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Much ado about Gilad

The country is sort of going a little crazy right now amid the flurry of reports about the imminent release of Gilad Schalit, the IDF soldier who’s been held captive by a faction within Hamas since 2006.

Rumors and speculation abound that the release in exchange for 450 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails – some hardened terrorists with ‘blood on their hands’, a euphenism for being the masterminds or perpetrators of terror acts – is only days away.

While media reports along the same lines crop up every few weeks, this is the first time since the whole ordeal began that it seems like there’s a semblance of truth to what’s being reported. President Shimon Peres said in Cairo on Sunday that progress had been made, and on Monday, a Hamas delegation from Gaza arrived in Cairo to discuss and decide on whether to accept the latest prisoner list provided by Israel. At the same time, Schalit’s parents, Noam and Aviva went to the Knesset to lobby the support of ministers to approve the deal on the Israeli side.

While all Israelis want to see Schalit come home to his family, some are saying that the price of releasing terrorists is too high. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Monday to hold discussions in the Knesset and with the public on the terms of a deal for the release of Shalit.

Netanyahu told fellow Likud MKs that the difficulties in making the decision lay in the government’s different goals in the negotiations.

“On one hand, the desire to take care of our soldiers and bring them back, sometimes at the cost of endangering lives – a very big principle for our people and in the Jewish tradition,” he said. “And on the other hand: refraining from encouraging future abductions.”

Members of the National Union party held a press conference urging Netanyahu to reject the deal, warning that it would increase terrorist attacks on Israel.

While that could possibly be an outcome of the prisoner release, it will be difficult, if not impossible for the government to turn back the deal. Apropo to Brian’s touching post below, in a country in which most families have a daughter or son, father and mother who have served or are serving in the army, the national sentiment is top heavy toward bringing Schalit home at any price.

Most of us who may bear the brunt of freshly released terrorists within arms length are willing to take that chance for the opportunity to see Gilad Schalit hugging his parents.

Attack in the heart of Tel Aviv

We always tout Israel’s – and specifically Tel Aviv’s – tolerant policies and attitudes toward alternative lifestyles. Which makes the horrible news about a masked gunman entering gay youth center in downtown Tel Aviv Saturday night and opening fire killing two and wounding 15 particularly difficult to digest.

According to the police, the masked gunman opened fire, then holstered his pistol and fled the scene by foot to the busy streets of Tel Aviv. The victims of the attack were named as Nir Katz, 26, of Givatayim, and Liz Troubishi, 17, of Holon. According to patrons, the center was not a club or disco, but just a place for teens from 14-21 to hang out in a non-threatening environment.

According to Ha’aretz, Gays and lesbians enjoy great freedom and liberties in Israel. Soldiers serve openly in the military, and openly gay musicians and actors like Ivry Lider are among the most popular in the country. Meretz MK Nitsan Horovitz is openly gay and ran for the current Knesset on a platform of gay rights.

Tel Aviv, one of the more liberal cities in the world, holds a festive annual gay parade, and the there is even a city-sponsored open house for the community. The media in Israel was full of speculation on Sunday whether this was the work of a crazed, lone gunman, or whether it was due to the cultivation of intolerance that certain segments of society have toward gays.

Israel is a place which, on the one hand has liberal laws, but on the other does not attempt to counter homophobia, claimed Danny Zak, a gay activist and journalist,

“The Shas party has the blood of two innocent kids on their hands,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “Shas has blamed gays for earthquakes and diseases. This is incitement, but no one is put on trial for it,” he said.

Shas released a statement following the shooting in which it called for the attacker “to be found and tried. Murder is of course against the Torah’s path and every attack is a contravention of the religion of Israel.”

All of the countries leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Deputy PM Silvan Shalom and Oppostion leader MK Tzippi Livni condemmed the attack. But MK Horovitz also raised the spectre of incitement from public leaders being behind the attack.

“There has been non-stop incitement,” he told the Post. “I very much hope this is not the result of comments made by public figures and Knesset members. They need to understand that some people will take action.”

He said the fact that the location of the center had been disclosed and that the murderer knew exactly where to go were serious blows to the gay community.

While the attack against the center was horrific, the public outcry against the attack and the unanimous condemnation across the board from public officials hopefully points to a future where an environment will not be allowed to develop where something like this could happen.

Israel’s next ambassador to the US – it cudda been me

There’s a warm glow in the bellies these days of many Israelis who immigrated from the US. One of our own – historian and author Michael Oren – has been named to be ambassador to the US.

Oren, whose books include Six Days of War: June 1967, The Making of the Modern Middle East and, most recently, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, made aliyah in 1979, only a few years before me. It just confirms that if I had buckled down more, had been a whole lot smarter, and like wearing ties, I might have gotten that posting myself.

While many nationalities in our melting pot have strong representation in the upper echelons of government, business and culture, it seems like we former Americans have been under-achievers, or maybe just too timid to push ahead in the the Middle Eastern environment here. Maybe, we just can’t work the protekzia button the way others have been able to.

Sure, there’s Tal Brody in basketball, Bank Hapoalim’s Shari Arison in business, Nobel Prize winner Robert Aumann, and Dore Gold, Ron Dermer and Ari Harrow in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s inner posse, as well as many more which I’m sure you’ll remind me of.

But when a fellow countryman, even one you don’t know personally, achieves the heights that Oren has, it’s reason to be proud. And Oren, evidently has many reasons to make us proud. Besides being one of the world’s foremost historians on the Middle East, Oren is a mensch, according to his fellow IDF reservist Dan Gordon.

Gordon, writing in his blog, described an incident during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, in which he and Oren were serving in the Army Spokesman’s unit on the front lines.

We hooked up with the ambulance in a wadi or deep ravine. Flairs were going off above us, which meant that Hizbullah knew we were there and were hunting for us. We served as the covering force while the fallen were evacuated.

Later Michael’s daughter, who was serving as a social worker in the Golani Brigade, called Michael on his cell phone. Her unit had taken a lot of wounded; most of them were her friends.

Michael turned to me and said, “My daughter needs a hug. Can I borrow your car?” The two of us drove down from the Lebanese border to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. Michael spent a half hour with his daughter; gave her a much needed hug and then the two of us drove back near dawn to rejoin our unit.

That is the kind of man Israel’s ambassador designate to the U.S. is. He wouldn’t hesitate to endanger his life not only to recover wounded, but to recover the fallen, and though exhausted himself, drove round trip, four hours to give his daughter a hug when she most needed her father’s love.

Politics aside, and Oren’s been bashed for being both too Right and too Left, as a person representing Israel’s interests in the US, there’s every indication he’s going to walk right down the middle. And if he finds the job too taxing, I’m available to help out as long as I don’t have to wear a tie.

Pooping out the Pope

We’re gearing up here for the arrival of one of the most charismatic guys around – attracting thousands of admirers to every appearance he makes. No, I’m not talking about Leonard Cohen, but Pope Benedict XVI, who arrives here the week after next.

It will mark the first visit of a pope to Israel since Pope John Paul II made a five-day pilgrimage in March, 2000.

I’m not sure who put together Pope Benedict XVI’s schedule, but even doing a quick scan of it left me breathless. It looks like somebody’s trying to poop out this pope, expecially considering he’s in his 70s.

Take a deep breath and imagine you’re in the Popemobile:

Monday, May 11

11:00 Arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, Official Welcoming Ceremony
12:05 Arrival at Mount Scopus helipad, Jerusalem. Welcoming Ceremony by Jerusalem Mayor, Nir Barkat.
16:05 Visit to the President’s Residence, joint planting of a tree in the Presidential Garden
17:30 Visit to Yad Vashem, Memorial ceremony at the Remembrance Hall; Wreath laying; Address by the Pope.
19:00 Interfaith Meeting, Notre Dame Hotel

Tuesday, May 12
09:15 Meeting with the Mufti, Temple Mount
10:00 Visit to the Western Wall
10:35 Meeting with the Chief Rabbis, Heichal Shlomo
12:00 Visit to the Church of Dormition – site of the Last Supper
12:30 Visit and Prayer at Latin Patriarch
16:15 Mass at the Garden of Gethsemane

Wednesday May 13
08:00-19:00 Visit to Bethlehem

Thursday May 14
08:30 Travel to Nazareth
09:15 Arrival in Nazareth, Welcoming Ceremony
10:00 Mass at Mount of the Precipice
15:50 Meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Church of the Annunciation
16:30 Meeting with the Faith Heads in Israel, Church of the Annunciation
17:30 Prayer at the Church of the Annunciation
19:00 Return to Jerusalem

Friday May 15
09:15 Meeting at the Greek-Orthodox Patriarch
10:00 Visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
13:30 Leaving Ceremony, Ben Gurion Airport

Whew! Talk about an intense four days. Let’s hope the Pope has some comfortable walking shoes.

Friday, Friday in Israel

Things seem to be going from bad to worse on this Friday, as we head into Shabbat.
Or, at least back to the way things were just a couple months ago, before Operation Cast Lead.

According to news reports this morning, at least 10 mortar shells have fallen on the Western Negev. At the same time, Israel’s chief negotiator in trying to get Gilad Schalit freed, Amos Gilad, has cancelled a planned meeting in Cairo, following the Israeli cabinet decision to tie a cease-fire arrangement with Hamas to the release of Schalit.

And it looks like we’re headed for a narrow Right-wing coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu, following reports in the papers this morning that Kadima leader Tzipi Livni said she wouldn’t let her party be the token centrists to make the coalition more palatable to the world.

Maybe a Right-wing government is what is needed, since we haven’t accomplished much in the last 10 years or so under various moderate leadership. Who knows?

That’s why I’m dealing with the Friday errands that we all surround ourselves with here, to take our minds off the mess. It’s a red-letter day in our household as our 14-year-old son has relented to getting his first haircut in a couple years. So hurray for that!

And then we’re going to bring our puppy to the vet for a third round of shots (hopefully one that will inject him with a going outside to the bathroom ethic).

But the highlight of the day is that our oldest daughter just returned home from her last day of her army service. She’s sleeping it off now, but tonight over Shabbat dinner, we’ll celebrate, and I’m making a Pillsbury chocolate cake with my own secret recipe homemade frosting. And a secondary celebration will take place for daughter # 2 who just received a letter from the army that she’s been accepted for an elite combat track when she’s inducted later this year. Great for her, that’s going to be three years of no sleep for her worried parents.

So, we take our happiness where we can, even as the news around us looks bleak. After all, those everyday treasures are the real reasons we’re living here anyway. Shabbat Shalom.

The Itzik Theory in the Israeli elections

With election day Tuesday closing in, the race for the 18th Knesset promises to be one of the closest in history. Thanks to the rising star of Israel Beiteinu and its strong-armed leader Avigdor Lieberman, the wide lead enjoyed by the Likud and Binyamin Netanyahu over Kadima and Tzipi Livni has virtually vanished according to the latest polls, as Leiberman has been stealing away Likud votes on its way to becoming the country’s third most popular party.

The end result is that the two Right-leaning parties may end up cancelling each other out, leaving Kadima with the most seats on Tuesday. However, as Gil Hoffman pointed out in today’s Jerusalem Post, just because you get the most seats doesn’t neccessarily mean you’ll end up being asked by the president to form the coalition. It’s a combination of that, plus an overall look at how many seats the Right bloc gained versus the Left, and perhaps most importantly, which party the other parties advise the president during post-election consultations to deposit the authority of forming the next government coalition to. And according to Hoffman, an overwhelming majority of MKs will advise President Shimon Peres to give that responsbity to the Likud and Netanyahu, no matter the outcome of Tuesday’s elections.

But I feel pretty confident going out on the limb and predicting that Likud will end up topping the list of vote getters on Tuesday. If only because of Itzik.

He’s a 22-year-old resident of Ma’aleh Adumim, and a player in my weekly Shabbat touch football game. Recenly demobilized from the IDF, Itzik has a great, self-deprecating sense of humor, a twinkle in his eye, and like alot of young, Right-leaning Israelis, a has a strong hint of racism against Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel.

He doesn’t really differentiate between the two, and being brought up on a sea of Palestinian terrorism, from the first Intifada, on down through the rocket attacks on Sderot that prompted the latest war in Gaza, he wants as little to do with Arabs as possible.

Quite naturally, he’s a big supporter of Lieberman. But he’s going to vote for Likud. “Bibi’s obviously going to give Lieberman a very senior cabinet position, so he’ll have alot of authority in the next government. So, I don’t see any reason to vote for Israel Beiteinu, we have to make sure Likud beats Kadima,” he explained during a break in the game.

So, extropolating a little, Israel Beiteinu might actually lose a little support and gain less than the 18 or 19 seats the polls predict. But that’s only because their supporters are going to prop up Likud to ensure a Right victory on Tuesday. That, at least, is the Itzik Theory.

Voting in the Israeli elections with a compass

With elections only 11 days away, it looks like a shoe-in for the Likud party led by Binyamin Netanyahu. But according to polls, there’s about 400,000 voters – which almost 10% of eligible voters – who haven’t yet decided which of the 34 parties running for Knesset to vote for.

You could count me as one of them. Alot of friends and acquaintances are voting for the Green Movement-Meimad ticket, but I fear they’re going to get 90% of the vote among liberal religious Anglo residents of southern Jerusalem neighborhoods like Baka and Talpiot, and 0.2% everywhere else.

Will they cross the threshold of minimum votes to gain at least one Knesset seat and not result in a wasted vote? Their TV ads aren’t very convincing – using Rabbi Michael Melchior giving a speech instead of utilizing one of the young, dynamic members on the list like Alon Tal. Melchior’s fine, but he’s a known entity, and his Meimad party has limited support around the country.

Perplexed, I ended up on this site my wife told me about – the Election Compass - a multiple choice questionaire about different issues related to Israel’s security mostly. Based on your answers, you receive a report with a compass on the political map pointing to the party you should be voting for – or at least the general vicinity.

Launched by the Israel Democracy Institute, the site had nearly 500,000 visitors by Thursday. Questions like ‘Would you be willing to give up Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem for a Palestinian state?’ have to be answered with a ’strongly agree’ to ’strongly disagree’ checkpoint range.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the model was initiated in the Netherlands for that country’s 2006 elections and was eventually used by 3.4 million people out of 12.6 million voters. The Israeli version was developed by a team of IDI scholars and researchers lead by Senior Fellow Prof. Asher Arian.

“The compass has three main goals,” Arian told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. “The first is to help the perplexed voter find his position within the Israeli political map. The second is to encourage parties to be more forthcoming with specifics regarding their various platforms. And the third is to encourage political participation. We’re very concerned about the low participation rate in Israel, and we thought that this could add a buzz.”

After dutifully answering the questionaire, I awaited the tally and the compass page to find out who I should be voting for. And, my compass pointed to an area populated by – guess what – the Green Movement-Meimad.

Getting Ben-Gurion high, and other TV ads

It’s here – the only redeeming aspect of the Knesset election campaign – the television ads!

Tonight beings the perennial ritual of the screening of the TV ads developed by the political parties running for the Knesset. Instead of airing them whenever they buy the air time, the three main Israeli channels – 1, 10 and 22, group the ads together in preset blocks of time. So tonight for instance, Channel 10 has been given the hour slot begining at 6 pm for those that just can’t wait, Channel 1 will air the aids at 10 pm and Channel 2 gets the late-night 11:15 pm slot.

The ads used to be screened in prime time, but there’s been a waning interest over the years among viewers, so they’ve been relegated to the early and late evening periods, and they’ll only be shown for two weeks instead of the traditional three. Still, the ads are always good TV and provide more laughs than any sitcom on the air.

Following the rich get richer mode of thinking, the amount of time each of the 34 parties receives for commercials is based on how many MKs each party has in the current Knesset, so Kadima will dominate the broadcasts and new parties will barely be seen, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Kadima’s ads are focusing on tearing down Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who is leading in the polls. One ad depicts a polygraph machine as Netanyahu vowed to oppose the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, while a picture shows him voting in favor of the plan.

The Likud will go after Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, portraying her as indecisive and zigzagging – by supporting the Second Lebanon War but calling it unwinnable, and calling to topple Hamas while giving them money. The Likud slogan – “it’s out of her league” is purposely read by a woman so as not to look chauvinist, says the report.

The religious Shas party is adopting the tactics of President Barack Obama, by featuring the “Yes, we can” slogan, while the Left-wing Meretz-Hatnua Hahadasha ads have candidate Nitzan Horovitz drinking from a toilet to highlight the problem of water pollution.

The less popular the party, the more outrageous the ad, it turns out. The Power to the Handicapped Party will feature disabled people having sex to prove that they are abled, while the Green Leaf Party which favors legalizing marijuana will feature chairman Gil Kopatch smoking a joint on the grave of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion.

Everyone’s happy now – the ad agencies have their creative juices flowing, the TV viewers have something to watch and talk about the next day, and the politicians are seeing themselves as God-like. Now, if all this only helped the voter decide who to vote for…

The Quiet Within the Storm

You have to give Israelis credit; when the chips are down, even the ones who aren’t necessarily suspected of idealism come shining through.

As Israel went to war against Hamas over the weekend, the leaders of the major political parties all decided to suspend their political campaigns for the duration of the operation – which, both Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak said could be lengthy. Barak, who leades the Labor Party, said that he had to concentrate on the operation and had no time for politics.

The Likud, too, suspended its campaign, and has put on hold a radio campaign featuring ads attacking Kadima chief and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni. Posters that bear the campaign’s tagline – “Tsipi, the job is too big for you” – that have already been put up will be taken down. In a statement Saturday night, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu said that “there is a time for debate and a time for unity, and today is a time for unity,” he said. “If our enemies thought we would not be united under rocket fire, they were wrong. The cannons roar, but we are united.”

With the elections coming just about a month from now – and the gap between the Likud and Kadima narrowing, according to the latest polls – the suspension of campaigning is really extraordinary. It wouldn’t be surprising for opposition politicians, for example, to accuse the government of timing its operation to cynically improve its standing in the polls, giving it a “January surprise” type of bounce that could sustain it until the elections. But no – politicians on the left and the right spontaneously announced (without any coordination, as far as I could tell) that they were holding off on the negative noise we are set to be subject to. Not that any Israeli, given the choice, wouldn’t opt for the noise if it meant that the south was secure. But it does show that our political leaders and would-be leaders are a better caliber than we usually give them credit for being.

(Photo courtesy One Family Fund)

Vote for Sisso

The November presidential elections in the US aren’t the only game in town. Next month will also see municipal and mayoral elections in a number of Israeli cities and towns.

Most of the attention has been on Jerusalem, where incumbent haredi Mayor Uri Lupolianski has been replaced on his party’s ticket by longtime MK Meir Porush. Just a couple weeks ago, former Shas leader Aryeh Deri was barred from competing against Porush because the timeout by law following his 1999 conviction of fraud and bribery hadn’t finished yet.
And of course, the great white hope, secular high tech candidate Nir Barkat is hoping to wrest the mayoralty out of the haredi hands. And on the side, Russian mega-rich businessman/shady character and Betar Jerusalem owner Arkady Gaydamak is also running on a ‘speak English only’ platform.

But lots of other cities and towns are also holding elections for mayors, with equally scintillating scenarios. Take the Haifa ‘burb of Kiryat Yam. The mayor there for the last 15 years has been one Shmuel Sisso. The veteran lawyer and former Israel consul general in New York been considered such a popular – or powerful – mayor that nobody had even bothered to register to run against him. That is, until just recently, Sisso’s younger cousin Alon, threw his hat in the ring.

According to a Ma’ariv report, Alon, who is running on a Likud ticket, was really only interested in gaining a seat on the local council, but national Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu advised the 38-year-old attorney to go for broke. Older cousin Shmuel, who is running under Kadima auspices, is not happy with the clan competition. Whatever the results in the Kiryat Yam mayoral elections, it will be all in the family.

 

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