The
Big Mouth Of Israeli Fascism
By Uri Avnery
08 March, 2007
Gush Shalom
"Patriotism,"
said Dr. Samuel Johnson over 200 years ago, "is the last refuge
of a scoundrel." If we substitute racism for patriotism, then we
have a perfect match with the Esterina Tartman affair.
She could have been a popular
member of the Knesset. She belongs to a respected Oriental family (The
Shabtai family, seven generations in the country). She is pretty and
looks very much younger than her 50 years. She is the mother of four.
She has recovered after a severe road accident.
She appeared on the public
stage at the end of the last Knesset, when she took the place of a deceased
member. From the very first moment, she aroused strong feelings of rejection,
disgust and even loathing.
Why? Because she is a vulgar
person. Her "big mouth" has become her trademark. Not only
is she a member of Avigdor Ivette Liberman's nationalist-racist faction,
"Yisrael Beitenu", which exudes the odor of fascism, but she
herself is prone to voicing discordant opinions. Her rabidly racist
speeches have won her headlines in the media, but repelled decent people
on the Left and even on the Right. "An ax has been raised against
the tree called Zionism", "The evil must be uprooted!"
she declared after a Muslim-Arab had been appointed a minister for the
first time.
Such statements are probably
music in the ears of Ivette Liberman (no one knows why his Russian or
Moldavian first name sounds like a female French one.) So it was only
natural that he decided to give Esterina the post of Minister of Tourism,
which was offered to his faction. Since he is the sole leader of Yisrael
Beitenu ("Israel is our Home"), that was enough. When asked
how the decision was taken, he replied, with unintended irony, "democratically
and unanimously." Unanimous" comes from "one mind",
in this case his own.
* * *
AND THEN, just a moment before
the appointment was confirmed, it became known that the beautiful Esterina
was a fraud, who claimed academic degrees which she had never been awarded.
Also, it was discovered that, after her road accident, she had used
dubious testimony in order to obtain compensation and incapacity-rates
(52%) from the insurance companies. In another case, after hitting a
pedestrian, she claimed that the victim had caused the accident intentionally,
to gain compensation. The courts reprimanded her for this argument and
took away her driving license for a long time.
It was the academic titles
that were her undoing. Actually, a Knesset member does not need any.
I served in the Knesset three times without having finished elementary
school. So, why did Ms Tartman add the bogus titles to her official
biography? Just for her image's sake.
For several days, the scandal
outshone all the other affairs that make Israeli life so interesting:
the sex scandal of the President, the fatal kiss of the (ex) Minister
of Justice, the cloud of alleged corruption affairs that follows the
Prime Minister wherever he goes, the alleged election bribes of the
Minister of Finance, the widespread suspicions of bribery in the highest
ranks of the Tax Authority, the resignation of the Chief-of-Staff after
the Lebanon fiasco, the resignation of the Chief of Police because he
did nothing about Mafia penetration of his organization.
The Esterina Affair has even
eclipsed another major new disclosure: that Ehud Olmert, in his former
capacity as Minister of Industry and Trade, distributed jobs and other
benefits to some 115 members of the powerful Likud Central Committee,
of which he was then a member, in order to ensure his place on the party's
list for the next elections. And indeed, how could such routine corruption
compete with the juicy affair of the "Tartarina" (as she was
dubbed by one Knesset member.)
* * *
HOWEVER IT IS not the cheating
of Tartman that is the main point, nor even her vulgar racism, but a
nagging question: how could such a person (almost) become a member of
the cabinet?
True, the Minister of Tourism
does not have a very important portfolio, but is still the equal of
all the other members sitting around the cabinet table, with a vote
on matters of peace and war. This vote can be decisive in sending thousands
of soldiers and civilians to their death. The minister takes part in
votes that decide the future of the state for generations to come. How
could such a dubious individual ever reach such a high station?
That is not a purely Israeli
question. It has been raised in many other democracies, too.
In the United States, the
ministers are appointed by the president and serve only as his aides.
If he wants, he appoints talented people. If he feels like it, he appoints
perfect fools, cheats and fanatics.
But the President himself,
how is he appointed? He needs only one talent: to convince the electorate
to vote for him. After being elected, he can surprise everybody and
turn out to be a real leader, with vision and integrity (like Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, for example), or he may turn out to be a charismatic
con-man, a trickster devoid of values and principles (see some of the
latest names in the media).
Israeli democracy is based
on a different system. Since no party ever wins an election outright,
the prospective Prime Minister needs a coalition in order to put together
a parliamentary majority. The ministries are distributed between the
coalition parties as spoils of war. Only after the parties have been
allotted their shares, each according to its strength, is it decided
who shall actually occupy the seats. In a dictatorial party, like Yisrael
Beitenu, it is the leader who hands out the jobs to his loyal supporters.
In a democratic party, the winners are the politicians who have been
most successful in accumulating power by intrigues, bribing colleagues
and setting up inner-party power centers.
* * *
AT NO stage of this process,
does one particular consideration play any role at all: the ability
of the candidates to direct the ministries they are fighting over. That
is considered irrelevant.
I remember a diplomatic party,
shortly after Ehud Barak was elected Prime Minister, where I met several
of the ministers newly appointed by Barak. All of them were hopping
mad.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, a professor
of history, an introverted intellectual with an interest in social theory
and peace affairs, was exiled to the Ministry of Police. There he was
responsible for the "October Events" of 2000, when the police
shot dead a dozen Arab citizens. The Judicial Board of Inquiry reprimanded
him harshly.
Yossi Beilin, who had dreamed
of the Foreign Office, a man of many political ideas (some good, some
bad, some very bad), was sent to the Ministry of Justice, which did
not interest him in the slightest. Barak treated the others in the same,
almost sadistic, way.
But why turn to the past
- the present has enough examples to offer. As chairman of the Labor
Party, Amir Peretz had a right to the most important ministry allotted
to his party: Defense. His tenure there has turned into a pathetic farce
(exemplified most vividly by the famous picture that shows the minister
observing maneuvers through binoculars with the lenses still capped.
The Foreign Minister, Tsipi
Livni, is considered well suited for the job by her colleagues because
other countries - the United States, the United Kingdom and Austria
among them - also have female foreign ministers. She also has dealings
with the female Chancellor of Germany and may soon - God willing - be
meeting with a female president of France. Since assuming office, Livni
has not started any initiative and not expressed any idea that would
suggest that she has any vision at all.
The Minister of Police is
a former Shin Bet chief, and therefore sees the police as a force fighting
enemies, rather than protecting citizens. He has shown his talent by
appointing a new police chief, who has in the past been stigmatized
in court as unfit to wear a police uniform. The new Minister of Justice,
who has just been appointed, declares publicly that his main aim is
to cripple the Supreme Court, the last bastion of democracy in Israel,
because a female friend of his failed to be appointed to this august
body. (His main ally in this noble endeavor was - surprise, surprise
- MK Esterina Tartman.) And the appointment of Avigdor Liberman, the
primitive racist bully, as minister in charge of dealing with the Iranian
problem is like introducing a deranged elephant into a porcelain shop.
And this government remains
in power only because practically everybody believes that another one
would be even worse.
* * *
ISRAELI SOCIETY is vibrant,
multi-faceted and rich in talents. It is prominent in many fields, such
as the sciences, medicine, the world of computers and especially of
start-up companies, the economy, literature, in several fields of the
arts and some sports. Why, then, for Gods sake, does it elevate to the
highest ranks politicians who are good for nothing?
I have the impression that
in other democracies, similar questions are being asked. There, too,
a vicious circle is in operation: the political profession is debased,
as a result, good people do not choose a political career, as a result,
the political profession gets even more debased.
According to a Hebrew proverb,
"the trouble of others is half of a comfort". Not in this
case.
Israel is facing many problems,
more than most democratic countries. It craves recognition from its
neighbors. It must overcome the negative aspects that accompanied a
hundred years of Zionist endeavor. It needs a settlement, peace and
conciliation with the Palestinian people, and with the entire Arab world.
It must cope with deep domestic schisms - between the secular and the
religious, between the poor and the rich, between the Jewish majority
and the Arab minority, between the various Jewish ethnic communities.
In order to cope with these
tasks, we need outstanding men and women, people with vision, integrity
and talent. And, yes: patriots who are not refuge-seeking scoundrels.
In short: men and women who
are the very opposite of Ivette and his Esterina.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.
He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent
and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book
The Politics of Anti-Semitism.