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.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Military foul-ups and the political echelons
'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.
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.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
David Grossman: Squandering its miracle
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
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.
Advertisement
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..
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.
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.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Another snafu during the Second Lebanon War
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.
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.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Ruthie - the giraffe - looking for a mate...
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.
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.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Our legal mess - background
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/
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/
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The state of justice in Israel....
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.
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.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
A Special Place in Hell
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?
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?
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Small is beautiful - but who will listen?
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
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
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Dr. Doolittle's legacy in Israel - wildlife university
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Personal responsibility (not...)
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.
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.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Israel's culture of government
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.
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.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Medical interpreter training - Israel
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.
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.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Judge decides on basis of videtape evidence - criticizes police behavior
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.)
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.)
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
People power against Agrippas bus plan?
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...
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...
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
The City That Isn't (and isn't Chelm...)
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.
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.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Good news for partridges! - the pear trees will be pleased...
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Family reunification files
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
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
Monday, September 18, 2006
Analysis - Lebanon postwar
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.
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.
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