While I work on a rather longer piece that tries to deal with the post-Zionist position put forward with real passion last evening at a conference of Jewish social justice activists - and with the discomfort of many in the gathering with any talk at all of Israel - a quick question.
Here we sit as Ehud Olmert apparently faces indictment on charges of corruption. By now, indictments of senior Israeli officials have lost their shock value. Shlomo Benizri, a member of Knesset (Shas) who was once Minister of Health and then Minister of Labor and Social Welfare (and once attributed two earthquakes to Israel's tolerant attitude towards homosexuality) has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for receiving bribes, breach of faith, conspiracy to commit a crime and obstruction of justice and moral turpitude. Tzachi Hanegbi (Kadima), currently chair of the Knesset Committee on Security and Foreign Affairs and formerly Minister of Health, of Justice, of Environment and of Public Security, is under indictment for having made 69 political appointments to the Environment Ministry, at least 51 of which were members or relatives of members of Likud's central committee. He's accused of fraud and breach of trust and, separately, of election fraud, giving false testimony, taking a false oath and attempting to exert unlawful influence on a voter. (The 33-page indictment includes a list of 321 witnesses for the prosecution.) Former President Katsav has chosen to reject the plea bargain he reached with the A.G. months ago, in which he confessed to sexual harassment, forcible indecent assault and harassing a witness; now it appears that the original charge of rape will be reinstated. Avraham Hirchsohn, former Minister of Treasury (and also of Tourism), will stand trial for fraud, theft, falsifying corporate documents, breach of trust and money laundering, in connection with his alleged theft of some four million shekels from the labor union he headed.
And all those are merely the tip of a very large and very dirty iceberg.
Now, on the one hand, Israel ranks 30th from the top of a list of 179 countries on a scale of corruption - a scale that goes from least corrupt (the very top) to most corrupt. It scores 6.1 on a 10 point scale, and 5.0 is regarded as the cut-off point between "acceptable" levels of corruption and unacceptable levels. By that accounting, things are not as bad as they seem.
But quite plainly, they are not very good.
I wonder whether there is, perhaps, a Jewish propensity for "beating the system." For a very long time, we were essentially required to beat the system in order to stay alive. We had to cut corners, cheat, lie, get away with things. The systems where we lived were oppressive, and we developed the wits to endure. Might there not have been a near-genetic selection for the live-enhancing ability to make it in spite of the oppression?
Has anyone done anything like systematic work on this question? Is the question simply absurd, meaning there is no such distinctive propensity?
Your thoughts?
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Leonard,
Let me respond to both your last posting in our previous conversation and to the question that you asked in this one.
As you wrote, in the table of 179 more or less corrupt countries 149 countries were listed to be more corrupt. This is prima fascia evidence that there is no special Jewish predilection to cheat, lie and get away with things. The tragedy is that after our thousands of years of history there seems to be no Jewish predilection to behave honorably.
Are there any elements that promote Israeli corruption? Yes! In accommodating the Haredi and pursuing a Greater Israel, the Israeli Government has broken its laws, one after the other, and has enforced some laws against Israeli Arabs, while never applying then to Israeli Jews. It would be entirely contrary to human nature if this didn’t result in pronounced public and private cynicism.
We were not and will not be exiled from Israel because of our sins. We were and may well be again exiled because of the ambitions of our neighbors. But, this was and will be facilitated by our greed, our unwillingness to face unpleasant truths and our rigidity.
All best wishes to those who care for our State and for its people, and for people around
I would recommend you read Naomi Klein's "Building a Booming Economy Based on War with
no End: The Lessons of Israel."
"So here's another theory: Israel's economy isn't booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines. It is booming, in large part, precisely because of that chaos - because Israel, perhaps more than any other country, has learned how to build an economy based on never ending war."
Perhaps that's the reason there is so much corruption. It pays well, just as in the U.S. Both economies, to the extent they are successful, are based on arms, security, "counter-terrorism" tooling industries!
To Mr. Plavin, best wishes back.
All,
The high level of corruption--in politics rather than by pakedim--is another parallel between Israeli politics in the Second Israeli Republic (1973-present) and the American Second Party System (1828-60). Corruption was endemic in American politics during the 1840s and 1850s. It was worst in the Democratic Party and the American (Know Nothing) Party (1855-57) but was also quite common in the Whig Party as well. Politicians would use their connections to reward their business "friends" while in office and would expect support from them in exchange in terms of campaign contributions. Ballot stuffing and intimidation against political rivals was rife in the large cities of the East and South such as New York, Baltimore,Washington, Louisville, and New Orleans. The movie "Gangs of New York" illustrates some of this although it conflates history by showing the Know Nothings to still have been around during the Draft Riots in NYC in 1863. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was particularly corrupt and this contributed both to the deprivations that Indians suffered during the Indian removal of the 1830s and the outbreak of many Indian wars in the West from 1862 to 1890.
The South African Republic (Transvaal) was also very corrupt in the 1880s and 1890s with the state living off of monopolies in the trade of certain products that were granted by the government. Politicians in the Volksraad (People's Council) were connected with this phenomenon. The monopoly on the sale of dynamite and other explosives to the mining industry was particularly lucrative during the late 1880s and 1890s. But the worst offender was the opposition Progressive Party, that like the Labor Party today, relied on the charisma of many African-fighter politicians.
So a corrupt state and political culture with a relatively clean and honest bureaucracy seems to be a common trait of frontier democracies during their infancy.
Joel,
America's support of Israel hindered its acquisition of oil rather than helped it. American support for the peace process since the Nixon admin is largely an attempt to try and reconcile America's support of Israel and its need to acquire oil from Arab producers. Israel is supported because of domestic politics, common values (democracy, religion), and because of Israel's value as a provider of intelligence and testing ground for weapons systems during the Cold War. You should stop listening to the crude propaganda of the anti-globalist anarchists.
Tom,
I think you are reading more into my posts than is there. We seem to agree on the facts, but disagree as to whether they result from U.S. realpolitik or U.S. nobility. So, I am curious. Which anti-globalist anarchists would you not recommend?
Joel,
I wouldn't recommend any of them. Anarchists aren't all that much more sophisticated than Bolsheviks in their analysis.
Tom,
In a technical sense, it is incorrect to say that the US is "dependent" on Arab oil. I read recently that the US actually gets very little oil from the Middle East, and this is due to the lessons learned from the oil embargoes of the 1970's. Most US oil imports come from places like Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, and Canada among others.
However, America's allies in Europe, Asia and other places ARE dependent on Middle East oil, so the US still has a direct interest in maintaining the free flow, at reasonable prices, of that oil.
The last few days have had the media assault on Olmert change direction. At first they accused him of bribery, now it has shifted to "illegal election campaign contributions".
Ehud Barak got huge amounts of illegal contributions yet he got away with it scot free, Sharon also did this, but managed to foist the blame on his son Omri who is now in prison. Thus, Olmert may be able to wriggle out of this as well. The man is not stupid and so I am sure whatever payoffs he received, he managed to cover up well. I think it is too early to write him off.
I think Yaakov Ben David is right in his assessment that it is to early to write off Olmert: he may well not resign very soon (though there might develop a public exhaustion that would cause eventually some ministers to resign and to start a process of disintegration. But it is too early to predict this too)
I think Yaakov Ben David is right in supporting his caution by showing that Barak and Sharon (and, by the way, Netanyahu) too did not have to pay for extra-moneys received from their rich American-Jewish patrons/benefactors.
However, I disagree with Yaakov Ben David's central thesis, namely, that Olmert is not stupid.
Zecharia,
Ha'Aretz noted in an editorial this weekend that in a previous corruption trial Olmert managed to convince the judge that he was innocent. While his cronies went to prison he stayed free. While you may not agree with his politics, you should note that he is a skilled player.
Ya'akov,
I didn't claim that the U.S. was directly dependent on Arab oil. But as a good leader of the free world it has to make allowances for its European and Japanese allies. The U.S. economy is also dependent on oil to the extent that even small gaps in supply cause major dislocations. This means that Washington must make allowances for Arab sensitivities on certain topics.
Better rethink reference to 'exile' [07 May 2008 at 7:50 am Joel A. Levitt]
Prof. Shlomo Sands is the latest scholar to put paid to that myth.
No, cheating is not genetically preponderant in one group, but culturally, those who are Zionist-Israel appear to more be suspect. Nurture?
BTW, does Moshe Katsav's trangerssions count? Or Sharon's charges not laid but his son's were?
Olmert appears to be scott free.
The book Mini-state for the Mob is more telling than the Transparency International index and its access to data.
Be well.