The UN and the so-called human rights NGOs “have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent. They criticize free nations and spare the unfree. They denounce nations like Israel and America, who have high standards for freedom, and leave alone nations that have no freedom at all. They are nearly comical in their double-standards. Whatever moral force they once had is spent.”
If those words of truth and common sense had been pronounced by Tzipi Livni, Israel’s mainstream media would be applauding. But since those words were pronounced by Glenn Beck near the Temple Mount during his “Restoring Courage” event last week, we are told that they reflect insanity and constitute an obstacle to peace.
The American NGO “Media Matters for America,” whose declared purpose is to “correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” has consistently been on Glenn Beck’s case. Among Media Matters’ backers is George Soros who, incidentally, also gives money to J-Street. Media Matters has been instrumental in getting Beck fired from Fox News.
In the US, the likes of Georges Soros are trying to silence Glenn Beck. In Israel, most journalists are at pains to describe him as a wacko who should be ignored.
Jonathan Lis from Ha’aretz called Beck’s event in Jerusalem last week a “circus” and he couldn’t hide his dismay at Beck’s decision to honor Rami Levy and the Mayor of Itamar. Rami Levy was honored because his recently-opened supermarket in Gush Etzion provides a model of coexistence between Jews and Arabs, and because he donates food both to the orphans of the Fogel family and to Muslims during Ramadan. As for the Mayor of Itamar, he was honored because it is in his town that the Fogel family was savagely murdered this past March. But since both Rami Levy’s model of coexistence and generosity and the tragedy of the Fogel family are beyond the “green line,” Ha’aretz has to treat them with scorn.
As for Tal Schneider from Israel’s business daily Globes, he called Beck an “extremist” because Beck opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as well as the division of Jerusalem, and because he blames radical Islam for many of the world’s ills. Most Israelis oppose the division of Jerusalem. Are they also “extremists”? And was Samuel Huntington an extremist for stating that “Islam has bloody borders”?
Jonthan Lis and Tal Schneider used similar words to express their distaste of Glenn Beck. Lis wrote that “an Israeli crowd would not have identified with Beck’s messages.” As for Schneider, he wrote that “Israelis, even when they tend to be right-wing, are deterred by the extremist messages of a foreign Christian.” What Lis and Schneider mean by “Israeli” is the small social fringe that they represent: liberal, urban, and secular. But most Israelis are not WASPs (White Ashkenazi Sabra Paratroopers), and many of them actually do identify with Beck’s message. Tal Schneider has no problem with “the extremist messages of a foreign Christian” when the latter is named Jimmy Carter.
Jonathan Lis and Tal Schneider are not Glenn Beck’s only Israeli foes, of course. Those foes include strange bedfellows, such as Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv (the recognized leader of Ultra-Orthodox Lithuanian Judaism), and Yariv Oppenheimer (Director of the left-wing “Peace Now” movement). While Rabbi Eliashiv publicly expressed his opposition to Glenn Beck, Yariv Oppenheimer organized a small demonstration against him. By contrast, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin opened Beck’s event with a blessing. Rabbi Riskin’s message was, in substance, the following: Zionism is the realization of God’s promise to the Jewish people and we should welcome Glenn Beck for proclaiming this truth to the world.
And this is precisely why both Rabbi Eliashiv and Yariv Oppenheimer can’t stand Glenn Beck: they don’t believe, and they don’t want to hear, that Zionism has a religious meaning. For Eliashiv, Zionism is a revolt against God. For Oppenheimer, Zionism is worthy of support only if it has nothing to do with God.
For here is what Glenn Beck said: “My Israeli friends, I have a message: You must not lose hope. You must not lose confidence. You must have courage. And you must draw courage from the knowledge that you were led to this land by God. Not by the hand of any man, whether his name is Balfour or Truman, does Israel exist. Israel is here because the God of Abraham keeps His covenants.”
Except for the references to Balfour and Truman, this is, in substance, what Rashi says in his comment of Genesis’ first verse: that when the nations claim that the Jews stole the Land of Israel, the Jew’s only justification, ultimately, is that God created the world and granted the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. This is the bottom line, this is what Glenn Beck said, and this is what really infuriates those who reject this vision.
“Condemn me. Target me” said Beck. “I will stand with Israel.” These are words of courage, which have cost Beck, and continue to cost him, dearly. Standing with Glenn Beck, in Israel, can be costly as well. This is why so many Israeli journalists and academics, out of concern for their reputation and media approval, have been at pains to distance themselves from Beck. I am not judging them, but let me make this clear: I stand with Glenn Beck.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Is Elvis Dead?
August 16th marks the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. Yet some of the King’s fans claim he never died and just went into hiding. The average person rightly scoffs at this science-fiction theory. But how can you ridicule those who believe that Elvis is still alive and, at the same time, continue to believe in socialism or in the Middle East peace process? Those Israeli academics and journalists who claim that both socialism and the Oslo accords can be salvaged may consider themselves to be the paramount of sophistication and rationality. In truth, however, they are no less irrational than Elvis Presley’s most wacky fans.
With Israel’s social protest movement in its fourth week, the Government has appointed a team of experts (the “Trachtenberg Commission”) to suggest ways of making life more affordable for the middle-class. High-rank academics have volunteered to help the protesters formulate their demands. Among those self-appointed consultants is Yossi Yonah, a philosophy professor at Ben-Gurion University. How exactly is Yonah qualified to argue about macroeconomics with the Trachtenberg Commission? True, the same question can be asked about Yuval Steinitz, himself a philosophy professor turned Minister of Finance. But the question is not whether philosophers can understand economics (Karl Marx had a Ph.D. in philosophy, in case you were wondering what the answer is). The question is what the presence of Yossi Yonah tells us about the true agenda of some of the movement’s leaders.
Yossi Yonah publishes mostly on “multiculturalism” and he summarized his views in an interview published in Ha’aretz in 2005 (“Brave New Multicultural World,” Ha’aretz, 14 October 2005). What is Yonah’s vision for the future of Israel? "Well” he says, “besides the naturalization of the migrant workers, it will include the annulment of the Law of Return; the cancellation of the arrangement of automatic naturalization for Jewish immigrants; and provision of a worthy solution for the Palestinian refugee problem, based on the Geneva Convention." So, you see, it’s not only about economics.
There are economic experts on the team, though, such as Prof. Avia Spivak from Ben-Gurion University. He recommends raising taxes, especially corporate taxes, which would supposedly fill public coffers –as if Israeli companies couldn’t pick-up and leave, and as if both economic theory and practice hadn’t showed that governments’ revenues decrease when taxes are too high.
Then there is Shas’ brilliant idea on how to lower the price of real-estate. Rent control, of course: the Government should tell landlords what to charge. Such policies have been tried in the past, and they’ve always had the effect of increasing the price of real estate. The reason is simple: when real-estate investors cannot charge the rent that would make their investment profitable, they stop investing in real-estate. When investments in real-estate decline, so does housing supply. And when supply goes down, prices go up.
The official narrative in Israel’s media these days is that the high cost of living and the hardships of the middle-class are the result of “ultra-liberalism” and that Israel must become a “welfare state.” The very opposite is true. Israel is not a liberal economy: it is dominated by oligopolies that strangle consumers, and by monopolies (such as the National Land Authority) that control supply. If the Israeli economy is strong and productive, it is partly thanks to the economic liberalization undertaken by Shimon Peres in 1985 and by Benjamin Netanyahu in 2003. What Israel’s economy needs is more, not less, freedom and competition.
As for adopting the welfare state model, it is ironical that our know-it-all pundits are suggesting the idea precisely when the welfare state is causing European economies to crumble. If Greece, Spain and Italy are broke, it is partly because their welfare state model was built at a time when the population was young and the economy was hardly exposed to foreign competition. With an aging population and the constraints of a globalized economy, the European welfare system has become unaffordable. Hence the pilling debts of European governments, and hence the nervousness of financial markets.
Israel’s provincial public discourse does not end there. The violence in Britain, we are told, is to be blamed on Thatcherism. The fact that Labor was in power between 1997 and 2010 is irrelevant (and anyways, a journalist told me while interviewing me live on the “Reshet Bet” radio last week, Tony Blair allied himself to George Bush, so he doesn’t count). The truth, of course, is that Margaret Thatcher saved the British economy and that if it weren’t for her reforms, Britain’s fate today would be similar to Greece’s.
If the current social protest movement in Israel finally provides the opportunity to lower the cost of living by breaking-up monopolies and cartels and by lowering taxes, it will be remembered as one of the best things that ever happened to the country. But if the movement is hijacked by armchair ideologues to implement policies that have been proven to be counter-productive, then Israel is in trouble.
Those who believe that socialism might actually work at the end and that Israel is just the right place to check the theory again are about as rational as Elvis Presley’s fans who “know” he’s alive. The Israeli hard Left should be given a chance to implement its economic theories –but only after it finds out where Elvis is hiding.
With Israel’s social protest movement in its fourth week, the Government has appointed a team of experts (the “Trachtenberg Commission”) to suggest ways of making life more affordable for the middle-class. High-rank academics have volunteered to help the protesters formulate their demands. Among those self-appointed consultants is Yossi Yonah, a philosophy professor at Ben-Gurion University. How exactly is Yonah qualified to argue about macroeconomics with the Trachtenberg Commission? True, the same question can be asked about Yuval Steinitz, himself a philosophy professor turned Minister of Finance. But the question is not whether philosophers can understand economics (Karl Marx had a Ph.D. in philosophy, in case you were wondering what the answer is). The question is what the presence of Yossi Yonah tells us about the true agenda of some of the movement’s leaders.
Yossi Yonah publishes mostly on “multiculturalism” and he summarized his views in an interview published in Ha’aretz in 2005 (“Brave New Multicultural World,” Ha’aretz, 14 October 2005). What is Yonah’s vision for the future of Israel? "Well” he says, “besides the naturalization of the migrant workers, it will include the annulment of the Law of Return; the cancellation of the arrangement of automatic naturalization for Jewish immigrants; and provision of a worthy solution for the Palestinian refugee problem, based on the Geneva Convention." So, you see, it’s not only about economics.
There are economic experts on the team, though, such as Prof. Avia Spivak from Ben-Gurion University. He recommends raising taxes, especially corporate taxes, which would supposedly fill public coffers –as if Israeli companies couldn’t pick-up and leave, and as if both economic theory and practice hadn’t showed that governments’ revenues decrease when taxes are too high.
Then there is Shas’ brilliant idea on how to lower the price of real-estate. Rent control, of course: the Government should tell landlords what to charge. Such policies have been tried in the past, and they’ve always had the effect of increasing the price of real estate. The reason is simple: when real-estate investors cannot charge the rent that would make their investment profitable, they stop investing in real-estate. When investments in real-estate decline, so does housing supply. And when supply goes down, prices go up.
The official narrative in Israel’s media these days is that the high cost of living and the hardships of the middle-class are the result of “ultra-liberalism” and that Israel must become a “welfare state.” The very opposite is true. Israel is not a liberal economy: it is dominated by oligopolies that strangle consumers, and by monopolies (such as the National Land Authority) that control supply. If the Israeli economy is strong and productive, it is partly thanks to the economic liberalization undertaken by Shimon Peres in 1985 and by Benjamin Netanyahu in 2003. What Israel’s economy needs is more, not less, freedom and competition.
As for adopting the welfare state model, it is ironical that our know-it-all pundits are suggesting the idea precisely when the welfare state is causing European economies to crumble. If Greece, Spain and Italy are broke, it is partly because their welfare state model was built at a time when the population was young and the economy was hardly exposed to foreign competition. With an aging population and the constraints of a globalized economy, the European welfare system has become unaffordable. Hence the pilling debts of European governments, and hence the nervousness of financial markets.
Israel’s provincial public discourse does not end there. The violence in Britain, we are told, is to be blamed on Thatcherism. The fact that Labor was in power between 1997 and 2010 is irrelevant (and anyways, a journalist told me while interviewing me live on the “Reshet Bet” radio last week, Tony Blair allied himself to George Bush, so he doesn’t count). The truth, of course, is that Margaret Thatcher saved the British economy and that if it weren’t for her reforms, Britain’s fate today would be similar to Greece’s.
If the current social protest movement in Israel finally provides the opportunity to lower the cost of living by breaking-up monopolies and cartels and by lowering taxes, it will be remembered as one of the best things that ever happened to the country. But if the movement is hijacked by armchair ideologues to implement policies that have been proven to be counter-productive, then Israel is in trouble.
Those who believe that socialism might actually work at the end and that Israel is just the right place to check the theory again are about as rational as Elvis Presley’s fans who “know” he’s alive. The Israeli hard Left should be given a chance to implement its economic theories –but only after it finds out where Elvis is hiding.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The Chienlit Revolution
As French students and intellectuals were playing Robespierre and Mao on the streets of Paris in the Spring of 1968, Charles de Gaulle came out with a formula that was typical of his linguistic creativity: “La réforme oui, la chienlit non.” Journalists and commentators had to look up “chienlit” in the dictionary since nobody ever heard of that word. Chienlit was used in old French and it means “carnival mask.” What could the General possibly mean? A pun of course: divide-up the word with hyphens (“chie-en-lit”) and you get “shit-in-bed.” Ahem.
Israel was completely disconnected from “Mai 68.” France was at the height of its power and de Gaulle’s rule was unchallenged. Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy offered the perfect antidote to a bored youth. Israel’s young generation, by contrast, had just emerged victorious from the Six Day War. Fighting for their survival, and being involved in building a new country, young Israelis had no time for planning revolutions from the terrace of a café.
Aside from the “Black Panthers” in the 1970s, Israel never had a social revolt organized by the youth. Being raised in a conformist society with a uniform public discourse, and being taught to respect authority in the army, Israelis were never known for their revolutionary zeal. Add to this the challenge of making a living in a socialist economy and the stress of being in a permanent state of war, and you understand why Israel never had the equivalent of Mai 68.
So the fact that Israelis are finally taking to the streets is actually good news: It shows that Israel has become so wealthy and secure that people actually have the time and luxury to talk about changing the world with nargilas and guitars. Like the French who had never had it so good in the late 1960s, we too are having our “chienlit revolution” (“chiant,” by the way, means “boring” in French).
This is not to say, of course, that there is no economic hardship in Israel. There is poverty and there is hardship. But it is Israel’s pervasive oligopolies and unfair tax system that make it impossible for middle class families to make ends meet, let alone save money. Real estate is unaffordable because there is no offer; and there is no offer because Israel’s Land Administration abuses its monopoly. Nobody has done more than Benjamin Netanyahu break up monopolies and to lower taxes, so protesters are picking a fight with the wrong person.
Like the Mai 68 strikes, Israel’s current social protest is not led by the union movement. During Mai 68, France’s main workers’ union, CGT, tried to contain the spontaneous militancy by channeling it into a struggle for higher wages and other economic benefits. Even the Communist Party got cold feet, and Jean-Paul Sartre accused the Communists of “fearing revolution.” What rioters really wanted was the ousting of de Gaulle. Although the trade union leadership negotiated a 35% increase in the minimum wage, a 7% wage increase for other workers, and half normal pay for the time on strike, the workers occupying their factories refused to return to work. They demanded new elections.
Likewise, the main organizers of today’s protest in Israel are more interested in ousting Netanyahu than in improving the lot of struggling families. This is why the Im Tirtzu movement pulled out of the protest: it realized that protesters were looking for a fight, not for solutions.
At the end, Mai 68 was a flop. De Gaulle called for early elections and his party won the greatest victory in French parliamentary history. After the carnival, it was time to go to bed –in clean sheets.
Israel was completely disconnected from “Mai 68.” France was at the height of its power and de Gaulle’s rule was unchallenged. Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy offered the perfect antidote to a bored youth. Israel’s young generation, by contrast, had just emerged victorious from the Six Day War. Fighting for their survival, and being involved in building a new country, young Israelis had no time for planning revolutions from the terrace of a café.
Aside from the “Black Panthers” in the 1970s, Israel never had a social revolt organized by the youth. Being raised in a conformist society with a uniform public discourse, and being taught to respect authority in the army, Israelis were never known for their revolutionary zeal. Add to this the challenge of making a living in a socialist economy and the stress of being in a permanent state of war, and you understand why Israel never had the equivalent of Mai 68.
So the fact that Israelis are finally taking to the streets is actually good news: It shows that Israel has become so wealthy and secure that people actually have the time and luxury to talk about changing the world with nargilas and guitars. Like the French who had never had it so good in the late 1960s, we too are having our “chienlit revolution” (“chiant,” by the way, means “boring” in French).
This is not to say, of course, that there is no economic hardship in Israel. There is poverty and there is hardship. But it is Israel’s pervasive oligopolies and unfair tax system that make it impossible for middle class families to make ends meet, let alone save money. Real estate is unaffordable because there is no offer; and there is no offer because Israel’s Land Administration abuses its monopoly. Nobody has done more than Benjamin Netanyahu break up monopolies and to lower taxes, so protesters are picking a fight with the wrong person.
Like the Mai 68 strikes, Israel’s current social protest is not led by the union movement. During Mai 68, France’s main workers’ union, CGT, tried to contain the spontaneous militancy by channeling it into a struggle for higher wages and other economic benefits. Even the Communist Party got cold feet, and Jean-Paul Sartre accused the Communists of “fearing revolution.” What rioters really wanted was the ousting of de Gaulle. Although the trade union leadership negotiated a 35% increase in the minimum wage, a 7% wage increase for other workers, and half normal pay for the time on strike, the workers occupying their factories refused to return to work. They demanded new elections.
Likewise, the main organizers of today’s protest in Israel are more interested in ousting Netanyahu than in improving the lot of struggling families. This is why the Im Tirtzu movement pulled out of the protest: it realized that protesters were looking for a fight, not for solutions.
At the end, Mai 68 was a flop. De Gaulle called for early elections and his party won the greatest victory in French parliamentary history. After the carnival, it was time to go to bed –in clean sheets.
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