the Israeli crisis

The Israeli Crisis

By David Verveer

Realizing that the political gossip coming from Israel sounds rather confusing; allow me to make a try to explain it to you in my simplistic way of comprehension.

Israel, a young nation of 60 years old, was created by a small bunch of highly intellectual idealists, who where experts in nearly all fields of science, without any practical knowledge or sense for tradition, and of course we adopted the democratic system of coalition government (mainly the British system) based of one man one vote national election, where all citizens (Arab and Jews) equal rights to vote.

Being a small democratic country, without any historic political parties, created a party system based on numerous ideologies; rightist parties (revisionists and settlers and non thinkers) leftist parties (socialists, blind followers and non thinkers), religious rightist leaning parties lead by old rabies, Arab parties, supporting the Palestinian claims, the so called impossible mixture of Israeli Palestinians (15% of the total population and growing), the very left and very right splinter parties and a majority of centralists, who couldn't care, believe in popular leadership, fed to them with the help of every half hour news broadcasts and other media. We have every 2 year a new election, even though, the members of parliament are elected for a four year term, they never reach a full term., as they are toppled by active scandals which feed the coalition breakdown.

Israel is really the only real democracy in the region, and running a county of only 7 million people, divided in more than 30 parties (not all in parliament), which is not an easy task, and the members of parliament are daily busy with either supporting the government or trying to topple the government, by digging up old or new scandals, which are plentiful and go from sex scandals, election bribes, to stupid quotations by one of the Ministers (specially the prime minister).

Concerning scandals, I need to mention an undeniable fact, the scandal sufficient to topple the government does not have to be true, or have any historical value, it is enough to get the media to catch on and daily publish the alleged colorful crimes in the media. The current scandal is a probe in the financial behavior of our current prime minister, who is supposed to have received envelopes with cash money to run election campaigns 20 years ago for mayor of Jerusalem and after that to run in the primaries of his party (a party he left 2 years ago). Receiving money for election is not against the law, and the only way to get elected (provided you don't belong to a certain section of the population that allows their religious leader (the Rabbi or Sheikh or Millionaire) to decide.

When a politician receives money from somebody, he either receives it as a trial to bribe him or contribute nameless money (in cash) for election purposes. This money is collected by money collectors, who receive a certain percentage of the money collected. Of course, it is impossible to get elected without contributions (legal and slightly illegal), but when the papers run daily articles on how Olmert received huge sums (in cash) estimated total of 150,000 USD from a Jewish money collector Talansky (over a period of 15 years) it looks bad, specially when you repeat hearing it and reading it. The fact that the media (hungry for blood stories, informs you on the crimes committed by the Prime Minister) assisted by opposition politicians, trying to topple the government, makes the Prime Mister look bad (a crook).

Of course, I won't claim that Olmert is completely innocent of any wrong doings, that is the task of the police; but I do claim that some interested people try to stir the smoking woodpile, in order to start combustion. Who are those people, in this case they are very easy to identify, as they are the people who oppose any moves towards peace with the Arabs, that involves concessions and return of the areas conquered and occupied, by claiming that the entire area belongs in the historical covenant of God with the people of Israel (the Promised Land).

The Olmert Government is nearing, step by step; to an agreement with the Palestinians, which includes removing those settlers, and even worth, it seems that there is an possibility that we start talking to the Syrians, which of course requires the return of the Golan Heights. All this causes a hectic search for scandals, sufficient to stop these peace efforts, by toppling the government. A stinker was found, in the form of a religious (Great Israel supporter) 75 old, dramatic Jewish American Fund Collector, who tearfully tells the entire world about the money he gave to Olmert through the years.

Irrelevant if the law was really broken, not important that Tallansky never got anything back for it, nor that Olmert himself did not handle the money, but left it all to his legal advisor and his secretary, we have sufficient smoke to lighten the political fire, politicians trying to better their jumping positions, add loud but empty phrases, on moral behavior (but please don't start to investigate them as well, as we can not handle more scandals at the moment), others found that anything positive produced by the government should be considered as a spin (the 60^th birthday celebration of Israel was a spin, the announcement of the Syrian dictator that he started to talk with the Israelis was another super spin, the announcement of the Hezbollah chief that they are going to exchange prisoners with Israel, a spin –first class, and announcing the Israeli shekel as a changeable currency worldwide, of course, a spin by excellence.

As conclusion of all the above, politics in Israel is not REAL POLITICS but ISRAEL POLITICS, "much ado about nothing" quoting Shakespeare, who did not have the luck to live during our enlightened times.