Israel

Former Israel President Guilty of Rape

I spent the day reflecting on what I was going to write about the conviction of former President of Israel, Moshe Katzav's recent rape conviction. It is clearly a very sad day for Israel. It is saddening to have someone who served as Israel's President be convicted of rape. Of course, the very fact that a President could be charged and convicted shows that Israeli justice works. As a father of two daughters, one of whom is about to join the IDF, I am glad that slowly, but surely, the whole question of what is and what is not acceptable behavior between men in power and woman has been changing. I am glad my daughter is entering the IDF of 2011 and not the IDF I served in during the mid 1970’s.However, the conviction raises a number of serious questions. First, how did Katzav ever become President? Katzav was never known as any more than a second bench politician, and rumors of less than stellar behavior toward women was widely known. Yet, pitted in an election against Shimon Peres, Katzav won? I do not see any Likud members who arranged Katzav's capturing the presidency taking responsibility for Katzav's election. The second problem Katzav's trial underscores is the incredible length of time it takes to bring someone to justice in Israel.Once accused, tt took two and a half years for Katzav's trial to begin. It then took another year and half for the trial itself to take place. The American concept of the right to "a speedy trial" does not exist in Israel. The American system of a trial beginning and continuing until it ends also does not exist in Israel. Trials begin, stop, start, and then conclude. Instead of a swift verdict, it takes weeks (and sometimes months) for judges to render their decision. In this case, Katzav was sitting comfortably in his home in the interim, so in this particular case, the delay worked in his favor. However, in a very different case, the driver who killed the son of former Supreme Court Justice Cheshin in a hit an run accident, was released to home confinement, after spending six months in jail awaiting trial. That defendant was only released because the State Prosecutors have been on strike (which ended today). The accused driver was kept in jail on the pretense that he was a danger to society. And, of course Israel does not have the same basic bail rights as the US.The largest question is: Why are there so many public officials who have been charged with or under investigation for alleged crimes? The former Finance Minister is sitting in jail for the crime of embezzlement. Former Prime Minister Olmert is in the middle of a number of trials. Lastly, we have been waiting for two years for the prosecutors office to decide whether to endorse the recommendations that Foreign Minister Lieberman be indicted. That’s without focusing on the statistic I recently heard that fully half of the mayors in Israel are either under investigation or have been indicted for some crime or another. So maybe the justice system in Israel works, sort of, but what about the morals that future Israeli leaders have been, and are being taught?If you want to be further depressed read Jeffrey Goldbergs Article What if Israel Ceases to be a Democracy

Israel's Border with Gaza Heats, More Signs of Racism

A series of rockets have landed on Southern Israel in the last two days. It's not clear what is behind the surge of attacks, which have not been carried out by Hamas, but have occurred with its ok. Israel responded today by attacking Hamas installations, for the first time in a quite a while. This time Israel chose installations that were actually manned and not abandoned. The fear is that the situation may escalate. Meanwhile, Israel's anti-missile deterence system remains in storage.

It was announced today by the IDF that last week an advanced anti-tank missile was fired at an Israeli tank near the border. The missile, which was of the same Russian design used in Lebanon by Hezbollah, penetrated the armor of the tank. This has resulted in the redeployment of Israeli forces, moving the older Mechava III tanks off the line to be replaced by a brigade, which deployed the Merchava IV. The Merchava IV includes an active armor defense that can defeat the missiles.

There have been a series of very disturbing incidents of racist anti-Arab behavior in the last few days. These episodes take place, of course, in the shadow of the racist statements made by the group rabbis two weeks ago. The first incident was the arrest of a group of 15 Jewish teenagers who have been charged with attacking Arab men in West Jerusalem parks over the past few months. The second incident was a demonstration against Arabs living in Bat Yam, (led by a local Rabbi). The crowd claimed that if these Arabs continue to live in Bat Yam they would marry their daughters. Finally, only slightly less offensive, was a rally tonight in Sh'chu'not Hatikva in Tel Aviv against foreign workers. There is something so fundamentally wrong with Israel's education system for all this to be happening now. It would have been understandable, but not right, if there had been large scale anti-Arab racism right after the Yom Kippur War, when we had lost so many. Or even if such protests broke out during the second intifada. But now? These actions are not the product of events, but a failure of Israel's schools, and certainly the religious establishiment to combat racism. Did dear Herzl who imagined becoming "a people like all others"include being racists like all others as well?

Prime Minister Netanyahu announced he would accede to the request of Jonathan Pollard and his supprorters and make a direct and public appeal to President Obama for his release. It's about time. The man has been sitting in jail for over 25 years. Whatever one thinks about the crime Pollard committed, there is no one who believes he should have been incarcerated for this long. Of course it would help if Obama had any reason to feel grateful to Netanyahu.

Roger Cohen had an interesting article in todays Times called the Captive Arab Mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lack of Accountability in Israel and in American Jewry

This week, Prime Minister Netanyahu used his best deal making skills, not with the Palestinians or with the United States, but with his coalition partners to make sure there were not enough Knesset votes to approve the establishment of an official State inquiry into the Carmel fire. Instead he convinced State comptroller Lindenstraus to issue a special report on the fire. Of course the fact that Lindenstraus had just issued a report, underscoring the fact that the government did nothing in response to the non-binding report after the Second Lebanon War, was exactly the outcome Netanyahu wanted… An investigation that will join together a long list of comptroller reports that are never acted upon and for which no one is ever held accountable.

This is phenomenon, of lack of accountability, is nothing new. When I was growing up my grandmother’s cousin, who we called "Yup", (the son of the chief Rabbi of Cologne, who moved to Israel in the 1930's) worked as the assistant comptroller (for investigations) at the Jewish Agency. At that time, I was in College and worked for the Agency in New York. Yup would tell me stories of the investigations he would conduct and how his reports were never heeded. Working at the Jewish Agency I saw much evidence of dysfunction and corruption back then first hand. While a lack of accountability is nothing new, what has been new in the last 30 years has been the incompetence of the ministers serving in the Israeli government. In the past, the ministers may have been politically corrupt, but they were never such poor administrators as Eli Yishai. In addition, there had never been someone in charge of the Health Ministry who could barely speak Hebrew and whose primary interest is in the treatment of Gur Hassidim I wish Israel was New Zealand, a place where governing is not generally of dire importance.

Now, on to the second half of this story...I worked for the Jewish Agency in New York once again 15 years later. My cousin Yup was gone. I served for one year as the Asst. VP of the Agency in New York. In that capacity, I saw a a number of cases of corruption, including the infamous suits that Simcha Dinitz bought using the Agency's credit card. A few years later, when I was back living in Israel, Dinitz was charged (and ultimately cleared on appeal) of embezzlement. Part of Dinitz's defense was that his needed to be dressed appropriately for meetings with his top American counterparts-- all of whom (the professionals and not the lay leadership) were earning at least four times as much as he was earning. I certainly do not want to be the defender of Dinitz, who, like to many public servants, believed he deserved the best in accommodations money could buy. However, this part of the story held a certain grain of truth. Since, during that time I learned that the top administrators in Jewish Federations were earning $250,000 salaries, a sum that, back then, I thought was outrageous. I further believed that these mega salaries were the cause of major structural problems to the Jewish community. However, that is a different, and much longer discussion.

This brings us up to today. The Jewish Daily Forward did its second annual survey of Jewish professional leaders. According to the latest statistics, the highest paid professional in the Jewish World today is the head of the Cleveland Federation, who earns north of $650,000. It is important to note that his pay went up last year, as did the salaries of most of the heads of Jewish organizations. If you were to factor inflation in for what I thought were high salaries of 1990, then the highest paid Jewish professional should be making about $450,000. It appears that since these salaries are being paid with “other people's money” who is to say, what is proper compensation. Especially since the communities of Jewish professionals have banded together, with their teams of consultants, to ensure that lay people have generally been emasculated over time. This has left the professional people firmly in control, through good times and bad. The best proof of the professional stronghold over Jewish organizations is the fact that almost everyone on that list (of Jewish professionals) I worked with 20 years ago, while at the Jewish Agency. These same people have remained in power all these years, just slowly but surely increasing their salaries over the years. With two exceptions they are also all male. In a similar, but slightly different vain, I received an e-mail appeal today from the New Israel Fund. Considering the news of the last few days, I would have expected to read about an appeal to influence of fight right wing rabbis or something along those lines. To my surprise, instead the NIF was trying to, as Israeli would say, "take a tramp" (hitch hike) on the Carmel Fires, in an appeal for money for the Carmel fires. Shame on them.

Today, the Israeli news today was filled with a story about the head of the Technion complaining how far behind Israel is falling in Science and Math education, based on the latest PISA test results. The comparison results are indeed discouraging, with Israel ranking at the bottom third, behind Jordan and Qatar. It should be noted, though, that when I took a closer look at the results, Israel's position in the ranking is static, as is the ranking of the US. There has been little change in Israel’s case since 2006, and no change for the US since 2003. (Israel’s students, were not part of the study prior to 2006.) The rest of the world has been moving steadily forward, while Israel and the US have stayed in the same place. The Technion’s President had a simplistic solution - eliminate the electives in Israeli high schools and just concentrate on Math and Science. Somehow I doubt that this is the right solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have chance read We All Owe the Racist Rabbis a Debt of Gratitude by Bradley Burston

 

Netanyahu Outsmarts Obama Now What?

The news from Israel has been problematic in the last few days on a number of fronts. The US has officially stated that it is giving up on getting Israel to extend the settlement freeze for three months. Why Israel did not just take the “bribe” the US offered makes no sense. Of course, the reason was politics. However, on just the level that the US made an offer, it made no sense to turn them down. On a more important level, there seems to be a sense of satisfaction in the Netanyahu camp that they have outmaneuvered the Obama administration. I am glad Netanyahu is happy he outmaneuvered Obama. Outmaneuvering Obama is not all that hard, since his policies have clearly been hapless. The question is, but now what? What does Netanyahu think comes next?
I can remember standing on a beach in Israel when I was in the army, and saying to a friend, that I am not sure if the Arabs are ever going to be willing to make peace. However, we always need to know that we have done the most we could. Otherwise, we will not be able to look into the eyes of our children when the time comes for them to go to the army. Well, we are getting close to the point where my second child is about to go into the army and I truly cannot look her in the eyes and say that if there was a war it happened despite everything Israel has done to avoid it.
All this ties into the other issue of the week, one that might quickly fade from the headlines. That is the halchic ruling signed on to by the large group of rabbis on not renting or selling housing to non-Jews. This rabbinic decision which is marked by an unbelievable level of paranoia, is based on the fear that Arabs are coming to Israel with Saudi money to buy up the country, seems to show these rabbis as totally disconnected from the real world.
There appears to be a level of Israeli triumphalism, both in Netanyahu’s view of the US administration and in the rabbis view of non-Jews in Israel that I can only compare to that euphoria that existed at the time after the Six Day War. Though then there was a reason for triumphalism. None of this makes very much sense to me today. For if current trends continue, the situation cannot end well. But... at least the coalition will be intact.

Report on the State Of Israel's Fire Department

State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss released his report on the state of Israel’s Fire department. The report stated that the Fire Department is on the verge of collapse, and that nothing had been done since the Lebanon War to fix the inadequacies of the Fire Department. The report directly faults Interior Minister Eli Yishai (who is responsible for the Fire Department) for doing nothing but writing a few letters. It blames Netanyahu for not paying attention to the letters; holds the Finance Ministry responsible for blocking any action; and criticizes Barak at the Defense Ministry for not paying attention to a serious national security weakness. The report clearly shows how not one of the recommendations made after the war has been implemented.
The Lindenstrauss report was a regularly scheduled report, as a follow-up to the report and recommendations made after the second Lebanon War. In normal times his devastating report would have hardly made it through one news cycle, but coming in wake of the Carmel wildfire disaster, and having been written before the fire broke out, the report caused a major political storm in Israel.
It seems that the first has provided one benefit, Prime Minister Netanyahu seems intent on using Turkey's assistance during the wildfire crisis as an excuse to climb down the tree that the Israeli government has climbed up vis-a-vis the attack on the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara. It seems that the Israeli government will apologize for the loss of life and may even pay some compensation to the families. All of this would allow for resumptions of relations between Israel and Turkey.
A series of Israeli rabbis are embarrassing Israel in new ways. It started when the State paid Rabbi of Safed came out with a ruling that Jews could not rent or sell to Arabs. When he came under attack, he received support in the form of a letter signed by 65 other community rabbis. They have come under criticism from both left leaning Orthodox rabbis and far right Charedi rabbis. Both making the same argument- what would Jews possibly say if Christians did that to Jews overseas? Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Peres have condemned the statement. Netanyhu has the power to fire these rabbis, but he does not have the guts.

Fire In Israel

It’s been a sad two days in Israel. The sadness has been multi-layered. The first level is, of course human; the loss of at least 43 young lives, with at least one more presumed dead is a tremendous tragedy in and of itself. The second level of tragedy is seeing the Israeli government so incapable of handling the problem. While Prime Minister Netanyahu has referred to the tragedy as "a natural disaster of International proportions", it is not a very large forest fire by American standards. Still, the fact remains that Israel is not equipped to deal with it.
Sadly, this is not a surprise. For twenty years there have been reports and investigations calling on Israel to invest in a better-equipped and larger fire departments. Unfortunately, only a tragedy of this magnitude results in a changes taking place. The obvious question being asked now is, how can it be that outgoing Chief of Intelligence stated that in the next war the population centers will be the front line, and the very fire department that will have to fight part of that war is so underfunded and poorly organized.
Many countries have sent Israel help. While this has been an embarrassment on one hand, that Israel needed the help, on the other hand, as one Israeli TV commentator said today, it seems people care about us more then we think. Even the Turks sent aid.
Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote a timely note, while on a helicopter watching the Greek planes try to put out the fire. He wrote what an irony that on the second day of Chanukah, Greek pilots are flying to put out a fire in Israel.
I cannot help but comment on a series of e-mail appeals I received today from different organization asking for support because of the fire. First, they appear way too early. Some even seem unnecessary-- one of the appeals talked about opening camps to house those who have been displaced. I have been watching Israeli TV for the last 24 hours and while 17.000 people have evacuated their homes, all have gone to stay with friends and family. This is not like the Lebanon war, or the fire from Gaza. This is bad, but it will end within a couple of days or sooner, long before money will get to Israel.