In praise of the 'Irvine 11' verdict

Democratic traditions have been around for several centuries. And in the United States, unlike most places in the world, democratic ideals – freedom from religious coercion, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression – are deeply entrenched and second nature for most people. Nevertheless, even in America there remains a surprising amount of confusion regarding the basic tenets of democracy.

A case in point is the controversy surrounding the “Irvine 11” case.

After two days of deliberations, a jury in Orange County, California, handed down last Friday a guilty verdict for 10 members of a group known as the Irvine 11. These young men, who belonged to the Muslim Student Union at the local University of California campus, were charged in February of this year by Orange County’s District Attorney Tony Rackauckas with two counts of misdemeanor for planning to trample and then trampling the freedom of speech of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.

On February 8, 2010, while trying to deliver a speech at the university, Oren was repeatedly interrupted by the Irvine 11. Instead of waiting to express their disagreement with Oren during a Q and A session at the end of his remarks, the Muslim students, who had planned the incident days in advance, took turns standing up and shouting epithets such as “You, sir, are an accomplice to genocide!”” and “Murder is not free speech!”

At least 10 times the ambassador was forced to stop his speech. Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson sentenced the students to 56 hours of community service and three years of probation, which can be reduced to one year if they complete their community service by the end of January.

Both the verdict and the sentence were eminently reasonable and reflect the real need to vigilantly protect freedom of speech, a right taken for granted in the US, but almost nonexistent in most of world.

Unfortunately, reactions to the decision reflect either a shaky grasp of the meaning of the First Amendment to the US Constitution or a deliberate attempt to distort and manipulate democratic freedoms to disparage and delegitimize Israeli policies, or both. Organizations such as Harvard College’s Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Alliance for Justice in the Middle East claimed it was the Irvine 11’s freedom of speech, not Oren’s, that had been trampled.

Convinced, apparently, that the ends justify the means, the two Harvard-affiliated organizations declared in a statement that the Irvine 11 should be commended for forcibly silencing “Oren’s propaganda effort to whitewash Israel’s criminal actions and policies in front of college audiences.”

Jewish Voice for Peace also failed to draw the distinction between exercising one’s own freedom of speech and preventing someone else from doing so, and claimed the verdict was a result of Islamophobia.

More surprising, however, was an editorial that appeared in The Orange County Register criticizing what it felt was the “arbitrary” use by the court of the First Amendment to quash offensive speakers – namely the Muslim students. The editorial wondered if the district attorney would have filed criminal charges against individuals who “had interrupted a campus lecture on chemistry or biophysics.”

Apparently, The Register is unaware that unlike the teaching of chemistry or biophysics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most heatedly debated issues which regularly commands extensive media coverage. The need to carefully protect the right of both sides in the conflict to express their views freely without being unfairly interrupted is all the more pressing precisely for this reason.



Israel’s many detractors are rightly given ample opportunity to freely voice their anti-Israel views on US college campuses without being forcibly silenced. The annual Israeli Apartheid Week is just one example of various Israel-basing fests on campuses across North America.

Organizations such as StandWithUs, the David Project, Hasbara Fellowships, the Israel on Campus Coalition and Masa Israel Journey, along with AIPAC-trained student activists, Hillel-Jewish Agency Israel fellows and others, are taking to the campuses of America to present a different, more accurate picture of Israel while respecting the right of those more critical of Israel to their freedom of speech.

Only through the vigilant protection of a free market of ideas will college students be able to formulate informed opinions on Israel. The Orange County jury and Judge Wilson understand this. Unfortunately, many Americans still don’t.

Trajtenberg and fiscal responsibility

Several activists connected with this summer’s socioeconomic protests have voiced supreme displeasure with the Trajtenberg Committee’s recommendations released Monday.

Some of the criticism was characteristically vague, particularly among the younger activists.

There was much griping about how the Trajtenberg Committee had offered nothing more than “minor adjustments” to the economy’s ills and not the hoped for “revolution,” without specifying what this “revolution” would entail.


Others, such a Prof. Yossi Yonah, a member of Ben-Gurion University’s education department and head of the “alternative team of experts” set up to counterbalance the Trajtenberg Committee, were a bit more specific.

In an interview to Army Radio Monday, Yonah declared that “more far-reaching steps” were in order. The professor of education, fearlessly venturing outside his field of expertise, called to significantly increase the size of the public sector as a percentage of GDP.

In fact, attacks on the Trajtenberg Committee began weeks ago, long before the recommendations were even published, when Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg made it clear his committee would exercise fiscal discipline and would not call for a breach in state budget guidelines.

For Histadrut Labor Federation Chairman Ofer Eini, Trajtenberg’s commitment to fiscal discipline was proof that the committee’s recommendations, whatever they were, would be poorly inadequate. Instead, Eini called on the government to bankroll greater welfare benefits by adding at least NIS 20 billion annually to government expenditures.

Thankfully, Trajtenberg Committee members have ignored irresponsible figures such as Eini, Yonah and others on the economic Left who have failed to internalize the lessons of the Israeli economy’s short history.

Trajtenberg and his fellows are familiar, for instance, with the sort of excessive government spending fueled by a bloated and highly inefficient public sector that, together with other factors, led in 1984 to 450 percent inflation.

No one who knows anything about fiscal policy wants to return to the days when public-sector expenditures made up nearly 60% of GDP, compared to less than 43% today.

Implementation of the Stabilization Plan in July 1985 – which introduced, among other reforms, fiscal restraint – helped reduce inflation and prevent a collapse of the economy.

Trajtenberg and his fellows also recall how in the mid-1990s, an abandonment of fiscal discipline at a time when Israel was absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union led to doubledigit inflation and economic instability.

The severe economic downturn beginning in 2001 led to further fiscal cuts, particularly in welfare benefits. Though it can be argued that in some cases welfare cuts went too far, nevertheless, as a whole it was largely thanks to Israel’s responsible fiscal policies in the first part of the 2000s that helped the Jewish state weather the 2008 economic crisis.

Countries that pursued a less responsible fiscal policy, such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, are now endangering the stability and integrity of the entire European Union.

While there is room for a measured reallocation of our limited budgetary resources – perhaps by cutting from our huge defense budget as suggested by the Trajtenberg Committee – we must be vigilant against breaching the fiscal framework.

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz has set the ambitious goal of ensuring that the 2011 budget deficit does not exceed 3% of GDP, down from 3.7% in 2010. Back in February when the government – in a move that largely catered to populist sentiment – added NIS 1.1b. to the budget in the form of fuel tax cuts, public transport discounts and water tax cuts, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer was quick to warn the government to stick to its budget deficit goal for 2011.

Activists on the economic Left are correct when they declare that the Trajtenberg Committee’s recommendations are not revolutionary – that is precisely what makes them so laudable.

We do not need a radical revamping of our economic system.

This summer’s socioeconomic protests made a major contribution to Israeli society by bringing to the forefront, perhaps for the first time in such a forceful manner, the importance of socioeconomic issues.

But while there is room for reevaluating how we determine our society’s list of priorities in the form of fiscal budget expenditures, we must also remember economic history’s painful lessons about the consequences of irresponsible spending.

The Trajtenberg Committee certainly has.

Post-UN blues

Where do we go from here? That is the question Israelis and Palestinians who yearn for peace are asking themselves after the showdown at the UN this weekend. And the answer to that question is hardly encouraging, judging from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech.

In outlining the causes for the recent stalemate in peace negotiations, Abbas placed the blame squarely on Israel’s shoulders while ignoring the Netanyahu government’s unprecedented 10-month building freeze during 2010 in Judea and Samaria.

Abbas went on to portray Yasser Arafat as a man of peace, without mentioning the deceased PA president’s rejection of the 2000 Camp David initiative backed by former US president Bill Clinton and former prime minister Ehud Barak.

Nor did Abbas mention Arafat’s collaboration, shortly after his rejection of Camp David, with Hamas and other anti-Semitic terrorist groups in the launching of the suicide bombings, shootings and other assorted lethal violence directed at Israelis that became known as the second intifada.

Finally, the PA president neglected to explain why he has to this day refrained from responding to a peace offer made during negotiations in 2008 with former prime minister Ehud Olmert, which, like Camp David, offered the Palestinians the equivalent of close to 100 percent of the West Bank, after land swaps, and the sharing of Jerusalem as the capital of both a Jewish and Palestinian state.

No less disconcerting – though not particularly surprising, based on PA-sponsored propaganda in the past – was Abbas’s omission during his speech of the Jewish people’s connection with the land of Israel.

Perhaps Abbas cannot be expected to see the building of settlements in Judea and Samaria as the return of the Jewish people, after nearly two millennia of exile and prayerful waiting, to a land resonant with historical, religious and cultural meaning. But at the very the least, he could have mentioned that the Holy Land, in addition to being “the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammed, the birthplace of Jesus Christ,” had meaning for Jews as well. But he did not.

During his speech, Abbas also rejected the request put forward by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Israel be recognized as the homeland of the Jewish people. Disingenuously, he argued that meeting this demand would “transform the raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict,” as if it weren’t already.

And though Israel strives, and generally succeeds far better than many countries in the region, including the PA, to protect the rights of minorities, Abbas claimed that recognizing Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people would threaten “the future of a million-and-half Muslim and Christian Palestinians, citizens of Israel.”

Abbas is apparently unperturbed by the double standard inherent in his rejection of recognizing Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, while at the same time defending the Palestinian demand that any future Palestinian state must, of necessity, be Judenrein.

And Abbas also continues to demand the “right of return,” which, if implemented, would flood pre-1967 Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere in the Palestinian Diaspora, effectively upsetting Israel’s Jewish majority.

These elements in Abbas’s speech, which taken collectively make up the “Palestinian narrative,” present an insurmountable obstacle to reaching a peace agreement.

Palestinian leadership must begin preparing its people for peace with Israel by acknowledging that the Jewish people’s connection to the land of Israel is profound on historical, religious and cultural levels.




Only then will Palestinians bring themselves to recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace as a homeland for the Jewish people, alongside a sovereign Palestinian state. Willingness to compromise on issues, such as the right of return, will follow.

It is, after all, only fair that Palestinian refugees be resettled in Palestine, which would be the 22nd Arab state, and not in Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.

Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership might believe that submitting to the Security Council an application for the admission of Palestine as a full member of the UN brings the Palestinian people one step closer to statehood.

Unfortunately, elements of his speech reveal the extent of the chasm that must still be bridged before peace is finally achieved between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel is not to blame

There has been a tendency by some to blame the Netanyahu government for Israel’s growing diplomatic difficulties, in particular over the Palestinian statehood bid in the UN. If only the architects of Israeli foreign policy had put forward some sort of peace initiative, these critics claim, the Palestinians would have aborted their campaign to be recognized by the UN as a state along the 1967 lines.

Opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni said in response to US President Barack Obama’s exceptionally pro- Israel speech before the UN General Assembly Wednesday that “[Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu must initiate the peace process, not as a favor to the Palestinians but for our own welfare...Only the renewal of negotiations will block unilateral measures in the UN and prevent Israel’s isolation.”

Meanwhile, in an op-ed that appeared in Thursday’s New York Times, former prime minister Ehud Olmert criticized Netanyahu for “expending all of his political effort to block Mr. Abbas’s bid for statehood” instead of pursuing a two-state solution.

And Shelly Yacimovich, in her victory speech after clinching the Labor leadership vote Wednesday, said that Netanyahu should call for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. “Don’t let the state be declared unilaterally," said Yacimovich. “It’s in your hands to prevent it.”

In contrast, the US president was careful during his 20-minute speech to avoid placing the blame for the breakdown in negotiations on either side. Instead, Obama called and Israelis and Palestinians to enter into direct negotiations, without mentioning any preconditions.

Apparently, President Obama understands better than our own opposition that the Netanyahu government is not to blame for the absence of peace.

After all, what could Netanyahu conceivably offer the Palestinians that would jump-start talks? Netanyahu already agreed, under American pressure, to an unprecedented 10-month building moratorium in Judea and Samaria – including in consensus settlement blocs such as Ma’aleh Adumim, Efrat and Ariel. But the Palestinians squandered nine of these 10 months, refusing to talk unless the building freeze was expanded to include Jerusalem neighborhoods such as French Hill and Ramat Eshkol, neighborhoods that a majority of Israelis would never give up in a peace deal.

And though Olmert claimed that “the parameters of a peace deal are well known and they have already been put on the table,” he failed to mention that these parameters – which include the creation of a Palestinian state on the territorial equivalent of the pre-1967 lines and the splitting of Jerusalem as the shared capitals of both Israel and a Palestinian state – were already offered in 2000 and 2008 by then-prime ministers Ehud Barak and Olmert, respectively.



Yet Palestinian leaders rejected these offers because they refused to concede the “right of return,” which, if honored, would undermine the Jewish majority by flooding Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees instead of resettling them in a future Palestinian state. In fact, the Palestinian leadership, which refuses to recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, has done nothing to prepare its people for peace with Israel. Instead, Palestinian media and political leaders continue to glorify terrorists and foster hopes that the Palestinian people will someday return to Jaffa, Haifa and other places inside Israel.

As we approach Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, it is only natural to engage in self-reflection and self-criticism. An integral part of Jewish culture is the acceptance of personal responsibility for one's actions and the need to repent for failures so that they are not repeated. However, in the case of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, there is little, if any, room for self-recriminations. If peace depended solely on Israel, it would have been attained long ago.

Balancing big business and free markets

Perhaps one of the thorniest obstacles to free-market competition in smaller economies around the world is the rise of a relatively small number of big conglomerates with diverse holdings in both industrial and financial firms that enjoy extraordinary economic clout. The Israeli economy is no exception.

In a 2009 annual report, the Bank of Israel said Israel had the highest concentration of corporate power in the developed world. A scathing parliamentary report from June last year found that 10 large business groups control 30 percent of the market value of publicly-traded companies, while 16 control half the money in the entire country. And the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which last year admitted Israel as a member, said Israel’s level of corporate concentration is problematic.

On Monday a committee appointed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and headed by outgoing Finance Ministry director-general Haim Shani, published its interim recommendations for improving free-market competition.

One of the recommendations is that conglomerates will not be permitted to have very large holdings in industries with annual revenues more than NIS 8 billion, while at the same time controlling shares in financial institutions that manage NIS 50b. or more.

Also, it will be forbidden for a person to be appointed to the boards of directors of both financial and industrial firms. Measures will also be taken against what the OECD called “cascading ownerships, pyramidal structures and cross-holdings” through which large conglomerates enjoy inordinate control in firms where they have minority share holdings.

And unlike previous reports which failed to lead to reforms, the Shani committee’s recommendations – which still might be modified over the next three months as big businesses are given a hearing – have a good chance of being implemented as is. The tycoons will undoubtedly enlist lobbyists, PR firms and influential political insiders to fight the recommendations.

But this summer’s socioeconomic protests, which griped specifically about the sorts of high costs of goods and services caused by Israel’s oligopolies, have provided the ideal social climate to encourage politicians to take up the popular fight.

Huge conglomerates such as Yitzhak Tshuva’s Delek Group, Nochi Dankner’s IDB Holdings, Shari Arison’s Arison group and various firms controlled by Muzi Wertheim and the late Ofer brothers, which combine holdings in both financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies and investment companies with controlling shares in industries such as shipping, telecommunications, real estate development and retail, will face the prospect of divestment for the sake of fairer competition.

Presently, conglomerates with holdings in both industry and financial institutions have easy access to credit – often at the expense of smaller, more worthy businesses. And this credit, extended by banks, insurance companies, pension funds or investment firms, is made up overwhelmingly of the savings of the wider public.

With a relatively small number of businessmen enjoying a large percentage of the outstanding loans, a situation is created in which one mistake can be huge and incredibly costly to many people.

Still, as the prime minister pointed out, big business is by no means the enemy of the Israeli economy. Indeed, entrepreneurship is the driving force behind growth and prosperity that provides jobs and opportunities and technological development.

However, in order to realize the full potential of our society’s many talented individuals, protect the economy from undue risks and provide citizens with affordable goods and services, it is absolutely essential to ensure truly free and fair competition.

Over the past two decades Israel has undergone an amazing transition from an economy dominated by the Histadrut Labor Federation, nationalized industry, state-owned banks and a stifling gauntlet of bureaucracy to a modern, efficient, free market economy.

As part of that transition a small number of large conglomerates have accrued enormous power and indirectly created a number of market failures that need to be fixed.

Let’s hope that the atmosphere created by this summer’s socioeconomic protests will lend a hand to the present government in its push to make the necessary reforms.

Overcoming gender

Religious soldiers are becoming an increasingly dominant force in the IDF. Although our military provides no official breakdown of the precise number of religious and nonreligious soldiers, various sources estimate that about a third of all graduates from officers training courses in combat units wear crocheted kippot, much higher than the 6 percent they make up in the IDF. In many elite combat units, Orthodox soldiers have taken over the role once played by secular Ashkenazi kibbutziks.




In general this is a highly positive trend. Religious soldiers have proven to be highly motivated, selfless defenders of a Jewish state forced time and again to resort to military means to protect its citizens. And despite claims that religious soldiers are torn between their loyalty to rabbis and their commitment to a secular military hierarchy, there have been few cases of insubordination, though these few cases have often been seized upon by left-wing media with little understanding of the diversities of religious Zionism to portray all crocheted kippa-wearing soldiers as extremists.




There is one part of society, however, that might be hurt by the rise of Orthodox soldiers in the IDF – women. The potential for a clash between religious men and women was evident earlier this month when nine cadets in an officers training course stood up and left an IDF ceremony to avoid listening to the singing of female soldiers.




The cadets, who ignored repeated calls by their commanders to return to the ceremony, claimed that Jewish law forbade them to hear a woman sing, even though several respected spiritual leaders argued there was no obligation to disrupt the ceremony and that soldiers had the option of quietly reciting Psalms or distracting themselves in some other way.




After consultation with the brigade commander, senior army officers and military rabbis, four of the nine who refused to apologize were expelled from the officers’ training course.




The cadets’ demonstrative and premeditated act based on a stringent view in Jewish law – not to mention prurience – coupled with the harsh response of the IDF brass underline the ongoing tension between the sexes. And these sorts of gender clashes are likely to take place more frequently. In parallel to the rise of religious men in the IDF, women too have been seeking out more dominant roles in our military forces, including in combat units once considered off limits to females.




FEMINISTS CALLING for a more egalitarian role for women in the IDF scored their first major victory in 1995 when Alice Miller successfully petitioned the High Court of Justice to open pilots’ training courses to women. In 2000 the Security Service Law was amended to ensure equal opportunity for women in the IDF. Gradually, combat positions were opened to women. And in 2003 women who volunteered for these positions were required to serve three years like men.




Manpower shortfalls in the IDF – in part due to the growing number of 18-year-olds who defined themselves as haredi and, therefore, exempt from military service – created an incentive for the integration of women into combat units. By 2005 positions in the IDF open to women rose to 88% from just 56% in the 1980s.




Like the rise in the number of religious soldiers, the increasing integration of women in diverse and challenging IDF positions is a positive development. Skills learned in the IDF are often readily transferable to the civilian labor market. Women who excel as officers or in other roles that demand responsibility, commitment and interpersonal skills often go on to serve in high-ranking managerial positions after their army stint is finished. And this helps do away with lingering gender discrimination in the business world.




Integration of both women and religious men into the IDF’s most prestigious units need not lead to strife and confrontation. In most cases both the religious sensibilities of devout soldiers and the aspirations of women for professional advancement can be accommodated, provided there is good will, mutual respect and the restraining of religious fanaticism.

Obama, visit Israel

Does Democrat David Weprin’s surprising loss Tuesday in New York’s heavily Jewish and Democratic 9th Congressional District signal a shift of the Jewish vote away from US President Barack Obama? If you believe Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the NY-9 vote is unrepresentative of American Jewry.

The disproportionately high level of Orthodox Jews living in the district, which spans Brooklyn and the Queens, means that deep down this is a traditional-minded constituency very different from the primarily non-Orthodox – and Democratic – majority of US Jews.

Indeed, a cogent argument can be made that Jewish voters in NY-9 – one-third of whose total voters are Jewish, with one-third of that third Orthodox, according to Weprin’s calculations – tend to be more conservative than the Jewish communities in Ohio and Pennsylvania, pivotal states crucial to an Obama victory in 2012. And there might be idiosyncrasies in this special election called to replace the disgraced former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner that make it a bad litmus test for Obama’s popularity among all American Jews.

For instance, Weprin’s principled stand for legalizing gay marriages might have also turned against him the Orthodox or traditional-minded vote in NY-9.

Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Bob Turner’s margin was wide enough that it cannot be explained solely by pointing to the Orthodox vote. And former New York mayor Ed Koch’s appeal to vote Republican was not directed at Orthodox Jews, but to a still more sizable population of non-Orthodox Jews in old-line Queens neighborhoods such as Forest Hills. Those older, heritage-proud non-Orthodox Jews are comparable to the Jews of South Florida, another pivotal state crucial to an Obama victory next year.

So NY-9 might very well be an indication that Obama is in trouble with significant segments of US Jewry. However, it is a bit more difficult to determine whether it is the Obama administration’s Israel policies that have distanced American Jews from the Democrats.

American Jewish Committee surveys in the past four years have shown that Israel has consistently ranked no more than fifth on American Jewish voters’ priority list. Ranking higher are domestic worries such as unemployment, housing prices, healthcare, and conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq where US soldiers’ lives are endangered.

Still, Turner’s attack on Obama’s policies vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict featured prominently in the campaigning. Weprin, in an interview with the Washington Jewish Week shortly after Tuesday’s election, specifically mentioned Obama’s Israel policy. Asked “what happened,” Weprin replied: “The media, my opponent somewhat successfully made it a referendum on Obama. I don’t know if it was just Israel, but Israel certainly was a major part of it.”

We believe there has been a change for the worse in US policies toward Israel under the Obama administration.

True, the US remains Israel’s single most important ally – the promised veto of the Palestinian statehood bid in the Security Council is just the latest example – and the American president remains unshakably committed to Israel’s security.

But it is disheartening that the Obama administration has refused to reaffirm former president George Bush’s 2004 letter – endorsed in overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress – that rejects the notion that any Israeli-Palestinian agreement would include a full return to the 1949 armistice lines.

The Obama administration’s demand, never made by previous US administrations, that Israel impose a complete construction freeze not only in Judea and Samaria but even in consensus Jerusalem neighborhoods as a condition for negotiations is another example of a change for the worse. Even after the Obama administration backtracked, the Palestinians continued to demand a freeze, using it as an excuse to indefinitely delay direct talks.

With 14 months left before the US presidential election, there is still time for improvement. For starters, we would recommend that Obama reach out to the Israeli people, and indirectly to American Jewry, by making a move long overdue. The time has come for Obama to visit Israel.

The NY-9 vote might be a sign that Jewish support for Obama has slipped significantly below the 78 percent he enjoyed in the 2008 election. And that fall in Jewish support might very well be tied in some way to Washington’s policies vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Making an outreach trip to Israel would be a positive first step toward improving perceptions – and realities – in American-Israeli relations.

The Labor primaries

Despite difficult time constraints that pushed the limits of printing deadlines, the front pages of all the major Israeli dailies – including this one – had stories about Monday’s Labor primaries and early results.

In the tabloids, the lead stories and color pictures featured MKs Shelly Yacimovich and Amir Peretz, the two finalists who will face off next week. Others showed some of the 43,391 Labor party members – out of about 66,000 registered members – who exercised their right to vote.

No other political party of comparable size could expect to receive such extensive media coverage. Labor has just eight MKs after Ehud Barak’s Independence Party split from Labor in January of this year. But Labor, the offshoot of Mapai, is not just any party, it is an institution with an illustrious history.

Labor’s first leaders founded the State of Israel and dominated the political scene here for nearly three decades until 1977. The party managed to return to power in 1992 to launch the ill-fated Oslo Accords. And in 1999, Labor candidate Barak formed a short-lived government.

The once powerful political party – which more than any other was identified with the Israeli mainstream’s Zionist ideals and the primary molder of public opinion – has for some time now embarked on a steady process of mostly self-inflicted political atrophy.

Monday’s primaries were the latest chapter in this deterioration.

Diplomatic and security issues have consistently determined the outcome of elections – at least in recent decades. But Labor’s tiny die-hard constituency chose two candidates with no credentials in these areas.

Peretz, a former development town mayor and head of the Histadrut Labor Federation who is well versed in socioeconomic issues, performed abysmally as Defense Minister during the Second Lebanon War.

Yacimovich, meanwhile, who has never served as a minister and has, like Peretz, focused mainly on socioeconomic issues, has yet to flesh out her position on diplomacy and security matters.

Clearly, neither Peretz nor Yacimovich are serious contenders to become the Jewish state’s next prime minister.

Apparently, Labor constituents have given hope of returning to power.

True, the summer of protests have succeeded in bringing to the forefront of public discourse socioeconomic issues. And this might improve Labor’s success at the polls slightly.

However, Labor leaders have failed to articulate viable left-wing economic solutions to the ills of our economy that would not dangerously increase fiscal deficits and hurt Israel’s hard-earned economic stability.

In contrast, the Netanyahu government’s emphasis on encouraging competition, fighting monopolies and fixing market failures through regulatory measures – without significantly increasing government spending – are the sorts of solutions being advised by experienced economists. And Labor will be directly challenged on socioeconomic issues by parties expected to be established by journalist Yair Lapid and former Shas chairman Aryeh Deri.

As a newspaper that dearly values the importance of two viable political options for leadership – one to the Right and one to the Left – as a condition for a robust democracy, we mourn the decline of Labor. Yet Labor has no one to blame for its fall from power but its own leaders.

Unlike David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir or other iconic Labor leaders who were unabashed advocates of strong Jewish nationalism, today’s party leaders seem to have precious little to say about Zionism.

They also seem to believe that the present deadlock in peace talks is primarily Israel’s fault, while the Palestinian leadership’s intransigence and uncompromising demands – unacceptable to the majority of Israelis – are conveniently ignored.

As a result of all this, Labor has gradually pushed itself outside the Israeli consensus.

Will the party continue on its path of self-destruction? If it does, Israeli society and democracy will be the real loser.

The Negev Beduin

The Beduin population of the Negev has a list of genuine gripes against a cabinet decision Sunday to evacuate tens of thousands of Beduin from “unrecognized” villages such as al-Arakib and Tavil Abu Jarwal and resettle them in “recognized” and relatively urbanized locations such as Rahat, Hura, Tel Sheva and Kuseife.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was right when he stated that “given the situation in the Negev, the time has come to act.”

Unfortunately, the NIS 6 billion, five-year plan approved this week contains a number of critical faults that, if not addressed swiftly. could lead to a further deterioration of relations with an increasingly alienated Beduin community. Beduin have already vowed to call a general strike in protest against the plan, and other Arab Israelis might join in.


At a time when Israel is facing numerous challenges abroad, from Turkey and Egypt to the Palestinian bid for statehood in the UN, it would be highly advisable to avoid a clash with the Beduin, a population that is rapidly growing (the average Beduin woman has between five and six children) and is relatively loyal (many Beduin men serve in the IDF).

Conflict with the Beduin might also have international ramifications. Prof. James Anaya, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, recently issued a report criticizing the Israeli refusal to recognize the rights of Beduin to land in the Negev.

The State of Israel has a moral obligation to provide the 200,000-strong Beduin population of the Negev with basic services such as roads, water, electricity and garbage collection. Besides, their demands are not outrageous.

They make up about 30 percent of the population of the Negev and if all their land demands of about 600,000 dunams (60,000 hectares) – in addition to about 200,000 dunams already recognized by the state back in 2003 – are met they would receive a total of 5% of the land in the Negev.

In October 2007, former Supreme Court justice Eliezer Goldberg was chosen to head an eight-man committee that included two Beduin representatives living in “recognized” villages in the Negev.

In December 2008, the Goldberg Committee presented a list of recommendations worded in conciliatory language. Statements such as “there is no justification for the state to treat the Beduin residents in these communities differently from the way it treats the rest of the citizens of the state,” and that Beduin have a “historic connection” to the Negev were received positively by the Beduin community as a basis for dialogue, though certain aspects of the report were criticized.

Where possible, wrote the Goldberg Committee members, an effort should be made to recognize the dozens of “unrecognized” villages throughout the southeastern Negev in the triangle created by Beersheba, Dimona and Arad, where the vast majority of Beduin now live, after being expelled from the western Negev in the years following the establishment of the state. The committee also recommended a generous compensation program in cases where recognition was unfeasible.

But for two years none of the Goldberg Committee recommendations were implemented. Eventually, a new body, the Prawer Committee, was formed. Devoid of Beduin representation, the Prawer Committee issued recommendations that were eventually adopted by the cabinet and have turned out to be bad for the Beduin.

As pointed out by Dr. Suleiman Abu Bader, director of the Robert Arnow Center For Bedouin Studies and Development at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, perhaps the biggest flaw in the Prawer Committee was its “top down approach” that made absolutely no attempt to incorporate the Beduin community in the decision-making process.

While it might not be realistic to meet all demands, a more serious effort needs to be made on the part of the government to open up channels of communication with the Beduin community in the Negev. Perhaps it is not too late to return to the positive atmosphere created by the Goldberg Committee’s approach that came close to striking a balance between recognition of Beduin historic rights to land in the Negev with the Zionist ideal of settling the area with Jews and “making the desert bloom” with the fruits of Jewish labor.

Hamas lesson for Libya

Libya’s rebel fighters have still not clinched control over a few areas such as Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, the desert town of Sabha and Bani Walid, but there is already talk of instituting democratic elections to choose a new leadership to replace Gaddafi’s dictatorial regime.

Not long after Libya’s National Transitional Council won control over Tripoli, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the council’s chairman, called for a new constitution and elections within 18 months. An internal UN document, meanwhile, envisions a two-stage transition to democracy in Libya.

However, judging from numerous examples in recent decades, the hasty implementation of “democratic” elections can be wrought with danger and can often lead to strife, bloodshed and even civil war. Academic studies have backed up the argument that rushing to the ballots is often a bad idea.

Dawn Brancati of Washington University and Jack Snyder of Columbia University have found, based on looking at elections that took place around the world after civil wars since 1945, that the sooner a country went to the polls the more likely it was to relapse into war. On average, Brancati and Snyder found that waiting five years before holding the first election reduced the chances of war by one-third.

And there is a local example of what happens when the trappings of democracy are introduced before the prerequisites for any democratic regime – administrative institutions, rule of law, political and social stability and cultural norms – are put in place. In January 2006 Palestinians went to the polls and granted Hamas – a terrorist organization bent on using violence, including suicide bombings, to destroy the Jewish state – a landslide victory in the Palestinian elections for parliament.

The vote led to the eventual split between the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip and the Fatah-controlled West Bank, and further complicated the already impossible chances for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Elliot Abrams, at the time a special assistant to president George W. Bush and the National Security Council’s senior director for Near East and North African Affairs, rightly noted in an interview with The Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon in June that in retrospect the US position on allowing those elections was mistaken. A hasty implementation of “democracy” can mean that citizens’ first experience with democratic elections might very well be their last.

Similarly, Libya is far from ready for democratic elections. The country lacks a stable civil society and is bereft of modern institutions, while its oil-based economy has fostered rampant corruption.

Further exacerbating the situation is the all-too-real danger of a new round of fighting. While the rebels won a decisive victory over Gaddafi, thus negating the possibility that forces loyal to the old regime will try to make a comeback, the balance of power among the victorious factions still remains in flux.

And the country is still awash in weapons, including stocks looted from government warehouses. Those arms are held by rival factions and private citizens alike. And judging from precedents in Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere, UN peacekeepers on the ground in Libya are unlikely to play a significant role in keeping the peace.

Before elections take place, Libya needs to be given the opportunity to build up impartial, rule-based, and noncorrupt institutions, including courts, police, and other governmental bureaucracies. Ideally, the country should also formulate a constitution that protects human rights, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.Premature elections in Libya might give the false impression of a speedy transition from dictatorship to democracy, but as the Palestinian example has shown, hastily implemented democratic elections alone are no guarantee that a more enlightened leadership will be voted in to power.

Democracies must be built from the bottom up, starting with administrative institutions that can help ensure the rule of law and protect basic human rights. Citizens must be educated to participate in civil rule and appreciate the benefits of a true democracy: freedom, liberty and equality.

Until Libya makes significant progress in these areas, it would be not only unwise but downright dangerous to push ahead with “democratic” elections within 18 months, as Libya’s National Transitional Council chairman is calling to do.

Waiting for Ankara

The Palmer Report, a UN review of the Mavi Marmara fiasco, has been ready for a few months now.

But until last week, its publication had been repeatedly postponed by Washington.

Though the report is critical of Israel, it contains a number of conclusions particularly damaging to the Turks that Ankara had a clear interest in preventing from being made public. A behind-the-scenes rapprochement deal would have included the quiet scrapping of the Palmer Report. But Ankara’s opportunity for reconciliation without fanfare passed after The New York Times obtained and released details of the report on Thursday, a day ahead of its official publication.

Admittedly, the report censured the navy’s Flotilla 13 commandos for using excessive force – which could now expose them to criminal prosecution in international courts – and criticized Israel for failing to provide “satisfactory explanation” for the nine “unacceptable” deaths of passengers on board the Mavi Marmara.

But the Palmer panel members also recognized that the commandos “faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers... requiring them to use force for their own protection.”

The report also provided an unprecedented UN-backed justification for Israel’s naval blockade – first put in place in the wake of Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

The panel, set up by UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon and headed by former New Zealand premier Geoffrey Palmer, found that Israel’s naval blockade is “a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons entering Gaza by sea, and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”

Its enforcement “may take place on the high seas and may be conducted by force if a vessel resists.”

These findings clash with Turkey’s claim that the blockade should be considered illegal collective punishment.

They also undermine Ankara’s justification for demanding that Israel lift the blockade as a condition for re-normalizing relations.

The report seemed to rebuke Turkey for failing to stop the IHH, an Islamist charity supportive of Hamas, from organizing the flotilla.

“More could have been done to warn the flotilla participants of the potential risks involved and to dissuade them from their actions,” the report said. “There exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly the IHH.”

The Palmer Report’s findings clearly find fault with Turkey for implicitly supporting the flotilla, and reject outright Ankara’s claim that the naval blockade on Gaza – designed to prevent the smuggling of arms and ammunition by Hamas, a terrorist organization that maintains ties with Turkey – is in any way illegal.

Yet, in a supreme act of chutzpah, it is Turkey – not Israel – that is now using the Palmer Report to justify a series of actions meant to hurt relations between the two countries. At a rushed press conference on Friday, even before the report was officially released, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, basing himself on The New York Times leak, threatened to take Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for “an investigation into what the Gaza blockade really is.”

Davutoglu also announced that Ankara was expelling Israel’s ambassador and was freezing all military agreements.

He also said Turkey would take measures for freedom of maritime movement in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, would no longer recognize the Gaza blockade and would support flotilla victims who take the matter to court.

Israel has already voiced “regret” for the Mavi Marmara incident, as recommended in the Palmer Report, but was snubbed by Turkey, which insists on a formal apology.

The government has also adopted the report’s recommendation to provide for the deceased and injured victims and their families by sponsoring a fund, but rightly balked at Turkey’s demand for compensation, saying that damages payments would amount to an admission of wrongdoing.

As long as Ankara adopts a bellicose approach apparently aimed at riding the wave of anti-Israel sentiment so prevalent in the region, there is not much Jerusalem can do to facilitate rapprochement – except to stick to its position and wait for a change in Turkish diplomacy.