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Tonight, as Israel’s memorial day for slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin begins, is a good time to debunk a myth that has recently gained great currency: that Israel’s population has become increasingly right-wing, constituting a major obstacle to peace. This myth was most famously propounded by former President Bill Clinton (here and here ), but it also crops up frequently in academic discourse. A study published by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies in September, for instance, declared that “Today Israel’s Jewish population is more nationalistic, religiously conservative, and hawkish on foreign policy and security affairs than that of even a generation ago, and it would be unrecognizable to Israel’s founders.”
Yet Rabin himself, the idol of those who propagate this myth, provides the best possible refutation of it. All you have to do is read his final speech to the Knesset, given one month before his death, to realize how far to the left Israel has traveled since then.
For instance, Rabin envisioned a final-status solution in which Israel lived alongside a Palestinian “entity which is less than a state.” Today, even the “right-wing” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly advocates a Palestinian state.
Rabin envisioned “united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev [two nearby settlements],” as “the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty.” Since then, two Israeli prime ministers have offered to give the Palestinians East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and most of the Old City.
Rabin declared that Israel’s “security border … will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.” Since then, two Israeli premiers have offered to give the Palestinians almost all the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley; even the “right-wing” Netanyahu reportedly agreed to negotiate borders based on the 1967 lines.
Rabin listed Gaza’s Gush Katif as one of the settlement blocs Israel would retain. Since then, Israel has withdrawn from every inch of Gaza.
Rabin pledged “not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.” Since then, Israel
has uprooted 25 settlements (21 in Gaza and four in the West Bank) without a final-status agreement, while the “right-wing” Netanyahu instituted Israel’s first-ever moratorium on settlement construction (for 10 months), including “building for natural growth.”
Israeli public opinion has also moved dramatically leftward. Two decades ago, for instance, a Palestinian state was anathema to most Israelis; the idea was
entertained only on the far-left fringe. Today, polls consistently show overwhelming support for a Palestinian state on almost all the West Bank and Gaza.
On only one issue have Israelis actually moved rightward: Far fewer now believe the “peace process” will ever produce peace. In April 1996, for instance, 47 percent expected Israeli-Palestinian peace to be achieved “in the coming years,” while 32 percent did not. In October 2011, only 32 percent foresaw peace being achieved anytime soon, while 66 percent did not. The latter results have been roughly consistent for years now.
That, however, has nothing to do with Israelis becoming more “nationalistic” or “religiously conservative” and everything to do with hard experience: Since
1993, Israel has evacuated Lebanon, Gaza and large chunks of the West Bank only to see all three become bases for murderous anti-Israel terror, while its Palestinian “peace partner” has steadfastly refused to recognize a Jewish state or cease demanding to destroy it through an influx of millions of Palestinian “refugees.”
If the world truly wants to see an Israeli-Palestinian peace, it must start addressing these very real problems. Blaming the impasse instead on a nonexistent Israeli turn rightward merely ensures that peace will remain an unachievable dream.
Reading the New York Times op-ed pages recently, one can’t help thinking the paper has launched a deliberate smear campaign against Israel. Consider just two examples:
This week, it published a piece called “In Israel, Press Freedom Is Under Attack” by Israeli journalist Dimi Reider. Reider lambastes the 4.5-year sentence a court just imposed on Anat Kamm, claiming the former soldier has been punished “for leaking documents containing evidence of what she suspected might be war crimes committed by her commanders.” Since journalists worldwide rely on whistleblowers, he charged, this undermines press freedom:
The verdict sends several chilling messages. To young soldiers it says: shut up, even if you suspect your commanders of violating the law; they will go unpunished and you will go to jail if you leak. To the source it says: no one will protect you; don’t be a self-sacrificing fool. And to the journalist it says: know your place; cover what we tell you to cover, print our news releases, and keep within your bounds.
But here’s what the court said actually happened, as reported by the very newspaper to which Kamm gave the documents: Over the course of her army service, Kamm betrayed her oath as a soldier by “systematically” stealing everything she could get her hands on – 2,085 documents in all, including “plans for military operations, information on troop deployments, summaries of various internal discussions, military targets and intelligence assessments.” For similar crimes in America, WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning now faces life in jail.
She then gave 1,500 documents to Haaretz journalist Uri Blau, who sorted through and found a handful that, in his opinion, showed the army was violating Israeli Supreme Court guidelines on assassinating terrorists. But as Reider himself admits, Israel’s attorney general – presumably a greater legal expert than journalists Reider and Blau – reviewed the material and concluded otherwise.
All this was widely reported in Israel’s English-language media, so the facts were easily checkable. But the Times preferred printing an anti-Israel smear.
Two months earlier, the Times published an op-ed by Israeli professor Carlo Strenger entitled “Netanyahu’s Partners, Democracy’s Enemies.” Strenger accused the Knesset of having “proposed and passed laws that seriously endanger Israel’s identity as a liberal democracy,” including “a law forbidding public commemoration of” the Nakba (literally, “catastrophe,” the Palestinian term for Israel’s establishment) and a “demand for all new Israeli citizens to swear a loyalty oath to a Jewish and democratic country.”
I’ve argued before that the proposed loyalty oath is no different than the pledge of allegiance required of American immigrants. But in any case, the bill died in the Knesset: Lacking a parliamentary majority, it wasn’t even brought for a vote.
As for the Nakba proposal, the Knesset itself concluded (correctly) that the original bill was undemocratic. Hence the law actually passed merely prohibited state funding for public commemorations of the Nakba. And while democracies must permit offensive speech, no democratic principle requires a state to finance public calls for its demise.
Again, all this was widely reported in Israel’s English-language media, so the facts were easily checkable. But the Times preferred printing an anti-Israel smear.
There’s been much talk lately about liberal American Jews “distancing” themselves from Israel. But that’s really not surprising when you consider that most liberal American Jews get their (dis)information about Israel from The New York Times. Hence American Jewish leaders concerned about this trend must start challenging the Times on these smears. And they must also start educating their public not to believe everything they read in its pages.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen proudly declared this week that “What has happened in Libya sends a clear signal to autocratic regimes all over the world — you cannot neglect the will of the people.” That might have been true, had he not declared in the very same breath that NATO’s military intervention in Libya would under no circumstances be replicated in Syria. “I can completely rule that out,” he said. In light of that corollary, here is how autocratic regimes – and many ordinary people worldwide – will actually interpret the “clear signal” sent by events in Libya:
First, you’re much better off being friends with Russia and China than the West. Almost two decades ago, Muammar Qaddafi decided to start courting the West: He paid billions of dollars in compensation to victims of various terror attacks allegedly perpetrated by Libya, most notably the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, and dismantled his nuclear program. Syria, in contrast, repeatedly thumbed its nose at the West while courting Russia and China.
The result: Western countries sought and obtained a UN Security Council mandate to intervene militarily in Libya and ultimately toppled Qaddafi’s government. But Russia and China vetoed even far milder resolutions targeting Syria. And since the West refuses to act without a UN mandate, Syria is safe from any Western military threat.
Second, joining the radical Islamic camp led by Iran is a good investment. Libya posed no military threat whatsoever to the West, nor did it have any allies who did. But Syria is backed by Iran, with its proven willingness and ability to make mischief for Western interests in the Gulf and to foment terror overseas, most notably by means of Hezbollah. The West has repeatedly shown its reluctance to confront Tehran, even when, for instance, intelligence estimates deemed Iran responsible for more American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan than Sunni radicals were. And since intervention in Syria almost certainly would trigger conflict with Syria’s Iranian patron, the West isn’t interested.
Corollary: The West really is a paper tiger, just as Iran, Al-Qaida and other radical Islamists have always claimed. It’s perfectly willing to attack comparatively defenseless Libya, but avoids taking on countries capable of striking back.
Third, the West really does care about nothing but oil. If you discount oil – of which Libya has a lot and Syria very little – it’s hard to explain why the West intervened in Libya but not Syria. You certainly can’t explain it on humanitarian grounds; Bashar Assad’s regime has been killing, torturing and jailing its own citizens with Qaddafi-style abandon ever since Syria’s uprising began in March. And from a strategic perspective, Syria is by far the more important country: Libya has no strategic significance whatsoever for the West, whereas regime change in Syria would deprive Iran of a key ally and sever its land bridge to Hezbollah.
If the West doesn’t understand that this is how much of the world will interpret its behavior, that is deeply disturbing. And if it knows about it, but doesn’t care , that is even more disturbing.
One of the most disturbing revelations of the past two weeks is that some
Knesset members who opposed the ransom deal for Gilad Schalit nevertheless
acceded to his family’s request to keep silent until the deal was
concluded.
On October 21, for instance, former MK Tzachi Hanegbi, of
Kadima, wrote the following in these pages:
Zvi Schalit, Gilad’s grandfather. He was upset by a radio interview I had given
that morning. At the time, I was chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee, and I detailed the “red lines” of the security and political
establishment over a prisoner exchange with Hamas.
Zvi Schalit sought to
persuade me that the state should not draft tougher principles on negotiating
with terrorists until his grandson was safely returned to his family.
I
couldn’t agree, but my heart went out to the grandfather’s plea. At his request,
I pledged not to worsen the family’s pain by making my position public. And I
kept my word.
Two days later, Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni announced
that she, too, opposed the Schalit deal, believing that it undermined Israel’s
deterrence and strengthened Hamas, but kept silent until it was concluded at the
request of Gilad’s father, Noam.
Livni and Hanegbi are almost certainly
not alone; many politicians, journalists and other public figures likely made
the same choice for the same reason. And I can understand their motives, because
I, too, received that heartrending phone call from Zvi Schalit, after publishing
a column in this paper in 2009 opposing the deal as it stood then. It’s very
hard to say “no” to a thoroughly decent man going through hell and begging you
not to add to his agony. And while I couldn’t retract what I’d already
published, I ended the conversation thinking that had he called before I wrote
the article, I might well have decided there were enough other things to write
about; I didn’t need to pour salt in the Schalit family’s wounds. Nevertheless,
Hanegbi and Livni were wrong to let their compassion overrule their judgment.
Livni herself gave the best argument for why.
“The people of Israel
forced the government to free Gilad Schalit,” she charged, correctly, when she
finally broke her silence. But did she really expect the people to do otherwise
when they were deluged, day after day, with arguments in favor of the deal,
while those who opposed it largely kept silent out of compassion for the
Schalits? You can’t win a battle of ideas by abandoning the field.
And
while private individuals have the right to eschew the fray, MKs do not, because
they have a fiduciary duty to the public: They are elected to serve the people,
and they owe those they serve their best judgment. By placing the good of one
family over what they themselves deemed to be the national interest, Livni and
Hanegbi betrayed the people who elected them.
This dereliction of duty
was compounded by the fact that they were uniquely well-poised to influence the
public debate, since their positions gave them access to information the general
public lacked. Hanegbi chaired the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for
four and a half years of Schalit’s captivity; Livni was foreign minister during
the first three years and leader of the opposition thereafter. All three
positions grant their occupants access to information that isn’t in the public
domain.
No official statistics, for instance, have ever been published on
what percentage of freed terrorists returned to terror; the estimates I saw in
the press during the years of Schalit’s captivity ranged from 13 to 80 percent –
a variance so enormous the public couldn’t possibly assess the magnitude of the
danger the deal posed. By virtue of their positions, Hanegbi and Livni could
have demanded that the security services provide real data and then publicized
it, thereby facilitating such an assessment. Instead, they chose to keep
silent.
Six weeks ago, I wrote a column criticizing MKs who seem to think
their job begins and ends with making public statements, rather than trying to
turn their ideas into legislation. An MK who is nothing more than a pundit is
useless; punditry can be done just as well from outside the Knesset.
But
refraining entirely from public statements is no less problematic because, in a
democracy, public opinion influences governmental decisions. Hence elected
representatives have an obligation to try to shape public opinion on the burning
issues of the day. That some MKs (and again, I doubt Livni and Hanegbi were
alone) instead sat out the public debate on a deal they considered dangerous to
the country is thus deeply troubling.
Speaking against the Schalit deal
would certainly have caused the Schalits great pain. But if causing pain
is a
reason for silence, no public debate could ever be held. Did the Gazan
settlers
slated to be thrown out of their homes not feel pain when MKs lobbied
for the
disengagement? Did the victims of post-Oslo terror not feel pain when
MKs
praised Mahmoud Abbas as a “peace partner” even as Abbas lauded their
loved
ones’ murderers as heroes? Did Livni and Hanegbi ever seriously consider
not
pursuing these policies out of
consideration for one particular family’s pain?
Their silence over Schalit is yet more evidence that far too many MKs
seem not
to understand the most basic responsibilities of their office. And then
they
wonder why only one-third
of Israelis retain any trust in what ought to be
democracy’s flagship institution.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.
The ink on Israel’s ransom deal for Gilad Shalit is barely dry, but already, the first fruits are visible: Hamas’ success in obtaining 1,027 terrorists for one kidnapped soldier convinced Egypt to enter the hostage-taking business as well.
Today, Israel’s cabinet is set to approve freeing 25 Egyptian prisoners in exchange for Israeli-American Ilan Grapel. Though the exact prisoner list hasn’t yet been released, Egyptian press reports say all are suspected or convicted of crimes like murder, drug smuggling and human trafficking; an Israeli group says half were involved in terror.
Grapel was arrested in Cairo on June 12, when Egypt, which was deeply involved in brokering the Shalit deal, already knew how much Israel was willing to pay. That he was seized purely as a hostage is obvious from the sheer ludicrousness of the charges. He was originally accused of espionage, but as his classmates at Emory University noted, it would take an extraordinarily incompetent spy to post Facebook photos of himself in his Israeli army uniform: If he were really spying for Israel, highlighting his connection with its army is the last thing he’d do. At some point, even Cairo realized this, so it added new charges, like firebombing Egyptian police stations during the revolution. But it never produced any evidence for those, either.
The motive is equally obvious. As Egypt’s Foreign Ministry noted, the families of Egyptians jailed in Israel began demanding their release the minute they learned of the Shalit deal; the government undoubtedly predicted this reaction and prepared in advance. After all, its status among the post-revolutionary masses is already shaky; it can’t afford to be seen as less capable of extorting the hated Zionists than Hamas.
Granted, these 25 prisoners don’t compare to the hundreds of high-level terrorists freed for Shalit, but the principle is the same; Cairo’s hostage was simply much less valuable. Not only are Grapel’s American parents incapable of
waging the superb Israeli PR campaign conducted by Shalit’s Israeli parents, but someone who traveled to Egypt to work for a legal aid organization and then enthusiastically joined Egypt’s revolution (see photo) can’t compare with an on-duty soldier kidnapped from Israeli soil: While few Israelis could imagine their son in Grapel’s shoes, almost all, in a country where military service is near-universal, could imagine their son in Shalit’s place.
That Egypt’s post-revolutionary government is behaving like a terrorist organization is disgraceful, but hardly surprising: It already showed its contempt for the norms of civilized international behavior last month, when it stood idly by as Israel’s embassy in Cairo was sacked and a mob threatened to lynch the Israeli personnel inside (it finally intervened only at the last moment in response to a phone call from Barack Obama, presumably explaining that if the Israelis were killed, Egypt could kiss its $2 billion a year in U.S. aid good-bye).
Nevertheless, it’s deeply worrying that even a country technically at peace with Israel now feels no qualms about treating it the way Hamas does. It’s hard to imagine better proof of just how badly the Shalit deal undermined Israeli deterrence.
The 1,027-for-1 ransom deal that returned Gilad Schalit to Israel last week has sparked much talk about how to ensure no such lopsided deal ever recurs. The Shamgar Committee, established in 2008 to formulate new rules for hostage deals but then iced until Schalit’s return, has already been recalled from retirement and is expected to submit its recommendations within two weeks.
Yet one glance at the polls reveals how futile any such recommendations will be. Channel 10’s poll, for instance, found that 62% of Israelis believed the deal would undermine Israel’s security, but 69% supported it anyway. In other words, a sweeping majority of Israelis backed the deal despite being fully cognizant of its risks. Under such circumstances, what government would ever be able to withstand the pressure to make a similar deal, regardless of what wise rules it adopts in principle?
This recognition has led several of my colleagues to suggest reinstating the death penalty for hardcore terrorists. That would at least keep the worst killers from ever going free to kill again, thus reducing the danger posed by future such deals. I fully concur. But the benefits of this move go way beyond the lives it would assuredly save.
According to Shin Bet security service chief Yoram Cohen, 60% of freed terrorists return to terror. Terrorists released in previous deals have killed hundreds of Israelis, and those freed last week will undoubtedly kill many more. But as long as terror is contained below a certain level, it isn’t a strategic threat: Israel has suffered nonstop terror since its inception, and that hasn’t prevented it from growing and thriving.
The deal’s strategic danger lies in reinforcing the belief that Israel, as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah famously put it, is a “spider-web” society, so frail that sufficient force will eventually cause it to collapse. If a single kidnapped soldier can produce such national trauma and such near-total capitulation to Hamas’s demands – more prisoners than Israel had ever exchanged for a single soldier before; hundreds of murderers whom it had refused to release even to its ostensible peace partner (having rightly insisted that mass murderers aren’t “prisoners of war,” but criminals who should spend their lives behind bars); and even Israeli Arabs, whom Israel had previously declared off-limits – why shouldn’t enough such pressure produce total collapse?
And as long as the Arabs believe this, they have every incentive to keep applying violent pressure and no incentive whatsoever to make peace: Why settle for half the country if continued war will eventually give them all of it? That’s precisely why previous peace deals have only been achieved when Arabs despaired of destroying Israel. Jordan’s King Hussein, for instance, despaired after the 1967 Six-Day War, ushering in a quarter-century of de facto peace that was ultimately formalized in 1994. Anwar Sadat despaired after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was signed six years later. Even Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accord only because his fortunes were at low ebb: He was languishing in exile in Tunis, and the first intifada had been suppressed without producing any real gains.
Hence reversing the belief that Hamas just won a great victory is vital. And reinstating the death penalty would do exactly that, by turning Hamas’s victory into a Pyrrhic one.
Had Hamas’s demands been more moderate, this decision would say, the old practice of periodic ransom deals might have continued ad infinitum, allowing terrorists to commit attacks in full confidence of someday being freed. But by its greed, Hamas has ensured that no high-level terrorist will ever again return home. The conclusion would be inescapable: Excessive violence doesn’t pay – and the “spider-web” society, far from collapsing under pressure, will strike back if pushed too far.
Moreover, as I’ve explained in greater detail elsewhere, most potential terrorists aren’t diehard zealots indifferent to cost-benefit calculations; hence as the likelihood of being killed or spending long years in jail rises, the number of people willing to become terrorists drops. That’s precisely how Israel defeated the second intifada.
The Schalit deal greatly reduced the “cost” of terrorism by convincing potential terrorists that they will likely spend at most a few years in jail before being released in the next ransom deal. It thereby increased the incentive for new recruits to enter the terror business. The death penalty, however, would raise this cost again, by making it clear that killers will never again go free. That would make it harder to recruit new terrorists over the long run, further undermining Hamas’s “victory.”
Finally, the death penalty would weaken one of the region’s top terrorist training programs. As defense officials noted before last week’s swap, Israeli prisons are notorious “schools for terror,” where low-level terrorists serving short sentences learn new skills that make them far more dangerous after their release. The Prison Service’s inability to prevent this is outrageous. But the death penalty would prevent it: If highly skilled terrorists were executed instead of jailed, our “schools for terror” would lose their best “teachers,” and would thus produce less proficient graduates.
Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty for terrorists actually
exists on the books; the problem is that courts never apply it. To solve
this problem, legislation must be passed making capital punishment
mandatory for certain types of attacks, just as a life sentence is
mandatory for murder. In addition, a massive public relations campaign
is necessary to convince the public – and, ultimately, the judges – that
Israel’s traditional revulsion at the death penalty is misplaced in
this case.
Having just paid the most generous ransom in Israel’s history, in
defiance of all his stated principles, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
is uniquely qualified to explain to the Knesset, and the nation, why
the death penalty is essential to prevent such a deal from ever
recurring. In so doing, he would take a vital step toward restoring
Israel’s lost deterrence.
Otherwise, he will be nothing more than Exhibit A in Nasrallah’s lectures on how to defeat the spider-web society.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.
In Jewish tradition, the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is supposed to be one of soul-searching, reflection and repentance. But it doesn’t look like much of that went on among the so-called “price-tag” vandals last week: Instead, they escalated their attacks on both Arabs and the Israel Defense Forces.
We’ll leave aside the fact that price-tag assaults – so called because they are meant to deter house demolitions in the settlements by exacting a “price” in the form of reprisals (usually vandalistic) against Palestinians and/or Israeli soldiers – are blatantly immoral under both Jewish and secular ethics; I doubt morality worries the vandals overmuch. But they do claim to want to protect the settlements – and on that level, their attacks are downright self-destructive.
The settlements’ continued existence rests on two pillars. One is the IDF: Few settlers would be willing to remain without the army to protect them against Palestinian terror. The other is public support. The real reason successive governments haven’t yet evacuated most settlements, or even most illegal outposts, despite massive international pressure is because most Israelis don’t like the idea of throwing other ordinary decent Israelis out of their homes. Hence they will countenance large-scale evictions only if the country will thereby attain some major strategic benefit: a durable peace agreement, or at least enhanced security (as Ariel Sharon falsely promised the Gaza disengagement would produce).
The price-tag attacks undermine both pillars simultaneously.
First, the IDF: The vast majority of law-abiding settlers recognize their debt to the army and strive to show their gratitude (usually, being Jewish, by plying soldiers with food). But price-tag vandals have increasingly targeted the army. First, it was just “heat-of-the-moment” attacks: hurling insults, hitting soldiers or vandalizing army vehicles during confrontations over house demolitions. Then, last month, came the first deliberate attack on an IDF base: Anonymous vandals broke in, damaged several vehicles and spray-painted price-tag graffiti.
Last week brought another escalation: A routine army patrol reported being deliberately ambushed and attacked by settlers near Shiloh. According to the soldiers, they ran into a settler-manned roadblock. When they tried to turn their jeep around to avoid a confrontation, they discovered that more settlers had blocked the road behind them. The settlers then surrounded the vehicle and punched one soldier in the face. A melee inevitably ensued.
Clearly, such incidents greatly reduce soldiers’ motivation to protect the settlers: As one officer reportedly told an IDF inquiry into the incident, it’s hard to now tell these soldiers to go back and protect their assailants.
Moreover, if the IDF has to protect its troops from settlers as well as Palestinians, that will inevitably affect its deployment, to the settlements’ detriment. For instance, soldiers are routinely sent to guard settlements and outposts. But after some incidents in which soldiers said they were threatened by outpost residents, the IDF is now reportedly considering curtailing the length of these deployments such that no soldier will spend more than a couple of days at an outpost. That means they will have no time to get acquainted with the territory, which will impair their ability to defend it.
Perhaps even worse, however, is the effect price-tag attacks have on the general public. As noted, most Israelis currently oppose evacuating settlements, but that stems from their belief that most settlers are ordinary, decent people like themselves. In contrast, few Israelis have qualms about, say, demolishing a Palestinian terrorist’s house. That’s precisely why a certain subset of the left has striven – so far unsuccessfully – to paint all settlers as thugs: They understand that public sympathy is the settlers’ greatest asset.
But the price-tag vandals may yet succeed where anti-settler leftists have failed. Low-level vandalism might not have attracted much attention, but torching Palestinian mosques is a different matter: Most Israelis can easily draw the comparison to torched synagogues. And that’s already happened a few times.
Last week’s events – the torching of a mosque in Tuba Zanghariya, in northern Israel, and the spray-painting of offensive graffiti (like “Death to Arabs” and “price tag”) in Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa – were even worse from this standpoint. Many Israelis view Palestinian areas of the West Bank as another planet, and Palestinians as an enemy nation. But these latest attacks targeted fellow citizens – and in Tuba Zanghariya’s case, citizens who have been allied with the Jewish majority since before the state’s establishment.
But worst of all, from the perspective of public reaction, are obviously attacks on the IDF. Many Israeli Jews have little contact with Israeli Arabs, but most do have friends or relatives in the army. Hence attacks on soldiers are taken very personally.
Clearly, not all attacks attributed to price-tag vandals are necessarily their work. The one suspect arrested in the Tuba Zanghariya attack indeed studied at the yeshiva in Yitzhar, which is considered a center of price-tag activity, but he has yet to be indicted, much less convicted. And police aren’t convinced the cemetery vandalism was a price-tag attack at all. But even if some incidents are copycat attacks – or even, as right-wing conspiracy theorists like to claim, deliberate efforts to smear the settlers – it’s the original price-tag vandals who make the accusations credible.
It’s also true that the media outrageously downplays identical attacks on Jewish targets, as Yisrael Medad superbly explained in these pages, leading to justified double-standard charges. But that in no way mitigates the price-tag vandals’ crimes.
Unfortunately, the vandals seem incapable of grasping the
self-destructive nature of their actions, while the police, with
characteristic haplessness, have thus far proven incapable of catching
the criminals. Nor are most settlers in a position to help: The ordinary
law-abiding majority has no more contact with these criminals than
other law-abiding Israelis do with criminals in their hometowns.
So altogether, it looks like it’s going to be a great year for the
anti-settler left, if for no one else. I hope the vandals are happy with
their achievement.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.
The Trajtenberg Committee’s report, which was submitted to the government last week, offered some valuable ideas for lowering prices and improving service. These include several proposals to increase competition, from eliminating protective tariffs to allowing private terminals to operate at the ports, plus sensible suggestions like having the government release more land for residential construction, expanding a program to let grade-school students borrow textbooks rather than buy them, and raising taxes on vacant apartments to encourage owners to sell or rent them.
Nevertheless, the report has one gaping lacuna: It ignores the powerful public-sector unions. Currently, these unions control many of the economy’s most vital products and services, including banks, ports, airports, railroads, electricity and water. And they exploit this control to extort outrageous salaries and benefits, which the public must finance through higher tariffs and fees, while also providing service that is poor at best and downright abusive at worst.
Sunday’s Jerusalem Post editorial detailed one salient example: Last month, railroad workers protesting a plan to outsource the maintenance of railway cars simply stopped their trains in the middle of the track, locked the windows and turned off the air conditioning, thereby imprisoning the passengers in airless boxes on a burning summer’s day. Eventually, passengers escaped by breaking the windows, climbing out and embarking on a dangerous hike down the tracks. And all this occurred in defiance of a court order barring the workers from striking
Moreover, the government had already tendered a written guarantee that existing maintenance workers’ jobs would be safe for at least 20 years, while their salaries and benefits would be safe until they retired. In other words, workers weren’t striking to protect their jobs or benefits; they were striking out of pure pique that management had made a decision (outsourcing the work) without first securing their approval. Because as far as they are concerned, they are Israel Railways’ true owners; the fact that the company is formally owned by the government is unimportant.
Nor is this behavior exceptional. Just last week, the airport union staged a two-hour “New Year’s toast” – aka strike – with no warning, meaning illegally. Passengers were stranded inside one plane for two hours because it had just finished boarding but wasn’t allowed to take off; another plane was being towed to the takeoff point when the tractor driver simply abandoned his vehicle, and the plane, in the middle of the tarmac. And this abusive strike took place even as management was convening to approve a new collective agreement that gave employees an average raise of 11.25% – the kind of raise most private-sector employees can only dream of.
Similarly, Haifa Port called two illegal strikes in three days last month over such weighty issues as – no joke – the job title given to one particular worker. And Ashdod Port closed for an entire evening that same month so the whole staff could attend a union official’s wedding. Indeed, the ports routinely shut down while staffers attend private parties hosted by union officials. A private-sector company would insist that some people stay at work to keep essential services running, because each such closure causes hundreds of thousands of shekels worth of damage. But the unions don’t care, because they aren’t docked a penny of their pay: Instead, the cost is borne by the ports’ clients and the taxpayers.
Moreover, public-sector unions perpetrate these abuses despite being among the country’s best-paid workers. Indeed, according to the Finance Ministry’s most recent report on public-sector wages (which was released last October and covers 2009), these unions’ members earn almost three times the average Israeli wage. The average Israeli salary that year was NIS 7,974 a month; this compared to average salaries of, for example, NIS 23,000 at Haifa Port, NIS 22,500 at Ashdod Port and NIS 20,200 at the Israel Electric Corporation.
The best solution to the problem would be to pass legislation banning or severely limiting public-sector strikes. This is hardly an unreasonable trade-off for the lifelong job security these workers receive (a benefit private-sector workers can only dream of), and many democracies have enacted such laws. Some, like the United States, bar public-sector strikes entirely; others limit them such that certain workers designated as providing essential services must keeping working even during a strike. In Canada, for instance, police, firefighters and hospital employees are barred from striking entirely, while railways, ports, banks and telecommunications are deemed essential services that must keep operating even if their unions strike.
At the very least, however, unions and their members must be made to pay a stiff price for illegal, abusive acts like those described above. Currently, unions have no incentive to refrain from such actions, because they know they can get away with it: Public-sector companies rarely even dock workers’ pay for an illegal strike, lest they spark another; and when they do, the pay is almost always returned as part of whatever agreement ends the strike.
Israel Railways is a laudable exception in this regard. It started disciplinary proceedings against union leaders over last month’s illegal strike and is suing them personally for damages over another illegal strike in May.
Incredibly, however, it isn’t getting support from the courts: Even
though both strikes violated an explicit court order, National Labor
Court President Nili Arad proposed last week that the company freeze
both the disciplinary proceedings and the lawsuit in exchange for the
union deigning to begin negotiations over the outsourcing contract. In
effect, she wanted to reward the union for breaking the law and
violating court orders.
To their credit, Israel Railways and the Finance Ministry both flatly
refused, and Arad backed down. But the fact that they had to face down
the National Labor Court president to take the elementary step of
punishing an illegal strike shows just how broken the system is.
It’s a pity the Trajtenberg Committee was silent on this issue. But if
the government is serious about lowering prices and improving service to
the public, it cannot afford to hide behind the panel’s silence. It
must finally tackle the problem of power-mad public-sector unions.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.
The run-up to the Quartet’s latest bid to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks is far more revealing than the talks themselves are likely to be, even if they ever take place. The U.S., UN, EU and Russia tried frantically to draft “terms of reference” for the talks, meaning broad parameters for what an agreement should look like. But in the end, they had to scrap the effort, because they couldn’t even reach agreement among themselves on these parameters.
In other words, contrary to the shopworn claim that “There is no mystery to what a final deal would look like” (as a New York Times editorial asserted just last week), there is so little agreement that four mediators – all of whom care much less about the issues concerned than the parties themselves – couldn’t even strike a deal on the broad outlines, much less all the pesky details.
As Reuters reported, the key sticking point was the Palestinians’ refusal, via their proxy, Russia, to recognize Israel as a Jewish state:
“The heart of the matter was that the only way in which it was going to work as a basis for negotiations was if there was a reference on the one side to ’67 lines plus swaps, which was the minimum but not sufficient requirement for the Palestinians, and a Jewish state as one of the goals of the negotiations, which was the minimum requirement of the Israelis,” said one source briefed on the negotiations….
There are many formulas to address whether Israel should be viewed as a Jewish state, including that it is a homeland for the Jewish people or that it embodies the right of the Jewish people to self-determination or that its status as a Jewish state should not prejudice any Palestinian “right of return.”
None appear to have sufficed, whether because they might be seen as unacceptable to the Israelis or because they would be impossible to swallow for the Palestinians.
So instead, the Quartet made do with urging the parties to resume negotiations “without delay or preconditions,” but on a strict timetable that gives them one month to agree on an agenda and a “method of proceeding in the negotiation.” In short, the parties themselves are supposed to agree in one month on parameters the mediators tried for months to agree on with no success.
The scary part, however, is there’s a method in this madness, and it’s implicit in the rest of the timetable: The parties are instructed to conclude a final-status deal by no later than “the end of 2012.”
In other words, the Quartet is telling the Palestinians, just keep the negotiation farce going until the end of 2012, when Barack Obama will be either a lame duck or a newly-elected second-term president, and either way will be free of the electoral constraints that currently require him to veto your bid to obtain UN recognition as a state without accepting the Jewish state’s right to exist.
If that interpretation is correct, then the most important development in the Israeli-Palestinian arena over the next year will take place not in direct talks or in the Quartet, but in Congress. For come December 2012, a credible congressional threat to the UN’s generous American funding may be the only way to halt the Palestinians’ unilateral statehood drive.
Israeli voters sent their politicians a remarkable message last week. At a moment when one would expect diplomatic and security issues to top the public agenda – with the UN poised to recognize a Palestinian state, peace with Egypt looking shakier than it has in 30 years and turmoil engulfing Syria – members of a major political party decided their new leader should be someone who unabashedly prioritizes domestic issues over foreign policy. Even more remarkably, this choice was made by a bastion of Israel’s left, the party that brought us the Oslo Accords, whose flagship cause for the last two decades has been the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
By choosing MK Shelly Yacimovich as their new leader, Labor Party members sent an unequivocal message that they are tired of this order of priorities. Clearly, they weren’t saying diplomatic-security issues should be ignored. But for years, successive Israeli governments have focused on diplomatic-security issues to the virtual exclusion of domestic ones. This neglect has enabled domestic problems to balloon and multiply, which in turn led to the eruption of the summer’s massive socioeconomic protests. And now, even members of Israel self-proclaimed “peace camp” have had enough: They want a leader who understands, as Yacimovich once wrote, that “before we … engage in a struggle for peace, we need to have a state.”
As I’ve noted before, polls have been showing for years that most Israelis view domestic issues as higher priority than the “peace process,” for the simple reason that most have concluded Israeli-Palestinian peace is currently unattainable. But voters have rarely had the option of expressing this preference via the ballot box: Candidates for leadership in every major party usually focus on diplomatic-security issues.
The recent Labor primary, however, offered a clear-cut choice, and the voters’ verdict was unequivocal. In the first round, they eliminated two candidates identified almost exclusively with diplomatic-security issues (Amram Mitzna and Isaac Herzog) in favor of the two with a record of championing socioeconomic issues: Yacimovich and Amir Peretz. And in the second round, they chose the candidate whose six-year career in parliament has been devoted exclusively to domestic issues over the one who, when he finally found himself in the cabinet, relegated domestic issues to the back burner by choosing to serve as defense minister.
Yacimovich’s victory – along with the surge it has given her party in the polls – thus sends an unmistakable message to leading politicians of all political stripes: Henceforth, you ignore domestic issues at your peril. If you continue focusing exclusively on diplomatic-security issues, you, too, may find yourself defeated in the next primary by a newcomer who focuses on domestic problems.
Yet at the same time, it poses several dangers.
The first is that Yacimovich might succumb to the heavy pressure she will now certainly face, from both the media and leading public figures on the left, to shift her focus to diplomatic-security issues. Haaretz, the voice of the hard left, fired the opening salvo just two days after her election, declaring in an editorial that “For Labor under her leadership to be able to head the left in the next Knesset election, she will also have to give voice loudly, clearly and forcefully to the diplomatic message she has thus far avoided: that ensuring Israel’s future requires a political separation from the Palestinians and the end of the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.”
So far, Yacimovich has showed an impressive ability to withstand pressure. She stuck to her socioeconomic guns before the primary in the teeth of all the pundits who asserted she couldn’t win without a diplomatic message; she also refused to back down when doyens of the left attacked her for insisting that the settlements are not the root of all evil (as she explained in a lengthy interview with Haaretz last month, she thinks most settlements will have to go under any peace deal, but she doesn’t think they are “a sin and a crime,” doesn’t support boycotting them, and doesn’t buy the argument that if only the settlements disappeared, billions of shekels could be diverted to social issues and all of Israel’s domestic problems would be solved).
Still, the pressure is bound to escalate now that she has won. And if
she does succumb, this will deal a tremendous blow to Israelis’ already
shaky faith in their political system. In a survey published in January,
over half of respondents said they feel their vote has either “no” or
“insignificant” influence on policy. This feeling would surely intensify
if, after having made their preference for prioritizing domestic issues
so clear, voters were to find themselves stuck with yet another
politician preoccupied with the “peace process” at the expense of all
else.
The second danger is that other parties might conclude not merely that
they should pay more attention to domestic issues, but that they should
actually adopt Yacimovich’s policies – most of which would be
disastrous. In that same Haaretz interview, for instance, she
unequivocally backed the continuation of monopolies and powerful
public-sector unions, blithely disregarding their sizable contribution
to the exorbitant prices that sparked the summer’s protests.
The third danger is that the rest of the political class will simply
fail to get the message. For if other parties keep focusing on foreign
affairs to the exclusion of domestic issues, not only will Israelis’
faith in the responsiveness of the political system continue to decline,
but Yacimovich’s destructive economic ideas will win by default. Only
if other parties offer their own solutions to domestic problems will
voters have a real alternative to her proposals.
Yacimovich’s victory is remarkable for the clear answer it provides to
the question of what Israeli voters really care about. The new question
it raises is whether Israel’s political establishment is listening.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.