The campaign run-up to Israel's election this year has been unusually dirty, filled with reports and allegations of corrupt campaign finances, mixed with McCarthyist assaults on the freedom of speech by the judiciary. So, what is the very dirtiest campaign of all the party lists running in this election? Is it Labor under Mitzna? Likud under Sharon?
No.
The very dirtiest party, in terms of campaign finances, this election is one that absolutely no one in the press is discussing. It is the corrupt election campaign by Amir Peretz and the Am Echad party.
Amir Peretz is the head of the Histadrut Trade Union federation. He took it over when Haim Ramon from the ?Shi'ite wing? of the Labor Party had captured it, but then got tired of playing with his new toy. Ramon wanted to compete for Labor Party chief and left behind the trade unions to Peretz. Peretz is best know for his Zapatista moustache and for the hilarious impression of him done by arch-comic Eli Yatzpan. In the past, Peretz failed to make it onto the Labor Party slate in its elections (before that, he was mayor of Sderot in the Negev), and so decided to "pull a Ramon" himself and set up his own list for the Knesset (Ramon had done the same trick to get himself elected as Histadrut head). He then shamelessly used Histadrut resources to buy his way into the Knesset.
It worked so well that Peretz is back this year, following the same strategy. First, he has stirred up trade union industrial actions and strikes all over the map just before the election. He is financing huge ads touting how wonderful the "New Histadrut" is - thinly disguised ads to boost his own chances of staying in the Knesset - which get around election finance laws, because they are technically not election ads. And all of this is paid for out of the coffers of the trade unions.
Among the last-minute strikes is one that Peretz organized for bank clerks. Israel's banks have bloated payrolls, increasingly use computers in place of humans, and are laying off employees. Peretz has lurid ads, dressed up with endorsements by leftist professors and communist party honchos, all "defending" the poor bank clerks against layoffs by their bad capitalist employers. A.B. Yehoshua and Natan Zach, from the Literary Left, are also signatories. There are enough bank clerks in Israel that they alone can keep Peretz in his warm Knesset seat.
Peretz has other fish to fry, as well. He is leading sanctions by the employees in the post office, yet another bastion of Israeli trade union Third Worldism. He has been a leading defender of the grossly overpaid, bloated, featherbedded workforce at the Israel Electric Company. Employees there typically are paid far more than going market wages and get free electricity for their families in any amounts they wish to waste. The IEC workforce is extremely bloated. Because Peretz has led the campaign to prevent any cutbacks or wage reductions or even restrictions on waste of free electricity for the workers there, the Israel Treasury this week is being forced to consider pumping new cash into the Electric Company. Some of the international ratings agencies lowered the bond rating of the electric company, and Treasury is afraid it may be contagious. So Mr. And Mrs. Israeli will not only be forced to pay high electric bills to keep Peretz's constituents in their cushy overpaid jobs at the Electric Company, but now public funds will be taken away from socially valuable uses like hospitals, schools and settlements, to be infused into the inefficient Electric Company monopoly.
As I say, not a single expose or commentary on the Peretz Buy-a-Knesset-Seat-with-Theft-of-Trade-Union-Dues campaign has appeared to date.
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Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).
No.
The very dirtiest party, in terms of campaign finances, this election is one that absolutely no one in the press is discussing. It is the corrupt election campaign by Amir Peretz and the Am Echad party.
Amir Peretz is the head of the Histadrut Trade Union federation. He took it over when Haim Ramon from the ?Shi'ite wing? of the Labor Party had captured it, but then got tired of playing with his new toy. Ramon wanted to compete for Labor Party chief and left behind the trade unions to Peretz. Peretz is best know for his Zapatista moustache and for the hilarious impression of him done by arch-comic Eli Yatzpan. In the past, Peretz failed to make it onto the Labor Party slate in its elections (before that, he was mayor of Sderot in the Negev), and so decided to "pull a Ramon" himself and set up his own list for the Knesset (Ramon had done the same trick to get himself elected as Histadrut head). He then shamelessly used Histadrut resources to buy his way into the Knesset.
It worked so well that Peretz is back this year, following the same strategy. First, he has stirred up trade union industrial actions and strikes all over the map just before the election. He is financing huge ads touting how wonderful the "New Histadrut" is - thinly disguised ads to boost his own chances of staying in the Knesset - which get around election finance laws, because they are technically not election ads. And all of this is paid for out of the coffers of the trade unions.
Among the last-minute strikes is one that Peretz organized for bank clerks. Israel's banks have bloated payrolls, increasingly use computers in place of humans, and are laying off employees. Peretz has lurid ads, dressed up with endorsements by leftist professors and communist party honchos, all "defending" the poor bank clerks against layoffs by their bad capitalist employers. A.B. Yehoshua and Natan Zach, from the Literary Left, are also signatories. There are enough bank clerks in Israel that they alone can keep Peretz in his warm Knesset seat.
Peretz has other fish to fry, as well. He is leading sanctions by the employees in the post office, yet another bastion of Israeli trade union Third Worldism. He has been a leading defender of the grossly overpaid, bloated, featherbedded workforce at the Israel Electric Company. Employees there typically are paid far more than going market wages and get free electricity for their families in any amounts they wish to waste. The IEC workforce is extremely bloated. Because Peretz has led the campaign to prevent any cutbacks or wage reductions or even restrictions on waste of free electricity for the workers there, the Israel Treasury this week is being forced to consider pumping new cash into the Electric Company. Some of the international ratings agencies lowered the bond rating of the electric company, and Treasury is afraid it may be contagious. So Mr. And Mrs. Israeli will not only be forced to pay high electric bills to keep Peretz's constituents in their cushy overpaid jobs at the Electric Company, but now public funds will be taken away from socially valuable uses like hospitals, schools and settlements, to be infused into the inefficient Electric Company monopoly.
As I say, not a single expose or commentary on the Peretz Buy-a-Knesset-Seat-with-Theft-of-Trade-Union-Dues campaign has appeared to date.
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).