Poll: PM Olmert is Israel's Most Corrupt Politician
Poll: PM Olmert is Israel's Most Corrupt Politician

The results of an extensive poll on government corruption released Wednesday finds that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, for the second year in a row, is considered the most corrupt politician in Israel. Fifty-six percent of the public defined his behavior as “corrupt to very corrupt.” Olmert, who also heads the Kadima party, received 42 percent of the vote in 2006.

The poll was conducted by the prestigious Maagar Mochot survey institute for the Fifth Annual Sderot Conference for Social and Economic Policy which took place on Wednesday at the western Negev town’s Sapir College.

Click here if you cannot see the Social and Economic Conf. video below

One of the conference’s main panels dealt with the spread and proliferation of corruption in Israeli society. “The corruption is a kind of cancer,” said Rabbi Yuval Cherlow. “We are not confronting something that is coming from the outside, but something is coming from the inside of Israeli society and I really believe that the prophets, when they spoke about corruption, when they spoke about leadership and all the problems that were present with leadership in those times, their words were for us as well. We see that it is the same; nothing has changed. The Prophet Micha said that though in his time Jerusalem had been built with marketplaces and all sorts of things, it was built on corruption and there was therefore no value to it. Jerusalem will collapse.”

Rabbi Cherlow hoped that the leadership of Israel will regain the faith of the nation.

In the corruption poll, former Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson (Kadima) came in a close second, with 55 percent of the public calling him “corrupt to very corrupt.”  Hirschson is accused of stealing public funds.  Vice Premier Chaim Ramon (Kadima) and Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) tied for third place, with 33 percent of those surveyed defining the two as corrupt.

“We decided to hold a conference that puts the social agenda at the top of the Israeli list of priorities,” conference chairman Ido Ohayon explained to Israel National TV. “We deal with economic and security issues from a social perspective that was missing from the public discourse in Israel. It is important that this happens in Sderot – because it is symbolic. We are not only dealing with Sderot, but the national agenda. Many of Sderot’s issues – such as the Kassam rockets – are a national issue.”

Trauma in Sderot

Psychologist Dr. Ronny Berger spoke about the continued damage to the residents of Sderot caused by the rockets being launched from Gaza. He said that although those reading about it in the papers get used to it over time, it only gets worse for residents as the phenomenon continues. “We see that as time passes and the exposure to shelling is greater, the residents condition is weaker,” he said. “We see post-traumatic symptoms in a large part of the population. This requires professional intervention. There is an attempt to help, but the degree of distress and hardship is so high that the needs still far surpass the assistance provided.”

The Brain Drain

Another major topic of discussion was the state of education in Israel and the low wages paid to teachers. “Israel is leading the West in growth, but the inequality in society is the worst,” said Labor MK Avishai Braverman. “Education performance is the lowest in the West. Salaries and status of teachers is the lowest. Major reforms and changes in the budget in the opposite direction as it is being changed these days are needed. I call on this government to expand spending on education, culture and the periphery before we become a country that is only for the top class.

"If we don't make the necessary changes, then the biggest threat is not Iran. Iran is also Americas problem, Europe's problem, Russia's problem. Our problem is what the young people of Israel is will do. And if the young people see that the only objective function here is money, they may go to Silicon Valley, they may go to Germany, they may go to other places. For me it is about moral change and moral leadership and a change of priorities that needs to happen now."



Tel Aviv University President Tzvi Galil said the 'brain drain' has reached crisis proportions. "41 of every 10,000 undergrads, 2 percent of all masters students and 6.5 percent of senior faculties in Israeli universities emigrate," he said. He himself moved to the US for more than 20 years, returning, he said, to help solve the crisis of emigration.

According to a study conducted by Dan Ben-David of Tel Aviv University and presented at the Sderot Conference, one out of every four Israeli academics works in the United States.  Ben-David said that many academics chose to work in the US due to the higher salaries, better working conditions, and relative ease of receiving tenure. 

Nobel Laureate Professor Yisrael Aumann, an expert in game theory, said that Israel must free its universities from government control in order to counteract the problem. Universities must be allowed to set their own acceptance standards and tuition requirements, he said. He said that government intervention in wages will not help the matter. "I know many economists who live here happily, though they could make more elsewhere, but they are not miserable," he said. "It's not just about pay. What is important is that we have people for whom Israel is of the utmost importance. I don't call that commitment to the country, but Zionism."