Issue # 119 / February 17, 1999

In publishing PS: The Intelligent Guide to Jewish Affairs, The Editors seek to promote understanding of Judaism's humane social ethic, especially its prophetic vision of the just community, and to apply this heritage to contemporary public policy.

Four looks at the run-up to Israel's elections:

Dan Leon
Ami Isseroff
Larry Butchins
Adam Keller & Beate Zilversmidt

Dan Leon's Jerusalem Diary

The military in politics. There is no danger of a military putsch in Israel but it is a fact that the former high-ranking IDF officers are playing a growing role in the political life of the country. Though since the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the 1982 Lebanon war and intifada, the reputation of the army (once considered by many to be "invincible") has been somewhat tarnished, the demand for high ex-officers in Israel's political and economic life is on the rise.

Between 1949 and 1994, of two hundred forty generals who were retired, over one third went into politics or took up top posts in economic corporations. Amira Segev has noted in Ha'aretz that of fifteen past chiefs of staff since 1948, ten went into politics, including Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin. In the outgoing Knesset there are ten ex-senior officers and many more are running this year. Another ten are Mayors of large cities. In the election staff of the Labor party they occupy many top organizational slots.

Women lack command experience. Former top Air Force officer Yaacov Turner, the new mayor of Beersheva, thinks that "a general with good command experience" has advantages over others. One indirect consequence of all this is that women, half the population but lacking the heroic military record and command experience of the males, have only nine out of one hundred twenty Knesset members. (Their position is somewhat better in the municipalities, where women mayors were elected in Herzliya and Natanya and there are four hundred women out of 1,560 councilors).

Why the demand for high ex-IDF officers in politics? One reason is surely that even now, the IDF still retains a unique standing in the public eye. Among the perceived advantages of officers over civilians, one is surely that the former project an image of service for its own sake as against the corrupt reputation of political life, particularly in the Netanyahu era.

Seeking integrity. Those responsible for persuading electors in the coming elections are banking on former army commanders like Labor's Barak and centrist Shahak (both former chiefs of the general staff) or centrist ex-major-general Yitzhak Mordechai, who was defense minister in the Likud government. They will be projected as representing more honesty and more sincerity than many present-day politicians, particularly when the prime minister is considered lacking all integrity.

It is too early as regards the coming May Knesset elections to gauge whether the abundance of ex-IDF candidates will turn out to be a positive or a negative development. There have been ex-soldiers who have promoted peace like Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman at Camp David and Yitzhak Rabin at Oslo. On the other hand, Ariel Sharon and Raphael Eitan have epitomized hawkish and militaristic, even warmongering policies.

Barak, Mordechai and Shahak will be prominent in the election campaign. Let us hope they will succeed in overcoming Netanyahu not because they are ex-IDF officers but because nothing is more important than replacing the prime minister.

## Dan Leon is co-managing editor of Palestine-Israel Journal, published in Jerusalem, and PS's Contributing Editor in Israel. His "Jerusalem Diary" appears in alternate issues of PS.

From the Peace Camp (1)
A Bad Week
By Ami Isseroff

Rehovoth, Israel-In a hasty flurry of pre-election legislation, the Israeli Knesset passed a number of ill-advised laws, and throttled some very good ones. A basic law regarding religious freedom was not passed after it lost the support of Labor MKs afraid of vengeance from the all-powerful Orthodox parties. A law guaranteeing that no part of the Golan Heights could be returned to Syria without a majority vote in the Knesset did pass. When it comes to setting up obstacles to peace, everyone is united.

The Israeli Supreme Court had ruled that representatives of Reform and Conservative Judaism must be seated in local religious councils that are paid for out of public funds. The Ministry of Religious affairs has been doing its best to thwart this decision. The Knesset passed a law stipulating that all council members must swear to abide by Orthodox religious law. This is designed to prevent the seating of Reform and Conservative Jews.

The star performance was given by Center Party leader Yitzhak Mordechai, who cast the deciding vote in favor of the Religious Council law, coming down squarely on the side of religious coercion and against the very principles his party was supposed to represent.

As the centrist non-party is a party in search of a platform, Herewith are a few modest suggestions for platform planks.

1. Israel will honor international agreements signed by our government, including the Oslo Accords and the Wye Memorandum.

2. Separation of Church and State. No more tax money for religious councils, ritual baths and fictitious yeshivas that teach fictitious yeshiva students how to stay out of the army.

3. Freedom of religion for the Jewish people. Israel is one of the few countries of the world where Jews are not free to practice their religion as they see fit.

4. No imprisonment without due process, i.e. an end to administrative detention.

5. An end to house demolitions. Palestinians and Israeli Arabs should be able to get permission to build houses like anyone else anywhere in the world.

In any other country, these points would be considered middle of the road positions. In Israel, they are only adopted by the extreme left. Religious coercion is accepted by everyone as a kind of elemental fact of life. The Shas party is even gaining significant support among Israeli Arabs. Of course, there is no chance that any major party will come out against house demolitions and administrative arrest. It seems that these practices must now be a part of the great Jewish tradition, handed down with the law from Sinai.

Ami Isseroff edits the Israeli-based Website PeaceWatch (www.ariga.com/peacewatch), where this essay first appeared.

From the Peace Camp (2)
Cry, the Beloved Country
By Larry Butchins

Raanana, Israel-The election shenanigans are really beginning to annoy me. Ramon is in . . . no, he's out, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak is/isn't/is starting a new party. Yitzhak Mordechai is Minister of Defense-oops, no he's not, he's leader of a centrist party. No, he supports Shas. Just what the hell is going on? As a member of what they used to call the "silent majority" . . . I feel it's time for the ordinary, law-abiding "centrist" citizen to speak out.

I really thought that with the formation of the so-called Centrist Party there may be some hope for those of us who just want to get on with our lives, live in peace and harmony with everybody and anybody, respect each others' viewpoints (while maintaining the right to disagree) show respect for human life and dignity, love animals, drive like a civilized human being, not litter our streets and keep our environment healthy (or return it to health).

Alas. If this week's less than exemplary opening performance by the new leader of the new party, Yitzhak Mordechai, is anything to go by, this just doesn't seem possible. Does all the above seem like some kind of Utopia-unattainable, a dream never to be realized? Is what I have sketched above so difficult to achieve? Is it so against human nature to want these few simple things?

In South Africa, from whence I sprung, there was once a great writer named Alan Paton, who wrote a book called Cry, the Beloved Country. This book was written at the end of the 1940's but it was prophetic and wise and predicted the course of race relations in that country for the following fifty years. One of its most prophetic and chilling concepts was expressed in the words spoken by a black priest in mourning for his son, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a white man:

"My greatest fear, is that when they (the whites) have turned to loving, we (the blacks) will have turned to hating. . . ." I think it is time to write a book with a similar title Cry, the Beloved Country-because, despite what some people would have you believe, we "lefties" actually do love this country and we do weep for it.

We weep for the hatred engendered between our own "blacks" and "whites"; we weep for the mistrust and anger sown between Jew and Arab and Jew and Jew; we weep for the nineteen-year-old cut down in Lebanon in a useless, futile war . . . we weep for the family wiped out in a traffic accident by some idiot who wanted to get to the head of the line . . . we weep for the unemployed, and the underemployed and for street people and for the environment, being destroyed by pollution and litter.

We weep for the bitterness and rancor between Orthodox and Conservative and Reform Jews and for the contempt by our Minister of Religious Affairs for the ruling of the Supreme Court . . . we weep for the threats made against judges and for the contempt for the rule of law . . . . we weep for a media that is only interested in ratings and sensationalism and we despair for attitudes that extol an assassin. We weep for lost opportunities and lies and trickery of those who would call themselves our leaders.

But most of all, we weep for our children who will somehow have to sort our this mess if they wish to remain in this land. . . we, who brought them here to what we thought was a better, more open, democratic, creative way of life appear to have condemned them to live in a morass of hatred, lies, contempt, cheating, dishonesty, deceitfulness, selfishness, coercion and fear. Yes, cry the beloved country; we cry for those who died here and for those who will die here-not in the peacefulness of their old age, but cut down by hatred-be it political terrorism or terrorism on the roads . . . there is much to cry for...

But being an eternal optimist, I still seek for one candle in the darkness. I pray that candle can be lit soon, before the darkness-the "nothing" of the Never Ending Story-overwhelms us.

Larry Butchins is a writer and journalist, working in finance and high-tech. His wife's mother and sister were among the victims of the Dizengoff bomb blast on Purim 1996. This essay first appeared on the PeaceWatch website, published by the PEACE Mid-East Dialog Group (http://www.ariga.com/peacewatch/).

From the Peace Camp (3)
Burgers and Bromides
By Adam Keller & Beate Zilversmidt

The call for boycott of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, launched a year ago by the Gush Shalom movement (info@gush-shalom.org), continues to reverberate, and sometimes in unexpected spots. The Israeli McDonalds recently declared that they will not open branches in any of the settlements. True, the Israeli concessionaire of McDonald's, Omri Padan, is a bit of an unusual businessman; he actually was among the founders of Peace Now twenty years ago. In a recent newspaper interview (Ha'aretz, Jan. 15), Padan explained his corporate policy:

"Of our sixty-five branches, none is in the Territories. McDonald's-Israel neither did nor will open a branch at any Israeli settlement beyond the Green Line. We have been approached on that issue by settlers from Ariel [on the West Bank], Katzrin [Golan Heights] and several other settlements. I turned them all down out of hand. The only exception I would consider making, should it fit with business criteria, is opening a branch in East Jerusalem. I don't believe in being a pure businessman without taking politics into account. You can't separate the two. Already when I was the general manager of Kitan Textiles I told the board I would resign immediately if they move to open a plant on the West Bank. In McDonald's-Israel I am owner as well as general manager. I have the privilege of not needing to compromise on my principles."

Padan's was a rare exception in Israel in recent months: a clear, unambiguous, uncompromising public statement of position. Ever since the Knesset decided upon early general elections, the leaders of the Israeli opposition seem determined to avoid controversial issues, contorting themselves so as to fit the supposed wishes of the amorphous "undecided voters."

Labor Leader Barak's campaign, emphasizing socioeconomic issues and almost completely avoiding mention of the Palestinians, is explicitly modelled upon Clinton's in 1992 and Blair's in 1997. However, the United States and Britain were not torn down the middle by the need to make difficult decisions regarding occupied territories where the situation nears the boiling point.

Yitzchak Mordechai, the man who held Israel's defense ministry until this week, seemed less calculated in the stormy row with the prime minister. In his first angry speech after being sacked from his ministerial position, he sharply denounced Netanyahu for wrecking the Wye Agreement-and did it quite well. But a day later, after being officially installed as the leader and prime ministerial candidate of the newly-founded Center party, Mordechai too started spewing a string of "safe" cliches, forgotten as soon as he had uttered them.

It is highly presumptuous to contradict such noted "spin doctors" as James Carville, adviser both to Clinton and Blair in their campaigns, and now employed by Barak. Nevertheless, Gush Shalom undertook that presumption in a recent newspaper ad:

"He who tries to escape from the Palestinian issue, the Palestinian issue will pursue him. All the candidates of the left and the center are trying to ignore the centrality of the Palestinian issue-but any day something may happen to remind us of that centrality. It would be advisable for all candidates to formulate their solution in a clear and open way, before events compel them to do so. Urgent social issues should, indeed, play an important role in the election campaign-but they, too, are inseparably bound up with the need to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" (Ha'aretz, Jan. 15).

By fixing an election date as late as May 17, the government-with Labor's help-effectively decreed that during four whole months Israel would be absorbed in staring at its own navel. The international community unwittingly encourages this attitude by pressuring the Palestinians to delay their declaration of independence, scheduled for May 4-so as "not to help Netanyahu's campaign." In the meantime, the Palestinians are expected to endure daily hardships in silence.

Adam Keller and Beate Zilversmidt edit The Other Israel. Articles from the publication may be viewed on the World Wide Web at (http://members.tripod.com/~other_Israel/).

Demolition Derby
By Jeff Halper

During this period leading up to the elections, we seem to be in the midst of a renewed campaign of house demolitions, both in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank. Twenty-two Palestinian homes were demolished last year in East Jerusalem, and hundreds of demolition orders have been issued. Because of the refusal of the Jerusalem Municipality and the Ministry of the Interior to draw up master plans for East Jerusalem neighborhoods that allow for natural population growth, Palestinian residents cannot obtain building permits and are forced to build "illegally." Israel's officially-stated policy is to enforce a seventy-to-thirty percent majority of Jews over Arabs in Jerusalem. In order to do so, it has expropriated thousands of dunums of private land from Palestinians for Israeli use, while confining the Palestinian population to severely circumscribed parts of East Jerusalem. While tens of thousands of units of houses have been built for Israelis on expropriated lands, Palestinians have access to only eight percent of the municipal area, much of which is already built up.

Fully ninety-four percent of the village of Issawiyeh's land has been expropriated since 1967. The Israeli neighborhood of French Hill, part of the Hebrew University, a nearby army base, the West Bank settlement of Mishur Adumim and the highway to the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim are all built on Issawiyeh land. The residents of Issawiyeh have been left with just one hundred sixty-six dumums (forty-one acres)-and about a fourth of that is zoned by the city as "open space" that cannot be built upon.

Issawiyeh has also borne the brunt of the government's demolition policy in Jerusalem. Since 1975 some twenty-five houses have been demolished in this village of six thousand people. More than forty others have demolitions orders issued against them. But such is the situation throughout East Jerusalem, home to some two hundred thousand Palestinians. Between 1967-1995, some sixty thousand units have been built for Jews, only five hundred for Arabs. In that time eighty-eight percent of the houses built in East Jerusalem were for Jews, all financed with government subsidies. Only twelve percent of new houses were Palestinian, financed by the residents themselves. To meet only existing needs, an additional twenty-one thousand units must be built for the Palestinian population. Yet the Municipality grants only one hundred fifty permits a year for Arab housing, while demolishing between twenty and fifty units a year.

Recently, on orders from the Interior Ministry, around one hundred fifty Israeli soldiers and police officers entered Issawiye to demolish the family house of Ahmed Mahmoud Abu Awais and Issa Abu Awais. The house had been a home for two families, consisting of fourteen persons, over the past three years. The families were given no prior notification that Israelis forces would arrive to destroy the house. Indeed, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) had worked frantically (and in the end successfully) throughout the night and the next morning to save the house of Na'if Abed. In all our contacts with the municipality no one ever informed us that the Abu Aweis house was also slated for demolition. As a result, the families had no time to remove their furniture and the Israeli forces refused to allow them to do so before demolishing the house.

During the demolition process tear gas and rifles were used to quell local protests. As in all demolitions, the police and army were quick to shoot. Besides tear gas, none of the crowd control techniques used against Jewish demonstrators-horses, water cannons, batons and the like-were employed. Shooting into the crowds was the police force's first option. In the name of Israelis seeking peace, justice and reconciliation, ICAHD members went to Issawiyeh to extend our condolences to the family. We denounce the wanton and unnecessary violence that accompanied the demolition, as well as government and municipal policies of carrying out demolitions in general.

Jeff Halper directs the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; e-mail halper@iol.co.il

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