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Until recently, I never imagined that the Bible could have anything pertinent to say about the structure of government, or economic policy, in a modern democratic state. What changed my mind was a new book by Joshua Berman, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Berman, a lecturer in Bible at Bar-Ilan University and an associate fellow at the Shalem Center, argues that the Bible introduced what were then radical notions of political and economic equality and promulgated strategies for achieving them. He does not discuss modern applications of these strategies, and might disagree with mine. But I was stunned by their ongoing relevance even millennia later, when equality is no longer a radical idea, but a political sine qua non.
On economics, for instance, Berman elucidates various biblical strategies for limiting, though not eradicating, economic inequality. Some, given the differences between modern and biblical economies, are now inapplicable: Debt servitude, for instance, no longer exists.
THE THEORY behind them, however, remains highly relevant. The goal, Berman argues, was not merely sustaining the poor (though mandatory tithing was instituted for that purpose), but enabling them to resume an economically productive life. For instance, since land is essential for economic viability in an agricultural society, it had to be restored to its original owners in the jubilee year. Debt servitude not only enabled the servant to learn marketable skills, but when his term ended, his master had to give him either livestock or seed – the agricultural economy’s equivalent of seed capital.
In modern-day Israel, there is broad consensus that economic inequality is reaching dangerous proportions. But the Bible’s strategies remind us that simply raising welfare allotments, as many politicians advocate, is no solution. Welfare merely sustains the poor. It does not help them reenter the economy.
One can argue about how best to achieve this biblical goal. The Wisconsin welfare-to-work program is one strategy; another, recently advocated by Omer Moav and Ofer Cohen in the Shalem Center’s journal Azure, is Denmark’s “flexicurity” system. But any strategy not aimed at this goal will fail.
On the judiciary, Berman notes that the Bible assigned the task of appointing judges not to the king or priests, but to the people as a whole (presumably through some unspecified representative mechanism). It thereby transferred a major power center from the ruling classes to the general public.
IRONICALLY, ISRAEL is the only democratic state that has yet to adopt this insight. In other democracies, Supreme Court justices are appointed by the people’s elected representatives. Our justices, however, are appointed by unelected legal officials, who comprise a majority of the Judicial Appointments Committee. And since certain population groups are underrepresented in the legal profession, the result has been a Supreme Court that these groups view as consistently hostile to their interests, and a consequent worrying decline in public faith in the courts.
With regard to leadership, many biblical precepts have obvious resonance in the post-Olmert era. For instance, the king (read prime minister) must not acquire a multitude of horses, wives or money: In other words, he must not view public office as a means of growing rich. Moreover, Berman notes, marriage was traditionally a way to form alliances with powerful families, which could lead the king to prefer these families’ interests to the general good. Hence “the injunction against marrying widely may [also] be understood as seeking to prevent the influence of cronyism.” Additionally, the king must “observe faithfully every word of this Torah as well as these laws.” In short, the king is bound by the law, just like any other citizen.
BUT EQUALLY important is a precept Berman derives from the Bible’s premier exemplar of leadership: Moses. Given his direct line to God, Moses could easily have ruled by fiat. Instead, Berman argues, he offers a model of consultative leadership: When he wants to delegate authority, he first seeks the people’s approval for his plan (Deuteronomy 1:9-18). Later, when the people propose sending spies into Canaan, he acquiesces.
In modern democratic Israel, however, consultation is far from the norm. The Winograd Committee’s report on the Second Lebanon War highlighted one aspect of this problem: Because Ehud Olmert consulted so few people before making decisions, he wound up lacking vital information. On military matters, for instance, he consulted only then chief of General Staff Dan Halutz, and was thus unaware that many experts questioned Halutz’s conviction that air power could suppress Hizbullah’s rocket fire – a conviction on which Olmert based his war strategy, and which proved disastrously wrong. Nor was Olmert exceptional: Most Israeli premiers consult only a handful of chosen advisers.
Far worse, however, is the consistent refusal to consult the public on major decisions. Yitzhak Rabin, for instance, openly bought Knesset votes to pass Oslo 2 rather than seeking the people’s support via new elections. Ariel Sharon refused to call either elections or a national referendum on disengagement and ignored the results of a party referendum.
CONSEQUENTLY, INSTEAD of feeling that they lost fairly and must accept the majority’s will, many opponents of these decisions feel that they were cheated. This has led to tremendous bitterness, loss of faith in democracy and a growing belief that violence is the only alternative – developments that could have been avoided by a genuine democratic ratification of major decisions. As Berman puts it, “Moses emphasizes that… the right way to rule is by way of discussion and consensus between the ruler and the ruled.”
The above is the merest sampling of what Berman’s book offers, and others might draw different inferences. But one conclusion I consider indisputable: The Jewish people’s foundational text has plenty to say about the modern Jewish state. And since no culture can long preserve its uniqueness if it comes to view its canonical texts as irrelevant, that is good news for everyone who wants Israel to remain a Jewish state.
Opportunism: Blatant opportunism has contributed greatly to a growing disenchantment with politics. The spectacle of people hopping from party to party based solely on which seems likely to win the next election, with no regard to their own or the party’s stated views, has convinced many Israelis that politicians care about nothing but being in power.
Three candidates in Likud’s primary embodied this phenomenon: Assaf Hefetz, Uzi Dayan and Miri Regev. None has ever publicly expressed a view that would indicate any affinity with Likud’s platform; indeed, as Haaretz noted, Hefetz and Dayan viewed Likud as “a dirty word” until its electoral prospects suddenly made it desirable. But Likud members resoundingly rejected such opportunism, relegating all three to the bottom of the slate.
In contrast, another newcomer once identified with the Left fared well: Moshe Ya’alon (No. 8). But in recent years, Ya’alon has consistently and publicly objected to disengagement and cast doubt on the near-term prospects of peace with the Palestinians – views that Likud members generally share. Hence far from being an opportunist, his positions have genuinely changed in a way that makes Likud his natural home. And therefore, he was welcomed.
Accountability (1): Rarely have voters’ views on an issue been as clear as Likud members’ views on disengagement. Not only was the party elected in 2003 by campaigning against unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, but members rejected the idea again, by a 60-40 majority, in a May 2004 referendum.
Yet in the Orwellian world of Israeli politics, those who honored the party’s platform and the referendum results were branded “rebels” by the media, while those who flouted their electorate’s will were lauded. And Likud’s central committee, which chose the party’s 2006 Knesset slate, sided with the media rather than the membership. Disengagement supporters featured prominently on the list, while many opponents were relegated to the bottom.
This, more than anything else, devastated many rightists’ faith in democracy – because if politicians can flout voters’ explicit directives with impunity, then voters have no influence at all. So why vote? Likud members, however, struck a blow for accountability in last week’s primary. Of nine candidates who served in the previous Knesset but not this one, six out of seven disengagement opponents made the slate; both pullout supporters failed. That sent a clear and important message: Voters will reward MKs who honor their will and punish those who do not.
Voters reinforced this message by punishing several sitting MKs who supported disengagement. Silvan Shalom was ousted from the heir-apparent’s slot (No. 2); he is now seventh, behind five disengagement opponents. Limor Livnat, for years Likud’s unquestioned leading lady, fell below disengagement opponent Lea Nass. Michael Eitan dropped from No. 6 to No. 16.
The one disengagement opponent who failed to make the 42-person list was Yehiel Hazan, who disgraced himself with a criminal conviction for double voting. That, too, was a triumph for accountability. Corruption was duly punished.
Accountability (2): Primary voters also rewarded effective MKs, while punishing poor performers. Shalom, for instance, was lackluster as both foreign affairs and finance minister, while Livnat, though she tried, failed to effect reforms as education minister. This contributed to their downgrading.
Instead, voters awarded the top five slots (after Netanyahu) to three MKs who have never been ministers and two who have held only minor portfolios, but who have all distinguished themselves as parliamentarians. Gideon Sa’ar, Gilad Erdan, Reuven Rivlin and Moshe Kahlon are all extremely effective legislators. In addition, Rivlin enjoyed wide respect as Knesset speaker, while Sa’ar has been a superb faction chairman. Former MK Bennie Begin was also a well-regarded parliamentarian.
Whether they would be effective ministers is anybody’s guess. But in the voters’ view, their strong performances to date have earned them the right to try. And that is as it should be, if we want talented ministers rather than hacks.
Diversity: Finally, voters made it clear that despite their desire for accountability, they see Likud as a big-tent party with room for diverse views – a fact concertedly concealed by the media. The Jerusalem Post, for instance, labeled Dan Meridor (No. 17) the slate’s only “centrist,” ignoring the six disengagement supporters above him.
BUT THE deeper flaw in the media’s view is the implication that anyone who opposed disengagement is by definition a right-wing fanatic. By that standard, Yossi Beilin is also a right-wing fanatic: He wrote and spoke tirelessly against disengagement (though ultimately deciding that he “could not vote against” uprooting settlements), for the exact same reason that many rightists did – fear that it would strengthen Palestinian extremists and encourage terror.
Given Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections and the huge upsurge in rocket attacks from Gaza, most Israelis now concur. Disengagement opponents were simply the first to recognize a bad idea when they saw it. If that is the media’s definition of “right-wing,” rightists will doubtless accept the compliment. But to assume that people who opposed a destructive peace initiative would therefore necessarily oppose a constructive one is a leap of illogic not justified by the data.
By rejecting opportunism and corruption while promoting accountability, talent and a big-tent philosophy, Likud voters have strengthened Israeli democracy as a whole. They have also bolstered the claim that direct election of MKs would similarly further these trends. And the credit belongs entirely to Netanyahu, who single-handedly forced democratic primaries on a reluctant party establishment when he assumed the chairmanship three years ago.
Unfortunately, with his active encouragement, party institutions have since nullified some of these achievements: In a disgraceful move of questionable legality, they reordered the slate’s reserved slots three days after the primary to move the opportunists up and disengagement opponents down, thereby effectively overruling the voters. One can only regret that instead of taking pride in his own genuine democratic achievement, Netanyahu has opted to denigrate and undermine it.
Topping the list, of course, are the Jewish thugs who rampaged through Hebron for days to protest the eviction, attacking soldiers, policemen and Palestinians and vandalizing property. But thugs exist in every society, which is why law enforcement agencies also exist. Thus far more disturbing than the thuggery itself was the response, or lack thereof – because that is what determines whether society controls its thugs or is controlled by them.
The police and army
The former’s primary task is keeping the peace; the latter, as the territories’ legal sovereign, shares this task. Yet both neglected their duties shamefully last week, allowing bands of teenage thugs to rampage unchecked for days. If any efforts were made to prevent the rioting, they were so half-hearted as to be risible. The army, for instance, did not declare the area a closed military zone, which would have enabled it to keep the thugs out, until days after the disturbances began, nor did police make any serious effort to arrest perpetrators afterward.
The claim that the security forces lacked sufficient manpower is absurd: They could easily have brought in reinforcements from elsewhere. Some 20,000 soldiers and policemen were sent to Gaza for the disengagement; an extra few hundred could surely have been sent to keep the peace in Hebron. Indeed, reinforcements were brought in for the eviction itself (which involved some 600 soldiers and policemen), indicating that the police and army viewed evacuating the house as a higher priority than containing the thugs. That is a severely warped order of priorities for organizations whose primary mission is supposed to be protecting the public.
Compounding the offense was the excessive force used during the eviction: The Jerusalem Post reported, for instance, that though resistance was largely nonviolent, police threw many demonstrators out the door head first, risking serious injury. Thus the same police that refused to use force against violent thugs had no qualms about using force against nonviolent demonstrators – once again evincing a badly warped order of priorities.
The government
Governments exist to set priorities. And had ours ordered the security forces to allocate the manpower and resources necessary to contain the thugs, they would presumably have done so. Instead, Olmert and Barak demonstrated the same warped priorities as the police and army: They did order the security forces to devote whatever resources were necessary to evacuate the house. But despite numerous public statements about how thuggery cannot be tolerated, neither the prime minister nor the defense minister ever issued comparable orders regarding keeping the peace.
This is negligence so gross, and so inexplicable, that many settlers believe it was deliberate: that the government let the rioters rampage unchecked to turn public opinion against all settlers. But one need not believe in malice aforethought to find what happened frightening; incompetence on this scale is frightening enough.
The broader settler community
Most settlers are decent, law-abiding people who would never condone such thuggery. And to blame them for not preventing the violence is ridiculous: They, unlike the security forces, have no power to forcibly restrain others.
Nevertheless, too many settlers have been far too willing to “understand” the thugs’ rage, insisting that however unjustified their behavior, the government is at fault for provoking them with an unjustified eviction. Orit Struck, a leader of Hebron’s Jewish community, for instance, told the Post that the violence was the direct result of Barak’s decision to evacuate the house.
Change a few words, and that sounds remarkably like Western apologias for Palestinian terrorists: Of course murder is wrong, but you have to “understand” their rage; you have to “understand” the intolerable provocation of settlement construction.
No morally sane person could view building a house, however illegal, as an acceptable explanation for murder. But for exactly the same reason, neither is being evicted from a house – and while there were mercifully no deaths in Hebron last week, we came perilously close. One settler opened fire, wounding three Palestinians; this incident could easily have ended in death instead. So could the numerous attacks not involving live fire: Rocks are also lethal weapons. That is why Israel jails Palestinian stone-throwers. And even if the shooting was, as the settler claims, in self-defense, it makes no difference: With the security forces doing nothing to stop the Jewish thugs, a violent Palestinian response was inevitable; that no deaths resulted was sheer luck.
IN SEPTEMBER, I argued in this space that correcting Israel’s democracy deficit was essential to prevent additional teens from joining the thugs. That remains true. But there is another side to the equation, which seemed so obvious that I spared it only one sentence: that thuggery “is something no society can tolerate, and better law enforcement is clearly part of the necessary response.” Those who have already crossed the line must face the full force of the law – along with unequivocal societal condemnation.
Many settlers view the violence as a side issue that should not be allowed to distract attention from the “main” issue: Jews being kicked out of their homes. Tactically speaking, this attitude is self-defeating. Dismissing the thuggery as unimportant instead of wholeheartedly condemning it plays right into efforts to tar all settlers with the same brush. This alienates even some of their staunchest supporters, which is a poor way to win a war.
But the argument is also wrong substantively – because while thuggery properly confronted and condemned would indeed be a side issue, thuggery unchallenged by either the law enforcement agencies or the society from which it springs is anything but. When not properly confronted, thuggery can quickly come to dominate society. And a society controlled by thugs is not worth living in.
If you doubt it, just take a look at the Palestinian Authority.
The politicians – more than 20 Hamas members of parliament plus eight cabinet ministers – were seized in the West Bank a few days after Hamas kidnapped Schalit in June 2006. The unstated but widely recognized purpose was to use them as bargaining chips for his release.
However, it turns out that Israel has no law enabling members of Hamas’ political wing to be held until the end of hostilities: The Law for the Imprisonment of Illegal Combatants, which was enacted precisely to enable terrorists to be held in this fashion, applies only to the military wing.
Granted, even this law is largely a dead letter, since it enables terrorists to be held only if their “release would undermine national security,” and the Supreme Court has interpreted this phrase very narrowly. Nevertheless, the court has occasionally upheld the state’s right to keep high-level detainees as bargaining chips for its missing soldiers.
In this case, however, Israel could not even make the attempt, because the law applies only to actual combatants, meaning members of the military wing. Therefore, the arrested politicians were instead prosecuted as ordinary criminals.
Yet this effort, too, was stymied by the legal system’s distinction between the political and military wings: It turns out that members of the political wing cannot be held legally responsible for the military wing’s activities unless there is evidence linking them personally to these activities. In the case of the arrested politicians, there was no such evidence. Thus in the end, they could be indicted only on minor charges such as belonging to an illegal organization.
The result is that almost all of the arrested politicians were sentenced only to short prison terms, generally ranging from two to three and a half years. Some have thus already been released, and almost all the rest are slated for release over the course of 2009 – even if Schalit continues to languish in captivity.
This fact helps explain why Hamas has felt free to make such outrageous demands for his release. According to media reports, it is currently insisting that 1,400 Palestinian prisoners be freed in exchange for Schalit, including several hundred vicious murderers responsible for some of the worst terror attacks of the intifada.
In other times and places, prisoner exchanges during the course of hostilities (as opposed to end-of-war exchanges, when everyone is released) have generally entailed a rough parity: similar numbers of prisoners of similar rank, or perhaps one higher-ranking prisoner for several lower-ranking prisoners. By that standard, Hamas should be able to obtain very little in exchange for a single lowly corporal.
But Hamas has no reason to settle for anything less than the “highest-ranking” prisoners, meaning those convicted of the worst crimes, because Israel’s own laws will force it to release all the others in a relatively short time anyway. What incentive could it possibly have to trade Schalit for the arrested politicians when they will all be released next year regardless of whether or not Schalit is freed? Or for low-ranking members of its military wing, who will similarly be freed once their relatively short criminal sentences have been served? The only people whom the country will not eventually release on its own are the murderers sentenced to life. Hence they are the only ones worth trading for.
ISRAEL GOT it right in its EU campaign: A terrorist organization’s political wing is indeed inseparable from its military wing; they are two sides of the same coin, working together to achieve a common goal. And this is especially true for organizations such as Hamas and Hizbullah, whose political wings actually control territory, as this gives them access to resources essential for their military wings’ operations.
Hamas’ political control of Gaza, for instance, has enabled its military wing to recruit and train freely; as a result, both the size of its forces and their skills have increased markedly over the last few years. Its control of Gaza has also enabled it to greatly expand its arms smuggling over the Gaza-Egypt border. Political control gives it access to tax revenues and even international aid, and money, of course, is essential to pay its troops and purchase arms. Finally, despite being boycotted by the EU, Hamas’ political wing has effectively lobbied the organization’s cause in other world capitals for years, and even many Westerners view its electoral victory in 2006 as conferring legitimacy on the organization.
Thus while Hamas politicians are generally not involved in actually planning terror attacks, they knowingly and actively facilitate them via their political activity. They are not innocent dupes; they know quite well what the military wing does with the resources they put at its disposal. And they should therefore be held responsible for the military wing’s activities, rather than being let off on the grounds that they never actually pulled a trigger.
If releasing Schalit were the only way to secure its politicians’ freedom, Hamas might be under pressure to do so: Aside from any sense of obligation it might feel, letting them languish for years with no hope of release would probably deter many suitable people from being willing to fill these vital posts. But because Israel’s legal system accepts the false distinction between its military and political wings, the organization is under no such pressure.
Thus far, successive governments have simply accepted this distinction as immutable fact. Yet it is the Knesset that enacts the laws; hence any government ought to be able to use its Knesset majority to enact legislation that would remove this distinction from the law books. And it is long past time to do so – because until this distinction is eradicated, we will be fighting terrorist organizations with one hand tied behind our back.
For instance, Netanyahu cannot actually grant Dayan and Hefetz places on Likud’s Knesset list, thanks to a reform he himself introduced in 2005, under which the slate will be chosen by party-wide primary. Thus Likud members – or rather, those who bother to vote in December’s primary – will determine whether leftists make it onto the list at all, whether they constitute a minority or majority of it, and whether they occupy the top slots or the bottom slots. And if Likud forms the next government, the answers to these questions will be vital.
FIRST, THE Right’s numerical strength on Likud’s list is the key constraint on Netanyahu’s ability to move leftward after the election – both because no politician would commit political suicide by going where his party refuses to follow, and because he will need Likud’s Knesset votes for any major diplomatic move. The disengagement, for instance, could never have passed had two-thirds of what was then Likud not backed it.
Thus if Likud’s list winds up in the Dayan-Hefetz mold, Netanyahu will find it easy to move left. But if it consists mainly of people like Bennie Begin and Yuli Edelstein, a sharp left turn will be difficult: The necessary Knesset support will be lacking.
Second, an MK’s place on the party list greatly influences his chances of becoming a minister. Netanyahu might pluck one or two ministers from the bottom of the slate, but any large-scale circumvention of those at the top would spark a party revolt. Thus a slate headed by rightists will produce a more rightist cabinet. And since the cabinet makes most governmental decisions, its composition is crucial.
Rightists thus have an especial interest in Likud’s primary this year. But this interest existed even before Netanyahu’s reform, because Likud has chosen its leader by primary for years – and Likud’s leader is the closest thing the right has to a prime ministerial candidate. No party farther to the right will lead the country anytime soon.
Nevertheless, far too many rightists still turn up their noses at the idea of joining Likud and voting in its primaries. Likud is not ideologically pure enough: It attended the Madrid conference, signed the Hebron and Wye agreements, and withdrew from Gaza (before the pro-withdrawal faction left to become Kadima). Yet as long as rightists prefer whining and moaning about the party’s leftward tilt to dirtying their hands by joining it and using their votes to have an impact, Likud will go right on inching leftward.
RIGHTIST PURISM also lies behind Netanyahu’s desire to form a government with Labor and Kadima. If current polls are accurate, Likud will win 30 to 35 seats, and a coalition requires 61. A strictly right-of-center coalition, if one is possible at all, would thus require at least four other parties, some of them serial extortionists, and even then, it would barely exceed 61 seats.
In short, it would be a coalition constantly on the verge of collapse, kept afloat only by regular blackmail payments and incapable of implementing any serious reforms. If the goal is solving the country’s problems rather than mere survival, such a coalition is not worth having. Netanyahu will thus have no choice but to bring in either Labor, Kadima, or both.
The situation would be completely different if Likud had 50 seats rather than 30: Netanyahu’s choice of coalition partners would be much greater, and whichever partner(s) he chose, whether rightist or leftist, would have far less power to dictate his moves.
That, however, will never happen, because too many rightists prefer either voting for small parties – including fringe groups with no chance of entering the Knesset – or not voting at all to voting for a party that is less than ideologically pristine. One would have thought 1992 would have cured the right of this folly: Had all the rightists who wasted their votes that year on parties that failed to make the Knesset voted Likud instead, Likud would have formed the government instead of Labor, and there would have been no Oslo. Yet if anything, the volume of wasted rightist votes has only increased since then.
Moreover, even voting for small parties certain to win seats is playing with fire, because most polls show Likud and Kadima virtually neck and neck. That means a few votes either way could determine whether Netanyahu or Tzipi Livni forms the next government.
LIKUD WILL never be as rightist as the ideological right would like: Precisely because it aspires to be a governing party, it must remain near the center; a far-right party cannot win. Yet the center-right is still vastly different from the Left. It was the Left that brought us Oslo, Camp David, the intifada, the Second Lebanon War. It was the Right (Sharon’s first government) that brought us Operation Defensive Shield and the subsequent sharp drop in terror.
Politics is the art of the possible, and that means the choice is often not between good and bad, but between bad and worse. Still, the difference between bad and worse can be substantial: Just compare the 63 terrorist deaths under Netanyahu’s first government (1996-99) to the 211 of the preceding three years.
If one truly sees no difference between Bennie Begin and Uzi Dayan, between Netanyahu and Livni, there is indeed no reason to vote. But people who understand that there is a difference have only two choices: They can dirty their hands and cast their votes where they might matter, or they can continue confining themselves to whining and moaning about Likud’s leftward turn – thereby confining the right to continued political impotence.
When comparing the Israeli and American systems, two facts immediately stand out. First, while our universities are state-funded, America’s best and wealthiest universities are private. Second, annual tuition at top American schools is about 15 times the NIS 8,600 here.
These differences are not coincidental. In societies where money is considered a measure of value, American tuition proclaims higher education valuable, while local tuition labels it virtually worthless. Moreover, while our system makes higher education another state-funded entitlement, America’s private system makes it a privilege.
Top American schools are therefore attractive to funders, who like the idea of enabling deserving students to obtain a valuable but otherwise unaffordable education. Moreover, since high tuition means that a majority of students receive financial aid, alumni feel obligated to help others as they were helped.
This country’s universities, however, face strong disincentives to giving: Private donors object to funding a government entitlement; most alumni paid “full” tuition, and therefore feel no obligation to help others; and the product, as indicated by its price, is worthless anyway – a point that also argues against generous government funding.
And since, as last week’s column explained, all Western universities must increase their non-state funding to survive, these disincentives put our schools at a serious disadvantage. Hence the importance of raising tuition, as the Shochat Committee recommended last year. In addition to increasing the universities’ revenues in itself, it would encourage private donations by sending the signals necessary to attract them – that higher education is valuable, that it is not a government entitlement for which civil society bears no responsibility and that many deserving students cannot afford it without help.
YET FOR all the importance of this issue, another American-Israeli difference that is less immediately obvious may be even more important. Prof. Israel Bartal, Hebrew University’s dean of the humanities, enunciated this difference in the Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal last February, when he declared that “trying to shape a generation of Jewish leaders” is “beyond our scope.” Substitute the appropriate nationality, and that statement would appall most leading non-Israeli schools.
England’s Oxford and Cambridge, France’s grande ecoles, America’s Harvard, Yale and Princeton – all view producing future leaders as part of their job. That is why France has a grande ecole devoted exclusively to public administration, why Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government or Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs rank among their respective universities’ most prestigious departments, why a school like Princeton unabashedly boasts of “Princeton in the nation’s service.”
It is also why American scholars easily move between academia and government – people like Larry Summers (who left Harvard for government service, ultimately became secretary of the treasury, then returned as Harvard’s president), Henry Kissinger (who left Harvard to become national security adviser and secretary of state, then returned to Georgetown University) or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (a former Stanford provost). In Israel, such transitions are exceedingly rare.
The point is not that Israel needs more academics in politics; rather, it is the attitude this trend reflects. While American (or British or French) universities feel a responsibility to give back to the communities that produced them, our universities acknowledge no such responsibility. They view their job strictly as churning out experts in particular academic fields. But if universities feel no obligation toward society, why should society feel any obligation toward them?
OUR UNIVERSITIES do not even feel obliged to produce well-rounded citizens with a broad base of knowledge. Except at Bar-Ilan, where students must take some Jewish studies courses, there are no distribution requirements. Thus science majors can graduate without ever taking a humanities or social science course, while humanities majors can graduate without studying any natural or social science.
The result, as Nobel laureate in chemistry Prof. Aharon Ciechanover lamented in Yediot Aharonot two years ago, is that “even among people with academic degrees, I find garbled language, a lack of cultural depth and ignorance of general history and the history of the Jewish people. We need institutions of higher learning headed by path-breaking leadership, but that kind of leadership has disappeared.”
Added to all this is rampant academic post-Zionism. Consider some examples: Two lecturers at Ben-Gurion University and its affiliate, Sapir College, refused to teach IDF reservists in uniform; many of their fellows supported them. A University of Haifa master’s student received top marks for a thesis accusing IDF soldiers of massacring Arabs during the War of Independence, yet the veterans later won a libel suit by proving gross fabrications of the evidence. A Tel Aviv University professor published a book asserting that there is no Jewish people. A Ben-Gurion lecturer described his university, located well within pre-1967 Israel, as being in “Palestinian territory.” Sociology professors awarded a prize to a Hebrew University graduate student for a paper claiming that IDF soldiers rarely rape Palestinian women because they view Palestinians as subhuman.
Since most Israelis love their country, and willingly defend it when necessary, their “negative view” of an academic establishment that prizes anti-Israel libel over academic rigor and deems military service an offense is
understandable. When academia actively undermines all that ordinary Israelis hold dear, why should they, or the governments they elect, wish to fund it?
Raising tuition is the government’s job. But only the universities can change their own attitudes, their own relationship with society. And if they care about their financial future, they must do so – because unless ordinary people are convinced that the universities do contribute to society, and are thus worth funding, the stark truth is that they have no future.
Unlike the others, the administrators are not seeking money for themselves. Their claim is that due to repeated budget cuts, they can no longer afford to hire even the adjunct lecturers who have replaced tenured faculty in many departments. Thus without extra funding, they will have to close numerous departments, mainly in the humanities – something they consider unacceptable for a self-respecting university.
Also unlike the others, the administrators have a good case: As Dr. Dan Ben-David notes in his book Brain Drained, the country’s ratio of senior faculty to population is now only half what it was in 1973. In absolute terms, both Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University have fewer senior faculty positions now than they did then (by 14 percent and 21%, respectively); yet the country’s population has more than doubled. And as a percentage of gross domestic product, state-funded university budgets are now 38% lower than they were in 1977.
The result has been something a country whose only natural resource is brainpower cannot afford: a massive brain drain. Fully 25% of Israeli professors work in America, Ben-David says, compared to less than 5% of European professors. And while American universities admittedly offer better pay and higher research budgets, the main reason for this brain drain is that positions are simply unavailable here. Since tenured faculty cannot be fired, universities have instead reduced their staffs through hiring freezes.
YET WHILE increased government funding is clearly part of the necessary solution, the universities are wrong in thinking it can or should be the whole solution.
The blunt fact is that state-funded higher education worldwide is now more expensive than it was 30 years ago. There are various reasons for this, including the soaring costs of cutting-edge scientific research. But perhaps most significantly, the proportion of the population attending college has risen as college degrees have increasingly become prerequisites for good jobs. And since all state-funded systems heavily subsidize tuition, this has created a growing burden on national budgets.
Throughout the Western world, therefore, state-funded universities are being forced to augment their income from nongovernmental sources – namely, private donations and tuition. England and Germany, for instance, both recently raised tuition at state-funded universities; so have many American states (for state schools).
And that is the crux of the current budget standoff here: The Finance Ministry is willing to increase university funding, but has conditioned this on various reforms, of which the most important is a tuition hike.
Since university administrators do not set tuition themselves, this pressure tactic is aimed primarily at the cabinet, which currently opposes raising tuition, and secondarily at student unions, whose lobbying influences the cabinet’s positions. Yet the administrators are not guiltless, either: Instead of recognizing that higher tuition is essential to their schools’ financial future, and therefore pressing the cabinet to support it, they demanded that the government cover the entire shortfall. They thereby reduced pressure on both students and ministers to moderate their positions, while also depriving the Treasury of the academic imprimatur it needs to paint its demand as good for academia rather than merely for the state budget.
Yet the Treasury is right – not only for budgetary reasons, but because artificially low tuition subsidizes the rich at the expense of the poor.
Wealthy students, as burgeoning enrollment at expensive private colleges attests, can afford to pay far more than the current subsidized tuition of NIS 8,600 a year. The popular Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, for instance, charges NIS 31,500 a year. And with so much of the higher education budget devoted to subsidizing those who can pay, little money is left to provide financial aid to the truly needy.
Moreover, a university education is one of the best financial investments around. It is the difference between being stuck in a minimum-wage job and landing one that pays the average wage or better. Since the monthly minimum wage is currently about NIS 3,850 and the average wage about NIS 8,200, that difference comes to some NIS 4,350 a month. In other words, it would take exactly two months of work at average rather than minimum wages for a university graduate to recoup his entire year’s tuition. Thus not only could students justifiably be asked to pay more, but the enormous tuition subsidy means that low earners are effectively subsidizing high earners – or, more accurately, the education that makes them high earners – through their taxes.
LAST YEAR, a committee on higher education reform recommended raising tuition to NIS 14,800 (about NIS 1,233 a month). For upper-income families, that is still easily affordable. And it is also still a fabulous investment: Ten months of work at average rather than minimum wages would finance the entire three-year degree.
If all of the country’s 171,000 undergraduates paid that amount, it would increase the higher education budget by some NIS 1.1 billion a year – almost half the extra NIS 2.4 billion the universities say they need, and about one-sixth of the total state budget for higher education. In reality, of course, the increase would be far smaller, since much of the money would have to be funneled into increased financial aid. But it would still augment the universities’ budgets by hundreds of millions of shekels a year, thereby easing their financial woes, while also reducing an unnecessary and unjust state subsidy to the wealthy. And, counterintuitively, it might even assist the universities’ private fund-raising (as next week’s column will explain).
With elections called for February, no serious progress on the university funding crisis is likely now. But for the sake of the future, the next government must give priority to resolving this crisis, through both higher state funding and higher tuition.
Shas wants to restore the system in place from 2000-2003, when the per-child allowance was NIS 171 for the first and second children, NIS 343 for the third, NIS 694 for the fourth and NIS 856 from the fifth onward. This structure primarily benefited haredim and Muslims, the only communities where large families are the norm. And it had two adverse effects.
First, because a family with six children received NIS 3,091 a month in child allotments – roughly equal to the minimum wage at that time – shunning work became financially feasible. Unsurprisingly, therefore, workforce participation rates among haredim and Muslims were more than 25 percentage points lower than among the rest of the population.
Second, the low allotments for earlier children offered no financial incentive for having, say, two children rather than one, but the high allotments for later children did provide an incentive for having, say, seven children instead of six. Thus this structure encouraged demographic growth among non-Zionist haredim and Muslims, while discouraging it among the Zionist majority.
IN 2003, the government slashed all the allotments, intending eventually to equalize them at NIS 144 per child (though this never happened). The cuts had two main goals: saving money and encouraging haredim and Arabs to work. But no serious thought was given to using the allotments to influence demographics, as the popular wisdom held that allotments did not affect birthrates.
Since then, however, hard evidence has refuted this popular wisdom. In the two years following the cuts, the Muslim fertility rate plunged from 4.5 to four children per woman, then leveled off (it was 3.9 in 2007). Among the Beduin, the rate fell even faster, from nine children per woman in 2003 to 7.6 in 2005. Fertility rates also plummeted in haredi towns (the only available indicator, as the Central Bureau of Statistics does not report the overall haredi birthrate): In Betar Illit, for instance, it dropped from 8.9 children per woman in 2001 to 7.7 in 2006, while in Modi’in Illit, it fell from nine to eight during this period.
Moreover, a new study published last year by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research on how child allotments affected Israeli birthrates between 1999 (just before the massive increase in 2000) and 2005, found that not only did cutting allotments lower birthrates, but increasing them raised birthrates.
UNSURPRISINGLY, THIS was primarily true for poor families: Among wealthy families, for whom child allotments constitute a minor share of total income, the effect was negligible. Fluctuating allotments therefore had the greatest impact on haredim and Muslims, the country’s two poorest sectors. Nevertheless, the impact was also significant among non-haredi Jews. Hence if properly targeted, higher child allotments could substantially improve Israel’s demographic balance.
The overall Jewish fertility rate was 2.8 children per woman in 2007, meaning that 65 percent of Jewish families have only one or two children. Thus providing financial incentives for families with one or two children to have a second or third could significantly increase the Jewish birthrate. Shas’ system, however, encourages parents with four or more children to have another child. And since only 15% of Jewish families fall into this category, its impact on the Jewish birthrate would be marginal.
In contrast, 39% of Arab families have four or more children, while only 38% have one or two. Thus structuring the allotments to encourage parents with one or two children to have another would increase the Jewish birthrate far more than the Arab one – whereas Shas’ formula, by encouraging families with four or more children to have another, would increase the Arab birthrate far more than the Jewish one.
Clearly, financial incentives would only persuade couples to have another child if they wanted one. But a major survey commissioned by the Jewish Agency in 2005 found that the average secular Jewish couple would like three children, while the average traditional couple would like three or four (religious couples wanted larger families). Thus in this case, higher allotments probably would produce higher Jewish birthrates.
IS IT acceptable to structure child allotments to influence the demographic balance? For anyone who wants this to remain a Jewish state, the answer must be yes. In 2007, Jews constituted 76% of the population – down from 80% in 1997, 82% in 1987, 84% in 1977, 86% in 1967 and 89% in 1957. In other words, despite massive Jewish immigration, the Jewish majority is being steadily eroded by the higher Arab birthrate. And that trend is liable to continue unless the Jewish birthrate is increased.
But what of Shas’ claim that higher per-child allotments for large families are necessary to reduce poverty? That, it turns out, is simply false. According to the Bank of Israel’s latest annual report, the haredi poverty rate averaged 52% in 2001-3, when Shas’ formula was in effect, compared to only 44% in 1997-2000. In other words, by encouraging higher birthrates and lower workforce participation, the higher allotments actually increased haredi poverty. Moreover, after initially rising when the allotments were slashed, the haredi poverty rate fell from 64% in 2005 to 59% in 2006/7, as haredim began adjusting by having fewer children and getting jobs.
DEMOGRAPHICS ARE ostensibly Kadima’s raison d’etre: Unlike parties to its left, which advocate leaving the territories to achieve peace, Kadima advocates doing so to secure Israel’s Jewish majority. But quitting the territories would do nothing to solve the demographic problem inside Israel. Thus Kadima ought to be the first to insist on restructuring child allotments to address this problem.
Instead, it has reportedly accepted Shas’s formula for distributing the money; it is merely haggling over the amount. And it has thereby opted to worsen the demographic balance rather than improve it.
Take, for instance, its pledge that “the United States will lead efforts, working together with Jordan, Egypt and others in the international community, to… prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means.”
In reality, Palestinians have fired more than 6,000 rockets and mortar shells from Gaza since the August 2005 disengagement, more than triple the pre-pullout volume. The Palestinian Authority, which controlled Gaza until Hamas’s June 2007 coup, made no effort to prevent this. Yet far from “leading the effort” against this threat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice preferred to press Israel for more concessions, claiming that absent these, the PA could not be expected to fight terror.
Specifically, she demanded a “safe passage” between Gaza and the West Bank – which would have enabled rocket technology to spread to the latter – and the reopening of the Israel-Gaza border, which would have eased terrorist procurement and infiltration. In November 2005, she bullied Sharon into signing an agreement that included both provisions, but Olmert, to his credit, froze it because of the ongoing rocket fire. Nevertheless, she continued pressing these demands, most recently in her May 2007 “benchmarks” plan.
THE LETTER also pledged that “Israel will retain its right to defend itself against terrorism, including to take actions against terrorist organizations,” if Gaza did prove “a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means” than diplomatic pressure. In reality, Washington pressed Olmert to avoid anything beyond ineffective, small-scale military operations. But there, it was pushing against an open door: Olmert wanted a major operation as little as Bush did.
Thus in theory, Bush’s letter offered a multilayered security guarantee: Either the PA would provide security voluntarily, or the U.S. would “lead the effort” to force it to do so, or if all else failed, Israel would protect itself militarily. Instead, Palestinians launched daily attacks from Gaza without suffering any serious diplomatic or military consequences. And the world will now expect Israel to accept this as the model for future withdrawals as well.
Equally grave, however, is the evisceration of two key diplomatic achievements. One was the letter’s pledge that the refugee issue must be resolved “through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.” The US has not reiterated this with the consistency and clarity necessary to convince the Palestinians that it is serious. But at least it never officially backtracked.
Olmert, however, single-handedly gutted this achievement by offering to absorb some 20,000 Palestinian refugees under any deal. And as everyone knows, the minute you concede the principle, the price is negotiable.
Predictably, therefore, the world is already pressuring Israel to raise the figure. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, for instance, declared earlier this month that not only must Tzipi Livni honor Olmert’s offer, she might even have to increase it: “I don’t know how many [refugees Israel must accept] – 10,000 or 100,000, I don’t know,” he said.
The second achievement was the letter’s promise that “in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
THE BUSH administration began gutting this promise almost immediately, by objecting vociferously to Israeli construction in these “major population centers.” Clearly, if the settlement blocs were to remain Israeli, there was no reason to oppose construction within them. Thus by declaring construction within the blocs no more legitimate than construction elsewhere in the West Bank, Washington signaled that in fact, it did not believe Israel should retain them.
Last month, however, it made its retraction explicit: Speaking to the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, US Consul in Jerusalem Jacob Walles said Rice had told both sides that negotiations must be based on withdrawal to the 1949 lines. The State Department subsequently issued a denial, but its denial said merely that “the US government has not taken a position on borders.” In other words, Washington no longer considers a return to the 1949 lines “unrealistic”; at best, it has “no position” on borders.
Olmert, however, has gutted this provision no less thoroughly: Last month, he told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the territorial price of an agreement would be “very close to a formula of one for one.” That means the border will basically be the 1949 lines: If the Palestinians must receive equivalent territory inside Israel for any West Bank territory Israel keeps, any adjustments to these lines will necessarily be minor. Olmert then repeated this in a Rosh Hashana interview with Yediot Aharonot, saying Israel “should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in east Jerusalem,” and compensate the Palestinians by “close to a 1:1 ratio” for any land it does retain.
CLEARLY, THE world will expect any future government to abide by this, since offers made during one round of negotiations are always the starting point for the next. Thus not only has Washington abrogated its 2004 promise, but Olmert has buried any possibility of resuscitating it.
Sharon claimed to have secured three American pledges in exchange for the disengagement: a free hand in fighting Palestinian terror post-withdrawal, opposition to resettling Palestinian refugees in Israel and support for retention of the settlement blocs. And most Israelis considered this trade-off worthwhile.
Four years later, however, all three have evaporated – just as disengagement opponents warned that they would. And Bush’s letter has become just another bit of fish wrapping.
Benn’s view is hardly unique; virtually all Israeli leftists concur – which makes you wonder whether they inhabit the same country as the rest of us. After all, as Benn himself admitted, “the public does not believe a [Palestinian] deal is possible.” It is equally skeptical about a Syrian deal, though he omitted that detail. Thus to most Israelis, the real waste of time would be for the government to throw itself into trying to solve conflicts they currently deem unsolvable, at the inevitable expense of domestic problems they deem genuinely critical.
For instance, while Benn dismisses “the war on corruption” as “whiling away time,” most Israelis disagree: In a January 2007 Peace Index poll, a large plurality gave this issue top billing, its weighted grade of 31.5 out of 100 compared to 22.1 for the second-place issue (rehabilitating the IDF) and a mere 10.8 for making peace with the Palestinians. And that was before the worst corruption scandals broke, including most of Olmert’s cases, then-finance minister Abraham Hirchson’s alleged embezzlement and the discovery that well-connected businessmen were dictating senior Tax Authority appointments. Thus the issue’s importance has presumably only grown.
And with cause: In Transparency International’s latest corruption index, published last week, Israel fell to 33rd place, down from 30th last year and an all-time best of 16th in 2001. This leaves us tied with the Dominican Republic, behind Chile and Uruguay and well behind the Western countries that are our main competitors, thereby threatening our long-term economic viability.
OR TAKE another issue Benn dismisses: governmental reform. Nothing endangers democracy more than a public conviction that the system is broken. Yet more and more people feel that way, and are therefore opting out of the democratic process. The evidence is incontrovertible: Voter turnout, after holding steady for decades at about 80 percent, plummeted to 69% in 2003 and 64% in 2006.
This disenchantment stems partly from governmental corruption, but there is another, even more critical factor: We are the last remaining Western democracy where voters elect party slates chosen by party hacks rather than individual parliamentarians. Thus people have no real say over who represents them; no way to “throw the bums out” (since the “bums” are usually popular enough with the hacks to secure safe seats on their party’s slate); and no way to influence their representatives, who answer to the hacks rather than the voters.
Ordinary Israelis understand this: Another poll last year found that 61% want MKs elected directly. But only a very determined government could enact this reform.
THEN THERE are all the issues Benn did not mention – like education, where we are dropping steadily in international rankings. The last international assessment tests ranked Israeli 15-year-olds below 28 of the 30 OECD members in reading, math and science. Incredibly, according to an OECD study published two weeks ago, these poor results occurred even though Israel provides more hours of classroom instruction than 19 of the 22 OECD countries for which data exists.
The gravity of the educational decline (and we have not even mentioned our crisis-ridden universities) cannot be overstated. This country’s only natural resource is its citizens’ brainpower. Without nurturing this brainpower, our economy will wither, people will flee, we will be unable to finance our defense and the nation’s very existence will be imperiled.
Moreover, failing schools perpetuate yawning gaps between rich and poor. The well-off compensate by providing supplemental, private education for their children. But that leaves children of the poor with no chance of escaping the cycle of poverty through the time-honored means of education.
Israelis care about nothing if not their children, and I have yet to meet a parent who is satisfied with his children’s public-school education. Thus this issue is of great concern to most Israelis.
OR CONSIDER our dysfunctional police. Underworld assassinations are killing innocent bystanders on the streets, yet police have not managed to indict a single leading gangster: The only underworld kingpins facing charges (the Abergils and Ze’ev Rosenstein) were indicted by US authorities in American courts. Police admit that only one in 100 break-ins results in prosecution; the protection racket is reportedly rampant nationwide; and horrendous snafus are routine, from the 2006 escape of serial rapist Benny Sela to the policeman who stood and watched while a terrorist slaughtered students at a Jerusalem yeshiva this March.
Indeed, it is a standing joke that people file police complaints only to collect their insurance. And since police performance affects everyone’s personal security, this clearly matters greatly to most Israelis.
Reforming the police is a complex problem, but there are some obvious starting places. The population has tripled since the 1960s, while the police force has grown by only 50%; consequently, it is now badly understaffed by Western standards. According to Insp.-Gen. David Cohen, Israel has only 2.7 policemen per 1,000 citizens, compared to five per 1,000 in Europe. Moreover, low salaries and long hours make retaining good people difficult. Both are problems only the government can solve.
These are only a few of many pressing domestic issues. But all have a common root: For 15 years, successive governments have devoted themselves mainly to either negotiating with the Palestinians or suppressing the terror that these negotiations produced. Domestic problems were consequently neglected, and they festered.
Tzipi Livni could thus give her country no better gift for the new year that began this week than to ignore the advice of Benn and his ilk, make do with managing the conflict and devote her energies to domestic problems. Unfortunately, nothing in her record suggests that she will do so. Thus most likely, domestic problems will keep right on being neglected.