Olmert's Worst Act

Ehud Olmert has just done immense damage to the State of Israel—damage that dwarfs anything he might have done at Annapolis,

indeed anything he has done in his checkered public career.  In the wild hope of saving himself from an indictment that now seems almost certain, he has involved Israel in a negotiation process, all of whose outcomes can only be bad for the country.
In the wild hope of saving himself from an indictment, Olmert has involved Israel in a negotiation process, all of whose outcomes can only be bad for the country.

Syria’s foreign minister has announced that Olmert committed Israel to retreat to the line of June 4, 1967 as a precondition of talks, while not insisting on any Syrian precommitments, such as leaving the Iranian orbit and abandoning terror (Olmert’s office has issued a denial).  These are the kind of terms usually offered by a country that has suffered a grave military defeat.  Though Israel’s performance in the Lebanon War was disappointing, it certainly did not suffer a defeat that could justify such capitulation, nor could Syria inflict that kind of defeat now.  The terms are entirely a product of Olmert’s personal situation and personal desperation. 

It is not Olmert who will have to pay the price for them, though.  He faces a couple of years in jail at most.  The price may be paid, G-d forbid, by young men.  And their families.  And Israel’s civilians, huddled under bombardment in inadequate shelters.  If Israel accepts the terms, war will come closer.  The entire history of diplomacy suggests that if Israel rejects the terms and the negotiations fail, war is the most likely consequence.
If Israel accepts the terms, war will come closer. The entire history of diplomacy suggests that if Israel rejects the terms and the negotiations fail, war is the most likely consequence.

Most Israelis and most Israeli politicians appear to appreciate how reckless Olmert’s move is.  Even MK Shelli Yehimovich, from the left wing of the Labor party, said that Olmert is simply playing upon the cupidity of peace activists in hopes of staying out of jail.  One junior Kadima minister has also come out against the move.  Significantly, Israel radio at 2 pm Israel time reported “a senior government official” as saying that in a meeting attended by Bush, Condi Rice and Tzipi Livni last week, Bush said he thought it most unlikely Bashar Assad could bring about the changes in Syrian foreign policy he would have to make in order to conclude a genuine peace.  No points for guessing the identity of the “senior government official,” hiding behind anonymity, as is her wont, rather than taking responsibility for her positions.

Oh yes, and Eli Yishai of Shas—someone else who never puts his vote where his mouth is—also came out against.

In starting negotiations under these conditions, Olmert has brought war nearer.  He won’t save himself, but neither will the negotiations simply go away when he does.  As Shahar Ilan writes in Ha’aretz today, “an MK who opposes a peace treaty with Syria before it is signed won’t necessarily oppose it after it is signed. . . . And when one recalls that Netanyahu also negotiated over the Golan, it is far from clear that Ehud Olmert has to be prime minister for the negotiations to be concluded.  Another prime minister from Kadima can give back the Golan.  Even Netanyahu.”

Ironically, in his attempt to save himself from prosecution, Olmert may have handed his hated arch-rival within Kadima, Tzipi Livni, the key to keeping her own government in business when she replaces him at the helm.
The calculus of negotiation may have nothing to do with real peace. The Israeli public may feel that by agreeing to sacrifice the Golan it can buy a better chance for a longer period of shadowy no-war-no-peace. The term for that attitude is appeasement.

I fear that the calculus of negotiation may have nothing to do with the prospects of real peace or a “new middle east.”  Rather, it may come down to what I mentioned above—all choices are bad, but the Israeli public may feel that by agreeing to sacrifice the Golan it can buy a better chance for a longer period of shadowy no-war-no-peace.  The term for that attitude is appeasement.

The next government, assuming it’s around the corner, will have to deal with the fact of negotiations.  It can’t simply send the Syrians a card saying “we thought better of it, sorry.”  If the negotiations are to be abandoned, it will have to be over real issues.

Two such issues are practical, foreign policy ones.  First of all, the public must be made to consider what it would be like to fight a war without any of the Golan—neither a warning station on the Hermon, nor a viable defense line anywhere on the heights.  Second, it must appreciate that it costs Syria nothing to get back the Golan in exchange for a piece of paper it can tear up whenever it’s ready for war.  Israel must insist Syria go the whole route before a peace treaty of any sort can be signed:  Kick out Palestinian terrorists, stop acting as a conduit for Iranian weapons to Hizbullah and Iranian-trained terrorists to Iraq, let Lebanon become a democracy, open its economy and society to Western, especially American, influence.  Unless Syria changes its identity, a peace treaty with Syria will be meaningless.  I agree with Bush, I don’t think Assad can or wants to do it.

The most important issue, however, is the most difficult to sell to the public, and it’s precisely because this is true that it’s the most important issue:  Appeasement is a sign of moral collapse.  The likelihood of war is determined only secondarily by borders, deployments, and ancillary conditions.  Fundamentally, nothing makes war more likely than the perception of a tyrant that his opponent’s moral will to resist has crumbled.  Unlike Olmert, Israel cannot afford to be tired of winning, because the alternative is defeat.

The Gaidamak Phenomenon

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 in the Shadows

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.