Soccer Dad

The Bankruptcy of Ha'aretz

Recently Ha'aretz published two articles that show how bankrupt the Israeli Left is today. Writing about the controversy surrounding former State Prosecutor Edna Arbel's appointment to the Supreme Court, Moshe Gorali writes in "Clouds of Controversy"

Edna Arbel's years in the State Prosecutor's Office may be described as a continuous war against government corruption. Three prime ministers, one president, and a number of ministers and MKs were investigated under her watch. More than a few indictments were handed down. The final result is a negative balance: Great efforts in investigation yielded a poor crop of convictions. The result exposed the State Prosecutor's Office to attack. At best, the prosecutor was accused of irresponsible sniping. At worst, she was accused of stitching cases and inventing targets.

That's very true.
When Arbel first made her charges public against PM Sharon, I asked my brother if he thought Sharon was in trouble. My brother in Bet Shemesh said that no one else she had suggested charging had been convicted, so he thought that the PM was in the clear, legally. Such a record of never getting a conviction might be prima facie evidence of incompetence at best; an abuse of power at worst. Mr. Gorali has another view:

What made such a difference in this arena? First, the times: The public mood following the Yom Kippur War scandal demanded blood. Corruption in the Mapai party political system was a likely target. And foremost: The State Prosecutor's Office, now and then, cannot succeed without the support of the court.

Good grief! The court didn't back up Arbel because the public mood did not support getting the politicians! Of the most significant cases that made it to court, such as Justice Minister designate, Yaacov Ne'eman, the subjects of the prosecution were acquitted. Other cases were laughed out of court. (In the Bar-On affair the Attorney General determined that there wasn't enough evidence to convict.)
I realize that Ha'aretz worship at the altar of clean and ethical government as defined by Arbel and Michael Ben Yair. But their record of overreaching when Binyamin Netanyahu was PM and interfering with Israel's democratically elected leader's ability to form his government has to be one of the worst abuses of power in the historyof the state of Israel. If there had been a conviction or two, I could understand that there would be some reason to support Arbel (and Ben Yair). But the lack of any positive outcome speaks louder than any rationalization that Mr. Gorali can provide.
In "Only one speaker left on the national screen", Arafat apologist, Danny Rabinowitz laments that:

Kuperwasser, like his predecessor General Amos Gilad, believes the Palestinians want to establish a state over all of Palestine. Like Gilad, he believes that when Yasser Arafat understood he could not flood Israel with refugees, he set off the intifada to subdue it with terror.

By contrast, the head of MI and their former direct commander general Amos Malka, believes the Palestinians want a political settlement with Israel. He believes the intifada was a tactic, intended to squeeze more concessions from Israel.

This debate has long exceeded the framework of an anecdotal or ego war. It deals with a procedure by which Israel's governments determine their policy toward the Palestinians - a policy responsible among other things for four years in which thousands have been killed and immense suffering has been caused on both sides, as well as tens of billions of shekels of economic damage.

Assessing the intentions of "the other side" is difficult even when it is one person, certainly when it is an entire nation. After the intelligence failure on the eve of the Yom Kippur War a more pluralistic debating culture was formed in the Israel Defense Forces and government.

According to Rabinowitz, then, the belief that Arafat isn't serious about peace is what led to the current intifada. If only Israel's leaders had listened to Gen. Amos Malka, Israel could have avoided the terrible loss of life that it has suffered over the past (nearly) four years.
Gen Yaacov Amidror recently recalled a prediction Israeli intelligence made at the time that Israel concluded the Oslo Accords:

When Israeli intelligence warned that the Oslo agreements could end up with the firing of Katyusha rockets on Ashkelon, this appeared at the time to be illogical to its architects and supporters.

With Qassem rockets falling with deadly effect on Sderot this week it would appear that the pessimists' hypothesis was proven. Yet Rabinowitz pretends that there's still a debate.
Worse than that, he falsifies the events of 2000 in order to prove himself correct:

They intensified the mantra "there is no partner and never has been." The chorus became louder and louder, until it ripened into the fiction of unilateral disengagement. This, it now transpires, has numerous partners - including the Palestinians. But the Gilad and Kuperwasser conception disintegrates not only in the face of reality.

It has inherent fallacies. These include reliable information that the eruption of hostilities in the territories had taken Arafat by surprise; the assumption that Arafat is so hallucinatory that he does not understand the limits of power opposite Israel; and ignoring the fact that politicians' public statements do not always constitute a serious basis for assessing long term intentions.

Arafat surprised? What color is the sky in his world?! Amos Harel reported in the middle of September 2000 in Ha'aretz had freed all of the terrorist leaders from jail. That was roughly 2 weeks prior to the outbreak of the intifada! Those terrorists didn't leave jail to join bridge clubs. Arafat was giving them a head start to wreak havoc. He wasn't surprised by the terror; he *orchestrated* it. This is what then Israeli ambassador to the UN, Yehuda Lancry wrote to Kofi Annan on October 2, 2000:

The events in these areas represent the latest and most severe developments in a wave of violence that has been building over the past few weeks. The attacks began with the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails in the vicinity of the Netzarim Junction on 13 September. This was followed by the killing of an Israeli soldier by a roadside bomb on 27 September, and the murder of an Israeli police officer by a Palestinian policeman in a joint patrol on 29 September.

Lancry's letter jibes with the Harel's report as to when the violence against Israel started.
The post Oslo violence came from legitimizing, arming and trusting an unrepenitent terrorist and his henchmen; it did not come from a lack of debate. Saying that debate is necessary after Arafat has shown his true colors is sort of like saying that there was a need for a debate whether or not the world was flat after Columbus returned from the New World. Debate can be useful if it is used to clarify a situation. Once the situation has been clarified debate only serves as a form of denial.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at July 1, 2004 02:35 PM | TrackBack