Israel’s Political Zoo

Posted on April 2, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

The greatest danger to Israel from the coronavirus is not a collapse of the healthcare system and a massive increase in the body count, as happened in Italy.

It’s not impossible, but most groups – with the notable exception of Haredi communities in several locations who might soon find their neighborhoods or whole towns under quarantine – are following social distancing rules, which have proven to be effective. Resources are being pumped into the healthcare system, testing and tracking of patients are being ramped up, and various promising drugs are being tested. It will probably be bad but not apocalyptic, despite statements by some religious figures that the virus is a sign of the imminent arrival of the Mashiach.

I could be wrong. A shortage of doctors and nurses and other health workers is our weak spot. But I think that unless something entirely unforeseen happens, like a war with Iran, chances are that the virus will burn itself out within a few months (though nobody knows how many months).

On the other hand, the economic crisis that may result from the almost total shutdown of the economy for an extended period could trigger a vicious downward spiral, a chain of bankruptcies and layoffs, a classic depression that will take years to come out of.

The government is hoping to avoid this with a massive program of aid to individuals and businesses to get them over the hump. It will provide 80 billion shekels ($22.3 billion), the biggest such package in Israel’s history. As a result, the deficit will increase from 3.5% to 10% of GDP. I believe that whether the program will succeed or not depends on how long the national lockdown continues. When the schools reopen, the economy will come out of its suspended animation. If it’s still alive.

So how is our political class responding to the situation?

Like zoo animals? No, that’s unfair to animals, who after all usually only want basic necessities of life and to be left alone. They are more like really, really, spoiled, greedy, sociopathic, children.

After three elections, it was announced that Netanyahu and Gantz had agreed to form a unity government. But no, it turns out that there are serious difficulties and no solution on the horizon (read this excellent summary of the deadlock by Haviv Rettig Gur). Gantz, as Speaker of the Knesset, can make whatever demands he wishes, since – by procedural maneuvers – he can prevent Netanyahu from doing anything, including forming a government without him, even though Bibi could easily get the 61 votes needed to do so. But with the split-up of Blue and White, Gantz himself has no chance to form a government without Bibi, even with Lieberman and the Arabs. At this writing (Wednesday, 1 PM) neither side has budged. So here we are.

Even if they had succeeded, the cabinet would have been a criminal enterprise. The plans were for a government with as many as 36 ministers! A country the size of Israel does not need 36 ministers, each of whom are paid more than 50,000 shekels ($14,000) a month. It is already outrageous that the 120 regular Knesset members get 45,000 ($12,000) each month, a result of voting themselves raises every couple of years, but when you consider that ministers have well-paid staffs, offices, and so on, the cost is astronomical. Assuming (conservatively) that each minister costs the taxpayers 100,000 shekels a month, if the government were reduced in size to “only” 18 ministers, it would save 21.8 million shekels in a year. As MK Gideon Sa’ar pointed out, the time that the Treasury is about to take an 80 billion shekel hit that will be financed by borrowing is no time to create the largest, most expensive government in Israel’s history. Sa’ar himself has declined to take the most recent pay raise.

It’s possible to argue about who is the most responsible for this travesty of “public service.” Gantz whines that he deserves as many ministries as Netanyahu, even though after the split of Blue and White, he brings only 15 mandates to government, while Bibi has at least 58 MKs to reward by doling out portfolios. Maybe the root of the problem is a system by which a MK is given a ministry as a political favor, and not because he or she is the best person to manage a part of government that actually provides services to the public.

The contest between Netanyahu and Gantz is part of a broader struggle between the “nationalists” (represented by Netanyahu), the group that wants Israel to be a Jewish state in a more significant way than just a state with a Jewish majority; and the “social democrats,” the legal and cultural/media/academic establishments that want to model Israel after Western Europe’s secular democracies. This tension has existed since the pre-state period, and I think it is more explanatory today than the traditional right/left distinction. Even after agreement on a unity government, we can expect more ideology-fueled “constitutional crises” as the opposition attempts to pass laws to oust Netanyahu because of his indictments, and the Supreme Court takes up petitions regarding the Nation-State law.

Several times in our history, this basic divergence – more than just a political disagreement – has endangered the state. This is such a historical moment. Here are my suggestions for what our government should do to survive it – if there ever is a government, and if it has a few free weeks between plagues, wars, and elections:

  1. Amend the Basic Laws for the Knesset and the Government to eliminate the system of proportional representation by party, which has led to the present impasse, and replace it with a system in which the citizens vote directly for their representatives, whether by districts or otherwise. Other countries make this work; we can too. It would greatly de-emphasize ideology in our politics, as well as reduce the likelihood of deadlocks like the present one.
  2. Pass a Basic Law for Separation of Powers. It will apportion power to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government, and in particular define the role of the Supreme Court, specifying the areas in which it may and may not intervene, on what basis, and who has standing to petition it. It should provide for checks and balances so no one branch can act tyrannically. It should also split up the functions of the Legal Adviser to the Government, who should not also be in charge of the state prosecutor’s office.
  3. Finally, the method of choosing judges, including Supreme Court justices, should be democratized. The system that allows the Bar Association and the current Supreme Court to dictate appointments must be eliminated.

Israeli politicians need to grow up and begin to accept responsibility for the people who are depending on them. These changes would give them a framework in which to do so.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 2 Comments

The Haredi Disconnect

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

About 12% of Israel’s population are Haredim, often referred to as “ultra-orthodox,” an expression which they strongly dislike. The Haredi population is growing rapidly with a birthrate of about 7 children per woman, and if this growth rate continues, Haredim will be 32% of the population in 2065 (this estimate, however, is high because it does not take into account “dropouts” from the Haredi lifestyle). Their religious ideology varies, including Chasidim, Sefaradim, and Misnagdim (sometimes also inaccurately called “Lithuanians”). Among these major groupings there are numerous groups and sects, with strong differences in their beliefs, politics, and ways of life. It would be a mistake to generalize about “those guys in the black hats.”

On the other hand, some things are true in general, and they are not good things for the future of the state of Israel. Haredi schools mostly teach secular subjects like English, the sciences, and mathematics very poorly or not at all. The native language of many Haredi communities is Yiddish, not Hebrew. Most Haredi young men do not serve in the military, and prefer to study Torah in yeshivot than to work at a secular job. These facts make the expected increase in the percentage of the population that is Haredi extremely problematic for the future economy of the state.

These are closed communities, which sometime allow social pathologies like sexual abuse to continue, especially when the perpetrator is an important person in the community. The external society and its police, social workers, and others are only (if ever) invited to intervene in truly horrific situations.

There is a current of contempt for the (perceived as secular) state and its laws in Haredi society. This is encouraged by the Haredi parties in the Knesset, who have taken advantage of their ability to hold the balance of power between the Right and the Left. Their critical position in most recent governments makes it possible for them to demand concessions that they would not otherwise get, like money for their schools and exemption from national requirements to prepare students for 21st century life, and avoidance of military or non-military national service. The Haredi parties have ensured that it is possible for a non-working “scholar” to have 10 children and be supported to a great extent by government child care allowances (often the women work too).

I think many Haredim feel that they can ignore the rules and laws of the state because they are loyal to a higher law. Some believe that Torah study is a more efficacious way to defend the Jewish people from the various threats facing it than the IDF and the police. And they think that congregating in large groups for prayer or other observances is a better response to the Coronavirus than following the recommendations for social distancing that come from the apikorsim (secularly educated, Jewishly ignorant Hellenists) in the government.

This is the kind of reasoning that led the Hungarian Belzer Rebbe to tell his flock that they didn’t need to worry about the Nazis, that Hashem would take care of them. He was tragically wrong. My personal view is that Hashem sometimes does miracles for the Jewish people, but he uses normal physics and biology to do them, and he expects the Jewish people to do their part as well. So in 1967 Hashem made use of the IAF, the military planners who developed the attack on our enemies’ air forces, and the brave pilots who carried it out, to save the Jews of Israel from another Holocaust. Of course I don’t understand Hashem’s intentions today, but perhaps he is working through our Ministry of Health, and yes, even our flawed Prime Minister, to save us from the virus (after all, the Minister of Health is a Gerer Chassid).

Many Haredim see the state as anti-Jewish, no different from any of the diaspora regimes under which they mostly suffered and rarely thrived. The fact that the rulers here happen to be Jews doesn’t change the adversarial nature of the relationship. To them, Netanyahu is indistinguishable from the Tsar. Like the Arabs, the Haredim have their well-developed narratives through which they perceive reality.

Criticism of Haredim is often muted because of a feeling that it is anti-Jewish (of course, in some parts of the Israeli political spectrum that is considered a plus). The Haredim themselves often call critics “antisemites” or even “Nazis.” Most Israelis take a live and let live attitude, which is only upset when Haredi extremists like the so-called “Jerusalem faction” riot and block roads in support of someone jailed for refusing to register for the draft and receive his exemption as a Haredi Yeshiva student.

Recently, however, the extremists – and I have no idea of how representative they are of the wider Haredi culture, just as I don’t know how many Arab citizens of Israel actually agree with the anti-Zionism of their elected MKs – have taken their attitude more than a little too far. Their disregard for the rules established to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus are endangering them, their communities, and everyone else in the country.

In the beginning, it was said that because of their isolation, they didn’t understand the dangers. But it is no longer possible to believe that they don’t know. PM Netanyahu met with Haredi leaders last week to try to convince them to close schools and synagogues. Some did, and some didn’t. Last night there was a funeral of a “Jerusalem Faction” rabbi in Bnai Brak, at which hundreds of mourners crowded the streets. Police, who now have the ability to levy fines on violators of the rule that no more than 10 people may congregate in one place, were present but did not issue any fines. But the authorities are considering quarantining whole cities, like Bnai Brak and Beit Shemesh, as well as particular neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

Will fear of Coronavirus do what years of negotiations and attempts at compromise have not, and make the Haredim cooperate with the state? I doubt it, not for those who believe that the pandemic is caused by women wearing wigs made from non-Jewish hair.

No, I think the way to get them to follow the social distancing rules will be widespread fines and arrests for violators. If they think the State of Israel is the Russian Empire of the 19th century, then we’ll just have to start acting like it.

The larger task of integrating all the Haredi communities into wider Israeli society seems to me impossible. There are exceptions, but generally Haredi attitudes toward male-female interactions are not compatible with the rest of the country, even with the religious-but-not-Haredi community.

There is an Israeli TV series about a dystopian future in which Haredim have established an autonomous area in Jerusalem, a “separation” not unlike what has been considered for the Palestinian areas. It’s horrifying, but I am certain there are those among the Haredim who would welcome it. And maybe it will come to pass.

Posted in Israeli Society | 1 Comment

A Short Political History of Israel

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

In the pre-state period, the socialist Left dominated the yishuv. They created the institutions that would form the basis of the state, and ran them according to their ideology. The Histadrut labor federation dominated the economy; its closely allied kibbutz movement was the primary producer of agricultural products, the Solel Boneh construction company built roads and buildings, and the Kupat Holim Clalit health fund was everyone’s healthcare provider. The Zim shipping line and the ports, the Tnuva dairy cooperative – most of the essential pieces of the economy were fully or partly controlled by the Histadrut, which was the heart of the Labor Party.

When Labor Party leader David Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel and became its first Prime Minister, naturally his people ended up in key places in government and business. The government supported arts and culture, and naturally the artists who received grants were the right kind (I should say, the left kind) of people. Music on the state radio stations was primarily written and performed by ideologically correct artists. The Mizrachi Jews that came here after the War of Independence and through the 1960s were treated as second-class citizens by the Labor establishment, which tried to keep them out of the political and cultural life of the country (this was the case for many years – when I tried to buy music by Mizrachi artists in the early 1980s, it was still mostly found on cassettes produced by back-porch entrepreneurs).

The right-wing political opposition was kept as far away from power as possible. Efforts were made to delegitimize the Herut party, led by Menachem Begin, and even to “remove [it] from any recollection or participation in [remembrance of war dead].” The contributions of the right-wing military organizations, Etzel and Lehi, to the achievement of independence were minimized or erased from official histories. Ben Gurion would not even mention Menachem Begin’s name in the Knesset, or speak directly to him. Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Etzel and the inspiration for much of the Israeli Right, died in 1940; Ben Gurion did not allow him to be buried in Israel and it was not until he left power that Jabotinsky’s remains were finally brought to Mount Herzl.

But in 1977, the world (well, at least Medinat Yisrael) turned upside down. In 1973, the Labor government had blown it big time. Regardless of the debate about precisely who was responsible for the debacle that almost ended the State of Israel, it was clear that it was time for new leadership. At the same time, Mizrachim had had enough of the paternalistic condescension and discrimination that characterized the establishment that was running the government. The people of Israel gave Begin’s Likud 43 seats, despite the fact that Begin himself had recently suffered a heart attack and did not participate in the campaign.

Since then, Israel has had right-wing leadership – or at least purportedly right-wing leadership – with the exception of a period between 1984-86 when Shimon Peres was PM in a rotation agreement as part of a unity government, 1992-96 when Yitzhak Rabin was PM, followed by Peres after his assassination; and then in 1999-2001, the term of the execrable Ehud Barak.

The Labor Party and the various small parties to its left have shrunk radically, as the Israeli public lost confidence in them following Oslo and then the Second Intifada. But to a great extent the leftish establishment in the media, the arts, academia, and the legal profession has remained dominant in those areas. And it has become more and more frantic in its desire to regain its former control of the country. In particular, it sees Binyamin Netanyahu, who has surpassed Ben Gurion as the longest-serving Prime Minister, as the personification of the enemy, a fascist enemy of democracy. But that is unfair. Netanyahu has problems, but he is not an enemy of democracy. He has become PM by winning democratic elections, or at least by putting together coalitions, something the opposition cannot do.

The Blue and White party was created by this establishment for one reason only: to remove Netanyahu. Benny Gantz was chosen as a neutral figure, somebody that would be respected as a former Chief of Staff, a person who has little baggage. His campaign was notable for its concentration on Netanyahu’s indictments and its almost total lack of other content. The party leadership does not share an ideology, and I suspect that 99% of those who voted for it understood that they were voting to depose Netanyahu – and the rest would have to take care of itself.

What has happened now, as I write, is that Blue and White did not come close to being able to obtain the needed 61 mandates to form a government, so they violated their pre-election promise to not try to form a minority government supported from the outside by votes from the anti-Zionist Arab parties. But then it turned out that they did not have the votes to do even that. So while they negotiated with the Likud to form a unity government in which Netanyahu and Gantz would take turns being PM, they planned to get the Knesset to pass several bills that would prevent Bibi from serving due to his indictments.

In order to do this, the Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, would have to let it happen, and Likudnik Edelstein wasn’t moving. B&W demanded that the Knesset vote to replace Edelstein with a more pliant candidate, but Edelstein refused to schedule that vote. So they turned to the Supreme Court, which issued a ruling that Edelstein must schedule the vote to replace him. Edelstein responded by resigning his position as Speaker, and in a particularly moving statement, said,

The High Court of Justice’s decision is not based on the language of the law, but on a unilateral and extreme interpretation. The decision of the High Court destroys the work of the Knesset. The High Court decision constitutes a gross and arrogant intervention of the judiciary in the affairs of the elected legislature. The High Court decision infringes on the sovereignty of the Knesset. …

As someone who has paid a heavy personal cost of years of imprisonment and hard labor for the right to live as a citizen of the State of Israel, no explanation is needed as to how much I love the State of Israel and the people of Israel. Therefore, as a democrat, as a Jewish-Zionist, as a person fighting against dark regimes, and as chair of this House, I will not allow Israel to deteriorate into anarchy. I will not lend a hand to civil war. I will act in the spirit of Menachem Begin who in June 1948, during the Altalena days, prevented civil war.

Members of Knesset, citizens of Israel, these days our people need unity, need a unity government. These days, when an epidemic threatens us from the outside and the cleavage rips us from the inside, we must all act as human beings, we must all transcend. We must all unite.

Therefore, for the State of Israel and in order to renew the state spirit in Israel, I hereby resign from my position as Speaker of the Knesset. We will pray, and even act, for better days.

Edelstein’s resignation will take effect in 48 hours. But the Knesset’s legal advisor warned him that he will be liable to a charge of contempt of court if he does not allow a vote to be called immediately. I suspect that the man who spent three years in a Siberian gulag will not change his mind.

I see the whole process that began with the investigations into Netanyahu more than three years ago, with all of the improprieties involved – the continuous media leaks from the police and prosecution, the abuse of witnesses, the recent last-minute attempts to change the law so that Netanyahu could not be even a part-time PM, the intervention of the Court – as a continuation of the struggle to subvert the will of Israeli voters, and bring the discredited Left back to power.

But the world has changed. The Labor Party and the Histadrut can’t pick the prime minister from among their activists anymore, as they did until 1977. Ben Gurion isn’t coming back. Form a unity government with Bibi and move on.

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Bibi Derangement in the Age of Corona

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

If there is one theme that PM Netanyahu’s opponents are banging away at – and that includes not just his political opposition, but most of the mainstream media in Israel and a small army on social media – it is that he is “destroying democracy,” or even trying to turn Israel into a dictatorship. If you don’t believe me, just google “Israel democracy Netanyahu” and you will get pages and pages of the same old … stuff.

Democracy, in the broadest sense of the term, means that the citizens of a state determine its policies by voting. Usually they vote for representatives to run things according to their understanding of what’s best for everyone, like parliaments or senators and congressmen, prime ministers or presidents. They grant these representatives power for a limited period of time, and then review their performance by holding elections.

Different countries have developed different systems for doing this, and some are better than others. Israel has a system of proportional representation by political party, which has some theoretical advantages but one big disadvantage: it doesn’t work. We have had three elections in about one year and none of them has enabled the formation of a government coalition.

The system is what is preventing us from having a functional democracy, not Bibi Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s Likud party got a plurality of seats in the Knesset, although no one party ever gets a majority. His bloc, which means the Likud plus some religious and right-wing parties is short of a majority, too. So why doesn’t the opposition have a majority? Because it  has two parts: the part composed of the Blue and White party and a few other parties on the (more or less) Zionist Left, and the part which is the 15 seats held by anti-Zionist Arab parties.

Not one of the Arab legislators will agree that Israel should be a Jewish state in any sense of the word. The most moderate would prefer it to be a “state of its citizens” like the USA, for example. The slightly less moderate would like it to become a binational state, while the rest are Islamists, or Palestinian or pan-Arab nationalists. I like to think that the political forces that produced them are not an expression of the true attitudes of Israel’s Arab citizens, but I’m not sure.

Most of Blue and White’s leaders could not bring themselves to include the Arab parties in the coalition (would you?), but apparently they are not averse to forming a minority government that depends on their votes. Our system allows a coalition of a minority of the members of the Knesset, as long as they don’t lose a vote of confidence.

This would mean that the Arab parties would have a veto over all the actions of the government. Given their ideologies, that is unacceptable. And at least three members of the opposition agree with me, so this will not happen. There is a law, by the way, that says that someone who “[negates] the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state” can’t sit in the Knesset, but the Supreme Court has prevented its application to Arabs.

The other alternative is to form a unity government in which the leaders of the two major parties would take turns at being Prime Minister. That is the direction we are going now, and they are negotiating terms – who will fill the various ministerial slots, who will be PM first and for how long, and so on.

At the same time, the opposition is trying to pass laws that will prevent Netanyahu from being PM at all, because he is under indictment for alleged corruption. In a way it is not ex post facto because he has not yet tried to form a government; but in a way it is, because the people voted with the understanding that he could.

It is also possible that if Netanyahu were to be offered the position of PM of a unity government, the Supreme Court will jump in and find a way to disqualify him. They have received petitions to this end, but they chose not to decide because until the moment that he actually tries to take the position, the issue is considered “theoretical.” The present law says that a Prime Minister can continue to serve when indicted, and only can be removed upon conviction. But here the situation is that he is presently PM of a caretaker government, and the government is about to change.

I should mention that some of the charges against Netanyahu appear justified, and some clearly don’t. It is also true that the behavior of the police and state prosecutor’s office during the three years of his investigation was reprehensible, bordering on criminal. There were daily leaks to hostile media, improper treatment of witnesses, and violations of privacy. In any event, he has not been convicted of anything.

Netanyahu says that the true danger to democracy is the combination of non-elected forces – the Attorney General (in Israel, he has far more power than the equivalent official in the US), the State Prosecutor, and the Supreme Court – acting against an elected Prime Minister. The selection of all of these is controlled to a great extent by one organization, the Bar Association.

It is also true that from an overall perspective, the people of Israel have consistently voted for a right-wing government in recent years, especially since the debacle of the Second Intifada. They didn’t always get one, as when Yitzhak Rabin promised that he wouldn’t talk to the PLO and then ended up on the White House Lawn with Arafat, or when the formerly right-wing Ehud Olmert took over from Ariel Sharon after his stroke, and tried to negotiate a withdrawal from virtually all of Judea and Samaria.

Today the explicitly left-wing parties like the Labor party that ruled Israel from its founding until 1977, have withered away to almost nothing. Since Menachem Begin’s victory, we’ve had a situation in which a usually right-wing prime minister and Knesset confronts not only political opposition, but also left-wing media, legal, cultural, and educational establishments. Blue and White, which has no real ideology other than a burning desire to oust Netanyahu, is supported by these groups.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has been dealing with the coronavirus crisis appropriately, mostly following the guidance of the Health Ministry, which includes taking and enforcing unpopular decisions. His opposition, both in politics and the media, have been claiming that he is using the issue as a “pretext” to “seize authoritarian powers.” One writer even suggested that an order banning gatherings of more than 10 people was issued to prevent demonstrations! Their self-absorption is remarkable.

Bibi has been appearing on TV almost every evening, explaining the steps the government is taking and why. Personally, I find it reassuring and I think he is doing the right thing to calm a nervous public – and to influence them to comply with the rules. But his enemies claim that it is all done for looks. The fact is that anything that he does will irritate them – especially when he projects competence.

So what does democracy demand? Unfortunately, we can’t tell from our badly broken system. Until we can fix it maybe it would be better to ask which of the possible outcomes is best for our country at this difficult time. The answer is a unity government, which need not contain either the extreme Left or the Haredi Right, and which does not depend on the votes of anti-Zionist Arab politicians. And probably the best person to lead it (eat your hearts out, Bibi derangement people) is Binyamin Netanyahu.

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics | 1 Comment

Israel and the Pandemic

Posted on March 19, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Is COVID-19 a blip or is it the apocalypse?

It seems to me that unless humans do something stupid, like start wars, it will be a blip (this post is based on statistical and other data on the pandemic from this site).

In many countries, it will be a vicious and tragic blip indeed, but the measures taken to reduce the damage have so far had far greater overall effects than the actual illnesses and deaths attributable to the virus. China, as of yesterday, had a total of about 3200 deaths, and the number of new cases dropped to only 13. 3200 is 0.00023% of China’s population. Obviously there will be more deaths, there may be additional waves of the disease, and other countries may not be able to or may not choose to take the draconian measures taken by China, including wide area lockdowns and millions of people in quarantine.

Italy, for example, already has 2500 deaths and almost 700 new cases as of yesterday. The number of deaths doubled in the past four days. It will get worse before it gets better. But still, it should be clear that this isn’t the Black Death, which killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population in the 14th century.

Within a couple of years – unless the virus mutates especially rapidly or there are other unforeseen circumstances – most of the world’s population will have immunity, either from having had the disease or by vaccination. But until then, some models predict hundreds of thousands of deaths in countries like the US and UK, unless policies of social distancing and quarantine are adopted, like the ones that have been effective in China, South Korea, and Japan – and that we hope will work in Israel.

Israel has implemented drastic measures, including closing schools and daycare, which essentially paralyzes the economy. The police have already arrested several people for violating quarantine, and they have announced that they will soon begin handing out heavy fines to anyone violating the social distancing rules, such as congregating in groups larger than 10 people. It’s possible that the next step will be a total lockdown, almost a general curfew.

When the rules were first announced, many people felt that PM Netanyahu and his advisors in the Health Ministry were overreacting, but as the number of cases grows, most Israelis have come around to the idea that tough measures are needed.

One step that is still controversial (at least among anti-Bibi politicians) is to have the Shabak (General Security Service) make use of its sophisticated cellphone data collection system, usually employed only for terror suspects, to track the whereabouts of everyone who has been diagnosed with the virus. This information will be given to the Health Ministry, which will be able to warn everyone who has been close to a carrier to enter self-quarantine. There is already an app available that will take the information provided by the Health Ministry about the location of known patients, and cross-check it with your own movements, so you can be informed if you have crossed the path of one of them.

As I write (Wednesday morning) we have 427 diagnosed cases, and the authorities are adopting new testing procedures that should make that number climb rapidly. I expect that we are in for a difficult few weeks as those currently incubating the disease develop symptoms, because our healthcare system is severely underfunded and understaffed, and is running over capacity even without global pandemics.

But from a political and economic point of view, here is the single most important fact about the pandemic:

Unlike the Black Death, which was especially fatal to children and young people, this virus is far more deadly to the old. Even if millions die, they will not be the most economically important millions. This is not pleasant to contemplate for those of us who are in the most threatened age groups (I am 77), but it is a fact.

It is also the case that ruling elites in many countries are made up of older individuals. Iran, which has been particularly hard-hit by the virus is a good example, with its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei 80 years old; it has lost several members of its parliament, an IRGC general, and other officials of various sorts. But Binyamin Netanyahu is 70, Donald Trump is 73, Joe Biden is 77, Bernie Sanders is 78, Narendra Modi is 69, and Angela Merkel is 65.

It’s interesting to speculate about how cultural attitudes influence the strategies being taken against the disease. We know that Israelis will go to any lengths to protect their children, including the ones who are already old enough to be in the army – what other country would release more than 1000 terrorists, many of them guilty of murder, in return for one young man? I often compare the way my grandchildren and their age-mates are being brought up to what I remember from my own youth in the USA: there is no comparison. Our parents loved us and did what they thought best for us, but they didn’t lavish the amount of attention, time, or other resources on us the way Israeli parents do today – both individually and as expressed by the cultural institutions they sustain. So does Israeli culture value its senior citizens as well? I think it does, although the children come first.

The strategy of social distancing and isolation is intended to prevent a collapse of the overstressed healthcare system, as occurred in northern Italy, where it has been reported that patients died because there weren’t enough ventilators available for those in respiratory failure. Since these patients are primarily (but not entirely) the older ones, adopting this strategy essentially protects the older population in return for accepting the economic losses that come from it.

Experts don’t want to predict how long it will be necessary to hunker down like this. Will it be only until the warm weather? Will it be until a vaccine is available, which may take a year or more? Will the relaxation of restrictions bring on new waves of illness? Nobody knows.

In some ways, Israel is in good shape to weather this pandemic. Israelis are resilient and creative, and are finding ways to work and study at home. Research is underway for vaccines and other forms of treatment or prevention. Israel has the ability to control its borders, so there is less worry about the introduction of infected individuals from abroad.

On the other hand, just as it is in our security situation, we don’t have a lot of room for mistakes: the healthcare system needed a big infusion of resources even before this happened. If there is a major source of concern about our ability to weather the crisis, this is it.

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Israel at War — with Corona

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Good morning from locked down Israel.

I was hoping to write that the Corona virus (called COVID-19) had accomplished what three elections failed to do, and forced the forming of an emergency unity government, as Netanyahu proposed. His main opponent, Benny Gantz, seemed warm to the idea, but as yet it hasn’t happened. Today the various parties will begin meeting with the President, Reuven Rivlin, to give him their recommendations for the person most likely to be able to form a government. Then he will use this information to decide who will have the first shot at organizing a coalition.

As they like to write in the Talmud, lo kashia. This isn’t hard. The two largest parties, Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’ Blue and White, together have more than the needed number of seats in the Knesset to form a government. They should do so. Although I think it is reasonable that all the various segments of Israeli society should have representation, the situation in which minority parties hold the balance of power and use it to extort money and unreasonable concessions from the nation as a whole must end.

The idea that Gantz will form a minority government with the support of Arab members of the Knesset “from outside” – that is, they will vote with the government in order to keep it in power as long as their demands are met – seems to be dead (I hope I’m right). There is nothing wrong with Arab citizens having influence – indeed it is essential for democracy – but the Arab members of the Knesset are all anti-Zionists: communists, Palestinian nationalists, pan-Arab nationalists, or Islamists. They should not even be in the Knesset, and would not be if the law that requires candidates to accept the idea of a Jewish and democratic state were enforced as it should be. This is a problem that must be dealt with, but in the meantime they are not needed to form a government.

The Haredim are a different kind of problem. On Thursday, Israel shut down its schools and universities; and today the kindergartens and day-care centers were closed also. But many Haredi yeshivot and schools were kept open against the orders of the Health Ministry, because leading Haredi rabbis declared that “canceling Torah study would be more dangerous than the coronavirus.” Apparently some schools have even been closed by police (link to Hebrew tweet). This is the kind of thinking that kept many Orthodox Jews in Eastern Europe from escaping the Nazis while it was still possible.

New rules have been issued in the light of the epidemic. Gatherings of more than 10 people are forbidden, and all non-essential businesses like restaurants, gyms, and cinemas are closed. Malls are closed, except for supermarkets and pharmacies. Many offices are closed and workers that can do so are working from home. In a drastic step, the Attorney General has approved tracking the locations of those infected with the virus by their cell phones, despite the violation of privacy involved. The army is not allowing soldiers leave. The use of public transportation is recommended only when absolutely necessary. Defense Minister Naftali Bennett announced this morning that the government will temporarily convert some hotels (which are almost empty anyway) to house those with mild or asymptomatic cases of the disease, in order to isolate them and free up hospital beds for more seriously ill patients.

The economic pain of the closures has been great. When there is no school or daycare, parents have to stay home from work. Some workplaces have closed, and some independent contractors – like my son, who trains security personnel – have seen their livelihoods disappear in a matter of days. It is not clear at this point how and to what extent workers will be compensated, and where the money will come from.

Testing for possible infection has been inadequate – Bennett said there were something like 600 tests a day being done, compared to thousands in some other countries, due to the small number of laboratories that have been doing them, but the plan is to greatly increase this. There has even been close cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, which is also taking the situation seriously.

I think it’s safe to say that the great majority of Israelis think that PM Netanyahu is doing a good job managing the crisis, and want him to continue doing it. There have even been a few grudging admissions by opposition figures that he has been following the right path, although the most vicious Bibi-haters can’t help but snipe at him. It is funny to watch them try to squirm away from the fact that he is by far the most competent person in the room. In an ironic turn of events, the court system may shut down, resulting in the postponement of Netanyahu’s trial on corruption charges, something that makes his enemies absolutely splutter with indignation.

All of the measures being taken to slow the rate that the disease will spread are intended to “flatten the curve,” to reduce the number of acute cases at any given time so that the hospitals will not be overwhelmed, as happened in northern Italy. There are only a finite number of intensive care beds and equipment, and if there are more patients in respiratory failure than ventilators available, then some who could have been saved will die. And in this respect, Israel is not so well situated as some other countries. We have only 3.09 hospital beds per 1000 people, ranked 28th out of 40 OECD countries. The leaders, Japan and South Korea, have 13.05 and 12.27 respectively (the US ranks even lower than Israel, in 32nd place with about 2.8 beds per 1000, and the UK is worse, at 35th and 2.54).

There are many unknowns. Will the virus die out or slow its progression during the summer, as happens with the flu? If so, will it come back next winter? There are at least three laboratories in Israel on the verge of testing a vaccine. Will there be an effective one and when will it be ready? Are there other possibilities for treatment?

This is not unlike a war, which demands a national effort. It is not going to be fun and it is not going to be easy. Some of us may not make it. But putting the politics and personalities aside, setting up an emergency unity government now, and ending the waste of money and energy on unnecessary political conflicts would be a good way to begin.

Posted in Israeli Politics, Israeli Society | 2 Comments

Mao comes to Michigan

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal
Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution

Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution

Read this article.

If you are not completely horrified, read it again.

Benjamin Gerstein is the president of the student body at the University of Michigan.

He wasn’t beaten with sticks or carried through the streets with a dunce cap on his head. He didn’t see his parents murdered or sent to concentration camps. He wasn’t starved or threatened with execution or imprisonment.

His crime was to suggest a few years ago, that the “Palestinian people” did not deserve a state. It was really a relatively mild statement, certainly less severe than anything I would write. When someone noticed, he was forced to recant.  And here is part of what he wrote on Facebook in his “defense:”

I made statements that erase the history of the Palestinian people. I made racist statements, including the denial of the right to self-determination, that were ignorant of Palestinians’ struggle under occupation. I am sorry beyond words … I accept total and complete responsibility for the harmfulness of my language, the offensiveness of my words, and the active role I played in the silencing of Palestinian voices.

I have grown considerably since I made those statements, and the repulsive views I expressed in the video no longer reflect my current understanding. I am devastated to see them reappear and be defended today. I know an apology is never enough and I am complicit in the oppression of Palestinians through my past actions.

I am asking myself if this could have happened when I was a student in America, in the early 1960s before the murders of JFK, MLK, and RFK, when LSD was still mostly in the lab, and Max Yasgur was just a farmer.

I’m not sure, but I doubt it.

I don’t know whether to be ashamed for him, to call him an idiot, or to feel sorry for him because I can only guess what may have been done to him to get him to crawl on all fours and lick the shoes of his enemies. Or maybe that’s what some American Jewish kids are like today. I don’t know. Maybe, like Jeremiah Denton, he blinked out “T.O.R.T.U.R.E” in Morse code when he posted that, but probably not.

American Jews: don’t send your kids to the University of Michigan or similar places. Let them join the military, enter apprenticeship programs to learn a trade, or make aliyah and serve in the IDF. Teach them about Mao’s cultural revolution, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and the treatment of POWs in Korea and Vietnam, so they will recognize brainwashing.

Don’t let this happen to them.

Posted in Academia, American Jews, American society | 2 Comments

Too Much Democracy?

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

The idea that there should be an independent sovereign Jewish state in the world is, to understate the fact, controversial. Much of the European-oriented West and certainly the Arab Middle East opposes it. Even many diaspora Jews either don’t see it as essential to Jewish survival, or are no longer concerned with the continuance of the Jews as a people.

But recent events in Israel’s politics have brought us to a crossroads. The direction that we go now will be critical for the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state, and therefore for the survival of the Jewish people.

The history of modern Israel can be viewed from various vantage points: religious, geopolitical, military, ethnographic, and perhaps others. One dimension is the struggle between the Jews who reestablished the Jewish state after several millennia of diaspora, and the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael and the surrounding region.

Jabotinsky, in The Iron Wall (1917) understood, long before the reestablishment of the state, that there is no way that we are going to make Zionists out of the Arabs. They will not be interested in minority status in a Jewish state, no matter what rights or economic benefits this gets them. They will only accept Jewish immigration and ultimately sovereignty, he said, if they have absolutely no choice. Hence, the “Iron Wall.”

But Jabotinsky also expressed the optimistic view that – if the Wall was truly impregnable – at some point the Arabs would decide that there was no hope of getting rid of the Jews, and that they would moderate their demands. And then “we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen [sic], or Arab national integrity.”

It has turned out that Jabotinsky was right in the first instance and wrong in the second. Perhaps – prescient as he was in other matters – he didn’t realize that it was impossible to separate Arab resistance from worldwide Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism, and that outside powers (in particular, Nazi Germany and later the Soviet Union) would adopt the Arab cause as instrumental for their wider geopolitical programs. Or maybe we just weren’t capable of building an iron wall high enough or strong enough.

In any event, the rejection of Jewish sovereignty between the river and the sea by the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael did not diminish over time. It was fed by the rejectionism of the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, amplified by the Soviet adoption of the PLO and Husseini’s heir, Yasser Arafat. It received a massive boost from Israel’s astonishingly stupid decision to accept the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian Arabs, and to breathe life into its corpse by signing the Oslo accords and inviting Arafat and his coterie back to Eretz Yisrael. With the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the realization of the initial steps in Arafat’s “phased plan,” Jabotinsky’s wall was breached. It became possible for Arabs to imagine finally ending the Jewish “occupation” of all of Eretz Yisrael.

The Arab citizens of the State of Israel have followed a more moderate trajectory than the Arabs of the territories, but its direction has been the same. When the state was declared by Ben Gurion in 1948, it was defined as a “Jewish state,” the realization of “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.” At the same time, the Declaration of Independence affirmed that the state would be a Western-style democracy,

…based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

It also explicitly invited the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael to “participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”

I am not sure why Ben-Gurion and the other founders didn’t grasp the fundamentally contradictory nature of the promises they made in the Declaration of Independence. How could the Jews be “masters of their fate in their own sovereign state” and still promise full equality of political rights to the Arabs, who would always vehemently oppose that objective?

Meir Kahane pointed this out some decades ago. The response of the Zionist establishment was to kick him and his party out of political life in the country, and even to imprison him.

Today there are four parties in the Joint List; three are Arab parties and one is the Arab-Jewish Communist Party. All four oppose the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. They are in turn composed of various factions that espouse everything from Islamism to Palestinian nationalism and Pan-Arabism. In the past few years the number of Arabs voting for the Joint List has grown, and in the last election it obtained 15 seats in the Knesset, making it the third largest party in the Knesset.

One of Israel’s Basic Laws – in effect, its constitution – disqualifies anyone who “[negates] the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” engages in incitement to racism, or supports armed struggle against the state from sitting in the Knesset. But the Supreme Court has insisted on the highest standard of proof in these cases, and as a result, since 1965 no Arab candidate or party has been disqualified. The Court has been harder on Jews, in the case of Kahane and his party, and more recently, upholding the disqualification of Baruch Marzel, Benzi Gopstein, and Michael Ben Ari on the grounds of incitement to racism.

This is where we are today. We have swallowed the contradiction inherent in the Declaration of Independence, and we are facing the political heartburn that results from trying to digest it. The most moderate of the Arabs and the Israeli Left find the idea of a “Jewish” state objectionable, and would prefer that Israel be a “state of its citizens” like the United States. The Right passed the Basic Law: Israel – the Nation-State of the Jewish People, to explicate the precise meaning of the concept of a Jewish state, and it faces strong opposition from the Left and the Arabs, who see it as anti-democratic and racist. Almost certainly it will soon be taken up by the Supreme Court.

No Arab party has ever been part of a ruling coalition, both because the Arabs didn’t want to support a Zionist government, and the Jewish parties didn’t want them. However, in July 1992, a 62-seat left-wing coalition of Labor, Meretz, and Shas (yes, Shas joined a left-wing coalition!) was supported in the Knesset by the votes of Hadash and one other Arab party, which kept it alive when Shas quit in November of that year, and they dropped to 56. A similar arrangement has been proposed for Blue and White and its proposed Jewish coalition partners with their 56 seats. The votes of the Joint List would allow them to pass a law that would prevent PM Netanyahu from forming the next government, and to form a government even though they will not have the required 61 seats by themselves.

The degree to which the key people in Blue and White – as well as their partner Avigdor Lieberman – have both personal and political animus against Binyamin Netanyahu can’t be overemphasized. But the fact that they appear to be ready to become indebted to and wholly dependent on anti-Zionist parties in order to accomplish their goal of forcing him out is shocking.

Such a government would in effect give the anti-Zionist Arab parties a veto on all of its actions. It would certainly not proceed with the extension of sovereignty in the Jordan Valley or to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It would certainly try to repeal or emasculate the Nation-State Law. And it is not clear how it would react to provocations from Hamas or Hezbollah.

Preventing this is the immediate problem, but there is an even bigger one on the horizon: in order that the State of Israel can continue to fulfill its function as the sustaining force of the Jewish people, it must continue to be a Jewish state, constitutionally and essentially, and not just an ordinary state that happens to have a Jewish majority.

Anyone who does not support that objective should not be part of the governing body of the state, whether they are Jewish or Arab.

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics | 2 Comments