Wish You Orwell

A list of questions to which, I suspect, I will not receive an answer

Last night I sent this long query to the IDF Spokesman, Radio and Internet Dept. I was informed it was forwarded to the New Media Dept. I will publish their reply when, and if, I receive it.

Greetings,

My name is Yossi Gurvitz, and I write for the Friends of George blog (in Hebrew), and for +972 (in English). Following the events of the last few days, I would appreciate an answer to the following questions:

1. In reply to a question how would have the colonel stoned by settlers reacted to being stoned by Palestinians, the IDF Spokesman, Brigadier Yoav Mordechai, said two days ago to Carmela Menashe (during the Ha’Kol Diburim program) that “I assume, Carmela, that you wouldn’t expect the brigade commander to open fire at a Jew standing in front of him, I am certain you didn’t mean that”.

A. Is this an official proclamation by the IDF of a policy of discrimination according to blood? If not, please supply an alternative explanation to Brigadier Mordechai’s words.

B. How does the IDF Spokesman expect the world media to understand this declaration?

C. Brigadier Mordechai said that IDF soldiers should not be expected to react violently to Jewish demonstrators. However, in the past the IDF has shot at Jewish protesters (Gil Na’amati, for instance, who protested the separation barrier), and have suffered excessive violence from them (such as when a stun gun was used against Yonathan Shapira). Given the facts, shouldn’t Brigadier Mordechai amend his comments to say “you wouldn’t expect the brigade commander to open fire at a right-wing Jew”?

2. Following the latest events, the IDF Spokesman announced (Hebrew) that “the IDF views with great alarm these acts, which are directed at it and its soldiers, and divert it from its main mission – the defense of the country’s citizens and residents. The IDF expects that the rabbis and the leaders of the Yesha Council strongly condemn this alarming behaviour.”

A. Is the IDF Spokesman aware that as the IDF is the sovereign in the West Bank, which is held as a territory captured at war, it is obligated to defend not just the civilians and residents of Israel, but also – and even more so – but also the residents of the captured territory?

B. Given that, and given the fact that Jewish terrorist attacks against Palestinians (nicknamed “price tag attacks”) are a daily occurrence, what does the IDF intend to do in order to defend the Palestinian residents from the settlers? Will it reinforce its forces in the captured territory? If not, why?

C. What is the statutory status of the Yesha Council? Given it has none, why does the IDF refer to it as a recognized body? What is the recognized status of the rabbis?

D. Assuming the Yesha Council and the rabbis will not obey the demands of the IDF, or take exception (such as saying, “we denounce the actions, but…”) what does the IDF plan to do?

3. According to some reports, attacks on IDF bases by settlers are carried out with the aid of soldiers who support the settlers, who also provide them with inside information in order to prevent the removal of outposts.

A. Is the IDF holding investigations in order to find those soldiers?

B. Assuming they are exposed, does the IDF intend to try them for treason and/or aggravated espionage? I wish to remind you former soldier Anat Kamm is serving four and a half years in prison after giving a journalists documents from the office of the Commanding General.

C. If the IDF does not intend to try them for treason and/or aggravated espionage, why not?

4. From time to time, the IDF enforces a curfew or an enclosing (during which movement within the settlement is allowed, but leaving it is not) of Palestinian settlements in the captured territory, for security reasons.

A. Assuming some Jewish settlements are known to the security forces for trouble-making, does the IDF intend to either enclose or curfew those settlements?

B. If not, why? Is it a part of the discriminatory enforcement of which Brigadier Mordechai spoke?

5. From time to time, IDF soldiers carry out nightly raids in Palestinian towns (during curfew), while mapping the inhabitants of each building and taking photos of them.

A. Is the IDF planning on extending this policy to the Jewish settlements?

B. If not, why? Is it a part of the discriminatory enforcement of which Brigadier Mordechai spoke?

6. Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, the head of the Hesder Yeshiva (*) in Elon Moreh, recently called upon his soldiers to refuse orders when ordered to particpate in events where women soldiers are singing; He further called upon them to be ready to die for this cause. This is not Levanon’s first instance of demanding his soldiers disobey orders: He did so in 1995, during the disengagement.

A. Does the IDF intend to stop recognizing Levanon’s yeshiva as a hesder yeshiva?

B. Does the IDF intend to demand the yeshiva remove Levanon from his position, it wants to remain a part of the Hesder agreement?

C. If not, why?

D. How would the IDF react to a university president who’d call upon his students to refuse serving in the reserves?

I would appreciate your prompt reply.

Thankfully yours,

Yossi Gurvitz

(*) Hesder yeshivas are part of an agreement which allows the national-religious to avoid most of the military service yet still feel superior towards the average Israeli. They serve for 16 months vs. the 36 required of most Israeli Jews, four of these months as reserve duty, and spend some 3 years more in their yeshivas, mostly being indoctrinated, indoctrination paid for by the government. It’s a nice, cushy deal, which allows a large number of religious soldiers to serve as one unit.

The IDF exposed its bias in treating settler pogromchiks and Palestinians protesters in diametrically different ways

Gotta hand it to the IDF. We could never have high-lighted its apartheid policy better.

Last night, three days after the killing of Mustafa Tamimi – who was killed by a 40mm grenade to the face by a soldier sitting in a protected vehicle – several young settler hoodlums tried to forcibly cross the border to Jordan, in order to create an outpost there. Ha’Kol Hayehudi, Israel’s equivalent of the Rwanda Radio, claimed their purpose was to remind us all that Jordan, too, is a part of Israel. Others said this was retaliation for Jordan’s participation in the crisis over a bridge near the West Wall.

Such an infiltration, if successful, could be considered to be a casus belli. The rioters managed to cross the security perimeter near the border, when surprised IDF troops managed to encircle them. At this point, an IDF Spokesman soldier told me last night, the brigade commander informed the rioters that “they won’t make it to Jordan tonight”, and that he was trying to convince them to go home. I asked whether this was a negotiation; The soldier preferred to term it ambiguously as “dialogue”. I asked why, come to think of it, they aren’t in cuffs already. He didn’t understand the question. I repeated it: After all, they are in a closed military zone and have attempted to force the border. Why aren’t they in cuffs? We don’t do arrests, he said. That’s not our department. Speak to the police.

I have seen with my own eyes people arrested and cuffed for the crime of entering a closed military zone. I have listened as a major explained patiently that the army has declared the entire village of Al Mu’asara as such a zone. I have seen the detainees being hooded and forced into military vehicle. Somehow, when it comes to right wing rioters in the West Bank, that doesn’t happen. Hours later, some arrests were made – presumably the police showed up.

Actually, we have some experience in the IDF rules of engagement when it comes to unarmed demonstrators trying to cross a border. You just have to ask the Lebanese and Syrians who overran the fences in the Golan heights or attempted to get near the border with Lebanon how the IDF treated them. A hint: The local brigade commander didn’t waste time on attempting “dialogue” with them.

Another incident yesterday took away most of the attention from the Jordanian border incident. A large number (some 300, we’re told) of yarmulke-wearing pogromchiks stoned Palestinian vehicles, stormed a military base, caused severe damage to equipment there, stoned a brigade commander and his XO – the stones were thrown into their command vehicle, no less – and managed to get away with it without having any pogromchik being shot in the face by a gas grenade. Actually, the IDF only managed to detain one of them. When military reporter Carmela Menashe asked the IDF Spokesman, Brigadier Yoav Mordechai, this morning how would the brigade commander react of he was stoned by a Palestinian, Mordechai answered (Hebrew recording, circa 12:00) that “I assume, Carmela, that you wouldn’t expect the brigade commander to open fire at a Jew standing in front of him, I am certain you didn’t mean that.”

And there you have it. The IDF’s official spokesman defines the apartheid regime in the West Bank. There are stone-throwers who may be shot, and there are some, those of the Chosen People, who can’t be. Same offence, same region, different reaction. I wrote yesterday in my Hebrew blog that the IDF has metamorphosed into a gang of frightened gunmen; But the main problem is the cowardly officers leading them. Oh, they don’t lack for physical bravery; They’ll charge a machine gun nest without thinking twice (the fact that the IDF is familiar with only manouver, the charge, is a problem for another post). But they have not a shred of civic courage. They know what damage the settlers can do to their careers. They know that gang of settlers can besiege their houses and intimidate their families. So they retreat, and let the enemies of Israel win; They turn the IDF into the SSA, the Settlers’ Service Army.

For decades, the IDF repeatedly claimed that it is not a political entity, and that it does “choose its own missions.” Those arguments were used against conscientious objectors from the left. But, as we see, the IDF knows perfectly well to choose its missions: Defending lands stolen by the settlers near Nabi Salah, while shooting the demonstrators? Sure thing, it’s our pleasure. Defending Palestinians from “price tag” pogroms? Fuggetaboutit, we’re now the Czar’s police. Defending itself from Jewish rioters? “I assume, Carmela, that you wouldn’t expect the brigade commander to open fire at a Jew standing in front of him, I am certain you didn’t mean that.”

We should thank the IDF Spokesman for his frankness. We should thank him for making it clear that, like the rabbis eating it from within, it reacts to events according to the blood of the people involved. If someone still had a doubt whether serving in the Settlers’ Service Army might be immoral, consider it removed. And, to quote one of my readers: The IDF Spokesman should be viewed through the same lens Arafat’s speeches were viewed – that is, we should pay attention to what it says to its own public in Hebrew, not to what it says to the world in English.

An attempt to infiltrate Likud with leftist voters is both immoral, impractical, and liable to backfire

The leftist swamp is abuzz in the last few days following Gil Kidron’s initiative (Hebrew), who wants 10,000 leftists to join the Likud party in order to change it from within. So far, he says, he managed to convince 400 leftists to register themselves as Likudniks. Kidron, who makes no bones of the fact he is mimicking Moshe Feiglin and his Manhigut Yehudit (“Jewish Leadership”) faction, tried to convince me to join. He failed, so I’ll take the time to explain why.

To begin with, and most importantly, this idea is immoral, because it is based on deceit. While Kidron keeps saying nothing he plans is secret, the idea of overtaking a party by activists who abhor its ideas but in order to change its policy is deceit nevertheless. It’s done according to the rules and is completely legal, yes, and it is still deceitful. There’s plenty of untruths in Israeli politics without us adding to it.

Secondly, this idea encapsulates both despair of politics and a cynical attempt to bypass. Essentially, Kidron says that our camp has no change of achieving power; So, instead of working hard, showing a stiff upper lip and waiting for the pendulum to swing leftwards – which it may still do – we should behave as cuckoos, and lay our eggs in other birds’ nests. There’s nothing to bring over Likud voters to your ideas like their surprise when they hear one of their elected representatives speaking hotly about the need to end construction in the settlements.

In response, Kidron will – and has – point out that if rightwing cuckoos like the authors of “Torat Hamelekh”, the murderer Yoram Shkolnik, settler leader Meir Bartler and other extreme right-wingers (Hebrew) register to the Likud, and manage to drag into the Knesset Kahanists like Tzippi Hotovely and characters like Ophir “McCarthy” Akunis, Danny Danon and others – well, they can’t bloody well complain about a few leftist cuckoos.

That, however, is not the case. The Likud was, once, a liberal party – or, at least, one which struggled between its liberal and nationalistic elements. That was a long time ago, however: Some 30 years ago. There are still liberal remains in Likud – the names of Rubi Rivlin, Benny Begin and Dan Meridor are often mentioned – but they no longer serve as anything more than fig leaves.

Benny Begin made it clear when he left the Knesset after the 1999 elections: There is no longer an electorate, he said, for people like him, who – trying to square the circle – believe both in Greater Israel and in human rights. More than a decade has passed since that speech, and the chasm between the Israeli right wing – which is essentially volkisch and is based on a concept of racial superiority, the so called “Jewish genius” – has widened to the point it can no longer be bridged. Like many good things in Israel, the liberal right wing became a casualty of the occupation. You can’t be a liberal and lord it over another people. Human rights are not divisible. The Likud voters of today are clearly right-wingers, people who cheer Danny Danon when he describes Rubi Rivlin as a “collaborator of the left.”

Ok, some of Kidron’s supporters will tell me, so it is immoral. Screw morality. We’re fighting for our country. All means are sanctified by this cause. I understand their argument, but it fails, for several practical reasons.

Let’s start with the funding. In order for Kidron’s method to work, 10,000 leftist will have to cough up 64 NIS per year each, for two years (the baseline requirement for registering as a Likud member). This means some 1,280,000 NIS which will make their way from the left, which is already severely underfunded, to the Likud. If those people give that money away to purposes they actually believe in, it will do much more good.

Next: The likud voting system. It allows candidates to distribute the famous “liquidation lists”, which tell their registered supporters who to vote for, and more importantly who not to vote for. Assuming leftist cuckoos do make it to the primaries, it’s a safe bet all real candidates will order their supporters to vote against them. And if they do manage to survive this, which is not likely, the Likud has a party tribunal, which can eliminate candidates.

Furthermore, while the Kidron supporters won’t get far, the Likud can use the attempt to infiltrate it as a bloody shirt to be waved. It will say that the left is so frightened of it, it is trying to deceive the public. Any decent demagogue can run wild with this. Kidron’s move is likely to fail, but will serve as rhetorical ram against the left for decades. The damage, ironically, will be worse if Kidron actually manages to push a leftist as a Likudnik MK.

In short, Kidron and his supporters are asking to waive our principles in order to carry out a political operation whose chances of success are nil, and the damage from it is significantly greater that any miniscule reward it may actually get. Say “no” to Kidron. Let’s leave politics-as-deceit to the long-time specialists: The settlers.

Israel is playing a regular bait and switch: Now it is the State of the Jews, the next moment Jews have nothing to do with it

The scandal du jour is the fact that the US ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, told a Jewish conference last week that Islamic anti-Semitism is the result of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian. This common sense statement caused a hue and cry, and it became the biggest news to come out of the land of chocolate and pederasts, drowning even the fact it finally managed to cobble together a government. The grand inquisitor of all things anti-Semitic, the man who turned his Jewishness into his trade, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote acerbically that “Here is a simple formula that could have saved Gutman from his stupid mistake: Jews do not cause anti-Semitism; blacks do not cause racism; gays do not cause homophobia. Hatred is a mental and spiritual illness, not a political position.

If only were things that simple.

See, we have a problem with this deceptively simple logic. Israel is a country which claims most of its citizens-to-be to reside outside its borders. Israel claims that a. It is a “Jewish country,” b. That all Jews are its potential citizens, c. That it is OK for her to meddle in the affairs of other countries on behalf of what it thinks are Jewish interests, and, finally, d. That any opprobrium gained by its actions, resulting in hatred or actual violence directed at those it claims to represent, is derived from racial and irrational causes. This, alas, does not make sense.

This is without even without mentioning the hidden point e., rarely mentioned, which says that Israel thinks it is perfectly acceptable to use Jews living in other countries as its agents. I’m not just talking about Pollard here – this goes way, way deeper. For instance, the first semi-public fuck-up of our intelligence services came in 1954, when military intelligence activated a terror cell in Egypt, composed of local Jews, which attempted to attack British and American targets for reasons beyond human ken (you can read about it here).

When the US does something awful – the invasion of Iraq comes to mind – its standing the world understandably plummets and we hear people speak of anti-Americanism. When Israel does something terrible, anti-Israeli sentiments understandably rise.

However, this is much more complicated. Israel keeps claiming it represents all Jews, even though most of them rejected the Zionist idea and refused to immigrate to Israel. Yet, when people hostile to Israel take it at its word, and act towards Jewish communities as if they were Israeli communities, Israel wails it is anti-Semitism.

It is, of course. The idea that all members of a group are responsible for the actions of other members is racist. But just how did the idea that “Jews” equals “Israelis” came about? Doesn’t the Israeli government have something to do with that? Isn’t it saying time and time again that Israel is a “Jewish” country?

Goldberg’s analogy simply does not work. Saying that all blacks are responsible for the actions of a single criminal, or that this single criminal is an indication that all blacks are criminals, is manifestly racist, but it is nowhere near the mark. Let’s try another analogy. Let’s say a band of rabid black-supremacists invaded a piece of land, claiming it to be their ancestral their homeland, supported by Europeans who wanted those people out of their own country; Let’s say the invaders have ruthlessly drove back the less organized, under-armed surprised locals; Let’s say they have kept the indigent population as second-class citizens, and later invaded another country and exported those methods to it – all the while claiming to represent black people everywhere, such a farcical claim being taken seriously by many countries. Would anyone be surprised if anti-Black sentiment would rise?

Let’s test the hypothesis. If we look at anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, it certainly existed. Jews were considered inferior by law to Muslims in almost all Muslim countries. The myth about the “golden age of Andalus”, when Jews, Muslims and Christians lived in harmony is, alas, a myth. There are certainly anti-Semitic elements in the various Islamic traditions.

But one would have to be a fool to claim Muslim anti-Semitism held a candle to Christian anti=Semitism. That’s where the knives were really out. Jews often describe Christianity as Judaism wayward daughter; In fact, given that Christianity rose just as rabbinical Judaism was finally affirming itself, they are two squabbling sisters. The tension between them is explosive, because they fought over the meaning of the same symbols and texts. Which is “verus Israel”, true Israel? The followers of the Talmud and Rashi, or those whose circumcision was “that of the heart”? Which is it, Passover or Easter? Pentacost, or Shavuot? Are we redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, or is the blood on doorframe just a fading memory of the delivery from Egypt? It is no coincidence that the blood libel traditionally happens near Easter. Or is it Passover? Which redeeming blood?

The Church preserved well the memory of the early days, when Jews used their power as an established religion to humiliate and persecute the followers of the new, illicit religion. Then came Constantine, and the wheel turned. The Church turned the other cheek to its own teachings, and the Jews became the persecuted – and took the vengeance of the oppressed. In secret books, preserved generation after generation, they poured scorn on Jesus, calling him a magician, calling his mother a whore of the Romans. Time after time, rabbis forbid Jews from spitting on crosses; Time after time, they break the ruling, and sometimes pay a hideous price. The emperor Theodosius has to enact a law, which forbids Jews from portraying the hanging of Haman as the crucifixion of Jesus; At least one pogrom in the 12^th century begins after Jews in France crucify a murderer during Purim celebrations, in lieu of Haman. Then we have the horrifying events of the crusades, with Jews murdering their children to prevent their baptism; And they lead horrified Christians to wonder: If this is what they will do to their own children, if they hate us so much, what will do to our children?

No, Muslim anti-Semitism doesn’t hold a candle to this terrible history. It comes into its own in the 1920s, and it’s not an accident. These are the times when the Protocols – the last, poisonous gift Czarist Russia, with its most anti-Semitic of churches – are considered to be earth shattering documents, when even the Times of London referring to them as holding a possible truth. And look – despite the fact that the Arabs are much more numerable, despite the fact they are more powerful, the Jews are much more influential with the allies, and they carve their own piece of the Arab world for themselves.

That’s where Muslim anti-Semitism starts to come into its own: From a conspiracy theory and as a reaction to Zionism. Hostility to Zionism and the British makes it a very short journey to support Hitler. The creation of Israel out of the ruins of Palestine empowers this conspiratorial sort of anti-Semitism, ironically an import of a colonial legacy. The humiliating defeat of 1967 further fuels this concept, giving renewed life to political Islamism as Arab nationalism is discredited.

And between these Scylla and Charybdis, between Israel’s claim to represent all Jews and the Arab world’s embrace of now-discredited Western anti-Semitism, the Jewish communities of the Muslim world are crashed. The ancient Jewish settlements of Egypt and Iraq, which pre-date the Second Temple, are broken and their members are forced to run for their lives. 2,500 years of existence end in tragedy.

And if, after this, you are still capable of piously saying “anti-Semitism has nothing to do with Israel,” you are either not paying attention, or you’re not arguing in good faith.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

There was nothing particularly new about the ads which so shocked American Jewry. They just exposed a face of Zionism most American Jews rather not see.

In the last few days there has been a hullabaloo about several ads published by the Ministry of Aliyah Absorption (not, as it is often referred to, “Immigration Absorption”; more on this below). Much of it was the result of Jeffrey Goldberg getting annoyed and claiming that “Netanyahu’s government suggests Israelis avoid Marrying American Jews.”

Netanyahu, being Netanyahu, did what he knows best: He immediately ordered the ministry responsible to put down those ads, and outreached to American leaders in order to convince them he is still their friend. Naturally, such cravenness would not play well among the Israeli public, so Netanyahu avoided saying anything about the mess to the Israeli press – which, of course, did not like learning about it from the American press.

Admittedly, this is somewhat unfair to Netanyahu. For starters,, they have nothing to do with him. They were produced by the Ministry of Aliyah Absorption (on which, immediately), held by Israel Beitenu’s (Liberman’s party) Sopha Landver. Netanyahu himself once married an American woman (his second marriage), so they most certainly are not directed at him.

Secondly, and most importantly, those ads show the essence of Zionism. The main concept of Zionism is that Jewish life, outside of their national homeland, is the life of an invalid. They cannot be truly Jewish life since they lack the national element of Judaism. Jews can only be fully Jews when they live in Israel. An early Zionist writer, Yehuda Pinsker, compared the lives of diaspora Jews to that of the undead, and went further on to say anti-Semitism is a natural response to the unnatural existence of deracinated Diaspora Jews.

Accordingly, Zionism views Jewish life abroad with disdain. This is reflected in the language: A Jew who immigrates to Israel is called an “oleh”, literally someone who transcends; One who emigrates from Israel is called a “yored”, literally someone going down. Hence, the need for an a ministry who will cater to the needs of Jews who “make aliyah” – The Ministry of Aliyah Absorption. Incidentally, it is extremely difficult for a non-Jew to immigrate to Israel.

Israeli Jews, particularly the hardcore Zionists, view Diaspora Jews with thinly veiled contempt, which erupts to the surface from time to time – such as when former President Weizman called upon American Jews to leave the US and come to Israel, and so fulfill their destiny, or when the author A.B. Yohoshua told American Jews in 2006 that “Outside of Israel, Judaism cannot exist. You are dealing with a Judaism of plug and play… You switch identities as you change your jackets… If China becomes stronger than the US, you would all move to China.” This is not particularly new: The Palestine/Israel branch of the historic Zionist movement always considered Zionists living in Israel to be superior to Jews living in the Diaspora, and considered Diaspora Jews not as independent human beings but rather as Zionist building blocks. Nowhere was this more evident that in Ben Gurion’s famous saying, that if he had to choose between a million Jewish children being saved by being sent to Britain or just half of them saved, but sent to Palestine, he would choose the latter. For hardcore Zionists, Diaspora Jews are failures; They can only be redeemed by joining our armed ghetto.

Therefore, the very idea of an Israeli Jew leaving the country and joining the Diaspora is disgusting to Israeli Zionists, particularly the older ones. Former PM Rabin called them “a residue of cowards”. For most Zionists, the idea of an Israeli Jew losing himself and his hard-won identity in the Diaspora, basically spitting on all that Zionism fought for, is loathsome. Hence the ads: They are trying to save Israeli Jews from sinking to the level of “regular Jews”, or, God forbid, “assimilating” with the gentiles.

Naturally enough, most Zionists did not put it exactly this way to American Jews – Weizman and Yohoshua were exceptional in their bluntness. Many American Jews would be surprised how many Israelis hold them in contempt – unless, as Goldberg did, they do the Zionist thing, move over to Israel and pass our ritual of passage, service in the IDF. Those who do that are considered heroes – people who have left the soft Diaspora behind and joined Israelis in their increasingly bitter quest for revenge on history. As a result, Goldberg may never have faced those sentiments.

But they exist, they predominate (though, among the younger Israelis, they are speedily waning), and there is nothing new about them. They were dominant even before Israel existed, when “those who stormed Canaan” called Diaspora Jews, survivors of the Holocaust, with cruelty they would take decades to fully digest, “soapies”.

The media rose in uproar after Lynsey Addario was humiliated when crossing the Erez Crossing into Israel. Basically all of the media, +972 included, attributed the beastly behaviour to the IDF.

Well, I’ll be the last person to defend The Green Beast, but they’re not behind this particular odious incident. A reader on my Hebrew blog pointed out that the Erez Crossing, as well as some other major checkpoints, are no longer manned by the IDF, but rather by something called the Checkpoint Administration.

A long series of phone conversations later, it turns out the reader was correct. The IDF Spokesman officially denies is in charge of Erez, and says it is not manned by its men. I am still waiting for the response of the MoD, to find out who is in charge of it, and how MoD intends to discipline it. When – if? – they get back to me, I’ll update.

So, the people who humiliated a pregnant woman and laughed at her did not wear army uniform, and hence could not excuse themselves by saying they were young, stupid, and unprofessional. They were actually drawing a salary from the government.

The IDF has overspent its budget by nine million NIS, and has the temerity to demand more money

The IDF announced yesterday (Hebrew) that it faces a deficit of 5.2 billion NIS, which it somehow misplaced. Actually, the deficit is considerably larger – some nine billion (9,000,000,000) NIS, about 2.4 billion USD – but it owes 5.2 billion to the military industry, and, given it has considerable clout in the Knesset, it figures it’ll get it back somehow.

A significant part of the expenses termed “unexpected” by the IDF were, according to it, expenses for defense of the home front. Among these, it named the Iron Dome and Hetz systems, which it claims cost some 18 billion NIS. This is strange: Iron Dome was supposed to cost much less (we were told in early 2010 it would only cost a billion). Can the Hetz system cost 17 billion? Or can it be that the IDF is fiddling with the numbers, hoping no one would notice?

Both are possible. There is an interesting point here. Suddenly, Iron Dome turns into a homeland defense measure – after the IDF explicitly told us (Hebrew) it intends to use the system to defend its own bases, and that the civilians can die off, as far as it cares. Note that the IDF – still calling itself “Israeli Defense Forces” after all these years – saying implicitly that the defense of the Israeli population is an unwanted distraction which it ought not to consider as part of its budget.

Two days ago we received yet another demonstration of the IDF’s priorities. Someone fired rockets from Lebanon into Israel. Despite the fact that an early warning system was installed, there was no warning. Why? Because the IDF decided to save some bucks at the public’s expense (Hebrew), that’s why. Which means that as far as the green gravy train is concerned, not much has changed since the Second Lebanon War. Then we learned that the army has privatized (!) the alarm systems, and that factories that did not pay it did not heard the alarm and had to settle for hearing the rockets instead. As if they did not already fund the IDF by paying their taxes.

Meanwhile, the IDF speedily announced how much it cares about the citizens who fund it and feed by informing us it is freezing the placement of Hetz and Iron Dome batteries, as well as the construction of the Separation Barrier. All these projects have one thing in common – they’re intended to defend civilians, so the IDF parts with them easily enough. Disbanding two armor divisions, whose main function is the fantasy of yet another titanic tank battle in the Golan, like in the good ol’ days when we actually won wars – fugget about it. Dismantling two F-16 squadrons, whose main employment is sonic booms over Gaza – likely the most outrageous waste in the sodden annals of military expenses – is not even to be thought of. But defending the civilians? That’s negligible.

Oh, and that Separation Barrier? The IDF is building it since 2003, and is building it in the most inefficient manner, trying to grab as much Palestinian land as it can justify to the courts. This has been going for eight years, and the waste is unimaginable, with the price of the barrier rising from to year, just as the date of its completion is postponed time and time again. Hey, what do you want? These are just public funds. Who cares?

So now, after wasting nine billions more than we allowed him to, the IDF comes to us, beret in hand, demanding more. And we don’t cough up the money, it threatens, it will not have enough funds to call up reserves for yet another operation in Gaza. Truth be told, thank goodness. Given the IDF’s inefficiency, given that its specialty is unbridled fire intended to keep his soldiers from risk (and failing; half of the IDF’s casualties in Cast Lead were the result of friendly fire), and given that its operations brought us little in the way of military achievements but caused plenty of death among civilians and massive diplomatic damage – it’s a good thing it cannot afford to leave its barracks.

It’s worth noting that the IDF is using the same method as that of the Israeli oligarchs who demand their investors “get a haircut” and forget about getting back their loans: We screwed you good and hard, we basically stole you money, but if you don’t give up, we’ll mess you up even more. In civilian terms, the IDF is bankrupt, but one that is unwilling to take orders from its creditors. It knows best and it wants to keep controlling its own spending – that is, it wants a blank cheque to keep on wasting.

We should not stand for this. If the IDF wants another shnekel beyond its budget – much of it goes for salaries and pensions, not proper military expenses – someone should put it on a diet. And it should be an outside agency, because the IDF certainly can’t do it itself.

We should be reminded, again, that Israel’s military expenses grow in inverse proportion to the number of threats it faces. Iraq, which was considered a major enemy, was taken out of the game in 2003 and in fact was not likely a threat after 1991 – but it served as a nice scarecrow for the IDF. The Syrian army is also hors de combat, given the uprising in Syria over the last six months. The IDF keeps scaring us with an Islamic coup d’etat in Egypt; Even should such an event take place, it will do enormous damage to the Egyptian military, whose officers are devoted to the junta which took over Egypt in 1952. Should Egypt go to war with Israel, it will do so with a very mediocre army – and will immediately lose all the funds it receives from the US. The IDF faces Islamic militias in the north and south, and Iran is out there – but it is irrelevant to the vast majority of IDF operations. Jordan is a steady ally – at least, so long as our yahoos won’t try to make their “Jordan is Palestine” fantasies reality. We are left, then, with the occupation.

The IDF’s budget for 2011 was over 50 billion NIS. It tried, and surprisingly failed, to lie its way to another 620 millions (Hebrew). Now it tells us it spent 18% more than we allowed it. Every single shekel the IDF stole from the public treasury is a shekel that won’t fund a school, won’t fund a hospital, won’t fund a university, won’t fund public housing – and we get a very shabby product into the deal. It’s time this corruption ends and the people responsible be punished, severely and publicly. Or this will go on, time and time again. In a normal country, a defense minister who would pull such a stunt would be sent immediately home. We do not live in a normal country, of course, and our ministers are appointed in a semi-feudal system; But if we don’t insist on seeing the heads of the Director General of the Defense Ministry and the officer in charge of IDF budget roll, we are losers who deserve whatever the IDF intends for them. It’s time to say the IDF has become too large for Israel, a parasite threatening its social cohesion.

Tiberias spent over 18 million NIS on rebuilding its roads so that they are “uncleanliness free”

The municipality of Tiberias – not, to put it mildly, one of the richest Israeli towns – has spent over 18 million NIS (about five million USD) over the last few years (Hebrew) in building a special road, about a kilometer long, and spent an unknown sum in a similar road, about 400 meters long. If it spends relatively the same amount, this new and shorter road will end up costing some 5.4 million NIS (about 1.5 million USD). The town also uproots ancient trees alongside the road.

Why do I bother you with this engineering project? Because these are voodoo roads. The town digs up the road, and then puts under it two slabs of concrete, arranged so that they are hollow, and there’s a pipe coming out of them. The pipe allows the mystical force known as “uncleanliness” to escape the road, and thus makes it safe for Cohanim to cross.

You see, Cohanim (you can often identify them by their last name of Cohen, Kagan, and similar variations) are the descendents of the priests of the Temple. They are ritually forbidden from visiting cemeteries, and touching or seeing the dead, lest they become unclean. There have been complaints that the newly-engineered roads were built on the site of either a former formal graveyard – it is well known that most of Tiberias is built on such – or a grave site, and if Cohanim were to cross the road, or drive over it, it had to be made uncleanliness-proof.

Naturally, this phenomenon is a modern concept. Over the last millennia, Cohanim were basically able to cross roads without thinking too much about it, since the rabbinical literature is in agreement that we are all “corpse-unclean”: We’ve all either seen or touched a corpse, and since the destruction of the Second Temple, the office of the High Priest is empty, hence no one can daub the ashes of a pure red cow over us and remove this uncleanliness, which is the only religiously-sanctified way to do so.

So, while a Cohen is forbidden from entering a graveyard, if he walks over a dead corpse accidentally – such, for instance, one which is long dead and is buried under a public road – this is unfortunate, but not a life-shattering event. It’s not that it can deprive him of his ability to serve in the Temple, seeing as there isn’t one. I don’t know how many observant Cohanim live in Tiberias, but assuming the majority or at least a large minority of the population isn’t composed of fanatical yet somewhat ignorant Cohanim, this looks like a massive waste of public funds. Presumably, a large sign at both sides of the road, along the lines of “Danger, uncleanliess – Cohanim are asked to use another road” would have cost thousands, not millions, and would not have required the uprooting of ancient trees.

The damned land we live in has served, over the millennia, as a convenient route for armed forces moving from Egypt to Syria and vice versa, not to mention various crusading armies traipsing about. As a result, the place is basically a huge gravesite. The Ultra-Orthodox have proven, in the last few years, that they emphasize the rights of the dead over those of the living: The most evidence being that of the Barzilai Hospital.

It is within rocket range from the Gaza Strip, and needed a reinforced-concrete emergency room; But, as the current emergency room is built over a gravesite, our deputy Minister of Health (the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox refuse to accept the legitimacy of the state by recognizing its ministers, so they only serve as deputy ministers; they have no problem taking the state’s money, on the other hand) decided to move it a few hundred meters away – at huge cost and delay. There was a public outcry at this blatant favoritism of the corpses – admittedly, they are in the majority – and the government backed down.

But given the example the municipality of Tiberias, one could expect other municipalities to cave in to such demands. And, again, given that you can hardly dig here without hitting a skull, this may likely mean that within a few short years, a significant portion of the construction budget would be diverted to the protection of Cohanim from uncleanliness.

Hey, you wanted a Jewish state, no? Live with the consequences.

Netanyahu freezes the anti-NGO bills – and keeps them as a weapon to be used at any time

The mythical, conflict-erasing goat has a place of honor in the annals of Israeli administration. It is based on an ancient morality tale, fabricated a few decades ago, in which a Jew goes to his rabbi and complains he prefers death to life; his large family, forced into living in a small room, bickers endlessly. What should I do, rabbi? The rabbi thinks. Put a goat in the room, he finally says. The Jew is skeptical, but obeys. A week later, they meet. How is life? Much worse, Rabbi, much worse; The goat is everywhere, eats everything, and befouls the room everyone are at their wits’ end. Take out the goat, orders the rabbi. Meeting a few days later, the Jew is ecstatic: Everything is so much better now, your honor! We have so much room!

The goat technique is the favorite of the two most powerful ministries in Israel: The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry if Security. The first uses it in a straightforward way: Come every budget season, it pushes a herd of goats up to the Knesset. We’re going to destroy education, destroy welfare, destroy pretty much everything, come to think of it – and we have a really large goat in the Omnibus Bill, specifically an article referring the elderly Israelis to a government-supplied protected housing, on the back of an Inuit iceberg. The public is shocked; MKs wear sackcloth and put ashes on their heads on live TV – and, in the end, the treasury boys lead most of the goats out, leaving behind them only those which are absolutely essential to the demolition of what’s left of the welfare state, and everyone sighs in relief, not paying attention to what actually happened.

The army has its own, slightly different, version. Oh, you wanted us to cut down on the number of unnecessary NCOs? Want us to send officers into retirement at the age of 67 instead of their current cushy 42? We hear you! We have therefore decided to cut down the wing which was supposed to bomb Iran, and that hideously costly missile program we lied to you will defend you, but actually is intended to be sold to Taiwan. So sorry, but if you cut our budget, we seem to lose all offensive and defensive capabilities. What’s that you say? You’re performing the manouver known as a French retreat? Exccccccellent. Now, to business – we need more money, specifically so that we can employ a few dozen more pointless officer on your account until they expire.

Binyamin Netanyahu will be remembered in the history of Israeli government as an upgraded version of Yizhak Shamir: A lack of activity on the Bourbon scale, combined with poisonous incitement against Israeli liberals. But you must grant him this: He has created a new model of a goat, the assault goat – a hybrid between a goat and a Rottweiler.

Netanyahu’s aides have informed us this morning (Hebrew) that he decided not to bring up the ministerial appeal against the anti-NGO bills. As long as the government does not vote on the appeal, whichever way it goes, the Knesset cannot go on with the legislative process (unless the bills’ supporters start a long and costly, and somewhat doomed, process of re-tabling them). Note that Netanyahu did not kill the bills, which he probably could have done had he wanted to; He merely froze them. The assault goat is not out of the room; It is under the table, dozing.

This is a very blunt sign to the NGOs: Criticize me too much, and I shall sic Akunis and Dannon at you again. Write a devastating report on what my government does in the territories – such as the novelty of annexing West Bank territory to a religious kibbutz stated in Israel – and you may find yourself without a budget and in litigation hell. Nice throat you have there, be a shame should something happen to it.

So go on, be the human rights NGOs we like you to be – the sort that will allow us to pretend to the world Israel is a democracy. Just don’t pull the rope too much, just keep looking around; I may have unleashed the goat.

I know many people in the human rights NGOs scene. With no exception, they are brave, opinionated people whose ideals are more important to them than wealth. If anyone of them is paid, as Im Tirzu defames them, 9,000 Euros a month, I am yet to meet him or her. But people, when all is said and done, are geared towards a struggle which has a definite resolution. A much vaguer situation, when a threat is always near you but you can never know whether you can fight it properly and find out whether you’ve won or lost, is much harder. The state of a prisoner who knows the day of his release, be it 20 years in the future, is much better than that of the administrative detainee, who has to keep guessing whether at the end of his six months, the dark apparatus which imprisoned him may decide to arrest him again. That Netanyahu wants the NGOs to live in this uncertainty in is not accident. Who knows, maybe they’ll get the hint and start censoring themselves. Maybe they’ll start rethinking, and rethinking, their every word. Maybe we should soften this harsh paragraph? Use less incisive, more obfuscating words?

And that would be the most harsh defeat of all – because it won’t be acknowledge or even understood as such.

Kol Hashalom, which operates from Ramallah, was suddenly shut down on Thursday, on what appears to be flimsy evidence

A small radio station, “Kol Hashalom”, unique in that it was directed jointly by a Palestinian and a Jew, was abruptly shut down by the Israeli police on Thursday.

Kol Hashalom was active for the last seven years. It was a joint venture of the Palestinian NGO Biladi and the Israeli NGO Jewish-Arab Center for Peace, and was directed by former Meretz MK Mossi Raz and Meissa Bransie-Senyura. The station broadcast from Ramallah, under a license granted by the Palestinian Authority to the Biladi company. (Full disclosure: I participated as a co-host in one of Kol Hashalom broadcasts about a year ago).

Naturally, the very idea of a Jewish-Palestinian radio was anathema to the Jewish right (can you seriously call it “Israeli” anymore, when its essence is the eradication of Israeli identity?). So, in September, one of the leaders of the campaign for the destruction of Israeli democracy, Likud MK and Sarah Palin fan Danny Danon, demanded (Hebrew) that the station be shut down. Danon claimed the station was “inciting against Israel”, specifically that it was calling upon people “to reject political decisions arrived at democratically.” To wit, to support Palestinian statehood.

On November 4^th, the Ministry of Communication sent a letter to Kol Hashalom, saying it is acting illegally and must close down immediately. The managers, having consulted their legal counsel, sent a letter last week denying all those claims. On Thursday, a day later – unheard-of speed for the Israeli police – Raz was summoned for a police interrogation, where he was informed that he was suspected of managing an illegal radio station, and that if he does not order it to shut down immediately, he would be arrested and the police would raid the station’s Jerusalem offices.

In a phone conversation with Raz today, he noted that a threat of detainment because of a claim of running an illegal radio station is unprecedented. As far as I recall, in all of the years of the saga of settler radio Channel 7, never was any of its managers arrested – even though its broadcasting interfered with the radio frequencies of the Ben Gurion Airport, and even though it never even claimed to be legal or that it is licensed.

Kol Hashalom, again, is based in Ramallah (the Jerusalem offices serve for its internet broadcast) and has a Palestinian license. Raz says the interrogators faced him with two arguments. One, that the station broadcasts in Hebrew, for an Hebrew-speaking public, which means it is an Israeli station which bypasses the law. Really? I guess the police don’t know that bypassing the law is, by definition, not breaking it. Raz, sarcastically, suggests the police should immediately arrest the anchors of the Persian Voice of Israel: According to the logic of the police, it is an Iranian radio stations and the anchors are obviously Iranian spies.

The second argument of the police was dubbed by Raz as the “I’ve murdered my parents, have pity on an orphan” argument”: They said that, as Israel has never granted the Palestinian Authority any frequencies, even though it was obligated to do so in the Oslo Accords. This argument suffers from two problems: Raz noted that the Accords grant the PA the right to grab their own frequencies if Israel doesn’t allocate them within a certain time frame. Secondly, and more importantly, this argument basically says that ALL Palestinians radio stations are, without exception, illegal – yet strangely enough the Israeli police only bother itself with the Jewish-Palestinian one. This can be seen as yet another proof of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank: Israel claims the right to shut down a radio station licensed by the so-called autonomous PA.

This stinks to high heaven, and looks suspiciously like – as Raz says openly – a part of the continuing effort of Netanyahu and his right-wing allies to overtake the media and silence their political rivals. Raz, fearing a raid on the Jerusalem offices, ordered the broadcasts to be shut down on Thursday, and now Kol Hashalom is preparing an appeal to the High Court of Justice. Developing.