Behind the Katsav scandal, racism and crisis in Israel
(AsiaNews) - Israelis received with mixed feelings the news of the criminal conviction of their former President, Moshe Katsav, of two cases of rape and other sexual crimes. There was, of course, a profession of shame at having had a Head of State who, the court has now said, had committed such serious crimes. But there is also a sense of national pride at having an independent justice system, which could not be intimidated or corrupted, which metes out justice equally, to the powerful and the powerless alike. No matter how high-ranking and influential a defendant may be, Israelis now say, if he has broken the law, if he has harmed his neighbour, justice is assured.
The satisfaction felt at this demonstration of the equality of all before the law is understandable and, as far as it goes, justified. It can be tempered though, by remembering that Mr. Katsav has never been a particularly powerful or influential figure. He has no wealth or significant connections of his own, and was essentially a failing fifth-rate politician, who had held some of the less important ministerial posts, when his party, then leading the Government, chose him as its candidate for Israel’s purely symbolic headship of State.
The sensational verdict served – if only for a moment - to take Israelis’ minds off the grave problems they are facing in other areas - first of all, the hopelessly stalled efforts for peace, either with the Palestinians or with Syria-Lebanon, and the not-unrelated constant threat of renewed attacks on Israel’s population from Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. And, of course, there is always the nightmare scenario of a nuclearised Iran, capable of carrying out its threat to “wipe Israel off the map”. Israel’s anxiety on this account is growing in proportion to the seeming passivity of the West.
Just days before the conclusion of the trial of former President Katsav, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Liebermann, had distressed the nation, and disappointed everyone else, by telling an assembly of Israel’s ambassadors throughout the world that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s stated policy goal of peace with a Palestinian State was unrealistic. The Foreign Minister, who had already made similar statements to the United Nations General Assembly earlier in the autumn, declared that the present Government would be completely incapable of following the peace policy proclaimed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, not only because the policy was objectively wrong, according to him, but also because the internal tensions and contradictions within the Government were such that Mr. Netanyahu could never get sufficient approval for his policies. Mr. Liebermann told his ministry’s senior staff and ambassadors that the only possible policy would be one of an “interim solution,” and that he was about to present his own plan in this sense. The “interim solution” he thinks of – the media have reported - would essentially be the continuation of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, with some discretionary “improvements” to the residents’ daily lives and economic opportunities, as long as they “behaved themselves,” of course.
The national and international embarrassment to Prime Minister Netanyahu has been intense. Commentators have been quick to point out the impossibility, and indignity, of a situation where the Foreign Minister publicly ridicules the fundamental policy positions of the Prime Minister (“two State solution) and actively opposes them. Mr. Netanyahu only responded feebly and unpersuasively that his Foreign Minister’s speech to the assembled ambassadors reflected mere “personal opinions” and that the Government’s official policy was that expressed by the Prime Minister. However, the Foreign Minister had been speaking to Israel’s ambassadors throughout the world, and giving them instructions on the positions they must represent to their host countries and international organizations. Perhaps, some in Israel think, the Prime Minister is waiting for the country’s fearless prosecutors to do his job for him: Israel’s Attorney General is expected to announce before too long his decision as to whether to bring a prosecution against Mr. Liebermann (whose record includes a criminal conviction for violence against children) on a variety of charges, related to the business dealings of the Foreign Minister (who immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union) with the former Eastern block, including money laundering and tax evasion. Under Israeli law, once a criminal prosecution is announced, Mr. Liebermann will have to leave his Government post.
In his speech, the Foreign Minister also threatened the Palestinians over their successful international drive to gain recognition, as of now, for a Palestinian State n the territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Once upon a time, a public international declaration by the P.L.O. that it was satisfied with those territories, about 22% of the whole of “historic Palestine,” would have been met in Israel with jubilation, since it would definitively signify, as it now does, full recognition of the State of Israel within its own borders (the other 78%). Now it is seen as a threat. Particularly because, in the absence of any concrete prospects for a peace treaty, more and more countries are taking it seriously, including increasingly-influential Brazil, which has already declared such recognition - with other Latin American countries following its example. Israel’s Foreign Minister has now threatened the Palestinians with heavy retaliation (“with sticks”) if they do not give up on this nonviolent effort to advance, diplomatically, the cause of their freedom. Meanwhile, on the ground, the colonization drive has picked up speed, following the ending of the partial “freeze” and Prime Minister’s Netanyahu’s effective rejection of insistent pleas from the United States to renew it, if only for 90 days, to allow peace negotiations to take place. Israel’s newspapers report daily on new settlement works, as well as on violence by settlers against Palestinian civilians; the latest “fashion” appears to be closing off Palestinian villagers’ access to their water sources, springs and wells, according to press reports in Israel.
Racism is another crisis convulsing Israeli society. So much that Israel’s Defence Minister, Ehud Barak - the contested leader of Israel’s once dominant, but now diminished, Labour Party - has warned of it in a strongly-worded public speech. Dozens of official State rabbis, rabbis of cities and towns (something like diocesan bishops in State Churches) have published a decree prohibiting the selling or renting of homes to members of Israel’s Arab minority, and some thirty wives of rabbis have published a document emotionally warning Jewish women not to enter into relationships with men who are members of that minority. Mobs in some town have attacked refugees from Africa and other “coloured” persons, in the streets, and broken into their homes and meeting places. Ultra-Orthodox Jews of European origin obstinately exclude other Jews, of Middle Eastern or African origin, from their schools. A new law has given certain townships the power to refuse to admit members of Israel’s Arab minority to live in them. Israel’s once-dominant liberal secular élite is horrified at these developments, which contradict their own conception of the Jewish State, and indeed the State of Israel’s own founding documents, especially the 1948 Declaration of Independence, with its solemn promise of full political and social equality, regardless of race, nationality or religion. One writer in the leading liberal daily, “Ha’Aretz”, has even spoken, of an atmosphere reminiscent of Germany in 1932. Others, while deprecating such rhetorical excesses, have however pointed to the analogy of warnings against the supposed designs of non-Jews on Jewish women, with some of the worst forms of incitement by anti-semites in that and other periods of history.
The Prime Minister and certain influential rabbis have indeed deplored the worst manifestations of racism, but the liberal circles complains that those statements have been too weak, and are not being backed by appropriate action. For example, the State rabbis who have signed the racist decree forbidding selling or renting homes to Arabs, are still occupying their official positions, are still being paid by the State, and have not been subjected to prosecution, even though racist incitement is forbidden by Israeli law.
But as 2010 ends and 2011 begins, the picture is not entirely bleak for Israeli society. Over-all the country’s cultural and intellectual élites, and very many other citizens, are thoroughly in favour of an end to the occupation and to the colonization, and in favour of a liberal, democratic State, with truly equal rights for all. And there is no reason to fear that, in the aggregate, they are necessarily doomed to be something like an uninfluential minority. If they are not sufficiently influential now, to change profoundly the course of events, it is because they find themselves without a credible political vehicle, or two, to channel their beliefs and sentiments into policy. The sad state of the rapidly disintegrating Labour Party has largely robbed it of the ability to play such a role, while the still new centre-right Kadimah party is as yet without a sufficiently clarified identity, and without sufficient day-to-day “reality” to make it a true engine of national renewal.
Amidst all these happenings, the absence of the Church from the public square is as evident as it is regrettable. When the late great John Paul II made the historic decision to appoint for Israel an “Auxiliary Bishop with Special Faculties”, great hopes were raised for a Hebrew-speaking Church willing to engage publicly in open dialogue (serene and respectful, “from within”) with the rest of the Hebrew-speaking majority society in Israel. Not very long after, the Bishop, the holy monk Jean-Baptiste Gourion, an Olivetan Benedictine, died of a painful illness, and then John Paul II too died. Since the Pope had not gone all the way, and had not in fact formally established a full-fledged Diocese, there is no canonically vacant office to fill. But there is a “vacant space” in the heart of Israel’s public conversation on all these issues, where the voice of the Church is not being heard.
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