I am suspicious of politicians who try to buy their way into our hearts.  Or into the Knesset.

Arkady Gaidamak, a very wealthy Russian Jew, now domiciled in Israel, wanted in France for illicit arms trafficking to Africa, has been doing a lot to put his name before the public.
Arkady Gaidamak just bought himself an Israeli political party.
  He’s been on TV, advertised cellphones (I think), and in general made a spectacle of himself.  I haven’t seen much of him because I don’t own a TV.  But I think he bears watching now, because he just bought himself an Israeli political party.  He promised three unmemorable members of the Pensioners Party to fund their next political campaign if they break away from their mother party and become his party, possibly sending him to sit as their representative in Olmert’s government (or Tzipi Livni’s, or whatever.  Stay tuned for our take on Tzipi).  The Knesset’s legal adviser has determined that the agreement between Gaidamak and the pensioners—they provide the party, he provides the cash to get ‘em elected—is illegal.  It will take a few days until Gaidamak finds a competent lawyer to write up the patently illegal deal in legally acceptable language.

Gaidamak has made a name for himself in Israel not just by making a spectacle of himself on TV but by engaging in large-scale acts of charity.  He’s provided aid to refugees from Gush Katif.  He provided vacations and outings to hundreds of Sderot families.  He bought Bikur Holim hospital in Jerusalem, which caters to the impoverished Haredi population of the city, covered its deficit and put it back in business.  In part, he did so precisely to increase his name recognition and popularity in Israel.  So what could be bad?

He’s done other things as well.  He bought Israel’s premier soccer team, Betar.  And he bought a radio station, all the licensed television stations already being owned.  This resembles a pattern, and the pattern set off alarms in my head.  You see, that’s what Russian oligarchs do.  They always buy a leading sports club and a TV station (there are more available in Russia) to round out their immense holdings, because owning a sports club makes them popular, popularity helps draw listeners to their media outlets, and their media outlets serve to defame their enemies and manipulate public opinion in favor of their business and political interests.
When Gaidamak has a soccer club, a radio station, a political party, and in addition learns the prejudices of the Israeli public well enough to pander to them, he’ll be all set to make his bid to become Israel’s Boris Yeltsin. Or perhaps its Vladimir Putin.

Gaidamak has formed a political party, “social justice.”  It sounds good and goes well with Betar and with Bikur Holim, both of which cater to Israel’s poorer population.  At first he declared that he was confining himself, for the time being, to local politics, i.e. running candidates in elections in Israeli municipalities, which are scheduled for November.  It’s widely believed that he bought Bikur Holim to curry favor with Haredi politicians, so that they will agree to back him for mayor of Jerusalem.  He was going to leave the Knesset for later.  But a good businessman has a nose for opportunity, and when the option of buying a minority stake in the Pensioners’ Party, came on the market, Gaidamak exercised it.

Gaidamak’s political career is still very raw.  When he first got here and bought Betar, he said he was going to use the club as a platform for promoting Jewish-Arab coexistence.  That’s probably the last thing in the world Betar fans are interested in (Betar recently was penalized heavily because some of its fans cursed vocally during a pregame minute of silence in memory of Yitzhak Rabin).  He still has to master Israel’s social and political cleavages, but he’s learning fast.  Buying Bikur Holim and sucking up to the Haredi population generally is a shrewd move from his perspective. 
The law alone is never enough to defend liberty. Only the public’s love of liberty, and its willingness to see through and resist the temptations offered by demagogues, will suffice.

Gaidamak has done some good deeds and has a lot of fans.  But I can’t help being suspicious of him.  He exhibits a close familiarity with the culture of money and power that made a farce of democracy in Russia and little of the genuine commitment to democracy that characterizes, say, a politician like Binyamin Netanyahu (who should be given such credit as he’s due).  When Gaidamak has a soccer club, a radio station, a political party, and in addition learns the prejudices of the Israeli public well enough to pander to them, he’ll be all set to make his bid to become Israel’s Boris Yeltsin.  Or perhaps its Vladimir Putin.

As I mentioned, the Knesset’s legal adviser nixed, for the time being, the deal between Gaidamak and the three MKs currently on the market.  But the law alone is not going to be enough—is never enough—to defend liberty.  Only the public’s love of liberty, and its willingness to see through and resist the temptations offered by demagogues, will suffice.  Do Israelis love liberty enough?  The precedents of Sharon and Olmert are not encouraging.

Olmert and people like him exhibit a diseased attitude to reality. To them, the world is a kind of amateur talent show writ large. As long as you can keep the crowd entertained, you can stay on the stage.
No, this is not "about" the investigation.  It's about the kind of reality the Olmerts of this world inhabit.

Olmert in the Shadows

Ehud Olmert and the shady figures surrounding him are creatures of spin.  They seem to believe, apparently with good reason, that they can get away with anything as long as they control the way it’s portrayed through the media.  So far nobody has proved them wrong, but this may change in the next few weeks as the Talansky-Olmert probe bites deeper into the vitals of the government.

Olmert and people like him exhibit a diseased attitude to reality.  To them, the world is a kind of amateur talent show writ large.  As long as you can keep the crowd entertained, you can stay on the stage.  People will call you Prime Minister, and the GSS will guard you and your family 24 hours a day.  You will possess immense powers and perks that the public cannot see, in consequence of which rich and powerful men will seek your acquaintance and slip you envelopes full of money.  All you have to do is make sure that the show goes on.

In the perception of the public there is another side of the job, one that has to do with running the country:  Making hard budgetary choices, preparing the army and the country for war, taking the decision to nip the Hamas terror state in the bud so as to neutralize its influence when the really big war to the north and east starts.  One gets the sense that for Olmert and his colleagues this is the shadowy part of the job, the one that doesn’t seems real and with which they never need, and never do, come to grips.  Every politician of course has to manage his relationship with his public, in order to stay in power and in order to marshal resources and commit people to the things he really wants to accomplish.  But for Olmert and his ilk, PR is the job.  It’s not about accomplishing anything in particular, but about staying onstage.
For Olmert and his ilk, PR is the job. It’s not about accomplishing anything in particular, but about staying onstage.

Oh yes, I know, dangerous negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians are going on all the time.  A year ago Olmert turned the Palestinian business over to Tzipi Livni and she’s going at it with devotion of a true believer.  In the aftermath of his failure in the Second Lebanon War Olmert turned the IDF over to Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi.  We don’t know if Ashkenazi’s a strategic planner, but he does appear to know how to train regiments and battalions, the building blocks of an army.  When Olmert can find someone competent to do a piece of his work he turns it over to them and something gets done.  When it comes to hard decisions, though—to go to war in Gaza, to make Israel’s educational system function, or to provide more resources for defense without busting the budget—Olmert simply isn’t there.

Olmert is actually pretty clever, but his thought processes are ill suited to evaluating complex problems and pursuing a strategy.  His vaunted peace overture to Syria was handled in an amateurish fashion.  He acted as if Assad were Morris Talansky or Eli Yishai:  Offer him something he wants (the Golan) and he’ll come around.  Olmert doesn’t appear to have considered that for Assad to accept such an offer, he would have to be convinced that all other avenues lead to a dead end and that the prospect of war with Israel was getting more, not less dangerous.  But Assad has good reason not to think that and he snubbed Olmert, publicly and insultingly.  With Lebanon knuckling under to Hizbullah and the clock running down on the American military presence in Iraq, Assad probably figures that he’ll pick up a lot more than just the Golan when Iran’s plans for Israel come to fruition.

From Olmert’s perspective, George Bush’s visit to Israel was a disaster. For months everyone in Israel anticipated, with horror or with glee, that Olmert would use the Bush visit to state just what he’s willing to give up, as the overture to new elections.  But the Talansky business rendered anything Olmert would say non-credible and if there are new elections now Olmert won’t be a candidate.  Even when Olmert decided to confine himself to soothing generalities about peace, Hamas ruined his show.  It blew in the roof of an Ashkelon mall just as Bush and Olmert were having their celebrated press conference.  The conference got no coverage, and Olmert was forced to spend the next 24 hours talking about war with the Hamas rather than peace.  From Olmert’s perspective the whole visit turned out to be a PR disaster. 
Olmert ignored the law and now it’s catching up with him. He led Israelis, however, in ignoring the mounting strategic threat from both north and south, and now that threat is catching up with Israel with giant strides.

But this is only of importance to Olmert and his ilk, who think that PR successes or disasters are the only significant successes or disasters there are.  There is indeed a whole other, real world beside the shadow world of spin and show.   Eventually reality catches up with you.  It’s catching up with Olmert right now.  He thought you can manipulate public opinion and sell the perquisites of office forever, and it turns out that not even he can do it.  Come to think of it, the main characteristic of the criminal mind is inadequate grasp of reality, the inability to imagine or take seriously the consequences of one’s actions.  That’s Olmert in a nutshell.

The real question of course is how an entire people can make an Olmert, or a Sharon, their leader and not see through them.  That’s a lot more serious than the criminal propensities of this or that politician.  Olmert ignored the law and now it’s catching up with him.  He led Israelis, however, in ignoring the mounting strategic threat from both north and south, and now that threat is catching up with Israel with giant strides. 

The attack on Gaza should have been launched yesterday.  Or better yet, last year.

A footnote to the Ashkelon attack:  The timing was perfect.  The guy with his finger in the launch button must have had his ear glued to Israel radio.  As soon as the press reported that the Olmert-Bush powwow was over and their press conference was about to begin, he launched.  The press conference got exactly five minutes of coverage during the next two hours.  All the peace rhetoric was blown to smithereens for the remainder of Bush's stay. 

During the war in Vietnam there used to be the following pattern.  The North Vietnamese, through their Vietcong terrorist allies, would launch an offensive against South Vietnam.  They’d make progress in some places, get stalled in others.  The Americans would bomb the heck out of their field forces and supply lines and bring them to the point of collapse.  When the Vietnamese wanted a break, they would call for a cease fire—to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year, or May Day, or whatever. 
Our Islamofascist enemy’s greatest ally is our own hesitation
International pressure would force the United States to agree, on condition that the North Vietnamese refrained from using the ceasefire to reinforce or resupply its forces.  The Vietnamese would of course accept, and then use the ceasefire to reinforce and resupply, so that the fighting could go on from square one.

This may sound like ancient history but it’s not.  The tactic was invented in Moscow (I think it was first used in the Korean War, actually).  The Russians taught it to many peoples, including the Iranians.  The Iranians taught it to Hizbullah and Hamas.  For them it’s not ancient history, it’s just part of the textbook for fighting Western countries.  Things that work stay in the textbook generation after generation.

Our Islamofascist enemy’s greatest ally is our own hesitation.  Israel’s present leadership, of course, wants peace at almost any price (for all I know it’s peace at any price—they just haven’t been put to that test yet, so that neither we nor the enemy can be sure).  If we look at what’s happened in the region since the 2nd Lebanon War, however, we can see that the enemy’s strategy, for the meantime, is to play for time. 
Hamas and Hizbullah have gotten stronger and stronger. Every day that passes shifts the balance of power against us.
During the 12 months since the war the IDF trained intensively, and for that time the balance of power shifted our way.  Since then Hamas and Hizbullah have gotten stronger and stronger.  Every day that passes shifts the balance of power against us.  Four years ago American pressure forced Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, creating the possibility of sustaining a democratic, Western-oriented government in that country.  The events in Lebanon over the past two weeks show that Lebanon has, in effect, fallen back into Syrian and Iranian hands.  Syrian divisions are on the Lebanese border and some reports say they have already crossed back into Lebanon.  Meanwhile, the IDF’s power has reached a plateau.  It is retrained and reequipped, but it needs to get much bigger and more powerful it isn’t doing so.

Israel is between the jaws of a pincers in which the enemy has considerable advantages.  To attack us it doesn’t need to invade us—just to shoot missiles.  Its armies can dig in and wait for us to come to them in prepared defensive positions.  As time passes, they get stronger.  When they feel reasonably certain we no longer have the strength to go after them, they will attack.

Israel’s best strategy is the one most difficult for a democracy to take:  Pick one enemy, attack and destroy it, while trying to deter the other from making a move. 
Israel’s best strategy is the one most difficult for a democracy to take: Pick one enemy, attack and destroy it, while trying to deter the other from making a move.
Israel’s attack against Syria’s reactor last year sent a double message:  Not only would Israel prevent Syria from getting nuclear weapons, but the entire Syrian hinterland remains as vulnerable as Israel’s.  What Israel ought to do now is conquer all of Gaza but the built-up urban areas (excepting two—Rafiah in the south an Beit Hanun in the north, which should be literally flattened, the civilian moved to tent cities under IDF control as provided for by the Fourth Geneva Convention).  A ten-kilometer strip between Khan Younis and the Egyptian border should be occupied.  The Syrians should be warned ahead of time that in response to attacks on Israel’s hinterland their entire energy, power, water and communications infrastructure will be eliminated, in a manner designed to cause as much civilian unrest as possible.  If they do attack, Israel should carry out the threat to the letter.

It should have been done eighteen months ago.  It ought to be done today.

And just who does Rabbi Eric Yoffie think he is to decide who may or may not speak up for Israel?

I deeply regret that I didn't think up the headline of Richard Baehr’s article on the conservative website American Thinker--"Rabbi Yoffie Excommunicates Pastor Hagee." Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, thinks that Evangelical Christians’ support is bad for Israel.  He thinks Pastor Hagee and similar enthusiasts for Israel should be ostracized by Jews in Israel and the United States:  Jews should neither attend Hagee’s events in support of Israel, nor invite Evangelicals like Hagee to demonstrate their support of Israel.
Yoffie wants Hagee out of debates regarding Israel’s future because Hagee is likely to be an effective and committed advocate of views that Yoffie doesn’t like.

Yoffie’s attitude is insufferable on at least two levels.  First of all, because of its blatant bias.  It’s not as if Yoffie thinks that Pastor Hagee is actually out to harm Jews or Israel.  No, he wants Hagee out of debates regarding Israel’s future because Hagee is likely to be an effective and committed advocate of views that Yoffie doesn’t like.  For Hagee believes that Israel should be the state of the Jews and that the Jews should control Eretz Yisrael.  Such views do not jive with the “two-state solution” that Yoffie prefers.  Yoffie would like to pretend that his views represent a consensus, but rather than argue for them he prefers to leave challenging interlocutors like Hagee out of the debating hall, in the cold.  Yoffie’s position is  intellectually dishonest. 

Now I happen to agree with the elements of Pastor Hagee’s positions cited above.  To be consistent, Yoffie has to regard me and people like me as a threat to Israel’s well-being.  If people’s views are what disqualify them from participation in the debate, then it cannot matter that I am Jewish, live in Israel, have Israeli citizenship, have sons that do reserve duty, and vote.  I’m as big a threat to Israel as Pastor Hagee is, and in Yoffie’s world view Israel would be better off if I were to just disappear.  Perhaps I’m fortunate that Yoffie lives in New Jersey and is not Prime Minister of Israel or head of its secret service. 

Which brings us to the second level on which Yoffie’s position is outrageous:  Who does he think he is anyway?

Long ago, American Jews used to debate whether they had a right to speak out on Israeli foreign policy.  After all, the argument went, American Jews were there, in the goldeneh medineh, and not here in Israel.  It wasn’t their lives and sons at stake.  Such decisions were best left for Israeli Jews to settle at the ballot box. 

That sentiment is long gone.  Partisans of unilateral retreat and pursuers of the will-o-the-wisp of a democratic
In our debates in Israel Yoffie is an outsider. He participates in our debates on sufferance. The last thing he should assume is that he has the right to decide whom to let into our debating hall.
Palestine have no problem lecturing Israelis ad nauseam, and using their influence to induce the American government to pressure Israel to act in ways most Israelis now think is against their country's best interests. 

Now in fact, I think American Jews have the right to talk about whatever they want.  It’s a free country.  Yoffie has solid Zionist credentials, having done much to legitimize Zionism among American reform Jews as head of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.  Nonetheless, if anyone has a right at this late date to pass on the propriety of participation, even as a kibitzer, in Israel’s critical debates, it’s me, a Jew in Israel, and not Eric Yoffie of New Jersey.

Yoffie seems to think that because he was born Jewish he was also born with a right Pastor Hagee doesn’t share, the right to nag me about my illiberality, inhumanity and violations of human rights.  Well, Yoffie's wrong.  A Zionist Yoffie may be, but in our debates in Israel he is an outsider. He doesn’t live here and nothing really vital to him is at stake.  He participates in our debates on sufferance.  The last thing Yoffie should assume is that he has the right to decide whom to let into our debating hall.

So why am I willing to tolerate Yoffie's presence in the debate?  First of all, because even though I am (apparently) a benighted warmonger whose opinions harm Israel, I am a more genuine liberal than Eric Yoffie.  I don’t seek to exclude people from debates simply because they disagree with me.

And second of all, because there are other Israeli Jews who want Yoffie in on the debate.  I have bitter
Pastor Hagee and Christian supporters of Israel are going to remain in the debate because I say so. I want them in the debating hall. Together with Amos Oz and Ehud Olmert, I own the hall. And I am going to seat Pastor Hagee in the first row.
disagreements with these Jews.  I think they are running the country to ruin.  I think they violated the rights of their fellow citizens during disengagement, thereby compromising the legitimacy of the Israeli state.  But they are here, their sons serve, they vote, and I owe them the courtesy of listening to Eric Yoffie.

And that is why Pastor Hagee and Christian supporters of Israel are going to remain in the debate, whether Eric Yoffie likes it or not:  because I say so.  I think Evangelical Christians' views on Israeli foreign policy are right where Yoffie’s are wrong, I think these Christians' Zionism is worthy of respect, that they have valuable contributions to make to Israel’s survival both in Washington and Jerusalem, and I want them in the debating hall.  Together with Amos Oz and Ehud Olmert, I own the hall.  And I am going to seat Pastor Hagee in the first row.  Shift over a seat, Yoffie, and let the man sit down.