.
True, we're talking about the "green" - environmental - police. Lupolianski has been questioned regarding his violation of the Environment Ministry's orders to clean up several different spots in the city, including the huge amounts of garbage that have accumulated at the Giv'at Sha'ul cemetery and the wadi (valley) beneath Ein Kerem.
The Ministry claims to have issued the mayor five orders, as required by law. The orders specifically instructed the Mayor to clean up the act within 30 days.
He hasn't.
According to Shonny Goldberger, head of the Jerusalem district of the Environment Ministry, ignoring an order of this sort could land the mayor in jail for up to one year or cost him a fine of NIS 150,000.
Earlier this year, Lupolianski had to pay NIS 30,000 to the city council opposition after the district court found him guilty of improperly using municipal buildings for haredi schools.
"Corridors of Power" hopes that this time he won't have to spare his family budget and choose prison.
And the troubles keep on coming.
Lupolianski has also had to deal with the annual comptroller's report regarding complaints registered by the public. The comptroller isn't pleased. According to her findings, more than one-third of the complaints were justified.
Head of the Comptroller's Committee, Pepe Allalu (Meretz), says that this is nearly double the proportion of justified complaints filed in last year's report.
"So what's happened to the municipality's slogans about ‘just give service’?" opposition councilman Nir Barkat (Jerusalem Will Succeed) asked cynically.
Maybe they should look for a new copywriter?
Finally, lest our readers suspect that this column is biased against the Mayor, we bring you a story from the offices of Municipal Director Eitan Meir. It is a tale which, we believe, will help to illustrate why so many citizens of Jerusalem feel that they are paying taxes to the municipality of Chelm.
In a spurt of effort to save public monies, Meir decided, among other, similar decisions, to change the company responsible for provision of computer services to the municipality, thus ostensibly saving about NIS three million a year.
A good idea. But not surprisingly, the people from the original company weren't happy about being sent home and losing their lucrative contract. In an attempt to reverse the decision, they went on strike and disrupted the municipality's computerized services, including even the email.
They put up a good fight, which went on for nearly four months, with various ups and downs.
They lost. The new company has been in since the beginning of the week.
But, as we all know, he who laughs last...
In the midst of the computer-turmoil, despite the on-going strikes and sanctions, Meir decided that the time was ripe to connect Jerusalem's 26 public libraries to the central system, so that subscribers would have access to the book lists from their personal computers.
It's a Brave New Hi-Tech World, but the timing wasn't great.
Not surprisingly, the employees of the old company made sure that the brave citizens of new-world Jerusalem were not going to enjoy this new service.
They dismantled the entire system - not just the link from home, but the entire system. Now even if you come all the way from home to the library, you couldn't check out or return a book.
The Baka library, for example, serves 1,600 subscribers, and they were furious. Even in Chelm, they probably noted, the general director might have waited for better timing.
But that's Chelm. This is Jerusalem - a totally different place.
As of earlier this week, since the new company has taken over, the entire computer system has been resurrected, the municipal email works, and the libraries are free to serve the public. Soon, the municipality promises, all 26 libraries will be connected to central system.
But while we're discussing the Baka library - this might be a perfect opportunity for the new computer company to prove its prowess. The phone number listed on the municipal website for the Baka library has been wrong for months. Until now, they couldn't change it - because of the computers, of course.

Good news for partridges! - the pear trees will be pleased...

2006-09-29T08:36:00.000-02:00

High Court of Justice imposes ban on partridge hunting
By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz Correspondent (September 28, 2006)

The High Court on Thursday ordered the Israel Nature and Parks Authority to ban all hunting of partridges as of next Thursday.

The decision was made after The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel launched a successful appeal to the High Court, claiming partridges were dangerously close to becoming extinct in Israel due to excessive hunting.

A Knesset committee recently declared partridges a protected species, but In order to appease hunters the INPA continued to allow small-scale hunting in areas where it claimed local populations had recovered.

In such instances, hunters were granted limited licenses that allowed them to hunt up to three partridges a day.

The SPNI insisted, however, that the ban applied to all hunting of partridges throughout Israel.

Family reunification files

2006-09-26T03:38:00.000-02:00

The sad story of my friend Sam
GERSHON BASKIN, THE JERUSALEM POST
Sep. 25, 2006

I have been spending hours during the past couple of weeks trying to help a friend. Well, he's not really a friend, we hardly know each other.
I have exchanged e-mails with him several times over the past years, and appeared with him once at a conference at Tel Aviv University. I was impressed by his mild manner and his "go-getter" attitude to life.
In a lot of ways he reminds me of myself. He immigrated to this country out of a deep sense of idealism. He felt that he was coming home. He wanted to serve his people, build a life for himself and his family. Like me, he immigrated from the States. He has been living here for years and has scored some real achievements, including making a name for himself in the business world.
His name is Sam Bahour, and he is Palestinian. He came home to Palestine at the outset of the peace process in order to build the new state and make a contribution to peace. He believed in the peace process and he wanted to build his life with his people.
Sam has built a hi-tech company in Ramallah. He's built a small shopping center there too. He has been a central and active part of Ramallah's social and intellectual life.
Sam is all over, always willing to help out, and always willing to meet Israelis because he believes in peace. He has many Israeli friends all over Israel. He even holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University.
The one place where Sam doesn't have Israeli friends is in the Civil Administration - and that's where he needs them more than ever.
WHEN MOSHE Arens was minister of defense in the early 1990s he formed a committee, headed by Prof. Ezra Sadan, to reevaluate Israel's economic policies in the West Bank and Gaza. The Sadan committee recommended, and minister Arens implemented, a major policy change that actually encouraged investors of Palestinian origin to "return" to the West Bank and Gaza in order to invest and to create jobs.
When the peace process got under way after 1993 that policy was further developed and Palestinian expatriates were called on by both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to come back to Palestine and build their future while contributing to peace.
That's what Sam did. Only Sam didn't know that Israel would continue to control the population registry, and that he would have to leave the country every three months in order to be able to stay in the country.
But Sam is a law-abiding citizen, and so every three months he left the country in order to get a new three-month tourist visa.
Now everyone knew Sam wasn't a tourist, but everyone has been playing the game of make-believe that he was so he could stay in Ramallah with his wife and children and could continue to manage the successful businesses he has worked so hard to build.
THOUSANDS of people have been playing the same game for years. Sam did apply for family reunification in 1994, before the PA took over. It is also worth pointing out that thousands of Jews live for years in Israel for years on tourist visas without being threatened at all.
At the end of this month, in a few days, Sam will have to leave the country again - but this time he will not be coming back. Someone decided that the charade has to end.
A certain Mr. Gur Lavie, who is in charge of Palestinian population registration for the West Bank, said to me last week: "Let's face it. We all know he's not a tourist."
I said, "That's right, we all know that."
So, said my interlocutor, "let him apply for family reunification."
Brilliant idea! Some 120,000 family reunification files have been opened since 2000, but since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, the State of Israel has stopped reviewing family reunification files.
The registration officer's response: "That's his problem" - and he is right, it is his problem; but it should be ours too.
NOW IT IS very important to get something straight. Sam Bahour does not want to live in the State of Israel. He lives in Ramallah, and he wishes to continue to live in Ramallah. He too wants to stop playing the charade.
He is not alone. He is one of thousands of Palestinians who have no Palestinian ID issued by the Palestinian Authority, thus, he has no ID approved by the State of Israel. Sam Bahour only has his US passport and that document is no longer useful for getting him permission to live in Ramallah.
The official I spoke to is implementing a policy which is nothing more than a form of ethnic cleansing, but he did not make the decision himself. He is simply a mid-level clerk in a pseudo-government system of control called "the occupation."
One of his bosses made the decision. Since his direct boss is the head of the Civil Administration, it might appear that some brigadier-general made the decision, but Brig.-Gen. Kamil Abu Rukon, the current head of the Civil Administration, did not make the decision. It came from higher up. Abu Rukon answers to Gen. Yosef Mishlev, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, but Gen.
Mishlev also didn't make this decision. It was made by the minister of defense - not Amir Peretz but his predecessor, Shaul Mofaz. It was probably one of the last decisions he made before leaving the ministry. It is possible that Peretz is not even aware of the decision and its impact on tens of thousands of people in the West Bank.
IT IS TIME to end the charade. When I immigrated to Israel they made me a temporary resident. When I was ready I was given citizenship and permanent residency.
Sam Bahour does not yet have a state to become a citizen of, but he certainly should be granted some form of residency that allows him to be the exemplary citizen that he is. We Israelis should be interested in keeping Sam Bahour and the thousands of others like Sam as our neighbors in the West Bank. The chances for building real peace increase when people like Sam Bahour can be our neighbor. Shame on any government of Israel that would force people like Sam to leave.
During the final days leading up to Yom Kippur we should all say sorry to Sam Bahour and correct this injustice to Sam and to thousands of others once and for all. It is the most Jewish thing to do, particularly in the Holy Days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

The writer is the Israeli Co-CEO of IPCRI, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. www.ipcri.org

Analysis - Lebanon postwar

2006-09-18T06:31:00.000-02:00

Lebanon - a reassessment
Sep. 13, 2006
By ASHER SUSSER

Anyone following the war in Lebanon in the Israeli media could not but come away engulfed in deep depression. Israelis and their media tend to focus obsessively on themselves, their own losses and failings, remaining largely oblivious to what is happening on the other side of the divide. This is as true about Gaza as it is about Lebanon. In contrast to the uniform and self-centered discussion in Israel, the war with Hizbullah and its consequences are being discussed in Lebanon and the broader Arab world in a more diverse and more sophisticated debate.
In the Arab world, views vary from the one extreme, which sees the ultimate victory of the Arabs in more missiles and rockets that will surely bring Israel to its knees in the not too distant future, to those at the other end of the spectrum, according to whom Hizbullah, Lebanon and the Arabs have, in fact, been defeated.
At the height of the war, as Hizbullah rockets regularly sent hundreds of thousands of Israelis scurrying to the shelters like "rabbits and mice," as some of the Arab media noted with undisguised gratification, the mood tended to be militantly euphoric, buoyed by the widely broadcast images of Israeli suffering and humiliation. But as the war came to its conclusion and life in Israel returned pretty much to normal, opinion in the Arab world has shifted to more sober analysis, as Lebanon, Hizbullah and the Shi'ites face the daunting task of what will probably be years of multi-billion dollar reconstruction.
Even a cursory perusal of the Arab press, will reveal that Hizbullah's status in Lebanon has changed for the worse, as many Lebanese come to the rather shocking realization that the south of their country, unknown to them, had in fact been transformed into an Iranian and Syrian launching pad against Israel posing an existential threat to their own livelihoods and to their entire country. Hizbullah is now on the defensive, trying to protect its political assets against a more assertive Lebanese domestic majority, that seems more determined than ever to contain Hizbullah's "state within a state," so that they are not drawn again into a destructive war with Israel, without as much as a word of consultation.
Many in Lebanon, especially non-Shi'ites, but also some important Shi'ite spokespersons, are calling for an end to the armed phase of Hizbullah's development and its integration into the Lebanese political system, like all other political parties, lest further provocation of Israel will expose Lebanon to even greater devastation in the future. In other words, they are demanding the disarming of Hizbullah.
Muna Fayyad, a Shi'ite professor at the University of Lebanon, and the Mufti of Tyre, Sayyid Ali al-Amin, for example, both questioned the right of Hizbullah to bring disaster on the Shi'ites of Lebanon, by dragging them into an ill considered adventure they never wanted, in the interests of a foreign power like Iran, about whom they were never consulted.
NASRALLAH NOW has to contend with his newly constructed image as the destroyer of Lebanon rather than its protector, as he himself regularly claimed before the war, as a main justification for the very existence of his militia. His recent interview (explaining that he would not have ordered the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers had he expected such a ferocious Israeli response) is indicative of this new predicament.
Arab commentators are considerably less impressed with Nasrallah's strategic genius than some of their Israeli counterparts seem to be in their moments of self-critical excess. They question the wisdom of his decision-making, as they wryly ridicule his claims of victory. A poll conducted in Lebanon in late August revealed that two thirds of the non-Shi'ite public believed that Hizbullah had actually been defeated in the war.
Hazim Saghiya, writing in Al-Hayat, questioned whether victory could be celebrated on the ruins of Lebanon by a leader who had to remain in hiding. Another commentator in Al-Hayat, Hasan Haydar, compared Nasrallah's interview of apology to Egyptian president Gamal Nasser's admission of defeat in 1967. The Arabs, he noted, were still paying for the defeat in 1967, and he wondered for how long the Lebanese and the Arabs would be paying for Nasrallah's "ill-considered 'victory.'"
Abd al-Mun'im Sa'id, the Director of the Al-Ahram's Center for Political and Strategic Studies, urged the Arabs to follow Israel's example and set up a commission of inquiry to establish how Nasrallah could have dragged Lebanon into war without the country and the home front having being at all prepared. He dismissed Nasrallah's contention that preparation of the home front was the responsibility of the state, arguing that the state could hardly prepare for a war about which it had no advance knowledge. As opposed to Israeli journalists, who tended to glorify Nasrallah's credibility, Abd al-Mun'im questioned why Hizbullah had failed to fire its long-range rockets after Israel had repeatedly bombed Beirut, even though Nasrallah had vowed to do so. And what about the relative ineffectiveness of the short-range rockets? The damage they caused was limited, and a significant proportion of the Israeli casualties were actually Arabs.
ALL OF the above have emboldened the Lebanese government to deploy its army in the South, which it had not done for over 30 years, and to accept the stationing of a more robust international force there as well. Neither of these had hitherto been acceptable to Hizbullah. These forces will not disarm Hizbullah, which will no doubt make every effort to rearm and replenish its depleted stocks. All the same, they do serve the purpose of reasserting the sovereignty of the Lebanese state in all of its territory. This in turn adds to all the other factors seeking to reduce Hizbullah's freedom of action to operate militarily against Israel from the South.
None of this would have happened had it not been for the severe damage Israel inflicted upon Hizbullah's civilian, political and military infrastructure. The civilian backbone of Hizbullah, the Shi'ite community of Lebanon, has incurred heavy loss of life and enormous property damage, which will take years to repair. The period of reconstruction may not be free of criticism for the leadership that led the community to this disaster.
And once rehabilitated will the Shi'ites of Beirut and the South be ready to endanger everything and go through their recent ordeal all over again, for what Hizbullah might feel required to do in the service of Iran and Syria? Moreover, a new Shi'ite middle class has emerged during the last generation and they are eager to integrate into the mainstream of Lebanese politics, something they might not be able to achieve as long as Hizbullah is perceived to be serving the interests of foreign powers.
IN DIRECT military terms Hizbullah's losses were heavy and will not be easily replenished either. Key installations and command and control centers were totally destroyed in the Dahiya area of Southern Beirut and in the South of the country. Fortified positions, bunkers and stores in close proximity to the border with Israel have been demolished, and it is highly unlikely that Israel will allow their reconstruction under any circumstances.
The organization lost between a quarter to a third of its fighting men. Bravado aside, in numerous encounters Hizbullah fighters fled the field of battle, leaving their equipment behind, to avoid direct confrontation with Israeli ground forces.
Much of Hizbullah's long and medium-range rocketry has been destroyed. They still have large stocks of the short-range rockets, which were the great majority of the over 4,000 rockets fired during the war into Northern Israel. But their effectiveness is limited. It is true that the North of the country was almost brought to a standstill and the trauma of hundreds of thousands of Israelis in shelters or living as internal refugees in other parts of the country will not be forgotten. But in terms of loss of life the thousands of rockets were less effective than a couple of suicide bombers.
The Iranian strategic outpost that had been built up for future use against Israel has been defanged, at least for the meantime. It must have cost hundreds of millions to construct and has been lost prematurely, spent not very effectively and not at a time of Iran's choosing. Moreover if intended to deter Israel from taking action, it achieved quite the opposite result.
Hizbullah, at this stage, is observing the cease-fire. They do not want a second round now. Nasrallah needs a breather, and has no choice but to accept the hitherto unacceptable in the form of the restoration of Lebanese state sovereignty to the South. The euphoria in the Arab media has also subsided. The "rabbits and mice" have left the shelters and it is the Lebanese and Hizbullah who must now survey the damage wrought unto them. Nasrallah's references to Israel as a society as flimsy as "cobwebs" seem somewhat less appropriate from the ruins of South Beirut.
AN EGYPTIAN commentator, Ali al-Ibrahim, noted recently that the Arabs had learned to differentiate between victories on television and real victories in the field. How long will it take the Israelis to do likewise?
Israel's achievements in the war should not be underestimated, all the more so because they were attained despite the unbelievably incompetent and indecisive handling of the military campaign by the triumvirate of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz. They have failed us miserably and must go.
The courageous citizens of this country, who endured patiently in the shelters, and the brave and resourceful fighting men and women of the IDF, regulars and reservists, who put their lives on the line, deserve much better.
Whether the achievements of the war prove lasting or not is another question. Can the Lebanese led by Fuad Seniora's government build on the new political realities that the war has created? Will they be able to withstand the pressure that is bound to come from the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah axis that will seek to undo the consequences of the war and reestablish the status quo ante? Only time will tell, but these are questions that would not even have been asked had it not been for the war against Hizbullah.
The writer is Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

"Legal bureaucracy is the culprit"

2006-09-16T18:41:00.000-02:00

Public trust in legal system result of inefficiency, not 'legal activism'
Yossi Tamar
Published in Ynet on September 14, 2006

The endless words, reports, and interpretations regarding the change at the Supreme Court's helm made us forget that public trust in the Israeli legal system is at an all-time low. The new chief justice, Dorit Beinisch, would do well if. along with working to protect the rule of law, she will also look into what's really going on at lower courts and execution offices responsible for implementing verdicts.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, but in Israel they're having a hard time turning at all. It's no secret courts are finding it difficult to serve their function. Citizens who seek to bring matters for legal debate discover that, even when they're dealing with minor issues, years will pass before a decision is made.

On the tortuous road to justice, the parties get to enjoy the best of Israeli bureaucracy, including extended waiting periods, useless sessions, needless forms, wasted money, and of course, endless lines. Even when a legal matter is decided, it turns out the State does not possess enough tools or power to enforce the decision.

More judges needed
Ordinary citizens who require mediation or legal defense and experience the Israeli legal system view the legal approach as an expensive, ineffective privilege. The sense that the system is not working as it should grows when one becomes familiar with the enforcement mechanisms, such as execution offices.

The same system, which shows apathy in the face of money owed to citizens, turns out to be a wonderfully effective well-oiled machine when it comes to banks seeking to collect debts.

Seemingly, the legal system possesses the basic condition needed for it to be effective and credible: The ratio of lawyers per population in Israel is among the highest in the world, and every year thousands more join the system and produce much work, and also great income, for the system.

However, it appears that while the whole world has moved forward and internalized the significance of service to citizens, the legal system has frozen in place and remained an island of bureaucracy, slowness, and ineffectiveness.

The legal system needs more judges. Currently, judges are sustaining an inhumane burden and are forced to hear dozens of cases and read hundreds of pages every day. The strict work procedures, which include a huge variety of forms, are incommensurate with our current age, while the manpower mechanism is tired, slow, and awkward.

Real problem ignored
The claim that the drastic decline in the public's trust in the courts is a result of controversial verdicts and doctrines on the part of the Supreme Court, in the wake of Israel's "constitutional revolution," is convenient for some elements.

This way, both those who back the "rule of law" displayed by Supreme Court justices and those who criticize them for interfering in government decisions sanctify the eternal argument and consistently ignore the genuine problem, which is the inefficient bureaucratic mechanism of the courts.

In my view, citizens who want the courts to hear their cases and discover the foot-dragging and system weakness lose their trust as a result of this state of affairs, and not because of the "legal activism" and the justice system's interference in Knesset decisions.

The system needs to be shaken up, and now. The number of judges must be boosted significantly, indicators that will determine their quality should be established, and judges who take too long in handing down verdicts should be made to retire.

It would be proper to add recognized and supervised mediation mechanisms that will lead to a decrease in the number of matters submitted to the courts by the public.

In addition, execution offices must be given real powers and the service offered to citizens must be significantly improved.

Previous Supreme Court presidents preferred to ignore the erosion of public trust in the legal system. Regrettably, the lack of faith in the system is so serious at this time that new Chief Justice Beinisch will have to consider the matter. Let's hope she deviates from the path of her predecessors and leads genuine reform in the justice system where ordinary citizens also have their place.

Yossi Tamar is an attorney and economist and managed the constitution project at the Shalem Center

And now for something completely different!

2006-09-11T17:42:00.000-02:00

An (unshaggy) dog story

When David and Daisy and I were on our way home this afternoon from Rehavia, our irresistible doggie attracted a lovely female white puppy with black spots who started by sniffing at the normal place and then decided this was the playmate for her - now. Since this part of Rehov Usshishkin is busy and the pavements narrow, it was not a good idea for them to play there: apart from the fact that David was desperate to get home because he was shlepping a not-light elderly printer to be passed on to one of his creative-writing group students.
We were just outside a courier business, where three men were sitting outside on a bench, so I asked whose dog it was. Typically, they were very unhelpful. I picked the puppy up and put her on the bench (by this time the men had stalked off), where she suddenly seemed very scared. She had a collar but no “dog tag” (in both senses), as we have done for Daisy, with her name in English and Hebrew and “her” mobile phone number on the other side. So what do we do?
David suggested putting her in the garden of the house opposite, which I did, not managing to close the gate properly. After we got home, David immediately went out shopping. I settled myself down to carry on reading a student’s thesis, and then decided to go to town to change a dollar cheque because finally the shekel is weakening so I’ll get more shekels. (If anyone can explain to me how we can fight a war and have our local currency strengthen, I’ll be grateful….)
Anyway, Daisy decided that she absolutely had to go out again, so I said fine, I’ll take you with me.
The moment we came out of the house, a youngish man asked me if I’d seen a dog – his had gone missing. Small, I said, a puppy? White? Yes, yes. With black spots? Yes! I told him where I’d left her, but he looked a bit unclear, so I said, fine, we’ll walk with you. When we got to the garden, the gate was wide open, and my heart fell into my boots. No signs of puppy.
Daisy insisted on going upstairs inside the building. I had a faint hope that the puppy might be hiding inside, but no luck. By the time we emerged, there was no sign of the owner. However, I’d taken the trouble to ask him his name, so I continued up the street calling his name. He came back looking crestfallen – no puppy. We all went into the house next door and walked round in the garden, but again no joy.
I insisted that he give me his mobile phone number, and gave him mine, in case one of us found her. And then suddenly, behind him, outside the gate, I saw something white, with a tail. “There,” I said – “there’s a doggie there. Is that her?” He turned round and saw her, and in a very matter-of-fact fashion said, “Michelle!” (a very unusual name for a dog in Israel).
We all emerged into the street and the puppy instantly started playing with Daisy again, just as she had an hour earlier… She was so oblivious of the cars, and the owner didn’t have a lead with him, that I begged him to pick her up. I couldn’t bear the thought that moments after I had managed to reunite dog and owner, something awful might happen to her.
The owner, Micha, said that he’d not long been back from Lebanon: gesturing at his short hair, he said, “I went there with a pony tail, and this is how I came back.”
So in the puppy’s short life - she's four months old - she’d been separated from her owner for over a month. But she was one of the lucky ones: his parents looked after her while he was in the army. Many of the dogs who were abandoned by their owners when they fled the North during the shelling have not been reclaimed and are in danger of being put down.
Israelis are not on the whole a dog-friendly population….

Jerusalem: A wheelchair view of Nachlaot

2006-09-10T07:34:00.000-02:00

Good news to travelers in wheelchair: Nachlaot neighborhood in Jerusalem is very accessible
Jenny Ki Tov, Published on Ynet: 09.07.06, 12:45

Let’s start from the end: To my surprise, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Nachlaot, one of the Israeli’s most picturesque areas, can be enjoyed from a wheelchair. The beauty and character I remember from my two-legged days can still be appreciated now that I sit in a wheel chair.

I was surprised to discover that the route of the tour which took about two hours of constant movement was totally navigational for me, except for one stair at the beginning and three stairs which were low but fairly wide in the middle.

Now come the drawbacks as I prepare a second guide for wheelchair-bound tourists where I team up with Arnon Brokstein, a friend who is also a tour guide. We limited our tour to the neighborhoods between Agrippas and Bezalel Streets during which I used a light wheelchair easily maneuverable by a healthy person.

This kind of tour requires cooperation of everyone involved: The person in the wheelchair willing to deal with sudden twists and turns in the narrow alleyways, roads that are far from paved and the accompanying person not to deviate from the predetermined route.

'Heart of the City’
Nachlaot is part of the greater community called ‘Heart of the City’ comprising 32 individual neighborhoods that adjoin one another. Some of them consist of only a few homes or buildings. The entire area is undergoing extensive renovations and preservation, which emphasize the beauty and unique character. Thus anyone whose last visit to the area was a few years ago is in for some surprises.

The 2-2.5 hour walk through the area was conducted on a typical Jerusalem day. It is preferable to begin in the late afternoon when traffic is light and there is parking near the Davidka Square or Clal Center.

The winding route requires strict adherence to the directions laid out where easy wheelchair access to the various sites is assured. Arnon and I did the entire route three times in order to check and double check this.

Yet despite the favorable conditions, I cannot resist asking one naive question: Why are so many of the neighborhood synagogues inaccessible to wheelchair visitors? Why is there no ramp for the disabled to enter more easily? The Jewish religious sites are no different than Christian ones in that regard as described in our first guidebook.

One other thing before we begin: There are no bathrooms in the entire area for the disabled and any potential visitor needs to take that into account.
Note by Daisyima: I live in the neighborhood and don't know of any public bathrooms (toilets) other than those in the shuk (Mahane Yehuda).

The route
Let’s start opposite the Gindy paper store on Agrippas St. Cross the street to the arched entrance at number 21 and enter the neighborhood of Sukkat Shalom

Continue straight until you see number 14 where you turn right and find yourself on Mishkanot Street. Look for the lane named for Rabbi Arye Levine. He was a legend of the city; counseled the underground fighters who were imprisoned by the British and was known to all as a righteous man. A long narrow alley traverses a number of the smaller neighborhoods.

Cross Shomron Street to the neighborhood of Mazkeret Moshe. At number 21 turn right to Einayim Lmishpat Street and stop at the beautifully designed gates of the Moroccan synagogue Hesed and Rachamim. Turn left and continue to the Ohel Moshe neighborhood named for philanthropist Moshe Montifiore.

The street features a community water cistern which has since been covered up by the municipality but one can still see its elevated presence. Continue on Carmel Street, passing the park known as mulberry tree park because of the massive tree which lends its shade there as well as mentioned in, 'Me, and Simone and Little Moise', a song by Yossi Banai about his childhood in the neighborhood.

Further on is Shilo Street. Turn left into the Nachlat Zion and Nachlat Achim neighborhoods. Stop at the impressive synagogue of the Syrian Adas Jewish community at the corner of Shilo and Beersheva Streets. Its interior is magnificent but difficult for the wheelchair tourist to enter.

Our tour takes us down Beersheva Street, right to Lachish Street, thus avoiding many stairs from where we continue until it meets Geva Street. Turning left and left again, then right we arrive at Ovadia Somech Street. Although we have done some backtracking it is worth stopping at the Beit Yitzhak, the Persian synagogue built in 1894. We turn left and return to the corner where we once again meet Shilo Street. Continue straight until you see a right turn which brings you to the charming Zichron Tuvia neighborhood of one street leading you out to Agrippas and back to where the car is parked.

Jenny Ki Tov is an editor and translator. She is wheelchair bound since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis

Site - reservists' call for a state commission of enquiry

2006-09-10T07:27:00.000-02:00

Anyone interested in signing the miluimnikim (reservist) call for a state commission of enquiry can do so through
www.adcan.co.il
A friend visited their protest tent in the Rose Garden near the Knesset and the Prime Minister's Office. They're calling on Olmert, Peretz and Halutz to resign and for an independent commission of enquiry, and they're collecting signatures to back them.
They don't have money to advertise the website and ask for those who support the commission to tell everybody they know about the website.

Four Monkeys, Israel 2006 style...

2006-09-09T19:01:00.000-02:00

For those unfamiliar with the figures, from right to left:
Amir Peretz, Defence Minister
Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister
Dan Halutz, Chief of General Staff
Moshe Katsav, President of the State, currently under police investigation for forcing unwanted sexual attentions on women in his employment...

A foodies tour of Nahlaot and some history...

2006-09-07T15:43:00.000-02:00

Jerusalem: Follow the smell

Tour guide Oded Amitai smelled the aroma of delicacies emanating from the local kitchens and decided to give tours in a variety of flavors in the multi-cultural capital
Ronit Svirsky Published on Ynet, August 21, 2006

Where to eat is a question that comes up on every hike, walking tour, or trip around the country. Sandwiches and water canteens are a thing of the past, and even when the meal is eaten in the area, gourmet or at least “authentic” is the preferred choice.
Jerusalem tour guide Oded Amitai usually takes groups around Jerusalem’s colorful neighborhoods. One day he smelled the aroma of delicacies emanating from the local kitchens, and he decided to give walking tours in a variety of flavors in the multi-cultural capital.
In Ein Karem you’ll find a combination of French, Russian, British, and Italian culture, so when you take a tour of the village you end with an Italian or French cooking workshop.

After a visit to the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Makor Baruch and Meah Shea’rim you’ll be introduced to kugel, cholent, matzoh balls, and gefilte fish. The tour along Jaffa Road will introduce you to Ethiopian cooking, and a tour of the alleyways of Nahlaot will acquaint you with the cuisine of Kurdistan, Aleppo, Urfa, and the Ashkenazi lands.

Kurds vs. Urfals
The tour of Nahlaot starts at the “Ta’amim” cooking school at 88 Agrippas Street. The school was established by Guy Tuchman and is under the direction of Chef Yufal Attias. After a small cup of coffee and cake you go out to the street, next to the Mahaneh Yehuda market, and stop across from a building with a large wall painting (mural), one of several in the city.
A group of French artists from Lyons is responsible for these paintings. They select cities all over the world where there are conflicts and seek to bring beauty to the residents of these cities. They take a prominent building, restore it, and decide on the theme. In this case they took their inspiration from Mahane Yehuda and painted the shoppers, residents of Nahlaot, and scenes from daily life.

The market
Cross Agrippas Street and enter the cobblestone streets of Nahlaot. The area is over 100 years old, and has fascinating stories, human dramas, and unique architecture. When the neighborhood was built every street or two was its own separate neighborhood, but Jerusalemites preferred to call them all “Nahlaot.”
Nahlaot is spread out between two main roads that are parallel to each other, Bezalel and Agrippas. Just a few steps take you away from a noisy main road and bring you to one of the tranquil houses, redolent with the smells of cooking and baking.
Go along the alleyways, feel the cool stone, peek into the arched windows with iron shutters, stop in front of the courtyards full of greenery, and meet Jerusalemites from all of the various ethnic groups.

It's all about the food
The Kurds are cooking hamousta soup with white kubeh balls; matfunia kubeh, a reddish soup made from beets; grilled beef in okra soup; and stuffed vine leaves. The Persians serve rice with chopped meat with an egg inside. The Sephardim cook bourekas with spinach that are rolled up like a snail.
The food makes its way to every heart, and love stories are also part of Nahlaot’s lore. Marriages between different ethnic groups were not welcomed, but it’s hard to make rules when it comes to love, so Sephardim fell in love with Ashkenazim, Yemenites with Aleppans, and most problematic of all, Urfals with Kurds.
According to Amitai’s stories, the Urfals were known for their ability to have sons, while the Kurds had mostly daughters. The Urfals did not like the Kurds’ stinginess, to put it mildly, and the battles between them were intense and bitter.
The accursed house and the blessed house stand next to each other in the heart of Nahlaot. The accursed house was built in the 1970s, near the Rabbi Shalom Sharabi yeshiva, for residential and commercial purposes. While it was being built the rabbi asked the contractor not to take over part of the yeshiva’s courtyard, but he refused. Since then, no business has managed to survive in the large "marble" building.
On the other hand, the small building next door, with a red tile roof, is known to increase fertility. Every childless woman who has gone to live there has become a mother of many children.

The underground widow
In 1882 Moses Montefiore founded the Ohel Moshe neighborhood, which inspired the play “Bustan Sepharadi” (Spanish Garden). Ohel Moshe has a stone entrance gate and courtyards filled with fruit trees and vegetable gardens. The Sephardic neighborhood provides love stories, stories of food brought on Fridays to the communal oven, and stories of a social life that revolved around the well (cistern).
The tour continues through Mahane Yehuda. Alongside the stalls and the singing vendors you can now find cafes serving short espresso and latte, gourmet restaurants, fashion designers’ boutiques, and jewelry stores. Ronnie, a vegetable vendor, stands behind piles of parsley and cilantro, reading rhyming poems he has written; while a pair of designers seated on retro metal chairs sip coffee.
The end of the tour is the closing of a circle for Oded Amitai. On the wall of a house in the Mazkeret Moshe neighborhood is a sign saying “Kramer-Rechtman House.” Chaya and Alexander Kramer, Amitai’s grandparents, lived in this house until 1986. His mother Rachel, their only daughter, fought with the Lehi pre-state underground movement, and was engaged to Meir Feinstein, who was a member of the Irgun, another pre-state underground group.
They met in 1946 at the height of anti-British underground activity. Rachel wanted to join the Irgun but her parents were vehemently opposed, and she ran away from home. Eventually it was agreed that she would come home and content herself with posting announcements made by the underground.
Meir Feinstein was caught blowing up a British train two weeks after the engagement. During his trial Rachel tried to convince him to ask for a pardon, which the Irgun was opposed to. He was sentenced to death, and on the day he was scheduled to be executed, Feinstein and his friend Moshe Barazani blew themselves up with a hand grenade that was smuggled into their cell.
Rachel joined the Lehi, became a fighter, and later married Efraim Rechtman, who was in the Palmach.

The tour began with a wall painting, and ends at a painting that is only several months old. The artists from Lyons returned to Mahaneh Yehuda and created a wall painting in the back parking area showing class pictures and school activities from the Alliance Israélite Universelle school. The school, which to this day is located next to the parking lot (but not in use), was once the first educational institution in the city.

It’s time to eat
Hungry and tired, we return to the Ta’amim school, where cold watermelon, kubeh, fresh laffa (flatbread), and homemade hummus await. Chef Yuval Attias explains how grandmothers chop beef to prepare fried kubeh nablusiyah, and demonstrates the use of jerish (not regular bulgur wheat) to prepare the dough.
The recipes are placed before the guests on stainless steel tables arranged in a horseshoe, and Attias now prepares the white kubeh balls for the soup. The matfunia soup is already boiling, and everyone on the tour receives a steaming bowl with a thick red liquid, like what you eat at stone houses in Nahlaot.

Ta’mim Cooking School, 88 Agrippas Street. Tour with workshop and meal: NIS 135. Call Oded Amitai at 972-50-630-0928.

Meanwhile, a client of David's and Ruth's does some research and -

2006-09-03T16:24:00.000-02:00

Poll: Israelis believed Nasrallah over Peretz
Polls conducted by Dr. Udi Lebel, political psychology lecturer, found sad picture of Israeli PR
Anat Breshkovsky, published on Ynet (Yediot Ahronot) 09.03.06, 16:38

Since the end of the war in the north, two main issues have been keeping the public busy: The demand for an account of the failures by the Israeli leadership, and criticism of the press and nature of reports.

A new study, however, by Dr. Uri Lebel of the Ben Gurion Institute, Beer Sheva University, has found that another problem requires urgent treatment: Israeli PR.

During the poll, entitled "the management of Israeli PR during the second Lebanon war," members of six groups were asked to watch video recordings of Israeli PR in Israel and abroad, and to answer questions. Lebel says he held polls in the past on issues of strategic press, political psychology, and army-media relations. The result of his latest poll show that Israeli PR was so lacking, that in many cases the public was forced to rely on the reports of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Lebel says a good media leader relies on three points – gripping the audience, being watchable, and giving the feeling of certainty.

The participants of the poll were asked who gave the a sense of certainty regarding the continuance of the war, and who was most authentic. The results were unequivocal: The Israeli public chose Nasrallah's speeches as giving it both.

'Nasrallah contradicted the Israeli spokespeople'

Asked about Nasrallah's authenticity compared to that of Israeli spokespeople, not one Hebrew spokesperson received high authenticity marks.

"We reached a really crazy situation," says Lebel. "A psychological situation which seems inconceivable: Instead of the Israeli public watching our national spokesman who tells it what is happening every day, who will minimize the chaos and who will be seen as believable, something unprecedented happened: The public perceived the enemy leader against whom we fought as having those characteristics, and waited impatiently for his speeches. Nasrallah contradicted the Israeli spokespeople more than once, many times contradicting the minister of defense – he was the first to announce the deaths of Israeli soldiers and the sad circumstances which led to them."

He added: "This isn't the first time that a bereaved mother found out the truth of the death of her son in recordings released by Hizbullah, which showed a totally different picture to what was provided by the IDF and its spokespeople."

Dr. Lebel believes that the figures indicate a serious crisis of leadership down the road. "It's not important if objectively the leadership did its best – now the public perceives it as cut off, unprofessional, and boastful. It won't follow the leadership to the next confrontation," he said.

Olmertism

2006-09-03T11:35:00.000-02:00

Ehud Orwell's speech
If PM has confessed to being 'entirely responsible' he should resign
B. Michael Ynet (Yediot Ahronot)
Published: 09.02.06, 16:06

In the event that future historians ask for some type of document attesting to the nature and acumen of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, it's hard to think of a more appropriate document than the speech he delivered this week to the heads of local authorities.

It was obviously a speech that had been well rehearsed. It didn't comprise any grumbling outbursts so typical of Ehud Olmert, who is known for his inadequacy to control his verbal utterances.

And because of it, its preciseness and planning, Olmert's true character came through; a transparent manipulator of words and facts; a go-getter who erroneously made his way to the top. And although each and every sentence in his address personifies this argument, lack of space only permits discussion of a small portion.

It would have been most appropriate to begin with the prime minister's opening sentence: "The decision to go to war, including the responsibility of its outcome – is entirely mine," but instead we'll leave this sentence to the end.

We'll begin, therefore, with the second sentence: "The Israeli, civilian home front was the enemy's main target, and not incidentally."

Hizbullah had one intention
But incidentally, the contrary is true. Hizbullah, explicitly and with much audacity said right from the start that it had one intention: To abduct Israeli soldiers in order to engineer a prisoner exchange deal.

That's what Nasrallah said on the day of the kidnapping, and he reiterated this in his speech of "remorse" which the prime minister enjoys quoting. This time, regretfully, the civilian home front was not the enemy's primary target, and not incidentally.

Let's go to the next sentence: "Hizbullah's target was…to harm the home front, to kill, to terrorize in an attempt to spread fear, panic and to create a public outcry that would paralyze military operations."

George Orwell couldn't have put it better. Because, this was in fact Israel's declared tactic: To strike at the home front, to kill, to terrorize and so on and so forth, or as commonly put in official Israeli jargon: "To put pressure on the Lebanese government."

Additionally, contrary to common belief, the first to shift the fighting inside the other side's civilian home front was Israel. Only after the IDF bombed Beirut and Lebanese infrastructure, did the rocketing of the Israeli home front begin.

The prime minister said in that same speech that when he decided to go to war "we knew very well that rocket fire would be aimed at civilian populations." And indeed it was. The first Katyusha rockets landed inside Israeli territory only on Thursday (July 13) before dawn, just a few hours after Israel attacked the Lebanese home front.

This fact doesn't clear the Hizbullah of its responsibility for starting the war; however, even in times of frustration and rage we would do well to stick to the facts.

We surprised them
The next sentence is a spectacular sample of Olmertism: "We surprised them. The home front persevered." The prime minister knows all too well that the home front did not persevere. The home front went south, and rightfully so. Those who persevered were the ones who had nowhere to go.

In general, the home front persevered the way any home front perseveres, in whatever country and in whatever war, whether it's here, in Lebanon, Iraq, London, Hamburg, Sarajevo or Tyre. What else can it do? Those who can flee do so, and those who can't, "persevere".

The prime minister also knows all too well that no one made any effort to assess the home front's preparedness for the "perseverance" it was forced into. But now, instead of asking for the home front's forgiveness, he is trying to use excessive doses of flattery.

Let's continue. In order to reinforce his victory argument, the prime minister quoted his enemy: "Nasrallah says simply – had I known this would be the outcome; I would not have given the order to start the war."

Isn't this wonderful? At the same time the prime minister was taking pride in these words, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians hoped that Olmert would be the one to say simply: "Had I known this would be the outcome of the war, I would not have ordered it to begin." But it seems that Olmert leaves these simple sayings to Nasrallah. He prefers more convoluted pronouncements.

The most amusing part is undoubtedly the part where Mr. Olmert tries to explain why a state commission of inquiry is inappropriate: It will be prolonged, it will paralyze, it will keep attorneys occupied, it's a luxury, it is indeed an "enticing solution" but it's "not what the country needs…"

Not since Louis XIV
Since Louis XIV, who said "L'État, c'est moi" (I am the State), no head of state has demonstrated such absolute monarchy. Namely, what he doesn't need, the state doesn't need either.

And then came the ultimate 'attorney' schmaltz, the pit of pathetic manipulation: "Each one of you, with his hand on his heart, knows deep inside that this will not put the shortcomings right."

Everyone - with or without his hand on his heart - knows all too well that when an attorney resorts to such meager tricks, it is an indication that he is in great distress.

One final sentence for the finale – and it cannot be more revealing: "The military should be examined in a way that a democratic civil society examines its military. And the same applies to us, the political echelon."

According to the prime minister, a state commission of inquiry is neither civil nor is it democratic. According to him only blunt-toothed investigative committees, devoid of any authority and financed by those being investigated, are appropriate for examining "a democratic civil society."

To sum up, as promised we'll go back to the first sentence: "The responsibility for the war is entirely mine."

If so, there's no need for an investigation. The person responsible has been found. And in keeping with the Jewish tradition of "He who confesses and forsakes (sins) will find mercy," he should be told: You confessed? Very well. Now resign. Only then will you find mercy.

A Persian Paradise in Israel's desert - a while ago...

2006-09-03T11:31:00.000-02:00

Ancient biblical waterworks found in Israel
Network of reservoirs, drain pipes and underground tunnels served a palace in biblical kingdom of Judea
Reuters, published in Ynet, (Yediot Ahronot), 09.01.06, 19:42

Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed an ancient water system which was modified by the conquering Persians to turn the desert into a paradise. The network of reservoirs, drain pipes and underground tunnels served one of the grandest palaces in the biblical kingdom of Judea.

Archaeologists first discovered the palace in 1954, a structure built on a six-acre (2.4 hectare) site where the communal Ramat Rachel farm now stands. Recent excavations unearthed nearly 70 square meters (750 square feet) of a unique water system.

"They had found a huge palace ... even nicer than the palaces in Jerusalem, (dating) from the late Iron Age to the end of the biblical period in the 7th century," Oded Lipschits, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, said.

The infrastructure of the palace was remodeled throughout the centuries to fit the needs of the Babylonians, Persians, Romans and Hasmoneans who ruled the Holy Land, said Lipschits, who heads the dig with an academic from Germany's University of Heidelberg.

To turn a desert into a paradise

But it was the Persians, who took control of the region around 539 BC from the Babylonians, who renovated the water system and turned it into a thing of beauty. Lipschits said they added small waterfalls to try to turn a desert into a paradise.

"Imagine on this land plants and water rushing and streaming here," Lipschits said. "This was important to someone who finds aesthetics important, for someone who wanted to feel as though they are not just in some remote corner in the desert."

Yuval Gadot, a biblical archaeology expert from Tel Aviv University who is taking part in the excavation, said it was unclear exactly how the water system worked.

"Probably rainwater came down on the roof of the houses (in the palace complex)," he said. "From there, it was collected by drains into pools or to the underground reservoir and taken to nearby fields for crops or nice gardens."

For centuries water supplies have been one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, where most of the region is desert.

Counterproductive policies destroy the chances of political progress and escalate violence

2006-09-01T11:51:00.000-02:00

Errors of the war on terror
By George Soros
Ha'aretz, Friday, September 1, 2006

Israel's failure to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One weakness is that even if the targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause.

In response to Hezbollah's attacks, Israel was justified in wanting to destroy the movement and to protect itself against the threat of missiles on its border. However, Israel should have taken greater care to minimize collateral damage. The civilian casualties and material damage inflicted on Lebanon inflamed Muslims and world opinion against Israel, and converted Hezbollah from aggressors to heroes of resistance. Weakening Lebanon has also made it more difficult to rein in Hezbollah.

Another weakness of the war-on-terror concept is that it relies on military action and rules out political approaches. Israel withdrew from Lebanon and then from Gaza unilaterally, rather than negotiating political settlements with the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority. The strengthening of Hezbollah and Hamas was a direct consequence of that approach. The war-on-terror concept stands in the way of recognizing this fact because it separates "us" from "them," and denies the fact that our actions may shape their behavior.

A third weakness is that the war-on-terror concept lumps together different political movements that use terrorist tactics. It fails to distinguish between Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaida or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq. Yet all these terrorist manifestations are different and require different responses. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because they have deep roots in their societies, yet profound differences exist between them.

Looking back it is easy to see where Israeli policy went wrong. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected chairman of the PA, Israel should have gone out of its way to strengthen him and his reformist team.

When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, negotiated a six-point plan for the Middle East on behalf of the Quartet (Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations). It included opening crossings between Gaza and the West Bank, an airport and seaport in Gaza, opening the border with Egypt, and transferring the greenhouses abandoned by Israeli settlers into Arab hands. None of the six points was implemented.

This contributed to Hamas' electoral victory. The Bush administration, having pushed Israel to hold elections, then backed Israel's refusal to deal with a Hamas government. The effect has been to impose further hardship on the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, Abbas was able to forge an agreement with the political arm of Hamas for the formation of a unity government. It was to foil this agreement that the military branch of Hamas, run from Damascus, engaged in the provocation that brought a heavy-handed response from Israel - which in turn incited Hezbollah to further provocation, opening a second front. That is how extremists play off against each other to destroy any chance of political progress.

Israel has been a participant in this game and President Bush bought into this flawed policy, uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to an escalation of violence. The process has advanced to the point where Israel's unquestioned military superiority is no longer sufficient to overcome the negative consequences of its policy. Israel is now more endangered existentially than it was at the time of the Oslo Accord. Similarly, the United States has become less safe since President Bush declared war on terror.

The time has come to realize that today's policies are counterproductive. There will be no end to the vicious circle of escalating violence without a political settlement of the Palestine question. In fact, the prospects for engaging in negotiations are better now than they were a few months ago. Israelis must realize that a military deterrent is not sufficient on its own. And Arabs, having redeemed themselves on the battlefield, may be more willing to entertain a compromise.

Strong voices argue that Israel must never negotiate from a position of weakness. They are wrong. Israel's position is liable to become weaker the longer it persists on its present course. Similarly, Hezbollah, having tasted the sense but not the reality of victory (and egged on by Syria and Iran), may prove recalcitrant.

But that is where the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas comes into play. The people of Palestine yearn for peace and relief from suffering. The political - as distinct from the military - wing of Hamas must be responsive to their desires. It is not too late for Israel to encourage and to deal with an Abbas-led Palestinian unity government as the first step toward a better balanced approach. What is missing is a U.S. government that is not blinded by the war-on-terror concept.

Financier and philanthropist George Soros is author of "The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror" (Public Affairs, 2006?).
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006. www.project-syndicate.org

And the sting in the tale: the Olmert file at the State Comptroller's Office

2006-09-01T08:43:00.000-02:00

Touch and go for PM
By Yossi Verter
Ha'aretz, Friday, September 1, 2006

Ehud Olmert's credit line was exhausted this week. From the rock bottom at which he found himself so early in his term of office, he is now subject to the mercies of the public, a prisoner in the hands of a fickle people that raises its leaders to the heights, and then throws them down to the depths with the velocity of a roller coaster. From now on, Olmert will be required to pay his bills up front. If he does well, he will gain support; if he does badly, or doesn't do at all, then he will be tormented further, until he is crushed.

We have already had leaders that fell and rose and fell again: Yitzhak Rabin, one year after his election, was receiving poor grades. And then came Oslo and he soared upwards, but on the eve of his assassination, Netanyahu was all over him in the polls. Ariel Sharon hit a nadir during his first year on the job, when buses were blowing up on a daily basis and he just stood there, powerless. His fortunes changed when he embarked on Operation Defensive Shield and regained his popularity.

Is Olmert capable of a recovery? Will the across-the-board dissatisfaction with the current leadership overcome concerns about what the alternative might bring? Olmert is not allowing himself to wallow in melancholy. He has no plans to place his head in the noose in order to wring a round of applause from the crowd. We have to work, he is telling his people; we have to produce results.

He feels that the criticism over the committees he set up will soon fade away. The people that he appointed are serious people, who will not be afraid to say what they think, to the same degree that the people who will appear before the committee - and everyone will appear, he says - will be afraid not to tell the truth, the whole truth and only the truth. The members of the committee are no suckers. He is amused by the criticism that he has known David Ivri for years, or that Yedidya Yaari is the CEO of Rafael. How could he not know Ivri? And what would he do to Rafael if the conclusions of the committee are not to his liking - close down the most important defense industry in the country?

The 20-20 hindsight makes him chuckle. Let's suppose he would have opted for the proposal to wait 48 hours, and only then attack. In the course of those 48 hours would he have looked into the state of the army's wartime equipment bases? The flak jackets? To what level of detail should a prime minister descend? The critical decision was to go to war. He takes full responsibility for it. Any explanations will be given to the Admoni committee.

Aides say that any decision he would have made would have drawn criticism. Had he decided to set up a state commission of inquiry, critics would be saying that he is a dishrag and is only dragging the country into a protracted state of paralysis. Dalia Itzik, who broke down in tears this week in Olmert's office, after describing to him her visits to the impoverished homes of bereaved families, says that saying no to a state commission of inquiry is also a mark of leadership.

On political matters, he is of two minds. He doesn't know what we would do if in the middle of next week the cabinet ministers of the Labor Party, led by Amir Peretz, unanimously voted against his inquiry committees. Evidently, he would grin and bear it.

In his own party, he has - as yet - not come across any serious problems. In spite of all the trouble, he is still considered the glue that holds everyone together there. His status in Kadima is much stronger than that of Peretz in Labor, because he has no serious competitors in Kadima. He has no one to compare with Sharon's "Netanyahu," the natural heir. This week, the entire leadership of his party expressed support for him: Peres, Dichter, Sheetrit, Bar-On, and Hirchson.

Tzipi Livni, his deputy, has not yet taken a position. Once again, she has chosen to remain silent. In principle, she, too, backs the solution of a committee of inquiry as opposed to a state commission, but her support is conditional and somewhat halfhearted: if the commission were to execute the inquiry in a businesslike, speedy and fundamental manner, then Livni would consider it a reasonable solution. But she still has to find out more about the mandate of the committee. Until she is convinced, she will not have a good word to say about it. Olmert can wait.

On Saturday night, about half of the participants in the bull session of Olmert's advisers and counselors, which took place in the Prime Minister's residence, were in favor of establishing a state commission of inquiry. The director general of the Prime Minister's Office, Raanan Dinur, cabinet secretary Israel Maimon, adviser Lior Horev and deputy head of staff Oved Yehezkel, told him to go for the state commission. It will buy you two years of quiet, they said. Only Reuven Adler, Sharon's senior adviser, felt that there was no need to investigate anything, and certainly not to set up a state commission. Adler was close to Sharon, back in '82. He accompanied him to the Kahan Commission, and experienced the humiliation from up close. Ever since then, Adler has never wanted to hear the words "state commission" again.

The dream and its remains

Benjamin Netanyahu made a strategic decision this week: He wants to be prime minister. On the face of it, there is nothing new to that. Nevertheless, Netanyahu's decision has one meaning: He will not join Olmert, even if the Labor Party withdraws and he is offered a respectable position, as well as respect, to enter the coalition. I, he says, in private conversation, am going to replace Olmert - not save him.

Nor will he join even if Olmert leaves and his place as prime minister is taken by another Kadima minister: Sheetrit, Dichter, Livni or Mofaz, each of whom considers him or herself a candidate, and who intends to contend for the Olmert legacy. Netanyahu rates his chances of becoming prime minister in this Knesset as good. The scenario that is making the rounds of his inner circle goes something like this: In the course of debates over the 2007 budget, it becomes obvious that the coalition is not equal to the task. The clock starts to count down to early elections, and then a third (the minimum required by law for withdrawal - Y.V.) or more members of the Kadima faction, who do not owe anything to Olmert, or to Kadima, withdraw from the party and join the Likud faction. Only such a move, which is not without logic, would get Netanyahu back into the Prime Minister's office.

In this scenario, Netanyahu could form a government with the ultra-Orthodox and the Right and the pensioners. The only thing that spoils his optimistic mood is the Avigdor Lieberman question. Netanyahu is alarmed at the prospect of Lieberman destroying his dream by joining the coalition. Now, with Olmert's plan to unilaterally withdraw from West Bank territories no longer on the table, the common denominator between Lieberman and Olmert is broader than that between Amir Peretz and Olmert. Perhaps this is also the problem: that as long as Labor is in the coalition, Lieberman will have nothing to do with it. He doesn't want to be some superfluous add-on. He wants to be a senior coalition partner, one who sets policy and wields influence. This is why he is playing hard to get, and naming such a high price: minister of defense. Lieberman knows that if he is to be Olmert's lifeline - Olmert is prepared to pay full market price. And if not, well then, it didn't hurt to ask.

Yatom the letdown

Danny Yatom was GOC of Central Command, Director of the Mossad, military secretary to Prime Minister Begin and head of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's political-security staff. He understands security, but as a politician he has not been a wild success. Since entering politics, buck privates and junior officers in his own party have run circles around him on a daily basis. Now he feels his time has come. That the people yearn for a leader with security expertise. He has announced his candidacy for the party leadership. Essentially, he is running to improve his standing, to upgrade his ranking in the party leadership. Yatom openly admits that if in the course of his campaign he comes to understand that he would be getting in the way of someone else (for instance, Ehud Barak or Ami Ayalon) from beating Peretz - then he would not be an obstacle. But he is not at all convinced that Peretz will even run. In his opinion, Peretz will be forced to leave due to the conclusions reached by the committee that investigates his performance in the war. Yatom intends to ask to appear before the commission or commissions. During the war, he met with the defense minister. His testimony might possibly relate to a conversation they had. Yatom believes that his words would carry weight. He also estimates that Olmert could emerge unscathed.

Another politician in Peretz's party, who is also known for his security acumen, said this week that unlike Yatom he was not asked to see Peretz, even once. But who was in the practice of consulting with him on a regular basis, once a week? Olmert.

When I speak, the man said, there is going to be an earthquake. And so it is. They, the members of his party are closing in, from every direction, on Chairman Peretz. People who spoke with Peretz this week described him as a lonely man, who is surrounded by a few advisers who are trying in a panic to find him an "agenda" that would extricate him from the valley of the shadow of death - negotiations with Syria, support for a state commission of inquiry, or re-embrace of the social agenda in advance of the 2007 budget - but the opinion polls are having their effect.

Peretz describes himself as being between a rock and a hard place: the army, whose every morbidity and failure has suddenly become his problem; and Olmert, who has an agenda and troubles of his own. Between the two, he is being pressured by the rebels in his faction, who hover about like a school of sharks around an exhausted baby whale.

One member of his faction, who actually supports him, told him this week: Go for a state commission of inquiry, go for it with all the gusto you can muster. After all, you couldn't get less than the single percentage point that you received (in response to the question of suitability as prime minister in a Dahaf poll published in Yedioth Ahronoth - Y.V.).

Fourth branch of government

The flare-up that erupted this week between Ehud Olmert and Micha Lindenstrauss was allegedly about manners and proper behavior: The State Comptroller, an overweening and unpredictable person, who was seemingly insulted by Olmert's having asked him through the media to investigate the handling of the war on the home front. This, despite the fact that Olmert acted in accordance with the law, and even took pains to call Lindenstrauss "the Honorable State Comptroller." One imagines that there are greater insults than this.

Anyone who knows what is going on between these two men understands that the sarcastic statements exchanged between their offices are concealing something else. The report Lindenstrauss and his subordinates are preparing about the purchase of the Olmerts' apartment at 8 Cremieux Street in Jerusalem is almost complete. Sources in the Comptroller's office have been telling politicians and reporters that Olmert's days in office are numbered. And that is before Olmert has even been questioned or given an opportunity to give his version. These leaks, say aides to Olmert, essentially make any further questioning superfluous. If it has clearly been decided up front that Olmert is "finished" then what form would the questioning take? Off the record, they say things about the Comptroller that no newspaper would dare print.

In any event, it is obvious that this preposterous debate is only a promo of what awaits us in the Olmert-Lindenstrauss arena. One diplomat recently related, in private conversation, that he was invited a few weeks ago to a meeting with a very senior official in the State Comptroller's office. There are four branches of government in Israel, he was told, not three. The judicial branch, the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the comptroller branch. The diplomat was surprised. That is not what he thought about Israel. In the same meeting, he was treated to some juicy details about the Olmert file.

"Someone was trying to kill me by throwing weapons out of the sky..."

2006-09-01T08:08:00.000-02:00

From my editor, Donna, who in a way started this blog when I wrote to her about my 1991 Gulf War memories of cleaning out our "air raid shelter on Saturday evening, July 15 (an eternity ago), here's a note dated Thursday, 31 August - just over six weeks later.
The "shloshim" to which she refers is the marking of 30 days since the death of Dave Lelchuk, their kibbutznik friend who was killed by a rocket - see the item on August 3 - "A one-man SPCA".

On another note, I guess we are back to normal here, whatever that means, though I still cannot get it out of the back of my mind that someone was trying to kill me by throwing weapons out of the sky...

Tomorrow is the shloshim for Dave. Time marches on.

Nasrallah's speech and Israel's leaders...

2006-08-31T09:49:00.000-02:00

Iran at the mike
By Danny Rubinstein
Ha'aretz, Thursday, August 31, 2006

Hassan Nasrallah's surprising speech Sunday will almost definitely save Prime Minister Ehud Olmert from a government probe. Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz may also breathe a certain sigh of relief. Nasrallah's statements represented a severe blow to protest movements, already in the throes of a difficult lift-off. The explanation is simple: Dramatic statements voiced by Hezbollah's leader were summarized in two words in most Israeli, Palestinian and foreign media outlets: "Nasrallah regrets."

If Nasrallah is truly remorseful and is admitting he made a mistake, that is in practice an admission of failure - since war is generally a zero-sum game. If one side loses, the conclusion is the other side won. In other words, Olmert's government and the Israel Defense Forces, led by Halutz, come out of Nasrallah's speech looking not half bad.

If that is true, who needs a serious committee of inquiry? This may represent an internal Lebanese account, an attempt to repel criticism that Hezbollah caused the destruction of that nation. The Iranian leadership is also undoubtedly connected to Nasrallah's statements. In the startling, more than two-hour interview, there were several extraordinary declarations: First and foremost was the actual expression of regret and the admission that a mistake may have been made. Political leaders are not accustomed to making statements like that.

The granting of an interview surprised the correspondent summoned to Nasrallah's hiding place. Palestinian reporters wrote yesterday that this was the first time since the war began that Nasrallah had been interviewed by a Lebanese television channel not operated by Hezbollah. According to Palestinians, Nasrallah's statements did not reflect distress, but the opposite: The fact that he does not fear self-criticism is proof of his credibility.

One might ascribe Nasrallah's speech to Iranian involvement in South Lebanon and the extensive Hezbollah bunkers just discovered near Israel's northern border. "An underground city," Israeli spokesmen called the structures, which covered two square kilometers and included concrete columns, telephone lines and other facilities. All this, intended for use in an expanded, comprehensive campaign, was undoubtedly established with Iranian assistance.

The construction of a system of this type costs a fortune and demands expertise and means. Iran, which provided Hezbollah with 13,000 missiles and assisted in building the enormous bunkers, did not do this so that Hezbollah might abduct two soldiers to be traded for a handful of Lebanese prisoners held in Israel. Iran apparently had grander intentions, like the initiation of a war against Israel should the Americans - with or without Israeli assistance - attack Iran to thwart its development of nuclear weapons.

Against that background, some Iranians were angry with Hezbollah for permitting the war to expand for no reason. According to one Palestinian commentator, Iranian pressure prevented Nasrallah from using long-range Zelzal missiles capable of reaching "beyond, beyond Haifa," and as far as Tel Aviv. According to this theory, Nasrallah's relatively moderate statements were influenced by Iran to correspond with things said by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a speech two days ago. Iran is not a threat to anybody, "not even the Zionist regime that is the arch-enemy of all the peoples of the region," Ahmadinejad said in his speech.

Is Iran trying to buy time to continue to build its nuclear capability? This all remains an assumption. For now, it is clear that Nasrallah, influenced by Iran to one extent or another, helped Olmert, Peretz and Halutz ride waves of aspersion.

Hopelessly untrained and unequipped - reservists about foul-ups

2006-08-31T09:38:00.000-02:00

Lambs to the slaughter?
Larry Derfner
The Jerusalem Post, August 24, 2006

'Yitzhak's" paratroopers unit spent the war going from one South Lebanese village to another, taking cover inside abandoned houses against the missiles Hizbullah was firing 2-3 km away, lacking weapons of sufficient range to fire back. From time to time they got orders to seek out Hizbullah on the ground, but every time the orders were cancelled at the last minute. Asked what they did inside the abandoned houses when they weren't waiting out flying missiles, Yitzhak, 34, one of the unit's snipers, replied, "We played whist a lot of the time."
In the villages, they would ask their commanding officers what was going on, and never got a satisfactory answer. But after the cease-fire, when they crossed the border back into Israel, they sat down in front of their division commander and finally learned why they'd been kept away from the enemy.
"He said they didn't want us to get killed or kidnapped by Hizbullah, or by all the friendly fire that was going on," said Yitzhak, a government employee in civilian life.
"Lior," also 34, and also a paratrooper but from another unit, told an almost identical story to Yitzhak's - waiting out the war in abandoned houses, unequipped to return fire at the distant Hizbullah positions, being given orders to advance that were always cancelled. And the explanation Lior and his comrades were given for why they weren't going after Hizbullah also matched the one Yitzhak heard.
"At one point our division commander told us that killing two or three terrorists wasn't worth the price," said Lior, a computer technician.
The movement of embittered reserve soldiers that began this week with a petition and protest camp outside the Knesset is carrying the message that the political and military leadership wasn't aggressive enough during the war, that the cease-fire left Israel still vulnerable to Hizbullah - that they didn't, as the saying goes, let the IDF win.
The petition signed by hundreds of members of the Spearhead brigade accused the leadership of getting "cold feet," of "inaction," and insisted that in future wars, their missions "be carried out by striving to engage in combat." This was also the tenor of the discussions being held by the hundreds of protesting reservists camped out at the Rose Garden next to the Knesset.
However, it has become clear from the accounts of reservists that in many cases, the reluctance to send Israeli troops into battle against Hizbullah grew out of the realization by commanding officers that the soldiers would have been going on suicide missions.
Major Adam Kima was imprisoned (but released after two days) when he refused to lead his platoon of some 40 combat engineers on a corridor-clearing mission on the eve of the cease-fire, because his platoon was improperly equipped to fight off the ambushes expected along the way. Five of his soldiers were imprisoned along with him. Yet Kima's mother reportedly received calls from parents of soldiers in the platoon thanking her son for saving their lives.
Yediot Aharonot columnist Nahum Barnea, embedded with the Alexandroni Brigade, reported that a commanding officer, Major Nati Barak, decided not to send his soldiers after Hizbullah guerillas hiding in the village where they were camped. "I have mercy on my soldiers' lives," Barak said.
And in Ha'aretz, Yonatan Nir, who was injured in the war, wrote how he and some of his elite unit comrades decided to tell their commanding officers that they were hopelessly untrained and unequipped for the mission they were assigned - to clear Hizbullah fighters out of a village. As a result, the superior officers cancelled the mission, "claiming that they did not know that we had not been properly trained for it and they even praised us for admitting this fact," wrote Nir, adding that the village turned out to have "enough terrorists to cause a significant number of casualties."
Protesting reserve soldiers are raising two main points - 1) that they didn't have the proper training, equipment and weapons, food and water, and battlefield intelligence to fight as well as they could have, and 2) that they too were often prevented from fighting.
Yet from the accounts of reservists, the very reason that they were prevented from fighting was, in many cases, precisely because their officers realized that they hadn't been properly prepared to take on Hizbullah.
"We weren't ready for this war," said Lior. "We didn't get any intelligence about how Hizbullah works, what are its weaknesses, what are its strengths. It's no tragedy that we didn't get to engage Hizbullah on the battlefield because if we would have, I'm not sure that we would have had the advantage."
THE DISADVANTAGES IDF reservists had in comparison to Hizbullah troops were absolutely staggering. Hizbullah had anti-tank missile launchers that proved the bane of the IDF's existence, not only blowing up tanks but posing such a threat to heavy IDF vehicles that supply trucks carrying food and water were held back for fear of getting blown up, leaving soldiers to fight in the torrid, humid climate for two days and more with hardly any sustenance.
By contrast, Lior's unit had two Law anti-tank missile launchers for 30 soldiers, but worst of all, he said, none of the soldiers knew how to fire them. "I've never fired a Law in my life. When Hizbullah is firing anti-tank missiles at us, how do I respond?" he said.
Other deficiencies mentioned by Lior, a reserve paratrooper, included: No target practice before entry into Lebanon, so rifles weren't properly aimed; no thermal night vision devices, which the IDF has in stock and which Hizbullah had in the field; aerial maps from 2000, with up-to-date maps arriving only towards the end.
Yitzhak, a reserve sniper, noted that the 100 or so soldiers in his unit were forced to take cover in only two houses of an abandoned village, which meant that a direct hit from a missile on one of the houses could have killed some 50 soldiers. The reason: "We only had two communication radios for the whole unit, and it was considered too dangerous to put soldiers in the village's other empty houses without a communication radio."
The soldiers had "red dot" sights for their rifles, Yitzhak said, but no equipment to fix the sights to the rifles. When they arrived at the base before going into Lebanon, there was such chaos in the weapons and ammunition warehouse that all the soldiers from the various units "just broke open the crates and took whatever they wanted, without signing for it. Lots of soldiers went into battle without enough ammunition," he said, noting that his unit was told to pack one pair of underpants and one pair of socks because they would be back in Israel after two days.
"We didn't get back for 10 days," Yitzhak noted.
SITTING ON the grass of the Rose Garden was "David," 27, a combat medic with the Alexandroni Brigade who had joined the reservists' march from Mevaseret Zion on Monday. "When we first got to the base and got our kitbags, a lot of us were missing basic things like combat vests and bullet-proof vests," he said, noting that he had no medic's vest and had to stuff his medical supplies wherever he could.
Unlike Yitzhak's and Lior's paratroopers units, the Alexandroni Brigade fought Hizbullah several times during the war. But because of the awful logistical conditions, the fighting was much harder than it should have been. "Our first mission was to reach a position that controlled the coastal road, and we reached it. But while it should have taken 36 hours, it took eight days," said David.
One reason was the lack of food and water. "We went as long as two-and-a-half days with daily rations of a can of tuna, a can of corn and a couple of pieces of bread - to share between four soldiers. So we got slowed up because 25 soldiers collapsed from dehydration and had to be evacuated. Everyone lost five, six, seven kilos in the 10 days we were there," he said.
Meir Pa'il, one of Israel's leading military historians, said this is the first time in all of Israel's wars that the reserve soldiers have complained to such a degree, and with such unanimity, about a comprehensive breakdown in practical IDF preparedness for battle. By contrast, he noted, the reservists' protests after the Yom Kippur War were over the failure to anticipate the Egyptian-Syrian attack, not over the lack of food and basic equipment.
"There are a lot of shlemiels in the army establishment," he said, while stressing that the failures of preparedness still didn't amount to a "total catastrophe" that by itself could spell defeat in war, because Israel's military strength can still make up for the oversights. He also noted that while such complaints aren't heard from the regular army, which stays prepared for battle on a daily basis, the reserves make up over 80% of the army ranks in war.
The Spearhead Brigade's petition speaks of a "crisis of confidence between us as fighters and the higher echelons," and both David and Lior gave personal testimony to this crisis. The "higher echelons" extends much deeper than just IDF chief Dan Halutz and the general staff.
"After we were released, the commander of our division spoke to us and said that while he would try to see that all these foul-ups didn't reappear the next time we had to go to battle, he couldn't promise that they wouldn't," said David. "The way he spoke to us was an insult to our intelligence, plain and simple. We have doctors, lawyers, company owners and government officials in our unit, and we leave our families and our jobs every year to serve our country, and he was talking to us like were were 18-year-olds.
"I've lost all faith in him," maintained David.
Lior said his immediate commanding officers told the unit that the kinds of demands they had, especially for equipment, were "small change," and that the IDF brass had much higher priorities for its budget, such as purchasing F-16 fighter jets.
"I still have faith in my company commander, my platoon commander, my brigade commander and even the division commander, but above them, the brigadier generals and up - I've lost my faith in them. If they can't understand the importance of taking care of the simple reserve soldier who drops everything to go wherever the army tells him, to risk his life, then I can't have faith in them anymore," he said.
These soldiers have fought the intifada for several years. They say they've never encountered such a comprehensive failure on the army's part.
"Some of the veterans in the unit were saying that this is the last reserve duty they'll ever pull, but I think I know them well enough to know that they'll be back next time we're called up," said Yitzhak. "But a lot of the guys in our unit this time were fresh out of the regular army - this was the first taste they've ever had of the reserves. After this, I wonder if they'll be ready to come back."
The reserve soldiers disagree on the goal of the protest; some say they won't leave the Rose Garden until the government agrees to a judicial inquiry committee into the handling of the war, some say they won't leave until Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Halutz resign, while others, like David, are waiting for some as-yet-unknown sign to convince them "that the leadership has heard what we have to say, is taking it to heart, and intends to learn the lessons of their failures."
By Monday evening, the number of reservists at the Rose Garden had grown from a handful to at least 200. Some had been released from duty that same day. And at this point, the protest appears to have traction; it is tapping in to overwhelming public dissatisfaction with the outcome of the war. The movement's assumption is that Israel could have won the war, but blew it. True or not, this is a widely-held view in this embittered nation. Which is why the protesters have the government and the IDF brass very worried.
Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post
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People in the Tel Aviv area needing mental help to go to offices of Health Minister Yaacov Ben Yizri

2006-08-31T09:31:00.000-02:00

Ichilov can't treat 3,000 new psychiatric patients, doctors say
By Ran Reznick
Ha'aretz, Thursday, August 31, 2006

Some 3,000 new patients with psychiatric problems, among them 300 children and adolescents, and adults under compulsory commitment orders, will not receive the treatment they need at the government-municipal Ichilov Hospital at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, senior physicians believe.

Their concern comes in the wake of a directive issued last month by the Health Ministry, slashing by half the budget for psychiatric services at Ichilov Hospital, and a new directive by the hospital's deputy director, Dr. Ronni Gamzu, to greatly reduce mental treatment and not exceed the new quota set by the Health Ministry, "even if that entails stopping treatment immediately" and firing workers.

The ministry quota was part of its preparations for transfering responsibility for all psychiatric services to the four health management organizations (HMOs) in January 2007, in keeping with a government decision last February.

Staffers at Ichilov's psychiatric clinic posted an unusual notice on the door this past Sunday: "The Health Ministry has decided in a unilateral and arbitrary manner to limit the quota of patients at the clinic to half of the real treatment needs of the Tel Aviv public. Since in the first half of the year we have already far exceeded the new quota, we are regretfully compelled to close the clinic to new applicants until January 2007. Veteran patients will continue receiving treatment even though the existing service will also be limited."

The notice went on to state that people needing mental help, including urgent cases, can go to the HMOs, psychiatric hospitals and the offices of Health Minister Yaacov Ben Yizri and his director general, Prof. Avi Yisraeli.

A week ago, Prof. Gabriel Barbash, Ichilov's director general, wrote a sharp letter to Yisraeli, stating that the hospital management had tried to warn of the impending crisis and that responsibility for it resides with the ministry. Barbash added that "there is no suitable alternative framework in the Tel Aviv area," and asked: "Is it possible that nobody cares because in another three months the responsibility [for the psychiatric service] will perhaps move to another body?"

Two weeks ago, Dr. Shaul Schreiber, director of Ichilov's psychiatric service, warned Dr. Uzi Shai, the Health Ministry's district psychiatrist for Tel Aviv, but Shai responded yesterday with a particularly harsh letter, in which he warned Schreiber that Ichilov's moratorium on psychiatric services for new patients, "some of whom pose a danger to themselves and their environment, might exact a high price in human lives. The decision places some patients at risk and it is uncertain whether it would prove defensible in court in the event of disaster."

Shai expressed the hope that "the professional-ethical consideration will at least guide you to continue providing professional and responsible treatment to the residents as you have steadfastly done until now."

In a reply to Shai, Schreiber charged yesterday that some of his letter "lacks any substance, when the Health Ministry restricts the hospital to a treatment quota that does not cover even half the needs, and the hospital management issues dismissal letters for some of the workers. Had we acted out of a professional-ethical consideration, we would have shut down the system completely because we have far exceeded the patient quota for the entire year!"

The Health Ministry said yesterday that Ichilov's overflow patients can apply for now to other medical centers in Tel Aviv and the central region, and that Ichilov's concerns will be discussed by ministry officials in the coming days.

Army not prepared for sudden shift from normalcy to war

2006-08-31T09:03:00.000-02:00

The Lessons of War / The IDF had been warned
By Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz Correspondent
Ha'aretz, Thursday, August 31, 2006

During meetings at the General Staff this week, in which the Israel Defense Forces preparations for war were at the center of discussions, the participants were shocked to discover that in a March 2006 report of the defense establishment's comptroller, the army was found not to be prepared to carry out the sudden shift from normalcy to war and that its "operational plans were not up to date."

Much to the surprise of the chief of staff, his deputy and other senior generals, this had been the conclusion in the comptroller's report during the previous year as well. In the report the comptroller had demanded that the situation be immediately remedied. It also turns out that teams of the comptroller's office continued their work, in the field, during the last war.

Also invited to the meeting at the General Staff was the defense establishment's comptroller, Brigadier-General (ret.) Yosef Beinhorn. Beinhorn formerly served as the chief of then defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer staff. The appointment of comptroller of the defense establishment is authorized by the government. Every year the comptroller prepares an annual report, similar to the reports of the state comptroller.

These reports do not enjoy great publicity. The reports are presented to the defense minister, the chief of staff and the various auditing sections of the IDF. Those being audited must prepare a detailed response on how the shortcomings noted in the report have been corrected.

The comptroller's 2005 report, which was published in March 2006, was on the agenda of the meeting at the General Staff. Also mentioned was the previous report, of 2004, which was published in the spring of 2005. In the report issued in 2006 there are two very grave criticisms. The first concludes that "most of the operational plans of the IDF have not been updated for a number of years." On this matter it was written that the lack of updating can be temporary but that this is not always the case. It does not specify one of the IDF's geographic commands, such as the Northern Command.

The negative conclusion relates to the overall structure. Accompanying this serious criticism is a demand, in a warning tone, that "a clear plan and time-table for bridging the gaps is necessary."

The second grave conclusion in the comptroller's report relates to the IDF's "preparedness" in terms of its emergency depots, in the stores, equipment and ammunition. This is what was found to be a problem on July 12, when Hezbollah attacked and Israel decided to respond in a broad and massive offensive. The report says that it is particularly important to examine the preparedness to shift suddenly "from the routine to a state of emergency," and that the problems that were found constitute a source of weakness. Again, this is what suddenly emerged when war broke out. It should be noted that the report also raises problems in battlefield intelligence.

This is a fascinating report in terms of its conclusions and its foresight. The two committees that are supposed to examine what happened to the IDF, that ordered by the government and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and headed by former Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and that set up by Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, and headed by former Chief of Staff Dan Shomron, should take a close look at the material in these reports.

In the land of Chelm, quis custodiet ipsos custodies?

2006-08-30T04:34:00.000-02:00

PMO 'astounded' by comptroller criticism over probe plan
By Yoav Stern, Ruth Sinai and Mazal Mualem, Haaretz Correspondents
Ha'aretz, Wednesday, August 30, 2006

The Prime Minister's Office said Tuesday that it was "astounded" to hear of complaints by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss over a plan for him to investigate the wartime readiness of Israel's home front.

The PMO added that the law explicitly states that the State Comptroller is bound to write an opinion when requested to do so by the cabinet.

Lindenstrauss earlier Tuesday reprimanded Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for having announced that the government would ask him to carry out the investigation, saying that the proposal was against the law and would compromise the independence of the Comptroller's office.

The exchange also followed a flap in which senior officials in the Labor Party, the key partner in Ehud Olmert's coalition government, openly expressed opposition to Olmert's announced intention to appoint a number of investigative committees rather than a full state inquiry into the conduct of the war.

Olmert decided that the issue of the preparedness of the home front would not be included within the brief of the governmental panel of inquiry, and asked that the investigation be handled by the Comptroller.

Lindenstrauss issued a statement Tuesday saying that under the law, only the Comptroller and his office were authorized to decide on the investigations they undertake. It was important that the cabinet be scrupulous regarding the independence of the Comptroller's office, the statement said.

The Prime Minister's Office responded that it was "astounded to hear from the media of the Comptroller's complaints."

The PMO cited a clause of the Comptroller's Law stating that "the Comptroller is obligated to the prepare a ruling on every issue within his purview, whether asked to do so by the Knesset or by the Cabinet."

Labor ministers oppose inquiry plan
Two Labor cabinet ministers said late on Monday that they would vote against the prime minister's decision.

Olmert decided Monday to set up two committees of inquiry into the government's and military's handling of the war, rejecting both the option of a more comprehensive, independent state commission of inquiry and a government commission of inquiry.

A third panel, yet to be appointed, will look into the Israel Defense Forces' and the defense establishment's functioning during the war.

The criticism within Labor was led by ministers Ophir Pines-Paz and Eitan Cabel, who announced that they would vote against the commission outlined by Olmert and said they would try to persuade other ministers to do the same. The Labor Party chairman, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, declined Monday to comment on Olmert's decision.

Pines-Paz called for a state commission, calling it the right way and the only way, to investigate the war. "I intend to oppose [Olmert's decision] in the government, and will try to convince other ministers," he said. "The commission Olmert has appointed to investigate the political echelons does not have clear authority or a timetable, and increasing the number of commissions of inquiries will lead to chaos."

Olmert associates, however, believe that the prime minister has a comfortable majority within the government who are in favor of his proposal, even if Labor ministers vote against.

"We don't have the luxury to spend years examining the past. What we need is a businesslike, professional investigation that gets to the root of the problem quickly," Olmert said in a speech in Haifa on Monday night, addressing leaders of communities damaged by Hezbollah rocket fire.

He also said he did not want to subject the army to "collective flagellation."

Sources close to the prime minister told Haaretz that the Shin Bet security service and Mossad had advised Olmert not to establish a state commission of inquiry into the war.

"The committee will be charged with examining the government's functioning and decision-making as it sees fit," Olmert said.

The inquiry into the government's conduct and functioning during the war will be headed by former Mossad intelligence service chief Nahum Admoni.

Law Professor Ruth Gavison, Professor Yehezkel Dror and Brigadier General (res.) Yedidya Yaari will also serve on the panel.

Olmert emphasized that the decision to go to war had been his alone, and said he was responsible for the war's results. "I want to make one thing clear, the responsibility for the decision to go to war... is entirely mine," the prime minister said.

Neither of the two committees named on Monday has the legal authority to summon witnesses.

The powers of the panels fall short of the demands for an independent, in-depth probe with the authority to dismiss top government officials.

Olmert's decision is likely to further enrage critics, who say that the prime minister and other top officials should be the focus of the investigation and not its overseer.

Critics have been demanding a full-blown state commission of inquiry that has the authority to dismiss officials. Israel has carried out such inquiries after past crises - including the 1982 Lebanon War - that led to the dismissal of then defense minister Ariel Sharon.

The examination of how the bombarded home front was handled will not be under the jurisdiction of either commission, and will be left up to the State Comptroller to investigate.

In his speech, Olmert justified the war, saying Israel inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah. He described the cease-fire, which calls for a beefed-up international force to help police the border, as a major diplomatic success.

He also said the ground offensive, launched just as the cease-fire agreement was taking form, was "unavoidable," despite the heavy Israeli casualties. He said the offensive put pressure on the United Nations to approve the cease-fire.

Former MK Professor Amnon Rubinstein was offered the chairmanship of the committee of inquiry into the conduct of the government, but he turned it down.

The committee of inquiry into the functioning of the military during the war will apparently be based on the panel appointed by Defense Minister Amir Peretz and headed by former IDF chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak.

The panel suspended its work after one day due to public criticism.

2006-08-30T04:25:00.000-02:00

The Inquiries / Exposing the past for the future
Ze'ev Schiff, Ha'aretz, Wednesday, August 30,2006

Once the decision has been taken to investigate the war, everything must be
done to ensure that the inquiries that have been established do a thorough and courageous job.

The goal of these inquiries is not to chop off heads or to settle accounts between politicians, but to expose the truth and the shortcomings and, whenever necessary, to expose those responsible. Israel will no doubt have to share some the conclusions with friendly democracies, since the war was part of a developing global conflict and not merely a localized incident.

It was clear all along that not everyone would be satisfied with whatever type of inquiry it was decided to establish.

Now that the decision has been taken, it is vital for the inquiries to work quickly and that the collation of testimony does not interfere with the IDF's operational investigations. These, too, are needed to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated.

Dividing the probe into two inquiries, political and military, is not possible on every issue. One can separate the military-tactical issue from the political and strategic issue, but there is no way of avoiding overlap and duplication when it comes to discussing the major political-military issues or strategic intelligence. That is why an issue of such major significance as the relationship between the political and military leadership cannot be overlooked.

The issue of the readiness of the home front, which has been entrusted to State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss, also has elements that are linked to decisions taken by the prime minister and defense minister.

As part of the work, the inquiries must address issues that include:
-The military advances made by Hezbollah in recent years, and Israel's response to this.
-The dialog between the militAry and political leadership with regards to threats to Israel since the establishment of the Olmert government and the appointment of Amir Peretz as defense minister.
-Whether Israel decided on July 12, after two soldiers were kidnapped and their comrades were killed, to launch a comprehensive military response against Hezbollah and Lebanon, up to and including all-out war.
-The level of IDF readiness for war with Hezbollah; the Northern Command's operational plans.
-Whether IDF's top officers knew about the state of the emergency supplies, which had been half depleted as a result of operation in the West Bank.

Yossi Sarid - disgrace has a way of haunting those who try to avoid it

2006-08-30T04:13:00.000-02:00

Olmert's Speech / Third-rate panels, first-rate snafu
Yossi Sarid, Ha'aretz, Wednesday, August 30, 2006

It was difficult to find even one sentence in the prime minister's speech last night that could not be immediately refuted. Ehud Olmert should have taken his cue from Hassan Nasrallah and admitted that he had misjudged the start of the conflict. Instead, he exchanged places with him, and made typical Nasrallah comments. How the tables have turned: Olmert bragged before going to war, and keeps on boasting after it.

He did not fulfill his duty as prime minister yesterday, and tried to pay lip service. Fleeing helter skelter from responsibility, he is trying to prevent the establishment of a state commission of inquiry headed by a Supreme Court justice, and to artificially resuscitate a governmental commission of inquiry headed by a Mossad chief from way back when.

But disgrace has a way of haunting those who try to avoid it. The specter of a state commission of inquiry will haunt Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz day and night, and terrify them.

Olmert's main argument against setting up a commission of inquiry worthy of the name was that he refuses to plunge the chief of staff and the country into an exhausting maelstrom that could go on for years.

In the same breath, he announced three simultaneous inquiries that will force the characters involved to scurry back and forth - because in this war, it is impossible to distinguish between the front and home front, and between the politicians and civilians. After all, any panel wishing to do its job properly will have to listen to all the versions to get the complete picture.

I feel for all those who made the mistake of accepting their appointment to this task. They have violated the public's trust even before their first meeting. The public was hoping to be informed of the truth and has been given a fig leaf instead. The appointed members may have good intentions, but the one who appointed doesn't. If these committees do complete their task, they themselves will have to be investigated one day.

Most of the members have neither the means nor the qualifications to conduct a real inquiry. They were chosen by default when their betters declined to collude in an escape strategy for the cabinet and General Staff. These are third-rate committees for a first-rate foul up.

Nations’ sympathies and confusements and historical burdens

2006-08-24T10:31:00.000-02:00

A personal account which gives us some hope…
Pem Rutgers, The Hague. August 22, 2006

We had dinner the other night with the Irish youth leader Mark of the Anglican Church who is leaving us after two years, and the assistant chaplain Rosy.
Rosy asked directly whether we thought BBC (World) is biased in reporting on the crisis/war. My husband Bram said: “Well they surely have a lot more reporters on location in Lebanon.” And Mark said wholeheartedly: “They are. It is disgraceful.”
We started to discuss nations’ sympathies and confusements. Each one labouring under its own particular historical burden.
Mark the Irishman living in the North growing up amidst a religious bloody conflict and working now with youth will participate in the next youth camp for Israeli and Palestinian teenagers we are preparing for coming summer. He has been involved in encounters between people from opposite sides. These camps are drops in the ocean. But a grain in the earth can shoot up and become big when fully grown. Just need careful tending.
Our first experience in the summer of 2004 has given us hope. Kids from “opposite sides” staying with families with teenage children, sharing a room: even sharing one double bed feel more or less safe in the context of a camp and families. They could bring out their emotions and fears, their griefs and losses. Could mourn together. While doing a lot of fun things in the open air as well.
Finally on the way from the lakes North to The Hague in the bus they had a group encounter which started naturally and spontaneously. And after that they were inseparable.
When a politician from the European Union came to speak to them about keeping peace etc. they opposed him together. In doing this together, being in agreement that you can not compare the European détente with the Middle East, they experienced for the first time - as one kid said - unity and togetherness.
One Israeli girl and a girl from Bethlehem have since then gone on holiday together in Ireland, speaking to a youth conference. Tina (Bethlehem) shared a room with Orit and said to her: “You have soldiers eyes.” And Orit retorted: “And you carry bombs”. At the final meeting during a farewell service they said confidentially: “We are the generation that will make peace.” We all sat with thick tears in our eyes.
They followed this up by making music together which they had done all along while at camp. The youth leaders were skilled young people from Israel and the leader was a Palestinian from Bethlehem. They all work with an organisation in Jerusalem by name of Musalaha. The director is Salim Munayer.
Salim has recently written a piece on “Discernment and reconciliation in the fogs of the war”.
No need to say anything, I just want, as Ralph Prins ( survivor of the camps) and a great artist, just turned 80, calls it: “Light a candle’s flame in the dark.” Like you three are doing.
Indeed, "hate talk” we do not need. Let’s follow David’s example and turn a deaf ear and go one step further as he does, by not allowing that kind of talk in our own houses

A few home truths from Uri Avneri - the corrupting effect of the occupation on the army

2006-08-24T10:13:00.000-02:00

Good morning, Elijah!
Uri Avneri
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1156357257/

A STORY has it that Oscar Wilde once attended the premiere of a colleague's play and every few minutes raised his hat. When asked about this odd behavior, he replied: "I am a courteous person. I raise my hat when I meet an old acquaintance."

If I wore a hat, I would have to raise it every few minutes these days when I view TV talk shows, listen to the radio or read the papers. I keep meeting things I wrote years ago, and especially things I have written since the beginning of this war.

For example: for decades I have warned again and again that the occupation is corrupting our army. Now the papers are full of learned articles by respected commentators, who have discovered - surprise! surprise! - that the occupation has corrupted our army.

In such cases we say in Hebrew: "Good morning, Elijah!" You have woken up at long last.

If there is a touch of irony in my remark, I do apologize. After all, I wrote in the hope that my words would convince the readers - and especially people of the Israeli establishment - and that they would pass them on. When this is happening now, I am quite happy about the plagiarism.

But it is important to spell out how the occupation has "corrupted our army". Otherwise it is just an empty slogan, and we shall learn nothing from it.

A PERSONAL flashback: in the middle of the 1948 war I had an unpleasant experience. After a day of heavy fighting, I was sleeping soundly in a field near the Arab village Suafir (now Sapir). All around me were sleeping the other soldiers of my company, Samson's Foxes. Suddenly I was woken up by a tremendous explosion. An Egyptian plane had dropped a bomb on us. Killed: none. Wounded: 1.

How's that? Very simple: we were all lying in our personal foxholes, which we had dug, in spite of our fatigue, before going to sleep. It was self-evident to us that when we arrived anywhere, the first thing to do was dig in. Sometimes we changed locations three times a day, and every time we dug foxholes. We knew that our lives depended on it.

Not anymore. In one of the most deadly incidents in the Second Lebanon War, 12 members of a company were killed by a rocket near Kfar Giladi, while sitting around in an open field. The soldiers later complained that they had not been led to a shelter. Have today's soldiers never heard of a foxhole? Have they been issued with personal shovels at all?

Inside Lebanon, why did the soldiers congregate in the rooms of houses, where they were hit by anti-tank missiles, instead of digging foxholes?

It seems that the army has been weaned from this practice. No wonder: an army that is dealing with "terrorists" in the West Bank and Gaza does not need to take any special precautions. After all, no air force drops bombs on them, no artillery shells them. They need no special protection.

THAT IS true of all our armed forces on land, in the air and on the sea. It is certainly a luxury to fight against an enemy who cannot defend himself properly. But it is dangerous to get used to it.

The navy, for example. For years now it has been sailing along the shores of Gaza and Lebanon, shelling at pleasure, arresting fishermen, checking ships. It never dreamed that the enemy could shoot back. Suddenly it happened - and on live television, too. Hizbullah hit it with a land-to-sea missile.

There was no end to the surprise. It was almost considered as Chutzpah. What, an enemy who shoots back? What next? And why did Army Intelligence not warn us that they have such an unheard of thing, a land-to-sea missile?

IN THE air as on the sea. For years now, Air Force pilots shoot and bomb and kill at will. They are able to hit a moving car with great precision (together with the passers-by, of course.) Their technical level is excellent. But what? Nobody is shooting at them while they are doing this.

The Royal Air Force boys during the Blitz ("the few to whom so many owe so much") had to confront the determined pilots of the Luftwaffe, and most of them were killed. Later, the British and Americans who bombed Germany ran the gauntlet of murderous flak.

But our pilots have no such problems. When they are in action over the West Bank and Gaza, there are no enemy pilots, no surface-to-air missiles, no flak. The sky belongs to them, and they can concentrate on their real job: to destroy the infrastructure of life and act as flying executioners, "eliminate" the objects of "targeted liquidations", feeling only a "slight bang on the wing" while releasing a one-ton bomb over a residential area.

Does that create a good air force? Does that prepare them for battle with a real enemy? In Lebanon the pilots have not (yet) met anti-aircraft fire. The only helicopter shot down was hit by anti-tank fire while landing troops. But what about the next war everybody is speaking about?

AND THE ground troops? Were they prepared for this war?

For 39 years now they have been compelled to carry our the jobs of a colonial police force: to run after children throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, to drag away women trying to protect their sons from arrest, to capture people sleeping at home. To stand for hours at the checkpoints and decide whether to let a pregnant woman reach the hospital or send back a sick old man. At the worst, they have to invade a casbah, to face untrained "terrorists" who have nothing but Kalashnikovs to fight against the tanks and airplanes of their occupiers, as well as courage and an unbelievable determination.

Suddenly these soldiers were sent to Lebanon to confront tough, well trained and highly motivated guerilla fighters who are ready to die while carrying out their mission. Fighters who have learned to appear from an unexpected direction, to disappear into well-prepared bunkers, to use advanced and effective weapons.

"We were not trained for this war!" the reserve soldiers now complain. They are right. Where could they have been trained? In the alleys of Jabalieh refugee camp? In the well-rehearsed scenes of embraces and tears, while removing pampered settlers with "sensitivity and determination"? Clearly it was easier to blockade Yasser Arafat and his few untrained bodyguards in the Mukata'ah compound in Ramallah than to conquer Bint Jbeil over and over again.

That applies even more to the tanks. It is easy to drive a tank along the main street of Gaza or over a row of houses in a refugee camp, facing only stone-throwing boys, when the opponent has no trained fighters or half-way modern weapons. It's a hell of a difference driving the same tank in a built-up area in Lebanon, when a trained guerilla with an effective anti-tank weapon can lurk behind every corner. That's a different story altogether. The more so as our army's most modern tank is not immune from missiles.

The deepest rot appeared in the logistics system. It just did not function. And why should it? There is no need for complex logistics to bring water and food to the soldiers at the Kalandia checkpoint.

THE SIMPLE truth is that for decades now our army has not faced a serious military force. The last time was 24 years ago, during the First Lebanon War, when it fought against the Syrian army.

At the time we said in my magazine, Haolam Hazeh, that the war was a complete military failure, a fact that was suppressed by all the military commentators. In that war, too, our army did not reach its targets on time according to the plan: it reached them either late or not at all. In the Syrian sector the army did not reach its assigned objective at all: the Beirut-Damascus road. In the Palestinian sector, it reached that road much too late, and only after violating the agreed cease-fire.

The last serious war of our army was the Yom Kippur war. After the initial disgraceful setbacks, it did indeed attain an impressive victory. But that was only six years into the occupation. Now, 33 years later, we see the full damage done by the cancer called occupation, which by now has spread to all the organs of the military body.

How to stop the cancer?

The military commentator Ze'ev Schiff has a patent medicine. Schiff generally reflects the views of the army high command. (Perhaps over the last 40 years, there may have been instances when he voiced opinions that were not identical with those of the General Staff, but if so, they have escaped me.) He proposes to shift the burden of occupation from the army to the Border Police.

Sounds reasonable, but is completely unrealistic. How can Israel create a second big force to maintain the occupation, on top of the army, which already costs something approaching 12 billion dollars a year?

But, thank goodness, there is another remedy. An amazingly simple one: to free ourselves from the occupation once and for all. To get out of the occupied territories in agreement and cooperation with the Palestinians. To make peace with the Palestinian people, so they can establish their independent state side by side with Israel.

And, while we are at it, to make peace with Syria and Lebanon, too.

So that the "Defense Army for Israel", as it is officially called in Hebrew, can go back to its original purpose: to defend the recognized international borders of the State of Israel.

A historical note - Harry Truman in 1948 in favour of an international trusteeship for Palestine

2006-08-23T11:46:00.000-02:00

JIM REED: As the world shrugs
CBC News Viewpoint July 19, 2006

The world is watching while war takes its toll of innocent lives, as Israel is forced to defend itself by attacking a neighbour. No leader, no statesman has come forward to offer any better alternative.

On one side is a powerless government - Lebanon - held hostage by a band of dedicated proponents of terror as a solution to a political dilemma. And on the other side is a powerful government acting on its own without international help.

The impotence and indeed the indifference of the international community have never been more starkly demonstrated than now, during this crisis in the Middle East.

The outside world stands by, as it has for more than half a century, and watches and waits while hundreds and in the end perhaps thousands of innocent people die as they have been dying for generations.

Most people shrug and say, "Well that's the Middle East for you," and go on about their business.

But with the proliferation of high-tech weapons, the hardening of attitudes on all sides and the widespread suffering of innocent civilian victims, simply standing by and doing nothing seems callous.

There's no shortage of finger pointing, however — and the blame game is being played by all the parties including us bystanders. Israel is blamed for over-reacting - but when your soldiers are captured, rockets are landing on your towns and cities and your people are being killed, who are we to say what reaction is appropriate?

History teaches us that nation states often behave irresponsibly or without sufficient regard to the consequences of certain actions and behaviour, in much the same way individual human beings often do.

Foresaw a multitude of tragedies

Occasionally, however, a national leader shows real insight and courage, as U.S. President Harry S. Truman did in 1948, with regard to the events in Palestine.

Truman and his secretary of state, General George C. Marshall, both foresaw the multitude of tragedies that would follow hot on the heels of an unsupervised partition of Palestine. On March 25, 1948, Truman made a speech in which he outlined what he felt the United Nations ought to do at the time.

He pointed out that the United States vigorously supported the UN partition committee's majority report, which recommended the division of Palestine into three separate provinces.

One was to serve as a homeland for the Jewish people, one was to be a Palestinian Arab state and the third was to be an international zone, which included the city of Jerusalem. That city was slated to be governed by an international council, representing the nations of the world.

However, both Truman and Marshall expressed concern that Great Britain, which was the central authority in Palestine prior to partition, was prepared to abdicate its responsibility for maintaining security and stability in the territory.

In his speech on that warm and sunny Thursday in March, Truman issued a plea that, as we witness events unfolding now, seems prescient indeed.

Truman was well aware of the violence already occurring in the area, well before the target date for dividing it up. The prospect of even more violence genuinely bothered him and he spoke publicly about it and the imminent dangers and consequences of war.

"If we are to avert tragedy in Palestine," he said, "an immediate truce must be reached between the Arabs and the Jews." Truman proposed an international trusteeship for Palestine "to provide a government to keep the peace."

'Violence and bloodshed'

The trusteeship was being proposed, he said, "only after we had exhausted every effort to find a way to carry out partition by peaceful means." He emphasized that the trusteeship was not meant to be a substitute for the plan of partition, but was intended only to be "an effort to fill the vacuum soon to be created by the termination of the British mandate on May 15th."

Truman and Marshall envisioned the chaos that would result if the partition process were not properly policed and Truman put the problem in clear language. Here's the core of what he had to say:

"The United Kingdom has announced its firm intention to abandon its mandate in Palestine on May 15. Unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land.

"Large-scale fighting among the people of that country will be the inevitable result. Such fighting would infect the entire Middle East and could lead to consequences of the gravest sort involving the peace of this Nation (the United States) and of the world."

It's almost as if old Harry could see into the future and imagine what we've been looking at lately on our TV screens and reading in our newspapers, "...consequences of the gravest sort involving the peace of the Nation (the U.S.) and of the world."

The world didn't listen to Harry Truman in 1948 and today, there's no leader who has either his insight or his courage.

You who make peace in high places, Help us make peace down here on earth

2006-08-23T10:24:00.000-02:00

Speech at Solidarity Rally for Israel
Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks
Sunday 23 July 2006
Solidarity rally for Israel, JFS, Kenton, London

We have come together today to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel and to say a simple prayer.

Ribbono shel olam:
Let your people Israel live in peace.
Let there be an end to bloodshed and violence.
Let there be an end to hostility and hate.
Let Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev come home.
Let Israel’s defence forces come home.
What else did Your people ever want, except the right to live with security, without fear, in peace? Almighty G-d, let your people Israel live in peace.

Today we stand in solidarity with Israel, and rarely have I felt so proud of Anglo-Jewry as I have done these past few days. Especially of our young people. Last week 1300 of them, from youth groups right across the religious spectrum, went out to Israel. Every one of them, or their families, might have said, ‘No, not now. It’s too dangerous.’ Yet almost none of them did. I want to say to every one of those young people: Kol hakavod. You make us proud.

And today I want a message to go forth from us to Israel to say: Israel, you make us proud.

In a mere 58 years, in a country half the size of Lake Michigan, you have done things that are unbelievable. You have gathered together Jews from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than eighty different languages and out of them made a great nation. You have taken a land with no natural resources and turned it into one of the great economies of the modern world. You have created a democracy in a part of the world where no one thought it possible. You have taken a desolate land and made it blossom and bear fruit. And you have developed medical technologies to save life.

Wherever in the world there has been a natural disaster, you have been among the first to offer humanitarian aid. Through six decades under almost continuous threat you have given the world poets and philosophers and musicians and novelists whose heart is Jewish and whose love is for all humanity. You have taken the language of the Bible and made it speak again You have taken a people from the valley of the shadow of death and made it live again. You have taken hope itself – hatikvah shnot alpayim – and made it breath again. Israel: you are our people and our pride and we stand with you today.

Why then does a people who have consistently said Yes to life and No to death, who have consistently said Yes to peace and No to terror, find itself today fighting in Lebanon and Gaza? The answer is so simple, yet so unbelievable, that we must hear it clearly and unequivocally: Israel is fighting today in Lebanon because six years ago it withdrew from Lebanon. Israel is fighting today in Gaza because one year ago it withdrew from Gaza.

And Israel discovered the terrible truth spoken by the late Mother Theresa that no good deed goes unpunished! Every gesture of goodwill undertaken by Israel has been seized on by its enemies as a sign of weakness. Every Israeli effort towards peace has led without exception to an increase in violence against Israel. The Oslo Peace Process led directly to the first Palestinian suicide attacks in Israel. Taba: the most generous offer Israel ever made to the Palestinians, led directly to the most concerted set of terrorist attacks against any nation in modern history. The Gaza Withdrawal, the most painful act Israel has ever had to undertake, led within less than a year to 1000 Kassam rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets including schoolchildren.

And finally the Lebanon withdrawal, undertaken by Israel six years ago in full compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425. That resolution was immediately broken by Hizbullah, about which the United Nations special envoy to Lebanon warned at the time, in November 2000, “Such breaches of international peace and security in the south threaten to ignite a new spiral of violence with tragic consequences for the civilian population.”

That failure led in 2004 to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 which called categorically for the disarming of militias in Lebanon. Again rejected. This time Kofi Annan himself protested to the Syrians. The effect? The arming of Hizbullah with weapons that threaten the very heart of Israel. Israel withdrew from Lebanon. Israel does not want to be in Lebanon. It does not want to do any of the things it is now doing. It accepted in good faith the commitment of the United Nations that it would not have to.

It is acting today only because the international community has failed to ensure that its neighbours met their obligations when Israel met hers. Israel, the Israel we know and love, is a people that pursues peace, yearns for peace, sings about peace, needs peace. For 58 years it has done everything a nation could do in pursuit of peace, and it has been rewarded instead with violence and terror. It has done what the world has asked it to do, and the result has been that it has been left vulnerable and alone.

Which of us does not weep when we see the news day after day? Does any of us, God forbid, take satisfaction at the devastation of Lebanon? Is that who we are? Let me be clear and unambiguous. We weep not just for Israel but for the people of Lebanon also.

Lebanon was once a great country, a centre of civilization A beacon in the Middle East… Until Jordan drove the Palestinians out of Jordan into Lebanon Until Syria used them to terrorise the Lebanese Until Iran armed and funded and manipulated them; Until the whole country of Lebanon, every man, woman and child, became a hostage. And so a great country was destroyed and reduced to ruins. And today Israel is fighting in Lebanon so that Israel should not become, G-d forbid, another Lebanon, as any country in the world will become if it lacks the clarity and courage to say No to terror and Yes to peace.

Tragically Jews have learned over the centuries that when their enemies speaking of killing them, driving them into the sea, wiping them off the face of the earth, they mean what they say.

What Hizbullah and Hamas have said in word and deed is this:

We will kill you if you stay
and we will kill you if you leave.
We will kill you if you retaliate
and we will kill you if you don’t retaliate.

What can Israel do but to seek to end the terror that threatens and is meant to threaten its very existence? When alone among the 192 nations that make up the United Nations, after 58 years it still finds its very right to exist denied?

Friends, let me tell you what is wrong with terror. It is not just that it murders the innocent: the young, the old, the defenseless, the uninvolved. It is that it murders innocence itself. It turns virtue into weakness, decency into vulnerability. And if we, if Israel, if Europe, if America do not take a stand against terror, if we ignore it as the world ignored it for so long, then it will leave a stain on the human future that no tears, no regrets, will ever remove.

The battle Israel is fighting today is not for itself alone. It is for the sake of all those who say no to terror. No to the desecration of life. No to killing in the name of God. Whether they live in Bali or Beslan, or Madrid or Mumbai. And therefore let me end with simple words of prayer:

Ribbono shel olam:
Be with your people Israel now.
Hear their cry.
Heed their tears.
Listen to this, our prayer on their behalf.
Grant peace to all your children, Jew, Christian and Muslim alike.
Help us live together, respecting one another.
Help us cherish life.
Help us to use the powers You gave us, to heal, to mend, to build.
We ask of You, Almighty God, just one thing:
You who make peace in high places.
Help us make peace down here on earth.

Where are you, Motti Ashkenazi of 2006?

2006-08-22T05:44:00.000-02:00

Where are the voices of protest?
By Yoel Marcus
Haaretz, August 22, 2006

The war has created a serious dilemma for the Israeli public. We went to battle with unparalleled self-confidence and came home bent and bowed. The call to war of our leaders, from the prime minister to the chief of staff, promised a crushing victory. The greater the promises, the deeper our disappointment. The army failed to achieve two of the war's objectives - freeing the captured soldiers and stopping the missile attacks on Israel.
The chief of staff, mistakenly believing that Hezbollah could be knocked out from the air, discovered too late that ground troops would have to be mobilized. Most of the soldiers lacked proper training. They were equipped with weapons that went out with the flood, and armor that could be penetrated by anti-tank missiles.
In 48 hours, 34 soldiers were killed for no rhyme or reason. The reservists felt duped. Like cannon fodder. God only knows how things might have ended if President Bush had not rushed to draw up a cease-fire agreement that gave us an honorable way of retreating from this unfortunate military campaign.
Ehud Olmert's promise that Israel would soon be a fun place to live has become the joke of the year. The arrogance projected by our heads of state, including the defense minister, who promised that Nasrallah would never forget his name, and Olmert, who assured us that victory was already in our hands, has only made the public angrier. Israel's citizens want to know who is responsible around here.
Who is responsible for the fact that the substandard shelters that the state comptroller complained about in 2001 were not repaired? Who is responsible for the fact that the political and military echelons have ignored the recommendations of the National Security Council from one decade to the next? Who is responsible for the fact that the government and its agents performed so poorly during the war? Who is responsible for the fact that Hamas has discovered our weak spot, and it won't be long before its pathetic Qassams are replaced by Katyushas and long-range missiles?
The frustration of the public has triggered some tough responses. One proposal is to bring down the government with early elections, which probably won't help much. The Kadima party doesn't really exist, and Labor has gone to the dogs since it gave up its socialist ideology and Amir Peretz, the defender of the poor, was given the portfolio he knows least about. There are no alternative leaders on the horizon. "The cupboard is bare," as Eitan Haber put it.
Another proposal is to sack the chief of staff, Dan Halutz, who has the ultimate defense at his fingertips: "I recommended, but you approved." Peretz has already chosen the option he likes best - an internal committee that will be friendly toward his superiors, the kind that will conduct an investigation, but without getting too fanatic about it. In short, a farce.
A third proposal is a national commission of inquiry. By law, however, such commissions are headed by a justice of the Supreme Court, and he makes the rules. Our government ministers are not going to offer up their necks to a panel whose decisions constitute the last word on who is guilty.
The Agranat Commission, which investigated the blunders of the Yom Kippur War, recommended the dismissal of the chief of staff and the head of the Southern Command - both stars of the Six-Day War - but vindicated Israel's political leaders. In spite of this war, which dropped on us out of the blue, a war that Moshe Dayan described as "the destruction of the Third Temple" in which 3,000 soldiers died, Golda Meir and Dayan ran again and won the elections.
An army captain by the name of Motti Ashkenazi was called up for emergency reserve duty on September 26, 1973. Together with his men, he was sent off to Budapest, the northernmost outpost on the Bar-Lev line. The outpost withstood five days of intense bombardment by Egyptian forces. After five days, Ashkenazi and his soldiers were rescued.
Upon his release from the army on February 3, 1974, Ashkenazi began a one-man vigil outside the Prime Minister's Office and demanded Dayan's resignation. He stood there alone for many days. But little by little, other embittered reserve soldiers joined him. One man's dissent became a massive protest movement that forced Golda and Dayan to step down.
As we hear more and more of the reservists' horror stories and the nightmare endured by hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens driven from their homes by rocket fire, and our politicians try harder and harder to dodge responsibility, the question grows louder and shriller: Where are you, Motti Ashkenazi of 2006?

There is no such thing as unilateral peace...

2006-08-20T14:40:00.000-02:00

Talking only to ourselves
Daniel Ben Simon
Haaretz, August 17, 2006

I am trying to recall when I last saw Israeli leaders talking with Arab leaders about peace, and finding it hard to remember. In recent years, our compulsive tendency to talk to ourselves about an agreement with the Arabs has been strengthening, as though the real conflict in the Middle East were between the right and the left. The fruitless discussions between these two tired bodies have had two goals: to neutralize any possibility of change and to freeze the reality on the ground, for fear that any step toward peace will ignite a domestic war among the Jews. And if we are already fated to go to war, say our architects to themselves, it is better to have a war against the Arabs. It is torturous to think that had similar diplomatic energy been invested vis-a-vis Palestinian leaders, Lebanese leaders and Syrian leaders, perhaps everything would look different. Perhaps we would even be living in peace with them.
Is it possible that the miserable war in Lebanon and the endless slaughter in Gaza are an outcome of the lack of willingness to talk with our neighbors? When was the last time we tried to talk to the Palestinians about their future and about our future? When was the last time we sent out probes to the Lebanese about signing a peace agreement with them?
When was the last time we tried to renew the truncated negotiations with the Syrians about the possibility of arriving at a peace agreement? For six years now Israeli politics has been at a standstill. Ever since prime minister Ehud Barak shoved Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat into the lodge at Camp David in July 2000, there has been no serious contact between an Israeli leader and an Arab leader with whom we are in conflict. The result is dreadful. Israel has slammed doors on its neighbors and has made up its mind to set arrangements on its own, in dialogue with itself, while ignoring its neighbors as though it were a lone juniper tree in the desert. It is possible that for this insult, we are now paying the price.
To a large extent both the slaughter in Gaza after the disengagement and the war in Lebanon prove the failure of the unilateral approach. How is it possible, asks every reasonable individual, that we pulled out of Lebanon and they are attacking us? How is it possible, asks every reasonable individual, that we pulled out of Gaza and they are still attacking us? Is it any wonder that the lack of gratitude on both these fronts has led many Israelis to the conclusion that hatred for Jews is imprinted in the Muslim genome and that the urge to go to war is imprinted in the Arab character?
And perhaps this outburst of aggression has its source in our egotistic nature, in our refusal to relate to our neighbors, in our unwillingness to see them from the distance of a meter. There is no such thing as unilateral peace, just as there is no such thing as unilateral war. It takes two to dance the dance of death, and to dance the dance of joy. We have decided to dance with ourselves, as though the Arabs were shapeless, transparent and not worth speaking to.
And it isn`t as though in the past there haven`t been bilateral contacts that aroused hope. However, they can be counted on one hand. Only two months ago a cheerful meeting was held between our new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan. How many smiles they scattered, and how many times they clapped one another on the shoulder. Olmert was at his best. He laughed, he joked, he chummed and he demonstrated impressive communications skills. He spoke with everyone - apart from the only person at that meeting who justified a serious discussion. And indeed, Olmert`s aides worked for days so that their boss would not shake the hand of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
These are the achievements of Israeli diplomacy vis-a-vis the Palestinians during the past six years: Ehud Barak pushed Arafat at Camp David, the same Barak invited Arafat to dinner at his home, prime minister Ariel Sharon invited Abbas to a meeting at the Prime Minister`s Residence, Olmert bestowed a hug on Abbas. Two gestures, one conversation and one dinner party during the course of six whole years. Not a bad output for a country mired in a bloody conflict with the Palestinian people.
And during this entire time, Israel has withdrawn into itself, refusing to look sideways. It exited Lebanon in anger and it exited in similar anger from the Gaza Strip, without having attempted to coordinate the moves with those concerned. It is also planning to exit the West Bank with a similar, unilateral slam of the door.
Instead of speaking with our enemies we speak with our friends, not to say our patrons, the Americans, as though we were lowly vassals. We have adopted English almost as a mother tongue and we relate to Arabic as almost an existential threat. Thus far, the subordination of our lives, our values and our future to the Americans has not proved itself. We have never been as insecure as we are today. As part of our despair we are surrounding ourselves with a wall and turning the symbol of national rebirth into a fortified Jewish ghetto closed on all sides.
If the despair with our neighbors and with peace spreads, the Israelis are liable to deposit the reins of the state in the hands of dangerous fanatics like Yisrael Beiteinu MK Avigdor Lieberman. 'For insane situations, you need insane people in charge,' said an inhabitant of Kiryat Shmona last week who thus reflected the new mood and mentioned Lieberman as a wonder drug.
If Olmert does not hold out any hope soon and does not start talking with the Lebanese and the Palestinians and the Syrians, the despair is liable to push the Israelis toward extreme solutions.

If it wasn’t so sad, it might be funny,,,

2006-08-20T13:34:00.000-02:00

The war is over, the in-fight is beginning
Jerusalem Times: Opinion
August 20, 2006

This week in Israel….. Behind the news with Gershon Baskin

With the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, the cease fire came into effect and the Israeli troops began heading home. The last 30 hours of the war that the government implemented while the Security Council was already in session brought about no military achievement and only led to more than 30 additional, unnecessary casualties. It has been reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was against launching the expanded ground operation up to the Litani, yet he gave in to the pressure of the military and of Minister of Defense Amir Peretz.. Olmert, as Prime Minister, as he himself stated in his last Knesset address, bears full responsibility for the decisions made by the government. This was one of the most foolish and costly decisions taken by his government.

The investigation committee established by Peretz to assess the operational aspects of the war (headed by former Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak) has no authority to judge the decisions made by the politicians. Olmert and Peretz should also have to answer to the public for leading the country into a war without achievable goals, with faulty tactical plans, and without taking into account the huge price that the home front would have to pay. Olmert’s taking responsibility has to be more than just words. Peretz must also stand before a real investigation so that the public can understand how and why he made the decisions that he did that cost so many human lives, so much physical damage in Israel and in Lebanon, and so much suffering.

It is still too early to determine who won and who lost this war. The outcome and the balance of accounts will only come in the aftermath in the months to come. If the Lebanese army is capable of deploying, as it has begun, and if it keeps armed Hizbollah combatants away from the south, then Israel and Lebanon will have both won, and that is good. Hizbollah will not simply go away, nor will we probably ever know what losses Hizbollah really suffered in the war, because they simply do not publish the truth.

The Government of Fouad Siniora (no relation to Hanna Siniora) seems to be coming out on top fully backed by Saad Hariri and even Walid Jumblat - this is good for Lebanon and good for the region. Israel suffered damages to more than 1,500 apartments and homes with massive damage to the forests and open spaces. Lebanon suffered damage to more than 15,000 apartments (some people are saying up to 30,000). The international community is now directing itself to raise funds for the reconstruction of Lebanon, while the government of Israel and the Jewish agency are doing the same for the north of Israel. Shimon Peres is off to the States on a fundraising tour. The losses, reconstruction costs and rebuilding the army will probably come to more than $2 billion. There go all of the budgetary reserves that were supposed to be invested in education, health and welfare.

A problem with the concept

Many people are blaming the lack of experience of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz for the less than satisfactory results of the war. The problem is, however, one that developed way before these gentlemen were sitting at the helm. In my assessment, the problem rests with the concept of what the Israeli army is and what kind of wars it was prepared to face. The problem’s roots can be found in the policies that were developed and implemented in the days of Chief of Staff Ehud Barak (1991-1995). Barak’s concept, mirroring what he saw in the United States following the first Gulf war was that Israel needed a small, intelligent and sophisticated fighting force. Translating that concept into policy and planning meant investing huge sums first and foremost in the air force, in modern technologies, and in scaling down the reserve forces, depending on elite units of the regular army. Since 1991, Israel invested the major parts of its military budgets into these areas and scaled down the dependence on ground infantry units. The overall dependence of Israel on the air force during the beginning of this war was not because the Chief of Staff came from the air force, but because that was the entire military concept of the IDF since Barak’s time. This concept is good perhaps for the United States when it attacked Kosovo, or even when they launched the attack against the Saddam Hussein regime, but is it the right concept for Israel? Perhaps, if Israel had to go to war against another army it would be right, but it appeared to be quite wrong regarding a war against a guerilla fighting force. Now, in the aftermath of the war, the army needs to be re-equipped and serious re-evaluation of the future needs of the army must be undertaken. The IDF needs to be prepared for a war against another army, but it also needs to be prepared for a possible second round.

The Government in shambles

Unconnected to the war, but in addition to it, the government seems to be coming apart. Olmert is under investigation for an alleged bribe concerning real estate; the Minister of Justice Haim Ramon is resigning over an alleged sexual abuse charge, the Chief of Staff was accused of selling his stock portfolio on the day the war began (although not illegal – it stinks), Shimon Peres is under investigation for illegal campaign funds, and the cherry on the cake concerns the sexual harassment charges against the President, Moshe Katzav who will probably have to resign before his term of office ends.

It has also been reported that since the beginning of the war, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs were hardly speaking with each other. According to the reports, Tzipi Livni was opposed to many of the government decisions concerning the war and chose to take a low profile. When the diplomatic efforts were launched and negotiations were underway on the text of the UN Resolution, Livni wanted to go to NY to be there, but Olmert prevented her from going. Olmert controlled all of the negotiations on the UN text by himself with his top advisors, leaving Livni out of the loop.

Today it was reported that Livni appointed her chief political advisor, Yaki Dayan to begin investigating and assessing the possibilities for opening up the Israeli-Syrian track. It is not clear if she made that decision with the agreement of the Prime Minister or perhaps despite his possible disagreement.

Today even Olmert is admitting that his realignment plan is off the agenda. The main aim of the government for the coming year will be the rebuilding of the north of the country. If it wasn’t so sad, it might be funny. Olmert, who came into office with his great promises of reshaping the country and setting Israel’s final boundaries, is now busy rebuilding what should not have been destroyed from the first place. The reason for going to war was the Hizbollah unprovoked attack against Israel, the killing of eight soldiers and the kidnapping of two others. Israel certainly had a casus belli - the question is whether or not it was wise to launch such a massive attack in order to achieve what has been achieved. Perhaps a more tempered response and a massive diplomatic offensive could have achieved the same or better results, and with a lot less damage?

New elections? – not now

The Government has a lot to answer for and the loss of support for the leaders in the public opinion polls is completely understandable (Olmert and Peretz are both in the mid to low 20’s approval rating after reaching the 70’s at the beginning of the war a few weeks ago). If the government wasn’t so young and if there weren’t so many new MK’s, the talk about early elections might have to be taken more seriously. But other than a few of the parties in the opposition, no one wants to go to new elections – they haven’t yet heated up their new seats and they are not get ready to take the risk of not returning to them. Olmert will probably try to expand his government, but it doesn’t seem that there are too many parties or opposition MK’s who are running to step on what now appears to be a sinking ship. Meretz won’t join, nor are they being asked. Meretz was divided at the beginning of the war, like the Peace Now movement, feeling that the war was justified, but by its end, most of their membership had joined the anti-war camp. Olmert has spoken about Lieberman and his right-wing Yisrael Beitenu joining the government, but even without the realignment platform, it does not seem likely that Labour and Lieberman can sit together. Perhaps Olmert will finally conclude the negotiations with the Orthodox United Torah Judaism party that have been dragging on since the government was formed months ago. Whoever joins this government, if anyone, still has to chart a course through some very unfriendly waters in the coming months. Even with the summer recess underway, a civil-society protest movement that may develop against the Government and against Olmert and Peretz specifically, will cause additional headaches to the Prime Minister. Together with that, we can be sure that the opposition will work overtime to have the Knesset meet frequently during recess.

Gaza next?

I visited Gaza last week. Many people there believe that Israel will take its Lebanese frustrations out on Gaza. Already severely hit and suffering, Gaza is mentally preparing itself for a new Israeli onslaught. There has been no real progress in freeing the kidnapped soldier Gilead Shalit. Israel is still looking for the address that is in charge of the soldier. The assessments from senior Hamas personalities in Gaza and from senior Israeli officials are that Gilead Shalit is alive and well. But in both camps, no one is sure who and where the decisions are being made about his future. In the meantime, it can be expected that Israel will prepare for a massive ground offensive in the coming weeks if the soldier is not returned to Israel. The Government needs an achievement and needs to rebuild the morale of the country. Finding the soldier and punishing the Palestinians at the same time would boost support for the government which only gives more reason to believe that this is in the plans. If this is the path taken, the chances of survival for Shalit are probably less than 50:50, there will most likely be Israeli casualties and there will certainly be massive Palestinian casualties. This is not the path that should be taken, but if there will be no progress on the issue of Shalit, it seems that it is inevitable, unfortunately.

Israeli Arabs' experiences in the Palestinian Authority during the war

2006-08-18T08:22:00.000-02:00

Israeli Arabs' war experiences
Ynet (Ma'ariv), August 16, 2006
Roee Nahmias

Several Arab families decided to act on Hizbullah Chief Hassan Nasrallah's "recommendation" and leave rocket-stricken Haifa during the war in south Lebanon.
They traveled to Palestinian towns like Bethlehem and Ramallah, and even to East Jerusalem, but soon after decided they had rather return home and face the rocket menace.
The reason: The bad treatment awarded to them in hotels, restaurants and stores, as well as ongoing harassments of their wives and daughters on the part of the local residents.
Ghani Abassi, married and a father of three daughters, decided to go with his family to Bethlehem and flee the Katyusha attacks. Abbasi traveled to the Palestinian town with some 10 other families from Haifa, who all chose to stay at local hotels. Unfortunately, this was when their true nightmare began.
"I waited for three days until I got a room. Then it turned out that the air conditioning wasn't working, and I was told that the reason was the high price of electricity. I decided that this wasn't that bad, because we felt we were among our brothers at the West Bank and were willing to endure the terrible heat, knowing we're safe and that our visit was also of financial help," Abbasi described to the website of the Israeli-Arab newspaper al-Sinara.
"However, the treatment we received was disgraceful and dreadful," he said. "We walked around town for a while, but the attitude we encountered on the part of the locals was horrible. The youngsters on the street started harassing our wives and daughters and used shocking expressions that I cannot even bring myself to pronounce," he said.
Another Haifa resident, who went with his family to Jerusalem to escape from the rocket threat, said that the local merchants blatantly took advantage of the situation and inflated the prices in stores. A bottle of mineral water that usually sells for about NIS 4, for instance, was being sold to the Haifa tourists for NIS 10.
'Even foreigners are respected there'
"They told us, 'you are worse than the Jews.' We heard expressions of joy over the fact we have fled our homes, and some even tried to attack us. We were disgusted and decided to return to Haifa," he said, stressing that he used to be a regular donor to the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.
According to him, after that day and the humiliation he experienced in Bethlehem, he does not plan on donating even one shekel.
"We thought we are one nation and that what really hurts them, hurts us too. We went to demonstrations for them and we donated a lot of money to them because we thought they are our brothers and that is our obligation. But, what we found was exploitation and undeserving treatment toward someone supposedly from the same nation," he told.
The same resident added that he expected the families from Haifa and Nazareth to be warmly received in the West Bank towns, but what took place was the exact opposite.
Today he speaks with regret about the two days he spent in Bethlehem. "While touring in Ramallah, a few youngsters said to us, 'you are the same as, even worse than, the Jews.'
We tried to understand why they were acting that way toward us, but they attacked us and a fight broke out. We are very sorry for what happened and we couldn't have expected such an unfit welcome from members of our nation whom we had respected and appreciated very much. But they didn't respect us at all, and saw as worse than the Jews. We are very sorry for what happened and that we drove all the way there to see the painful truth that they don't respect us there," said Ghani Abassi.
Abassi added that the restaurants jacked up prices for customers because they thought they were foreign 'tourists.' "Even foreigners are respected there, but we, their own brothers, felt like they don't respect us, and my friends and I asked why? Are we unworthy of the respect due to members of the same nation?"
Following such treatment, Abassi and his friends hurried back to the lap of the Katyushas and air raid sirens of Haifa. "'We will never again make a donation or participate in a demonstration for the West Bank from now on," said one of them.

From mania to depression - Uri Avery

2006-08-18T08:07:00.000-02:00

From Mania to Depression
Uri Avnery
Ha'aretz, August 16, 2006

THIRTY THREE days of war. The longest of our wars since 1949.
On the Israeli side: 154 dead - 117 of them soldiers. 3970 rockets launched against us, 37 civilians dead, more than 422 civilians wounded.
On the Lebanese side: about a thousand dead civilians, thousands wounded. An unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead and wounded.
More than a million refugees on both sides.So what has been achieved for this terrible price?
"GLOOMY, HUMBLE, despondent," was how the journalist Yossef Werter described Ehud Olmert, a few hours after the cease-fire had come into effect.
Olmert? Humble? Is this the same Olmert we know? The same Olmert who thumped the table and shouted: "No more!" Who said: "After the war, the situation will be completely different than before!" Who promised a "New Middle East" as a result of the war?
THE RESULTS of the war are obvious:
The prisoners, who served as casus belli (or pretext) for the war, have not been released. They will come back only as a result of an exchange of prisoners, exactly as Hassan Nasrallah proposed before the war.
Hizbullah has remained as it was. It has not been destroyed, nor disarmed, nor even removed from where it was. Its fighters have proved themselves in battle and have even garnered compliments from Israeli soldiers. Its command and communication stucture has continued to function to the end. Its TV station is still broadcasting.
Hassan Nasrallah is alive and kicking. Persistent attempts to kill him failed. His prestige is sky-high. Everywhere in the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, songs are being composed in his honor and his picture adorns the walls.
The Lebanese army will be deployed along the border, side by side with a large international force. That is the only material change that has been achieved.
This will not replace Hizbullah. Hizbullah will remain in the area, in every village and town. The Israeli army has not succeeded in removing it from one single village. That was simply impossible without permanently removing the population to which it belongs.
The Lebanese army and the international force cannot and will not confront Hizbullah. Their very presence there depends on Hizbullah's consent. In practice, a kind of co-existence of the three forces will come into being, each one knowing that it has to come to terms with the other two.
Perhaps the international force will be able to prevent incursions by Hizbullah, such as the one that preceded this war. But it will also have to prevent Israeli actions, such as the reconnaissance flights of our Air Force over Lebanon. That's why the Israeli army objected, at the beginning, so strenuously to the introduction of this force.
IN ISRAEL, there is now a general atmosphere of disappointment and despondency. From mania to depression. It's not only that the politicians and the generals are firing accusations at each other, as we foresaw, but the general public is also voicing criticism from every possible angle. The soldiers criticize the conduct of the war, the reserve soldiers gripe about the chaos and the failure of supplies.
In all parties, there are new opposition groupings and threats of splits. In Kadima. In Labor. It seems that in Meretz, too, there is a lot of ferment, because most of its leaders supported the war dragon almost until the last moment, when they caught its tail and pierced it with their little lance.
At the head of the critics are marching - surprise, surprise - the media. The entire horde of interviewers and commentators, correspondents and presstitutes, who (with very few exceptions) enthused about the war, who deceived, misled, falsified, ignored, duped and lied for the fatherland, who stifled all criticism and branded as traitors all who opposed the war - they are now running ahead of the lynch mob. How predictable, how ugly. Suddenly they remember what we have been saying right from the beginning of the war.
This phase is symbolized by Dan Halutz, the Chief-of-Staff. Only yesterday he was the hero of the masses, it was forbidden to utter a word against him. Now he is being described as a war profiteer. A moment before sending his soldiers into battle, he found the time to sell his shares, in expectation of a decline of the stock market. (Let us hope that a moment before the end he found the time to buy them back again.)
Victory, as is well known, has many fathers, and failure in war is an orphan.
FROM THE deluge of accusations and gripes, one slogan stands out , a slogan that must send a cold shiver down the spine of anyone with a good memory: "the politicians did not let the army win."
Exactly as I wrote two weeks ago, we see before our very eyes the resurrection of the old cry "they stabbed the army in the back!"
This is how it goes: At long last, two days before the end, the land offensive started to roll. Thanks to our heroic soldiers, the men of the reserves, it was a dazzling success. And then, when we were on the verge of a great victory, the cease-fire came into effect.
There is not a single word of truth in this. This operation, which was planned and which the army spent years training for, was not carried out earlier, because it was clear that it would not bring any meaningful gains but would be costly in lives. The army would, indeed, have occupied wide areas, but without being able to dislodge the Hizbullah fighters from them.
The town of Bint Jbeil, for example, right next to the border, was taken by the army three times, and the Hizbullah fighters remained there to the end. If we had occupied 20 towns and villages like this one, the soldiers and the tanks would have been exposed in twenty places to the mortal attacks of the guerillas with their highly effective anti-tank weapons.
If so, why was it decided, at the last moment, to carry out this operation after all - well after the UN had already called for an end to hostilities? The horrific answer: it was a cynical - not to say vile - exercise of the failed trio. Olmert, Peretz and Halutz wanted to create "a picture of victory", as was openly stated in the media. On this altar the lives of 33 soldiers (including a young woman) were sacrificed.
The aim was to photograph the victorious soldiers on the bank of the Litani. The operation could only last 48 hours, when the cease-fire would come into force. In spite of the fact that the army used helicopters to land the troops, the aim was not attained. At no point did the army reach the Litani.
For comparison: in the first Lebanon war, that of Sharon in 1982, the army crossed the Litani in the first few hours. (The Litani, by the way, is not a real river anymore, but just a shallow creek. Most of its waters are drawn off far from there, in the north. Its last stretch is about 25 km distant from the border, near Metulla the distance is only 4 km.)
This time, when the cease-fire took effect, all the units taking part had reached villages on the way to the river. There they became sitting ducks, surrounded by Hizbullah fighters, without secure supply lines. From that moment on, the army had only one aim: to get them out of there as quickly as possible, regardless of who might take their place.
If a commission of inquiry is set up - as it must be - and investigates all the moves of this war, starting from the way the decision to start it was made, it will also have to investigate the decision to start this last operation. The death of 33 soldiers (including the son of the writer David Grossman, who had supported the war RM: but called just before the push for an end to it - see earlier in this blog) and the pain this caused their families demand that!
BUT THESE facts are not yet clear to the general public. The brain-washing by the military commentators and the ex-generals, who dominated the media at the time, has turned the foolish - I would almost say "criminal" - operation into a rousing victory parade. The decision of the political leadership to stop it is now being seen by many as an act of defeatist, spineless, corrupt and even treasonous politicians.
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?
THE ISRAELI public is now in a state of shock and disorientation. Accusations - justified and unjustified - are flung around in all directions, and it cannot be foreseen how things will develop.
Perhaps, in the end, it is logic that will win. Logic says: what has thoroughly been demonstrated is that there is no military solution. That is true in the North. That is also true in the South, where we are confronting a whole people that has nothing to lose anymore. The success of the Lebanese guerilla will encourage the Palestinian guerilla.
For logic to win, we must be honest with ourselves: pinpoint the failures, investigate their deeper causes, draw the proper conclusions.
Some people want to prevent that at any price. President Bush declares vociferously that we have won the war. A glorious victory over the Evil Ones. Like his own victory in Iraq.
When a football team is able to choose the referee, it is no surprise if it is declared the winner.

Haifa zoo animals stressed out after confinement due to war

2006-08-15T15:58:00.000-02:00

By The Associated Press
Ha'aretz, August 15, 2006

A female bear resting at the entrance to a bomb shelter at Haifa Zoo on Tuesday (AP)

After 34 days in indoor shelters, many of the animals at the Haifa Zoo got a breath of outdoor air - if not a taste of freedom - for the first time on Tuesday.
During a month-long barrage of rocket fire from Hezbollah guerillas, the baboons got stressed, the lions got fat and zoo officials worry the antelopes might have heart attacks.
Zoo officials moved all the carnivores, bears and monkeys indoors at the start of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, both to protect them from rocket strikes and to keep an errant missile on a retaining wall from setting them loose into Israel's third-largest city.
"The lions gained weight, but they look basically OK," said zoo manager Etty Ararat as he released them outdoors on Tuesday. Hours before, the lions roared and flashed their teeth at reporters who visited them at the 3 by 2-meter-(yard) indoor cages where they were confined for more than a month.
"Baboons suffered from stress," Ararat said.Most of all, he worried about the more fragile animals, like the gazelles, who had to stay outside while thousands of explosions went off around them.
"These animals sometimes die instantly from a heart attack several weeks after they were traumatized," he said.
But all the animals seemed pleased when they were allowed to venture out with the declaration of a cease-fire on Monday.
"They're thrilled, very happy. It's like a new place for them," said veterinarian Ayelet Shmueli.
A troop of baboons scrambled to get outside through a little gate before it was even fully opened on the first day they were allowed out. Bears paced nervously, and a tiger blinked hard in the morning sun.
"But we don't know what will be the impact of the fact they were enclosed for so long," Shmueli said.
While indoors, zoo officials were forced to get creative to keep the animals from going crazy.
"We hung sacks of meat on the ceilings of the leopards' and tigers' cages so they had to jump to get them," zookeeper Yoav Ratner said. The handlers stuffed pumpkins full of meat, he added. They filled bamboo poles with jelly "so the monkeys had to do a bit of work to get the jelly," he said.
The war also hurt the zoo itself. July and August, usually the busiest months for visitors, were completely wiped out financially because of the war.
"We had no revenues and I had a lot of extra expenses," Ararat, the manager said. Those expenses included buying meat the zoo usually got for free because markets had shut down, and buying tranquilizers just in case one of the animals got loose in the city, he said.

Photo fraud - or resurrection? - at Qana?

2006-08-15T09:21:00.000-02:00

Those for whom the issue of photo fraud is relevant, among all the undoubted death and destruction, might want to consult the following site:

http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

And you can also cConsult David Frankfurter's site for a clear explanation of what to do to see the two figures in this picture which are considered to be proof of photo fraud:
http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com/77833.html

David writes:
The front page of the Washington Post of 31 July 2006, had a dramatic photo by Lefteris Pitarakis of AP, captioned "A resident of Qana, in southern Lebanon, weeps as he shows the bodies of some of the 57 victims of an Israeli airstrike on a building being used as a shelter."
Long after the event, with so many questions reverberating in the blogosphere as to whether much of the events in Qana (or at least their journalistic aftermath) were, in fact staged, one would think that a self-respecting editor would very closely scrutinise photos for possible hints of Hezballywood.
Click on the picture on the left and give it a few minutes to load. Courtesy of PressDisplay.com, you will enter a site that lets you enlarge the page using the magnifying glass tool (at the bottom of the screen). Then click and drag your mouse to cruise around reasonably high resolution image of the page. Move up to the the last "body" in the row. Someone forgot to tell him that the photo-op wasn't quite over, and that he really should play dead for just a few more minutes.

And try to make up your own minds.

Remember that the figures of nearly 60 casualties were adjusted down to just under 30 a few days later.

And still, as I wrote at the time, pray for us...

It's official - no such city as Jerusalem. Honest!

2006-08-15T07:07:00.000-02:00

On a lighter note, I am pleased to report that, in its wisdom, the Jerusalem Municipality has ruled:

I would like to remind the readers of this blog that its owner and her spouse (aka Daisyabba) are suing the Jerusalem Municipality over its collusion, connivance, and general cooperation in the construction of an illegal and sub-standard structure...

May such lighter notes come to characterize this blog rather than its content of the last month.

And may I catch up with my translation commitments!

PS Those of you who remember me asking weeks ago when the prime minister would be addressing the nation may be interested to know that yesterday, both he and the head of the Opposition spoke in the Knesset.
Unquestionably, Bibi's speech was the better of the two.
Watch this space...

"Bleeding-heart ignoramuses" - British columnist Julie Burchill

2006-08-14T15:44:00.000-02:00

Bleeding-heart ignoramuses

By Julie Burchill (non-Jewish British columnist)
Published in Ha'aretz, Monday, August 13, 2006

A few weeks back it was my birthday, and my equally non-Jewish journalist friend Chas Newkey-Burden took his life in his hands and presented me with a cuddly toy. Now, normally I feel that people who bother with cuddly toys over the age of eight are either mad and/or prostitutes, but this little sweetie stole my heart. A honey-brown camel with a heart-melting smile and a jaunty cap, he proudly wore an Israeli Army uniform with a fetching hole cut out for his hump. "I've named him Bibi," Chas told me, obviously in honor of our mutual crush.

Later that night Chas and I were watching a TV news report of the beginnings of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. To say we were amazed when a news presenter solemnly intoned that there had been "two militants wounded" with all the grieving gravitas of Richard Dimbleby reporting on the state funeral of the late Winston Churchill is to employ English understatement to an almost surreal degree. But it's been that way ever since - and more than one night has seen me screaming at the TV/my husband "You don't understand! None of you English bastards understands!" before running into the bedroom, slamming the door and collapsing in a tearful heap with only Bibi to comfort me.

One of the most grotesque examples of the almost brainwashed level of bias can be seen on the official BBC Religions Web site, where that "peace be upon him" eyewash is going on like crazy, while other religions are coolly commented on in a strictly "objective" way.

The conflict has sent this tendency into overdrive, with not just the usual Masochist Hacks For Mohammed such as Robert Fisk (beaten up by Islamists, says they were right to do it) and Yvonne Ridley (kidnapped by Islamists, then became one) getting their chadors in a twist about big swarthy men with tea-towels on their heads treating the West mean and keeping it - in their case at least - keen.

Even the women's magazines have gotten in on the act, with lots of first-person eye-witness accounts of British citizens fleeing the Jewish jackboot. Then turn the page and you'll often find a shocked article about honor-killing or forced marriage, Muslim-style. That Israel is fighting the frontline war, on behalf of the freedom and civilization of all of us, against the very real evils of shari'a law never seems to occur to these bleeding-heart ignoramuses.

Over at Channel 4, Jon Snow interviewed an Israeli diplomat with all the finesse and objectivity of a neo-Nazi spraying a six-foot swastika on a wall. Of the rockets which murdered Israeli civilians in the town of Sderot, he said "Rockets, pretty pathetic things - nobody gets injured." This was gleefully picked up and proclaimed by The Guardian, the newspaper I left some years ago in protest at what I saw as its vile anti-Semitism.

All across the board, Lebanese civilians are referred to as "civilians" where Israeli civilians are referred to as "Israelis" - an eerie and sinister difference pointed out by the non-Jewish stand-up comic genius Natalie Haynes, and one which very few people appear to have noticed - even me, until then.

In fact the tone in papers as diverse as the "liberal" Guardian to the right-wing Daily Mail has been repulsively similar; look, look, the Israelis are as bad as the terrorists! Worse, in fact, because they've got America behind them! Even the normally sensible Matthew Parris in the normally sensible Times wrote: "The past 40 years have been a catastrophe, gradual and incremental, for world Jewry. Seldom in history have the name and reputation of a human grouping lost so vast a store of support and sympathy so fast."

The catastrophe he refers to is the State of Israel itself; you'd really think, reading this, that the years leading up to the creation of the Jewish state were, in fact, a right royal romp in the park. Instead of the Holocaust.

A surprising number of British people - especially the super-creepy British Jews who recently signed a treacherous letter to the press distancing themselves from Israel's actions - seem to think Israel should exist not as a real, imperfect country full of real, imperfect people led by real, imperfect leaders, but as some sort of collective kosher Mater Dolorosa, there to provide a selfless, suffering example to the rest of us.

Fight back, and the outside world reacts with the revulsion of a man seeing his sainted grandmother drunk and offering sailors outside. Even (especially?) anti-Semites and enemies of Israel are shameless in recycling the legends of "brave little Israel" - I'm thinking of David and Goliath here - and basically believe that each IDF member should go into battle against the assembled hordes of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah armed with nothing but a slingshot apiece. Failing that, this tiny country must embark on a suicidal act of self-sacrifice in the face of murderous, genocidal hatred, as Matthew Parris astoundingly suggests:

"The settlement has to be a return to its pre-1967 boundaries. Precisely because Israel is by no means forced to make so generous a move, the international support (even love) this would generate would secure its future permanently. It would bring it back within the pale."

Personally, I'd far prefer the Jews to be angry, aggressive and alive than meek, mild and dead - and that's what makes me and a minority like me feel so much like strangers in our own country, now more than ever. I've always loved being a hack, but now even that feels weird, as though I'm living among a bunch of snatched-body zombies who look like journalists but believe and say the most inhuman, evil things.

When Mel Gibson was picked up for drunk-driving recently, he was reported to have screamed at the police officer, whom he believed to be Jewish, "Fucking Jews! The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." His subsequent excuse was that he has "battled the disease of alcoholism for all my adult life." The British media are notorious for our love of the hard stuff; is that going to be our excuse too, I wonder, when large numbers of us are finally bang to rights for peddling the same loathsome lie?

A spirit of absolute folly

2006-08-14T10:04:00.000-02:00

A spirit of absolute folly
By Ari Shavit
Ha'aretz, August 13, 2003

In the difficult summer of 2006, the State of Israel is declaring in astonishment: They surprised us. They surprised us in a big way. They surprised us with Katyushas and they surprised us with the Al-Fajr rockets and they surprised us with the Zelzal missiles. They surprised us with anti-tank missiles. And they surprised us with the operational skill of theanti-tank squads. They surprised us with the bunkers and the camouflage. They surprised us with the command and monitoring. They surprised us with strategy, fighting ability and a fighting spirit. They surprised us with the astonishing power that a small death-army with low technology and high religious motivation can have.
However, more than they surprised us in Summer 2006 with the strength of Hezbollah, they surprised us this summer with our own weakness. They surprised us with ourselves. They surprised us with the low level of national leadership. They surprised us with scandalous strategic bumbling. They surprised us with the lack of vision, lack of creativity and lack of determination on the part of the senior military command. They surprised us with faulty intelligence and a delusionary logistical network and improper preparedness for war. They surprised us with the fact that the Israeli warmachine is not what it once was. While we were celebrating it became rusty.
Generally it is not right to conduct an in-depth investigation of a wartime failure during a war. However, at the end of the most embarrassing year of Israeli defense since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Israeli government is not drawing conclusions. It is not reorganizing the system, there is no evidence of a real learning curve and it is not radiating a new ethos. On the contrary: It is adding another layer of folly onto a previous one. Its slowness to react is dangerous. Its caution is a recipe for disaster. Its attempt to prevent bloodshed is costing a greatdeal of bloodshed. So that now of all times, just when the forces are moving toward south Lebanon, there is no escaping the question of where we went wrong. It is so that Israel will be able to achieve a last-minute victory and so that the troops will be able to achieve their goals and so the soldiers will be able to return home safely, that we must ask already now: What happened to us? What the hell happened to us?
A simple thing happened: We were drugged by political correctness. The political correctness that has come to dominate Israeli discourse and Israeli awareness in the past generation was totally divorced from the Israeli situation. It did not have the tools to deal with the reality of an existential conflict. It did not have the tools to deal with a reality of an inter-religious and inter-cultural conflict. That is why it focused entirely on the Palestinian issue. It made the baseless assumption that the occupation is the source of evil. It assumed that it is the occupation that is preventing peace and causing unrest and perpetuating the instability.
At the same time, political correctness assumed that Israeli strength is a given. That Israel is insanely strong. Therefore, political correctness disdained any attempt to build and maintain Israeli strength. The defense budget was cut, the values of volunteerism were mocked, the concepts of heroism and fortitude became despicable. Since the Israel Defense Forces was identified as an army of occupation - rather than as an army defending feminists and homo-lesbians from the fanaticism of the Middle East - they had reservations about it, they shook it off and became alienated from it. After all, in the spiritual world of political correctness, power and army have become dirty words.
Any national idea was rejected because of the sanctity of the private sphere. Every cooperative ethos was dismantled in favor of the individual. Power was identified with fascism. Masculinity was publicly condemned. The pursuit of absolute justice was mixed with the pursuit of absolute pleasure and turned the reigning discourse from a discourse of commitment and enlistment to one of protest and pampering.
Another thing happened: We were poisoned with an illusion of normalcy. The State of Israel is fundamentally an abnormal state. Just because it is a Jewish state in an Arab region, and just because it is a Western country in a Muslim region, and just because it is a democratic state in a region of fanaticism and despotism, Israel is in constant tension with its surroundings. On the one hand, because of the situation in which it finds itself, Israel cannot live a life of European normalcy. On the other hand, because of its values and its structure in terms of identity, economics and culture, Israel cannot avoid being a part of European normalcy.
Therefore Israel is in a constant state of basic contradiction. The way to resolve this contradiction is to create a positive anomaly - both ideological and ethical - that will provide an answer to the negative anomaly in which Israel exists. There is no other way: Israel must prepare a defense envelope that will protect its internal environment from the external environment surrounding it. Life in defiance of the environment is an essential part of Israeli existence.
However, in the past generation this cruel insight has dissipated, the delusion has spread that we have overcome our problems and reached a state of tranquility, and that we can live in this place like any other nation. This illusion led to a situation where the positive Israeli anomaly gradually became blurred, and the energies devoted to maintaining the defensive shield that isolates Israel from the region and protects it from this region were drastically reduced. Weakness prevailed. Our willpower was weakened. The bubble so inebriated the Israelis that they didn't bother to surround it with a fortified wall. Therefore, the pressures of the external environment steadily increased - with the terror of 2002 and the Qassams of 2005 and the Katyushas of 2006 - until they penetrated deep inside the Israeli environment. Thus was created the paradox that those who wanted to believe that Israel could be totally normal were the ones who caused it to decline into a chaotic situation of total anomaly and a loss of balance.
Both political correctness and the illusion-of-normalcy spread first and foremost among the Israeli elites. The Israeli public in general has remained for the most part sober and strong. It did not err with illusions of a new Middle East. It did not turn its back on the existential imperative, the defense ethos and the IDF. Even its core values were not destroyed. Therefore, it impressively withstood both the test of terror of 2001-2003 and the test of "fire-on-the-home front" of 2006. It demonstrated an almost British fortitude and continues to do so.
On the other hand, the Israeli elites of the past 20 years have become totally divorced from reality. The capital, the media and the academic world of the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, have blinded Israel and deprived it of its spirit. Their repeated illusions regarding the historical reality in which the Jewish state finds itself, caused Israel to make a navigational error and to lose its way. Their unending attacks, both direct and indirect, on nationalism, on militarism and on the Zionist narrative have eaten away from the inside at the tree trunk of Israeli existence, and sucked away its life force. While the general public demonstrated sobriety, determination and energy, the elites were a disappointment. Capital brought the illusion-of-normalcy ad absurdum, and established a crushing social-economic regime here that does not suit the historical situation. The academic world promoted political correctness ad absurdum and conducted a somewhat suicidal spirit of criticism here. And the media combined the two and created a hallucinatory state of mind, which combines unbridled consumerism with false righteousness.
Instead of being constructive elites, in the past generation the Israeli elites have become dismantling elites. Each in its own area, each by its own method, dealt with the deconstruction of the Zionism enterprise. Step by step, the top 1000th percentiles abandoned the existential national effort. They stopped doing reserve duty, they stopped sending their sons tothe fighting units. They mocked those officers who warned about unilateral withdrawals. They mocked those officers who warned that the emergency warehouses were emptying out and the enemies were becoming stronger. And they deceived themselves and those around them that Tel Aviv is in fact Manhattan. Money is in fact everything. And thus they bequeathed to young Israelis a legacy of values that makes it very difficult for them to attack even when the attack is fully justified. Because a country that lacks equality, that lacks justice and that lacks faith in the rightness of its path, is a country for which it is very difficult to go on the attack. It is a country for which not many are willing to kill and be killed.
And in the Middle East of the 21st century, a country whose young elites find it difficult to kill and be killed for it is a country on borrowed time. A country that cannot endure. So that what is now beingrevealed before our eyes, as the smoke of the Katyushas continues to rise from the Lebanese thicket, is not a failure of the IDF but a failure of the elites that turned their back on the IDF. What is being revealed now, when Israel cannot properly protect the lives of its citizens, is not problems of command and problems of tactics, but rather deep-seated problems of a society whose elites have abandoned it. It is not Major-General Udi Adam or Brigadier-General Gal Hirsch who are the problem, it is the Israeli spirit. A spirit that for far too long has been a spirit of stupidity. A spirit of absolute folly.
Usually, the accusation of folly is directed at battle-hungry generals and warmongering politicians. However, at the end of this war, the accusation of folly will be directed at an entire cadre of Israeli opinion-makers and social leaders who lived in a bubble and caused Israel to live in a bubble. The army will be required to put its house in order and to rebuild, but the true anger will be directed toward the elites who failed. Elites who betrayed the trust of a wise, impressive and strong nation.
However, now it is wartime. The citizens of the north are still in bomb shelters, the soldiers of the regular and standing armies are risking their lives in a war that was not properly planned or properly defined and is being conducted poorly. Therefore, what is needed now is to operate quickly, to operate while in motion, in order to strengthen the spirit of those participating in the battle. What is needed is to create immediately a new discourse that will suit the new situation. Without a new spirit and without a new language there will be no victory in the fighting. Therefore, while the war is raging we must find the spirit and we must find the language that we lost in the years preceding the war.
Israel tried with all its soul and all its might to be Athens. However in this place, in this era, there is no future for an Athens without a speck of Sparta. There is no hope for a society-of-life that does not know how to organize itself to deal with death. Therefore, after decades during which the right and the left and the center took Israeli power for granted and wastefully exploited it, now there is no escaping the need to place the renewed building of Israeli power at the top of the agenda. We are returningto the encounter with our fate; returning to what is decreed by the reality of our lives.

The Face of a Hero - Roi Klein, of blessed memory

2006-08-14T07:32:00.000-02:00

http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=409254
The Face of a Hero
By Chana Weisberg

Roi Klein.
It is a name that until a few days ago held no meaning to me. He was a complete stranger, about whom I had never heard and whom I had never met.
Yet an image of the last seconds of his life won't leave my mind.
Roi was a son. He was a brother. He was a husband to Sara and a father to three-year-old Gilad and one-year-old Yoav.
But most of all, Roi was a hero for all of us. He was a face and a name to the many Jewish heroes spanning the generations.
Roi's funeral was last Thursday (July 27), the day that would have been his 31st birthday.
Major Roi Klein was a Golani brigade deputy commander. He was killed last Wednesday, in an ambush among the houses of Bint Jbail, a large village in southern Lebanon. Hezbullah terrorists killed eight soldiers, including Roi, and injured nearly two dozen.
There were two other soldiers next to Roi. A hand grenade was thrown at them and Roi shouted, "Grenade!" He then threw his body over it, sacrificing his life for the sake of his soldiers, who later attributed being alive to his act of selflessness.
In his last seconds of life, Roi mustered the strength to shout "Shema Yisroel" the prayer that Jews have prayed for centuries, declaring our belief in G-d and in a better world; the prayer that so many Jewish martyrs throughout the generations called out as they were being led to their deaths.
My mind can't stop conjuring what it must have been like in those last seconds of his life, when Roi made the split-second decision to jump on the grenade. I imagine Roi seeing his beloved family in his mind's eye--his wife, and their two young children who would now grow up knowing him only from stories that they'd be told or from pictures that they'd be shown.
I imagine Roi thinking about his grieving elderly parents; of his mother, Shoshana whose voice cracked at her son's grave as she cried out, "The pain is unbearable... We will look after the children and raise them according to what you left behind…"
And I imagine Roi seeing the West Bank hilltop settlement of Eli that he and his wife idealistically made their home, despite those who wished to dismantle it.
It was for these loved one that Roi served in the special units of the Paratroop and Golani brigades. It was for them, and for the ideals represented by the Shema Yisroel prayer, that Roi diligently and courageously pursued his army service, advancing to the point where he would have been promoted to battalion commander.
What a colossal contrast between Roi and his enemy.
Roi was there to ensure a peaceful existence of his people in their homeland. He was there to safeguard the innocent lives of his children and his nation. To ensure that people could live in their homes in peace and tranquility. To guarantee that they could continue their ordinary day to day activities. Activities like shopping in a mall without being blown to bits, like eating a family meal together in a pizza shop without worrying about flying shrapnel, like praying in a synagogue without having to run for cover in a bomb shelter, or like sending their children on a school bus without thoughts of bullets penetrating within.
Roi was there to defend his people against those that vowed their destruction. Even in his death, he sacrificed his own life to ensure that two of his comrades could live.
I picture his enemy, too, in my mind. He is there to cause as much death, devastation and destruction as he possibly can. He is eager to send his young, strapped with explosive bombs stuffed with nails on missions of "suicide bombings," as long as in their death they murder as many Jews as possible with them. He is launching rocket after rocket into densely populated Jewish cities so that hospitals healing the sick and homes housing the elderly will be destroyed together with the lives of those inside.
Roi's enemy was willing to die to bring death and mourning to as many as possible; Roi was willing to die to ensure life and liberty for others, to preserve a world in which Jews could pray to G-d in their synagogues, perform G-d's commandments and make our world a better, more moral and more conscientious place.
This is the third time in this last century that the Jewish people have found themselves on the front lines against those who sought their annihilation.
For the Nazis, the Jew was a racial impurity to be exterminated like insects. For the Soviet communists, the Jewish religion was a thorn in their sides to be eradicated. And for the Islamic extremists, the Jew and his state must be eliminated from the face of the earth.
Less than a century has passed since Jews fell in the Soviet gulag with the chant of Shema in their mouths for the mere "crime" of observing kashrut or Shabbat in their private lives. Just over a half a century has passed since the echo of the Shema resonated in the Nazi gas chambers where Jews were asphyxiated and then burnt to ashes in the crematoriums just because they were born as Jews.
And now Roi Klein followed in the path of these martyrs, dying with the cry of Shema on his lips in the act of defending his people from those who, yet again, wish to destroy them.
Roi is no stranger after all. He is each of our husbands, sons and brothers. His face is the face of each of our heroes and martyrs.

Tallest building in Kiryat Shmona hit by Katyusha - August 13

2006-08-14T06:22:00.000-02:00

August 13, 2006
Dear Friends,

I wrote a brief note on Friday, to tell everyone that I'm OK, in case they saw my building on television. In fact, only a few minutes later, the building was shown on TV, on the 5:00 p.m. news program; my phone didn't stop ringing for hours.

I was about to get ready to leave the house anyway, when I heard the whoosh of a Katyusha, the loudest crash I'd ever heard, and the building literally bounced. My apartment, on the 13th floor of the "14 storey building" faces east, with one window on the north; I looked down from there, to see if the building had been hit on that side, and it hadn't. When I got out into the hallway, I heard lots of voices on the stairs, or on the floors below. Although the elevators were working, I decided to walk down, and see what was going on. I walked onto each floor from the stairwell.

When I got to the ninth floor, I did the same, and noticed some drops of blood on the floor in front of the south-west apartment. At the same time, someone was hollering from inside the apartment, "Is anybody there?" When I answered, he asked me to try to push open the door from the outside, he couldn't get it open. I pushed and even kicked it, but couldn't get it open. I told him to wait, and I'd get help; he seemed calm enough. I went to the stairwell, and called down for help. Immediately, a policeman appeared, and spoke to the man inside, who answered him. The policeman tried to kick the door open, with no success, and ran and got the firemen who were in the building. No one could figure out how the man was trapped inside, because obviously, whoever had been hurt had left from that door. I surmised that whoever it was had gone in and the door slammed behind them. The firemen started working on cutting the door open. The door is what is known as a multi-bolt door: it's metal, with bolts that go into the frame on all four sides of the door. They kept trying to call to the man inside, but now there was no answer, and faces were looking very worried. Several firemen asked me if I was sure I'd heard someone there, but the policeman interceded and said that, "Yes, there was someone there", and he had spoken to him, we both had. Of course, a crowd of neighbors had collected. One was Ella's husband from the 10th floor, who ran back upstairs. A few moments later, Ella came down with the key - just in time; they were close to breaking in. But there was no one there! He'd been rescued by the fire truck, which reached him through the living room window. I had a glimpse of destruction, with the windows and shutters shattered, and glass all over, before the door was closed and locked again.

I had a passing thought of a funny incident that occurred last summer: I'd been sitting at the computer, which is near the window, and heard voices very close. Now, sound does travel up, and I sometimes hear sounds from the street, but this sounded like someone was talking into a telephone or walkie-talkie, extremely close to the window. I couldn't figure it out. Suddenly, a man loomed up next to my window! I don't know which one of us was more startled upon seeing the other. I chatted with him and offered him a cold drink. Turned out that he was a fireman, and after a minor fire in a 3rd floor apartment, the fire department had decided to practice reaching the upper floors, "just in case". Now, I thought how lucky it was that the firemen had practiced reaching the upper floors of our building, the tallest in Kiryat Shmona, when they did.

At that point, one of the firemen I knew asked about the other residents of the building, in the floors above the ninth. He and I went up again, floor by floor, to make sure no one else was trapped in their apartments. I pointed out which residents had already left, and which apartments still had people living in them, and we knocked on those doors. By that time, all the residents were downstairs, milling around in the lobby.

I went to the 10th floor, to Ella's apartment. It was a shambles. Every day, I had warned them not to close the windows all the way. However, her husband had come home from work, turned on the air conditioner, and closed the windows. Then he sat down in the living room to read the paper, after having just stepped out of the kitchen. All the living room windows were knocked out; I don't understand how he wasn't seriously injured by flying glass. All he had was a small cut on his arm. The kitchen was in worse shape. They'd had a huge window in there, which was completely blown out, frame, glass, even bits of plaster, and all. Here, it wasn't just the force of the shock wave, as it had been in the living room, but shrapnel as well. Pieces of shrapnel and glass were embedded in the wall above the cabinets. Another piece had evidently struck the mechanism of the refrigerator, because it had stopped working. The sink had been dislodged from the surrounding countertop, and was tilting at an angle. All in all, though, they were uninjured. Her father had been lying in bed, in the far bedroom (facing the southern niche) and so hadn't been hurt, either.

I left her and went downstairs. Most of the other neighbors were milling around; one family was in hysterics. I had met them only a few hours earlier, when I came home. The siren had gone off, and they had run to the stairwell, which is very secure. Now, some of their windows had been blasted in, and they were totally in shock. Several people noted how many people had stayed in the building; I would estimate that one-third of the residents were still there, which seems to be typical of the town as a whole.

The building is shaped roughly as below (my artistic abilities are nil Note from Daisyima: the drawing did not come over in the posting); there are four apartments on a floor, each identical. Each apartment has 3-way ventilation. (One of the jokes here is that Nasrallah is trying to improve living conditions by giving everyone cross-ventilation.) Most windows face one direction, one window in the next direction going counter-clockwise, and the third, continuing counter-clockwise, facing into the "niche" . The inner part of the niche is the kitchen window. So, for example, my windows mostly face east, with another window facing north, and the one facing the niche actually facing west, but blocked by the other side of the niche. My kitchen window faces east as well, but is on the inner side of the niche. Hope this isn't too confusing.

What had happened is that the Katyusha hit inside the niche, which amplified the effect. All, or almost all, of the kitchens facing west, i.e. the lower left quadrant of the figure above, were damaged, from at least the 3rd floor to at least the 13th. That is, the kitchen windows were blown in, with glass and possibly shrapnel inside. I don't know about above and below that, because people weren't home, and I couldn't tell from outside. Most of the apartments which have one window facing into the niche, i.e. the north facing ones, were also damaged. Even with the windows open, the force of the blast blew them off their frames, and there's glass everywhere.

People keep asking me about the building itself, the electricity, the elevators, etc. There was no real structural damage: apartments like Ella's, and Riki's below hers, had a lot of glass, wood and plastic damage, even perhaps a cinderblock or two dislodged, and plaster knocked off the concrete. However, despite the jokes, e.g. Nasrallah wants everyone in Kiryat Shmona to have a single-storey house, the Katyusha is not like a bomb dropped from a plane, or even the size and strength of those that have fallen in Haifa, which seriously damage buildings and infrastructure. The Katyusha is actually an anti-personnel weapon. Because it's sent over with tremendous force, and has so much explosives packed into it, it can and does do damage to structures. But that damage is usually a hole where it penetrated, and whatever it wrecks inside. It usually does not do structural damage, and certainly not in modern, strongly-built buildings like mine.

Getting back to what happened that evening, I again started leaving the building, and ran into David T. coming in. David is an engineer, who has been assigned by the municipality to check on physical damage, and authorize evacuation for those people whose homes and apartments have been damaged to the point where they can't stay there. First, he was waylaid by a neighbor downstairs, who said that water was leaking from the 7th floor down, in the southwest quadrant. He then asked me who lived where, what apartments were affected. We ended up coming back up to my apartment, where I printed out a list of the residents I had on my computer, having once been the treasurer of the building committee. We went over the list, and I explained which apartments were damaged and which people needed to be evacuated. Before he was finished, he got a call to run to the next site that had been hit. A little later, when I discovered that two families weren't listed, I called David, and he was already at the third site. Among those whose names I gave him was Ella and her family.

I finally left, about an hour after I originally planned to leave. In all of this going up and down, I was still holding a container of cat food to put out, and eventually I did so - luckily. I was in time for one of the most moving moments of the day. A family from the Eshkol neighborhood, where I volunteer, and with whom I'd been in contact, knew that I lived in the 14 storey building, but didn't have my phone number. So, they hopped in their car to come over and see if they could find me, to make sure I was OK! We met in the parking lot. As I say, I was very touched.

Of course, my phone didn't stop ringing from the moment the building was shown on TV, about 15 minutes after it was hit. All my friends, from near and far, wanted to make sure that I was OK. Every time I completed one phone call, there were 2 or 3 messages waiting. It's wonderful to know that so many people care.

After eating dinner out - far away from town - I returned. Two families were downstairs, waiting to be picked up, and taken to their temporary homes away from Kiryat Shmona, although they didn't know where. But Ella and her family hadn't been picked up. I went upstairs to her apartment, and called David from there. Turns out he'd had the wrong phone number: Ella's brother-in-law, Peter, lives in the building, too. They had gone to relatives for the duration, and David had mistakenly gotten Peter's number from information, and kept calling Peter's empty apartment. By the time I was able to put Ella and David into direct contact, it was too late to do anything. Ella and her husband had already cleaned up most of the broken glass, and they ended up spending the entire weekend in the apartment, with no windows. When I left this morning, they were waiting for a call about their evacuation. They'd received a call from the tax authorities, telling them that the damage in their apartment was too extensive for a regular temporary solution. A longer-term solution, close enough for them to continue going to work even after the war is over, was being sought. In the meantime, all they could do was wait. [By this evening, they were gone, and I'll try to call her tomorrow and get details.]

I had another full and interesting day at the moked today, but details of that will have to wait until tomorrow's update.

Until then, have a quiet and peaceful night,

Marsh

Great potential for progress

2006-08-13T12:28:00.000-02:00

The night of the long knives is just around the corner
Gershon Baskin

This has been a terrible week for Israel. Although the end of the week brought UN Security Council 1701 which has met most of Israel’s demands, the war has continued and in its (hopefully) final hours it is taking a huge toll in new casualties. With the war in its final hours the “after war” has already begun. Generals, including the Chief of Staff, Ministers, including the Prime Minister, and other officers and politicians are already jockeying for positions to defend themselves or for attacking others in what can be expected to be the very long “night of the long knives” period.

There are a lot of questions that demand answers concerning the preparedness of the army and the home front, the decision-making process in the government, the IDF, the officers on front lines and the linkages between them all. There will be a lot of charges and counter-charges about the level of experience and knowledge of the decision-makers. This past weekend’s newspapers were already filled with stories of “fashles” (screw-ups) on the battle field. For weeks, people have been asking many tactical questions and now they are beginning to ask the main strategic questions: what was achieved and at what price? Should Israel have gone to war now or should we have been better prepared? Why does it appear that the intelligence regarding the ability of Hizbollah to fight was so incorrect? It seems, for example, that the various anti-tank weapons used by Hizbollah were far more effective than thought in taking out the Merkava IV tanks which were believed to be invulnerable. Those same anti-tank weapons were used by Hizbollah on helicopters, buildings and troops. How did Hizbollah manage to shoot an average of almost 200 rockets into Israel everyday? As the IDF captured more territory the amount of successful rocket fire into Israel increased – why? Why were the IDF weapons unable to penetrate the Hizbollah bunkers in Beirut and throughout south Lebanon? Israel had turned down an offer from the US several years ago to purchase the US bunker-busters claiming that Israel had its own more superior version of this bomb.

Just as serious are the questions concerning the home front. Some 1.5 million Israelis were displaced or forced to spend a month underground in shelters. In many cases, the shelters were in terrible condition and could not be used. There were problems of supplies to the home front. There seemed to be no orderly plans for evacuation and now the questions regarding financial compensation for damages and losses will bombard the government with more force than the Katyusha rockets. These questions don’t even touch the important issues concerning the level and extent of damage done by Israel to Lebanon – did this have to happen? Why? What were the alternatives that were not implemented?

Who will pay the price?

The Likud is already on the attack. Voices unheard from in months are beginning to speak out against Olmert, Peretz and everyone else in the government. Netanyahu is back in the media and on full attack. He has, until now, supported the government’s war effort. He has presented himself as taking a loyalist nationalist stance. Now he is on attack because of his opposition to the UN Security Council resolution and because of what seems to be a likely ceasefire to begin tomorrow. Netanyahu and his Likud mates want more blood – more Hizbollah blood, and they fail to realize that the cost of more Hizbollah blood will be more Israeli blood. Those right-wing politicians and the generals, who are calling for more, still believe that Hizbollah can be brought to its knees. They believe that Israel can still dictate the political changes that they want in Lebanon. In the name of the so-called “deterrence” and in the name of Israel's honor, they have no problems sending more young Israelis to their deaths, so that they can capture and hold the next hill and the next village. They want us to stay in the bloody quagmire of Lebanon for years to come. They have learned no lessons from the past or from the current fiasco. But these people will probably not pay the price of the current mess. They will probably inherit the spoils of this war.

Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Dan Halutz are most likely to pay the heaviest political price from this war (aside from the real price of the war paid by those who have lost their lives, their homes, and their livelihoods). This war is considered by most of the public to be a military defeat. Most Israelis think that Israel did not win and that Hizbollah has a much better chance of claiming victory. At this point, most Israelis believe that we will have to face the Hizbollah once again in a few years from now and then they will be even stronger than they are today. Many Israelis believe that already in this war we were essentially facing Iran and Syria on the battlefield and that we should already face both of them directly – and the sooner the better.

Olmert and his Kadima party were elected on a political platform that is today rejected by the Israeli public. The idea of another unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank has lost all of its appeal. Most of the drop in support is from people who think that Israel cannot afford to give up any territory because in a few years from now we will have to go to war to take it back after the Palestinians manage to deploy missiles and rockets that can hit all of Israel. Others oppose the unilateral withdrawals because they believe that we should not do anything outside of negotiations with a Palestinian partner. “No more unilateralism” is their motto (and I am one of them). The Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon brought both the second intifada and this war in Lebanon. The Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza brought us the Hamas victory.

New opportunities

If Olmert and Peretz do not come up with a bold political initiative in the coming months that will take us beyond Lebanon, they will pay the price and we will be heading for yet another round of new elections, and in those elections, once again the political map of Israel will be changed out of all recognition. The best way to fight off the return of the right is to push forward with the agenda of the left. Forging an aggressive peace agenda, negotiations and a comprehensive regional approach is what Olmert (and Israel) needs in order to bring us to safer shores. The best step would be to bring back the Clinton parameters and the Arab League peace initiative. With the Security Council being held in such high regard lately, perhaps a new initiative for a UN Resolution that would include the Clinton parameters and the Arab League Initiative – with international guarantees and support – could help move us along. Some people have suggested reconvening the Madrid conference of 1991 to bring along the entire region and the international community. All of this can be done, but the basis for any progress must be to rebuild the Israeli-Palestinian partnership. President Mahmoud Abbas is the recognized leader of the Palestinian people – democratically elected and now further backed by the empowering prisoners’ document for Palestinian reconciliation. Olmert must now use the new political environment and his political needs to re-launch the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian track. The first issue on the agenda is the release of Gilead Shalit from his captors in Gaza. Serious negotiations and offers have already placed the resolution of this problem on the doorsteps of the decision makers – it is time for them to decide and to move immediately.

Within the framework of resolving this problem are the means for building Abbas’ position in Palestine. Abbas can be the deliverer of Palestinian prisoners. Abbas can be the deliverer of the Israeli soldier. It is possible, Olmert knows it, Abbas know it, the Egyptians know it, and even the Hamas leadership knows it. This problem can be resolved this week. This would be the first step towards renewing the Israeli-Palestinian track. There is great potential for progress mainly because everyone on both sides is fed up with the current stalemate. This last Middle East war has worked on accentuating everyone’s fatigue with war. Perhaps the political needs of Olmert and Kadima for a strategy of political survival will converge with the real needs of the region to find a less violent means of managing and hopefully resolving our conflict.

Gershon Baskin is the Co-CEO of IPCRI – the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.
http://www.ipcri.org/