Not Really Interested in Reform

Israel’s State Prosecution is a mess.  For years it has been incapable of keeping up with its workload; a few years ago the organization shredded over 30,000 files of cases it acknowledged it would never get around to investigating.  Its work is often sloppy, prompting harsh criticism from judges and violating the  due-process rights of defendants.  Its workers are demoralized, as reflected by a lengthy strike last year over pay rates.  It is infected with political bias.  A special unit, the “Office of the Deputy Attorney General for Special Affairs,” focuses on prosecuting people for what they write and say, as well as for demonstrating.  There are laws in Israel that can be interpreted in a way that prohibits these fundamental democratic activities, and the “Office” applies these laws selectively, generally against right-wing and religious political activists.

Widespread complaints against the State Prosecution have led to calls for some kind of oversight body with the power to redress the Prosecution’s violation of citizens’ civil and due-process rights.  Pressure for this reform grew to the point where the current Attorney General, Yehoshua Weinstein, admitted that something would probably have to be done.

Weinstein finally announced the establishment of a committee to consider how such an oversight body should be designed.  The composition of the committee is not encouraging.  All eight members are senior employees of the Justice Department.  They include Mike Blass, a deputy Attorney General with notorious left-wing views, and Raz Nizri, a senior aide to Weinstein (Nizri served the previous Attorney General, Menahem Mazuz, in the same capacity).  

The point is not so much the political bias of the committee—Nizri is simply a lapdog for whoever holds the office of Attorney General—as the fact that these are all insiders whose first concern is to protect the institutional interests of the State Prosecution.  Don’t look to them for any fundamental reforms. 

Weinstein’s decision represents a pattern.  A generation ago complaints about police violence led to the establishment of a special unit within the Ministry of Justice to investigate errant policemen.  A study by the State Ombudsman seven years ago found that this body was chiefly staffed by . . . policemen, seconded to the unit for a number of years before returning to the police.  Many had themselves long records of complaints filed against them by citizens who alleged their rights had been violated.  Needless to say this body, the Police Investigation Department, is not considered very effective.

In 2006, rising complaints against judges prompted the Knesset to pass legislation to create an ombudsman for the court system.  The judges fought tooth and nail and lobbied the Knesset to change the legislation to provide that the ombudsman be a retired judge, appointed by the Chief Justice.  So lobbied, so provided.

So in Israel, “oversight” of the legal and law-enforcement system means oversight by  the system:  Judges by a judge, policemen by policemen, and now if Weinstein has his way, prosecutors by prosecutors.  Which is to say, no effective oversight after all.

What really needs to be done is to establish a completely separate unit within the State Ombudsman’s office, charged with overseeing the protection of citizens’ civil rights.  This unit should have the authority to investigate complaints against judges, prosecutors and policemen, to launch disciplinary actions against them and if necessary to indict them for violations of the law.

Weinstein’s announcement produced protests by members of the Knesset Committee on State Oversight, which had scheduled a session on the issue.  The MKs insisted that the committee Weinstein established to prepare proposals for oversight of the State Prosecution include representatives from academia and the private sector.  Stay tuned.

Time to Decide

The Netanyahu government’s decision to approve construction of 500 housing units in Judaea and Samaria in response to the slaughter of the Fogel family in Itamar cannot please anyone. If building in the settlements is right, then it’s right whether or not Palestinian terrorists kill innocent people.

The decision underscores the fact that Netanyahu’s current non-policy on Judaea and Samaria is unsustainable. That policy is to approve no new building in Judaea, Samaria and Jerusalem, while waiting for the Palestinians to come around and resume negotiations. By not approving new building, Netanyahu hoped to reduce foreign pressure on Israel. The policy has failed.

The Europeans and the Obama administration are applying immense pressure to Netanyahu to “do something to facilitate negotiations.” This is pure cynicism. Everyone knows the Palestinians are not going to come back to the negotiating table. The foreign pressure is meant to force Israel to agree unilaterally to withdraw the IDF from almost all of Judaea and Samaria and destroy Israeli settlements there.

This is what the Olmert government was prepared to do. According to "Palileaks," the Olmert government had given up just about all Israeli settlements; only Ariel, Maale Adumim and Har Homa in Jerusalem remained to be negotiated about. Olmert himself confirms that he agreed to withdraw the IDF entirely from Judaea and Samaria, leaving the Americans to guard the Jordan front.

Subsequent events show how fortunate Israel was that the cavalier and shallow Olmert was thrown out of office before he could cut a deal. Without Israel’s military presence, Hamas’ takeover of Judaea and Samaria is only a matter of time. This is even clearer today, in the aftermath of the Egyptian uprising. An American presence in Judaea and Samaria won’t last long in the face of a Hamas terror offensive, just as terrorism is chasing the United States out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel cannot allow Judaea and Samaria to turn into another Gaza, where a murderous terror regime enjoys effective sanctuary from the IDF under the protection of hypocritical Europeans.

Obama and the Europeans consider Israel’s presence in Judaea and Samaria absolutely unacceptable, no matter what the consequences of withdrawal to Israel. Sooner rather than later, the Europe is going to announce it recognizes a Palestinian state in all of Judaea and Samaria. The Obama administration is going to agree—after all, it already agrees in practice if not in form.

Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government is doing nothing as the inevitable approaches. Netanyahu is preparing another Bar-Ilan-type speech, in which he will try to find some middle ground between Israel’s irreducable vital interests and the West’s nonnegotiable demands.

He may as well spare his breath. Israel and the West are on a collision course over Judaea and Samaria and Israel has nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. Israel is just going to have to tell the West, “We are not going to do what you want us to do, and we are all going to have to live with that fact.”

Israel needs to move unilaterally to create a situation in Judaea and Samaria conducive to its interests. This includes three elements:

• Move quickly to separate from the Palestinians. Start working on roads and fences to join Palestinian inhabited areas together and isolate them from areas Israel seeks to control.
• Lay claim to the rest of Judaea and Samaria, about 50-60% of the whole. From a security perspective Israel needs to control this area and especially to be able to intervene quickly in Palestinian-inhabited areas when needed. Its right to do so cannot be founded on security considerations however. It needs to assert that it is in Judaea and Samaria by legal right—which is only the truth—and the IDF’s presence needs to be backed up by a continued and growing civilian presence.
• By no means should Israel agree to recognize a Palestinian state unilaterally, in any borders whatsoever. If the Palestinians agree to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, then there’ll be something to talk about.

Netanyahu needs to move vigorously to assert Israel's rights and interests in Judaea and Samaria.  Procrastination isn't gaining Israel anything.  Israel should be building now—whether or not its own citizens are being slaughtered. For now, it can argue that building is a response to Palestinian diplomatic provocations. That is the only policy that might, at the last minute, cause the Palestinians and the Europeans to pause. But that’s unlikely. Israel has to make clear that it will place its own stamp on Judaea and Samaria whether it suits the West or no, because it has no choice. Better sooner rather than later.

Time for New Elections?

Netanyahu’s coalition with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, chairman of the Labor party, is unravelling. The two joined forces after the last election on the basis of the new consensus in Israeli politics: Dismantling settlements and unilateral retreat ends in disaster, the Palestinian Authority cannot be trusted to make a durable peace agreement, so Israel must retain effective security control of Judaea and Samaria. Now Barak is welching on the deal. Barak fears the Americans and wants to give in to American pressure. He also suffers from delusions of grandeur, imagining himself leading Netanyahu’s government down the path of unilateral concessions, taking credit for a peace treaty and reconciling himself with his party’s mainstream, now dominated by the loony left.

What the country may need is a snap election before Rosh Hashana. Netanyahu needs to shore up his ability to pursue a policy at variance with the Obama administration. Polls show that since Obama started pressuring Netanyahu, Netanyahu’s Likud and parties to Netanyahu’s right have become even more popular than when elected in 2009. They regularly get 70 Knesset seats or more in the polls. That won’t be the case anymore if Netanyahu lets the pair of Baracks (the American and the Israeli versions) force him to abandon the policy he was elected to pursue.

Of course an election needs to be prepared. Netanyahu needs to spend about a month campaigning hard, reiterating that his government’s policies reflect the national consensus. He should say that the issue of the campaign is the position laid forth in his Bar-Ilan speech a year ago: Yes to negotiations, no to a precommitment to retreat, dismantling settlements or abandon Israel’s security concerns in Judaea and Samaria. He should make Barak take responsibility for messing up the Mavi Marmara affair. Only then should the coalition introduce a bill to hold snap elections. Passing it should take 72 hours (at the start of which Barak should be fired), with elections taking place three weeks later. The heart of an American electoral campaign is the best time for Israel to hold its own elections; it will reduce Obama’s ability to interfere.

The opposing forces in the election will be very clear. On the one side will be Labor, Kadima, the press establishment, the academic establishment, the business establishment, and all the loonies who haven’t learned a thing in the past twenty years and think that safety lies in unilateral concessions and American smiles. On the other side will be the common sense of the great majority of Israelis, who actually have learned a thing or two in that time. Let’s see who prevails.

After the election, if all goes well, Netanyahu will no longer be dependent on Barak for political survival. He can even take Barak back into his new government if he wants, as head of a truncated Labor party or even on his own (though why Netanyahu needs a serial political loser like Barak at his side isn’t clear). Barak will hardly be in a position to say no. Then Netanyahu can then use Barak as he desires, without Barak holding the key to the government’s survival.

Barak Goes Off the Reservation

Ehud Barak is the odd man out in Israel’s government. Netanyahu brought him in as Defense Minister to create a stable coalition. Since then Barak has been destroying Jewish homes in Judaea and Samaria, built during the “freeze,” with a dedication worthy of a better cause. Recently he made a fiasco of Israel’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara.


Barak joined Netanyahu’s government last year because he shared the opinion of Netanyahu and 70% of Jewish Israelis: The Palestinians are not interested in peace but in destroying Israel, unilateral withdrawals (Barak was responsible for one, from Lebanon ten years ago) merely encourage terrorist radicals, so all the talk about a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians is just for show. Unfortunately, Barak is just about the only person in his party who’s wised up about the true prospects for “peace.” He’s under a lot of pressure to promote an “active policy,” which means giving up something for nothing—e.g. dismantling Israeli settlements—in order to entice the Palestinians to make peace.

Barak now appears to be going off the Netanyahu reservation. He’s calling for “an assertive diplomacy,” a code word for unilateral Israeli action. Barak’s faith in unilateral actions, of the dismantle-settlements-and-retreat kind, has been restored. He now wants Israel to make unilateral concessions, but not because that will promote peace with the Palestinians. He knows it only whets their appetite for more. He wants to do it because Barack Obama wants Israel to do it, and keeping the United States happy is vital to Israel’s security.

The United States is certainly vital to Israel’s security but that doesn’t mean that Barak’s new policy is a good idea. It isn’t. It’s hard to tell with Obama. He may want Israel to make unilateral concessions because that conforms to his abstract ideals of peace and justice in the Middle East. He’s swallowed the Palestian narrative, hook, line and sinker. Or he may want it because he wants to make the Arabs happy, and squeezing Israel is the way to do it. In practice, he’s acting as the Arabs’ tool.

Israel cannot, for its life, do what Obama wants. To do so is to prove to the Palestinians and the broader Arab world that they can get Israel to make unilateral concessions simply by getting the Americans to demand them. And that way lies the road to Israel’s demise. Barak may talk about “assertive” policies, but the real word for his policy is “appeasement.”

Lookit all the Democrats!

I’m sitting in the library of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, looking at the news on the net. Hizbullah is preparing a flotilla of women to crash the blockade of Gaza. Why, I wonder, would more women want to go to Gaza? Once they get there, they will have to wear burqas.  If they don’t bring male relatives with them on the boat to escort them once they land, how will they get around? Will the Hamas authorities throw them in jail, or sentence them to lashes for indecent strolling?  I don’t know if Hamas has got around to prohibiting women from driving cars, as Saudi Arabia once did.

In the meantime, how’re things going in Europe, that bastion of democracy and civil rights? Today the upper house of the Spanish Parliament passed a law restricting the wearing of the burqa in public. The New York Times article reporting this event reviews Europe’s evolving attitude to the rights of its own Moslem citizens:

• Switzerland bans the construction of minarets.

• One house of Belgium’s Parliament has passed a law that outlaws wearing clothing in public that covers the face. (What are they going to do in six months, when the weather in Brussels drops to 20 degrees below zero Centigrade? Throw everyone wearing a ski mask into jail? At least the jail’s warm).

• France already bans headscarves in the public schools. According to the Times, France is “inching toward” a ban on the burqa, which French President Sarkozy supports.

Wearing a burqa is a personal, "self-regarding" decision.  In the words of John Stuart Mill, in his essay On Liberty, it "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Therefore it's nobody's business but the wearer's.  Legislating against it is illegitimate, at least in societies that pride themselves on being free. Anti-burqa legislation, like anti-minaret legislation, is simply the prejudice and intolerance of the majority made law. It’s discriminatory and violates freedom of religion.

I look around me at the students of the Hebrew University, studying for exams. Two tables over, four of them sit together. Three wear headscarves that cover their hair, neck and ears. One wears a brown hijab. Earlier, I ate my sandwich in the stairwell, watching the students—not a few in headscarves—coming and going.

Who cares? In Israel, nobody--neither individual citizens nor the government. If an Arab woman wants to dress like an Arab woman, that’s her business, and maybe her family’s business, but certainly none of mine. Or yours. Or the State of Israel’s, which to its credit couldn’t care less about burqas. If an Arab woman wants to wear tights and a t-shirt, that’s fine too. Plenty do. One of them sits together with her headscarved sisters, cramming for an economics final.

Sometimes, sitting here at the top of Mount Scopus, I get a weird sense that either we’re crazy or else everyone else is crazy. This burqa business brings the feeling back. We’re surrounded by people who either force people to wear burqas or force them not to. The only thing these people seem to agree about is that Israel is a threat to human rights. Honestly, who’s being nuts?

Tzipi Speaks Out

What’s a person like Tzipi Livni, who, as far as we can tell, never put an agora in her pocket that didn’t belong to her, doing in a party like Kadima? In her first public attempt to act like a Prime Ministerial candidate, she made it clear. She’s announced that she wants to form a National Unity government which can stretch to include even Meretz and (horrors) the Likud, in order to deal with Israel’s situation, which is “not simple,” in her words.

Tzipi’s right about the situation. She also assumes that while the situation is not simple, her audience is.

Somewhere, beneath the spin and the corruption and the nauseating display of the titanic ambitions of little people, politics is about important issues. Eons ago, Tzipi Livni was elected on a platform of tossing another 100,000 Israeli citizens into the dustbin and making a lasting peace with the puppet of the Mukata.

That platform lasted for about 90 days, before the Olmert government could get properly comfortable in its chauffeured Volvos. Since then Israel’s situation has changed dramatically. Just about everybody realizes that instead of being on the brink of peace, we stand on the brink of a war of annihilation. We’re just not doing anything about it.

In this situation, which is “not simple,” Tzipi Livni is not a tabula rasa. She comes with a record. She bears more responsibility for Israel’s predicament than any person alive with the exception of Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak. Her political blindness has been monumental. She hasn’t done a single thing to warn the public of the dangers or to avert them. She hasn’t changed her personal positions an iota since the day before the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War. She’s pursued the will-o-the-wisp of peace with the Palestinian Nonentity long after a majority of the country has recognized it for what it is, a farcical scam. Till her statement yesterday, she seemed totally oblivious to the rapid and ominous darkening of Israel’s political horizon during her tenure in office.

That in itself would be reason enough for her to leave the political stage now rather than to seek to dominate it. At the very least, she should let the public know what she intends to do with her “national unity government.” What’s her platform? What does she intend to do about Gaza? About Judaea and Samaria? About Hizbullah? About Iran? Parties join a government on the basis of that government’s proposed policies. Nobody now has any idea what a Livni government would stand for, other than for Tzipi Livni.

Israel has had a hollow government for over two years now, full of comments about our serious situation but with no plans to do anything about it. The real object of those currently sitting around the government table is to . . . keep on sitting. When Livni discusses whom she wants in her government, as opposed to what she wants to do with it, she’s indicating that she’s really proposing more of the same. Like the entire Kadima lineup, she’s gotten the country into a situation that she’s too small to handle, or even to think constructively about. Good enough a reason to flee her “national unity government” rather than join it.

News scoop :)

Peres and Abu Mazen were meeting in the Israeli President’s residence when Abu Mazen’s constituent went on his tractor rampage on King David Street. In the ensuing uproar, few noticed when Abu Mazen pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and began measuring Peres’ rooms for his furniture.

Poor fool. He doesn’t realize that Ismael Haniya in Gaza has the complete floor plans of Peres’ residence in Jerusalem and Abu Mazen’s suite in the Mukata in Ramallah tacked onto the wall of his office.

Moral Hazard

Moral hazard. It’s an insurance term. It’s also a fundamental concept in political philosophy. It means what happens when you let someone get off without paying in full for the risks he is exposed to, such as offering a cut rate on health insurance or a pension plan. Insurance companies may be tempted to do this in order to get a contract now, and worry about the costs later. Eventually, moral hazard ends in tears: the insurance company goes bankrupt, or the pensioner winds up with too little or nothing for his retirement, or both.

Moral hazard exists when people discount the future. People naturally tend to do this. What happens in twenty years seems a long time away, especially when we’re talking about risk, the chance of something happening rather than the certainty. Yet in the long run there seems nothing as certain in this world than that moral hazard, eventually, comes home to roost.

The world’s greatest producers of moral hazard are governments. Governments consist of people who, in theory, control a big chunk of everybody else’s money, lives, welfare. The people who make up governments are tempted to use those resources to achieve what they passionately desire today.

Democratic governments desire to be reelected. They are tempted to promise the people things now, leaving the payment to the future, when they will no longer be in office or even alive. Non-democratic governments aren’t immune. The Soviet Union wanted, more than anything else, enough military power to bully the West into submission, and they sacrificed everything to that. The result was the biggest political and economic implosion in history.

The headlines these days are about moral hazard. Americans have made a mess of their economy through neglecting moral hazard. Thirty years ago the American government promised everyone cradle-to-grave, government-guaranteed welfare. It couldn’t keep the promise. Taxes went up, growth went down, and there weren’t enough resources to keep the promises. Then things changed for a while. The Reagan Revolution came in. Instead of the failures of government, the free market was going to be given its head. Businessmen are entrepreneurial and good at creating wealth, so went the story. They’re hardheaded and don’t believe that something can be had for nothing.

For a while this worked quite well. But then it turns out that businessmen are pretty good at smelling out a sweet, government-guaranteed deal, especially if that is the quickest way to make a profit. Businessmen love it when the government guarantees that their deals can’t fail. When government does that, businessmen are as good at anyone else at throwing caution to the winds and taking on dodgy deals for the sake of immediate income. The result is this week’s headlines: Millions of people have taken on risks they cannot sustain, millions are in trouble and, yep, Uncle Sam has stepped in to take off the pressure. With just whose money?

The fact is that American civilization as a whole has spent the last twenty years taking on a monumental bad bet. Americans don’t save. They spend. They take out loans on their houses to fund spending beyond their income. And now the rest of the world looks upon the once-almighty dollar the way Americans used to look upon Mexican pesos. If and when America gets out of this, Americans are going to have to live a lot less well, spend a lot less and save a lot more. That will affect everybody, from Shanghai to Syracuse, who wants an American to buy something.

Moral hazard is not just about money. There was once a leader who was very careful about public money—so obsessed by it, in fact, that it blinded him to every other danger. So careful was Neville Chamberlain with pennies and pounds that when he went to Munich he found himself facing the biggest air force and army then in the world, with none of his own. His prudence turned out to be a rather poor investment for the British people, and for many others besides.

After every episode of catastrophe arising from moral hazard, people are careful for a while. Regulators get tough with private interests and prevent them from taking a free ride. For a decade, for a generation. Then special interests get to work again: They make or buy friends in government, the regulations get watered down, and we all get set up again. And of course, there are no “regulations” or regulative authorities in foreign policy.

The true defense against moral hazard is not regulation (though regulation can help). It’s an attitude of mind and soul, once called “prudence” or “character.” It means a disposition of the soul to be suspicious of momentary pleasures, to guard against them. At its highest, it means cultivating a sense of responsibility for the future, for the world around you—a sense that its welfare is in your care. It is not the same thing as simply being conservative, since prudence requires being alive to changes in the world around you, taking advantage of emerging opportunities and precautions against emerging risks.

The key to developing this kind of attitude on a society-wide basis appears to be religious belief and values, the sense that one is subordinate to a Creator, and responsible to Him for the welfare of His world, His people, and His soul—that is, the one He gave to you to guard and improve. This attitude of prudence and responsibility seems to be what modern (and postmodern) civilization is set up to destroy. Watch out, or it’ll take you—us—with it.