Politics, 17-th Century Florence style

If Jerusalem 2008 were Chicago in 1930, Ehud Barak would suddenly find himself friendless (as indeed he pretty much is today). Nobody would want to be seen talking to him. If he walked down the street, people would hurry across to the other side. If he entered a restaurant or a speakeasy, the patrons would take one look at him and leap for the exits; the proprietor would say “we’re closed!” and push him out the door.

For Ehud Barak is a marked man. He took a shot at Il Capo di tutti Capi, and failed to bring him down. If Jerusalem were Chicago in 1930, men in fedoras toting violin cases would be combing the streets for him. If he were smart, he’d leave town.

Barak is bright, analytical, cold-blooded and calm. He sometimes tells the truth with disarming naivete He has one besetting flaw: The inability to act decisively (which ought to disqualify him as Defense Minister or Prime Minister). Twice he issued ultimatums, to Arafat and to Hamas, and failed to follow through. Once he issued an ultimatum to Olmert. This time he didn’t back off, didn’t swallow his words. He merely temporized, postponed the day of reckoning, tried to be nice and to give Olmert and Kadima time. This could turn out to be the mistake that ends his political career.

In politics, Olmert is a past master to Barak’s puerile amateurism. By telling Olmert to go, Barak has marked himself as Olmert’s greatest foe. Barak foolishly gave Olmert three months, and Olmert will use them to wipe Barak out, swiftly and efficiently.

The overall game plan is clear: First and foremost, put Barak under investigation by the police. On Tuesday, six days after Olmert and Barak signed the agreement that postponed elections, Shmuel Levi, a former Barak flunky who is now an Olmert flunky, cut a deal with the police to turn state’s witness and testify about Barak’s illegal campaign contributions in 1999 (on the radio his attorney said he was doing so as “a matter of conscience.” I laughed so hard I nearly had to pull the car off to the side of the road).

Second, raise a revolt against Barak in the Labor party, where Olmert, giver of budgets and offices, has more clout than Barak himself. On Monday Amir Peretz declared he would challenge Barak for leadership of the Labor party before the next elections. Olmert got a freebie from MK Dani Yatom, who disgusted with barak, announced he was leaving the Knesset. Barak today heads the Labor party only nominally. His colleagues are divided into two camps: Those who are openly screaming for his political head, and those who would be happy to sit back and see him lose it.

By skillfully putting all of Barak’s weaknesses into play, in a manner which Barak has neither the skills not the resources to prevent, Olmert plans to reduce Barak to a political cipher by September. By then Olmert should be able to cancel Kadima’s primaries with impunity. Labor will be too divided and Barak too discredited to do anything about it.

Maybe my knowledge of political history is too limited, but I cannot recall a similar spectacle of the country’s greatest political crook methodically plotting the downfall of another political crook, using the country’s legal system as a political tool. One would have to go to the dying days of the Roman Republic or the Weimar Republic to find a parallel.

The dying days of republics . . .

To me he most ominous aspect of the whole affair are Olmert’s chosen hatchetmen, his guys in grey fedoras and violin cases. They are none other than the police and the State Prosecution. It is Olmert who, with a crook of his finger, is producing evidence against Barak where there was none before. With a history of lenience toward public figures and incompetence in investigating them, Israel’s law enforcement agencies cannot be portrayed as crusaders against official corruption. From Aharon Barak and Asa Kasher they have learned to let precious calculations of individual rights and solicitude for legal niceties dominate their real job of going after the corrupt, dominating them, and throwing them out of public life. Of course, the precious calculations and legal niceties go out the window when political enemies are involved. Like other parts of Israel’s unelected power elite, they themselves have been corrupted, first by the perversion of their power to political ends, and then by its perversion to personal ends of power and money.

They will not, of course, make themselves the agents of Olmert’s dirty political manipulations willingly or intentionally. But they will serve those ends nonetheless. The reality of Israel’s public arena today is that the crooks are on top, able to exploit the “forces of justice” as and when desired, for their desired ends.