17 Days to Israel's Knesset Elections

Friday - Talk to us


Benjamin Disraeli was reputedly once asked by a novice member of parliament whether he would advise him to take frequent part in House debate. Disraeli answered: "No, I do not think you ought to do so, because it is much better that the House should wonder why you do not speak than why you do."

So in joining Ehud Barak's call for a debate between the three most likely candidates for prime minister, this newspaper is mindful that such an encounter could easily devolve into a cacophony of vacuous sound-bites.

Jaded Israelis claim intelligent debate is alien to the political culture. Moreover, they say: We know the candidates - too well. We've already made up our minds. What could we learn from a debate?

To which we say: Plenty.

What we propose is not a candidates' brawl. We envision a tightly choreographed discussion, operating under strictly enforced rules and chaperoned by a moderator respected for fair-mindedness who won't take drivel delivered in clever cadence for an answer.

There are just 17 days left before Israelis go to the polls to elect a new Knesset, from which the next government will be formed. Public opinion surveys tell us that the Likud, Kadima and Labor - in that order - are in the lead, with Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas and Hatnua Hahadasha-Meretz a tier below. Perhaps another five smaller parties, including Arab nationalists and haredim, will pass the ludicrously low two-percent threshold.

Whatever other electoral surprises may be in store, it is all but certain that Israel's next prime minister will, in order of likelihood, be Binyamin Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni or Barak. Wouldn't it be valuable, then, if we could pin them down on where they want to take the country, and how they distinguish themselves from one another?

The voters deserve more than the manipulative TV electioneering spots that begin rolling this coming Tuesday and the print, billboard and Internet ads already attacking our senses.

ISRAEL'S first televised election debate took place between Labor's Shimon Peres and the Likud's Menachem Begin in the 1977 race, which broke Labor's lock on power. In 1996, in the wake of the Rabin assassination, Peres barely deigned to acknowledge Netanyahu in an encounter that contributed to Likud's win.

In 1999, Ehud Barak boycotted a three-way debate with Yitzhak Mordechai and Binyamin Netanyahu. Mordechai chipped away at Netanyahu's credibility by asking the Likud chief to look him in the eye and answer his questions. In the event, Mordechai ultimately threw his support to Barak, who went on to win.

In 2006, Kadima's Ehud Olmert refused to debate Labor's Amir Peretz.

Netanyahu and Livni may be right to see no political profit in engaging in a debate with Barak. The only beneficiaries would be the voters - yet shouldn't that count for something?

The format we envisage would require Netanyahu, Livni and Barak to each answer questions on national security and domestic issues, with the opportunity for rebuttal.

For instance, Livni might be asked whether, since Mahmoud Abbas says Israeli-Palestinian talks have reached a dead end, Kadima still stands as the party of unilateralism, disengagement and convergence. And if unilateralism is to be jettisoned, what sets Kadima apart?

Barak could perhaps be invited to delineate the tweaks and changes he'd want to make to the Saudi-sponsored Arab League peace initiative, which Labor says it sees as a good jumping-off point for negotiations.

Binyamin Netanyahu's question could be: Since you are on record as acquiescing in the creation of a Palestinian state, what - when all is said and done - separates the Likud from Kadima and Labor?

Going beyond the issue of security, we'd ask:

• Do you favor reforming Israel's electoral system to allow some form of district representation?

• With increasing numbers of Israelis Jewishly illiterate and the Orthodox rabbinate alienating many from their heritage, how would you enrich the Jewish content of our lives?

• How can ordinary Israelis be shielded from the effects of the global economic recession?

George W. Bush goes; Barack Obama comes. What does this mean for Israel?

Wednesday -- From Bush to Obama


As we, from 6,000 miles away, watched Barack Obama take the oath of office, promising America's friendship to all those who seek peace, the extraordinary enthusiasm of Americans for their new president, together with the optimism that he can begin to meet the challenges their country faces, draws our admiration and our affection.

The first time the name Barack Obama appeared in the pages of The Jerusalem Post was on July 28, 2004, in a report on the Democratic National Convention which nominated John Kerry. Our correspondent noted that "Barack Obama, a candidate for US Senate from Illinois, has become a star of the Democratic Party" and was scheduled to address the convention. The next day we reported that Obama "energized the crowd with an indictment of the Bush administration's decision to wage war in Iraq."

Obama was elected to the Senate that November. And by the time he made his first trip to Israel in January 2006, the junior senator was already being touted as a possible presidential candidate. He declared his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, in February 2007, won the Democratic nomination and went on to defeat John McCain to become America's first African American president.

ONE HEBREW tabloid headlined a front-page picture of Obama in English: "Good luck." In truth, beyond wishing the new president well, Israelis are apprehensive over whether he will be not just supportive, but empathetic toward Israel - like George W. Bush.

Yet Israel had plenty of ups and downs with Bush, too.

Shortly after al-Qaida's attack on September 11, 2001, Bush sought support to build an anti-terrorism coalition by emphasizing - Palestinian suicide bombings notwithstanding - that a Palestinian state living alongside a secure Israel was part of his vision of a Middle East peace. He quickly dissociated the war on Islamist terror from Israel's war against Palestinian terror. His administration initially resisted isolating Yasser Arafat; it even opposed Operation Defensive Shield.

Bush eventually figured out that before the Palestinians can create a state they needed an institutional infrastructure and civic-minded technocrats. His administration recruited Salaam Fayad to be the PA's finance, and later prime minister.

Bush will go down in history as the first US president to explicitly call for the creation of a Palestinian state, while urging the Palestinians to reject Arafat's violent ways.

His administration proposed a "road map" aiming to settle the conflict by 2005. In it, the Palestinians committed to an unconditional cessation of violence. Israel promised to dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

Bush opposed the security barrier. He found nice things to say about the EU-funded Geneva Initiative promoted by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abd Rabbo, which would have driven Israel back to the 1949 Armistice Lines while obfuscating a resolution of Arab claims for a "right of return."

Though Bush supported disengagement only reluctantly, out of this tentative backing came, potentially, his most important contribution to Israel's security: His April 2004 letter to premier Ariel Sharon acknowledging that "it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."

In 2007, in the wake of the Iraq War and the need to rebuild support for the US in the Arab world, Bush repackaged the road map as the Annapolis process, setting December 2008 as the new deadline for ending the conflict.

It was under Bush's watch that the disastrous 2003 National Intelligence Estimate was issued, taking the wind out of efforts to isolate Iran. Not only didn't Bush "solve" the Iran nuclear crisis - perhaps because he had overstretched US military resources in Iraq - he also reportedly blocked Israeli efforts to go it alone.

THE LESSON in all this? Israelis would be wise not to panic at the first sign of turbulence in Jerusalem-Washington relations. American interests in the Middle East are not always in harmony with Israel's. But we have every reason to expect that Obama will support the Jewish state in its quest for defensible borders and genuine acceptance by its neighbors.

He knows that this can happen only if Iranian and Arab extremists - charter members of that very "far-reaching network of violence and hatred" he warned against in his inaugural address - are sidelined.

The true test & Tragedy is no crime

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Tuesday -- The true test

By the time Barack Obama is sworn in today as America's 44th president, every Israeli soldier, save for Gilad Schalit, will be out of Gaza. And when President Obama starts his first full day at the White House tomorrow Hamas will already be setting the stage for the next conflagration.


The new American president will no doubt have noted Ismail Haniya's speech "thanksgiving" broadcast on Hamas TV in which Gaza's prime minister declared: "God has granted us a great victory, not for one faction, or party, or area, but for our entire people."


Briefing journalists, Hamas military officials claimed that they lost just 48 gunmen to the IDF (Islamic Jihad and other organizations suffered another 40 or so killed, they said). Hamas managed to launch 1,000 rockets and mortars at Israel, killed 80 soldiers, captured some and shot down a helicopter. With these achievements under its belt, the manufacture and smuggling of arms – described as "holy" work -- would now pick up where it left off.


Ordinary Gazans, much as they are wont to identify with Hamas's delusional sense of triumph, will find their gratification tempered by their coming face-to-face with the price paid for Hamas's "achievements" which according to Palestinian sources include 1,300 dead; over 5,000 wounded; 90,000 made homeless and over $1 billion in economic damages.


Hamas's claims notwithstanding, no IDF soldiers were captured; 10 soldiers were killed (though several in "friendly fire" incidents); some 50 troops remain hospitalized. Three civilians lost their lives. Hamas's bombardments (some 852 flying bombs packed with shrapnel) injured over 700 Israelis. Fourteen non-combatants remain hospitalized, including seven-year old Orel Yelizarov, who lies gravely injured with shrapnel in the brain.


WE WILL know soon enough whether Operation Cast Lead achieved its purpose. The test is not whether it is "quiet" in the south while the terrorist organizations take a hiatus. The true test is whether Hamas is allowed to realize its plans to rearm.


The IDF needs to intervene the moment Gaza's workshops resume producing Kassams; the instant its laboratories renew the production of explosives; and the minute tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor are refurbished for the smuggling of weapons and supplies necessary for the arms industry. Failure to act, without delay, would instantly return Israel to the intolerable state of affairs which prevailed prior to the launching of IDF operations.


We were glad to hear Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni tell Israel Radio that she had reached an understanding with the outgoing Bush administration that Israel could act even in the absence of actual Hamas shooting. Israel also reserves the right, she said, to operate along the Philadelphi Corridor, if the pledges made by Egypt and other countries to halt weapons smuggling go unfilled. Should Hamas resume its attacks, Livni warned, it would get another dose of what the IDF dished out over the past three weeks.


Will Israelis and Palestinians have reason to recollect the flash visit, first to Sharm e-Sheikh and then to Jerusalem of six European leaders, including the voluble French President Nicolas Sarkozy? They Europeans came expressively to bolster the cease-fire, and Israel's leaders are convinced they now have part their solid support against Hamas. Each leader assured Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel has every right to defend itself. Sadly, it's not self-evident that any of them meant what they said – literally.


Be that as it may, beyond doing the obvious and making certain that those who brought devastation upon Gaza aren't given the wherewithal to do so again by rearming, Europe and the international community needs to restrain itself for making Hamas the project manager and chief financial officer for the reconstruction of the Strip. EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner seems to have taken this point on board and hints that it will be difficult to rebuild Gaza while the Islamist remains opposed to peace.


So long as Hamas remains an unrepentant enemy of peace, so long as it is full-throttle committed to violence, so long as it refuses to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a homeland anywhere, and so long as it refuses to abide by the Palestinians' international commitments, Hamas can never, legitimately, be part of the solution in Gaza – not even under the fig leaf of a Palestinian unity government.

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Monday -- Tragedy is no crime


You are a freshman university student on the first day of a philosophy course. Your professor poses this ethical dilemma: A devoutly religious man is shooting at you with an AK-47. He is determined to kill you and your family. Is it moral to shoot back? Before you answer; consider that he is shielded by his pregnant wife and three young children.

Ordinary Israelis know what any undergraduate not suffering from a death-wish intuitively appreciates - namely, that human beings should not intentionally injure other human beings but may sometimes need to resort to violence to keep themselves and others from harm.

We are sensitive to the heartrending loss of innocent life in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Arab and foreign press reports claim upwards of 1,300 Palestinians killed, including 300 children and 100 women. It will take Israeli experts time to accurately determine how many of the dead were truly non-combatants. For now, there are huge discrepancies.

Of the 900 enemy dead that Israeli intelligence had reportedly identified by last Thursday, about 250 were said to be non-combatants. The blame for their deaths rests solely with Hamas. Hamas provoked this war, and then fought it from behind Palestinian men, women and children.

Still, for some knee-jerk enemies of Israel like the 78-year-old British MP Gerald Kaufman, even the killing of "militants" is inexcusable. He's implied that Israel's shooting of a Hamas gunman is akin to the Nazis' murder of his grandmother during the Holocaust. We can have no common language with someone whose moral compass is so warped. Kaufman, like the mullahs in Iran, has convinced himself that Israel is exploiting the "continuing guilt from Gentiles" over the Holocaust "as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

That broken record won't play. Presumably, Kaufman means the "gentiles" who control the United Nations. But how sympathetic are they to Israel's right of self-defense? Or perhaps he means the "gentiles" in the international media? How convincing is it to suggest that they side with Israel in their Gaza coverage?

Even Kaufman's notoriety as a "Jewish critic" of Israel has lost its cachet - such critics are hardly a rare species.

And anyway, Kaufman has been siding with the Palestinians since 1988, when he endorsed the first intifada.

The Kaufmans of the world apart, Israel can also do no right in the eyes of those critics who believe that our existence here is an "original sin"; that since there were 600,000 Jews here in 1948 and, arguably, twice that number of Arabs, any partition of Palestine was inherently "theft." We have no claims on the hearts of those who embrace the Arab narrative so utterly.

BUT WE'VE also been let down by those who profess to believe that the Jewish people do have the right to a homeland. Why is it so hard for them to comprehend the nature of the enemy we're facing in Gaza? After all, the theology that motivates Hamas is analogous to the fanaticism that brought down the World Trade Center, exploded London's transport system, and continues to spill innocent blood from Bali to Mumbai.

Israelis are told that no matter the provocation, we are "too quick" to resort to force. As if negotiations with Hamas were an option; as if eight years was too quick.

And if we've acted so "disproportionately" in our brutal march to triumph, how come the enemy is still standing and declaring victory?

To the morally obscene charge that we've committed "genocide" in Gaza - does anyone seriously doubt that were genocide our goal, heaven forbid, there would be 500,000 dead Palestinians, and not 1,000?

What other army drops warning leaflets and makes automated warning calls prior to attacking? Why is it ethical for Hamas to fire from a mosque or over the walls of a UN facility, but unethical for our citizen-soldiers to save themselves by responding with heavy weapons?

The truth is that no Western country faced with a similar set of circumstances - fighting an enemy that principally targets non-combatants while hiding behind its own civilians - would comport itself with higher moral standards than the IDF.

Sophomoric ideals about wartime morality are barely tolerable in Philosophy 101. When mouthed by leaders and pundits who should know better, they reflect intellectual laziness and dishonesty.

Cease-fire -- Day 1

SUNDAY
Deterrence restored?

If the cabinet's decision Saturday night to halt Operation Cast Lead is premised on the notion that such restraint will afford this country renewed international legitimacy to defend itself against continued Hamas aggression, the ministers are likely to be disappointed.

Nevertheless, under intense worldwide pressure, including from the US, the cabinet declared an immediate unilateral Gaza cease-fire whose longevity will depend on how Hamas responds. The cease-fire comes in the wake of commitments by Egypt regarding the Philadelphi Corridor. Meanwhile, our forces will remain in-place; the crossing points from Israel and from Egypt into Gaza will stay closed until security arrangements to prevent Hamas arms smuggling can be implemented.


UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon declared: "We cannot wait for all the details, the mechanisms, to be conclusively negotiated and agreed, while civilians continue to be traumatized, injured or killed."

Though Hamas has repeatedly rejected the cease-fire, and even now says that "resistance and confrontation will continue," the feeling among ordinary Israelis is that Ban was hectoring Israel and not the Islamist aggressors. Because the international community never seems to have the time to "wait for all the details" on how to stop Hamas or Hizbullah from arming themselves to be worked out; and because the UN has said not a single word to criticize Hamas's belligerence or its unlawful practice of fighting from behind Gaza's civilian population, it may be setting the stage for yet another round of bloodshed.

The goal of the IDF operation which began on Dec. 27 was to halt continuing Hamas rocket attacks and infiltration attempts against southern Israel; to change a reality in which a generation of Israeli schoolchildren has grown up thinking the threat of rockets and mortars was part of the fabric of life; and to plug up the hundreds of tunnels from Egypt into Gaza which deliver military hardware, trained gunmen and illicit cash that prop up Hamas. Defense Minister Ehud Barak argues that Israel is "very close" to reaching these goals "and securing them through diplomatic agreements."


Time will tell.

Israel's decision to agree to a cease-fire was facilitated by its talks with Egypt and a rather nebulous memorandum of understanding signed Friday between Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and outgoing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (in coordination with incoming Obama administration officials). Washington pledged to "work cooperatively" with Jerusalem on an array of steps to stem the flow of arms to Hamas. Separately, Italy, the UK, France and Germany have signed on to the memorandum.

ISRAELIS HAVE every reason to be skeptical that these pledges will translate into a tangible diminution of the enemy's capacity to smuggle Iranian weapons into Gaza. Moreover, while the US and EU have always supported Israel's theoretical right of self defense against terrorism – and do so again in these latest commitments – when push comes to shove, as it did at the UN Security Council debate on Gaza, that support evaporated.

We are hardly encouraged by Egypt's announcement that the Israel-US memo does not obligate it. Indeed, all we heard from President Hosni Mubarak was an adamant demand for "an immediate and unconditional cease-fire" and "a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Strip."

Leaders of several EU countries are due to visit Egypt and Israel tomorrow to bolster the cease-fire. But unless Mubarak can be convinced to fulfill his responsibilities to stop the smuggling beneath the Philadelphi Corridor, all the photo-ops in the world will be to no avail.

Whatever the fate of the cease-fire, it is not too soon to praise the IDF for an astoundingly effective war against Hamas, and to thank our fighters for their extraordinary efforts -- the disparagement of the foreign media notwithstanding -- to avoid hurting non-combatants.

Operation Cast Lead has taught Hamas that just because Israel is a civilized society, and though we cherish life and are loath to engage an enemy that shields among its own civilian population; our army can nevertheless overcome its inhibitions. It has admittedly been disagreeable for the IDF to strike back at Hamas as it operates out of mosques, schools, hospitals and aid buildings. But the enemy now knows that Israel will not commit national suicide -- not even if surviving makes us unpopular.