Jerusalem Elections - A Test of Rationality (please vote!)

Resident Traveler's definition of campaigning: the process of a party or candidate disseminating the lies they think will get them the most votes.

While this is true of all political campaigns, none have exemplified this more than the Porush campaign. His numerous lame attempts to buy votes through hollow verbiage is a test of basic rationality I pray we don't fail.

The Porush campaign has been nothing short of an insult to intelligence. Putting a little santa-claus image of him is entirely beneath the adult, voting population. Promising thousands of jobs - which is as simple as designing a poster that says "thousands of new jobs!" and then posting them all over town, with no accountability - is no less an insult. It's tempting to run myself, just say I can draw up posters of "Free jacuzzis for all Jerusalem residents!" or "100,001 residents will return".

While Barkat has quietely been doing things to better the face of this city, the Porush campaign pulls out every kind of fallacious argument, effectively saying, "the people are stupid - they'll buy this crap". If he wins, it means we've failed this test. Please vote!

Talk Talk Talk

In an article that came out today, Jerusalem's glorious mayor, Uri Lupolianski, wrote Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz requesting that Road 9 not become a toll road. Road 9 connects those coming to Jerusalem from the direction of Tel-Aviv straight to the Begin thruway, and bypasses the traffic at the center of the city.

I couldn't help but notice there was no mention of who had put such an offer on the table in the first place, or anyone explaining the underlying logic for such a proposal. I'd be happy to make up my mind, if I were given some rational explanations either way, but instead the article only quotes politicians too busy covering their own asses to professionally address this issue.

One by one, they dispel and excoriate the idea. It's a chorus of them, yelling "noooo... no no no. Of course I'm against it. It's a terrible idea". It's almost like these damned empty-rhetoric throw-a-fish-to-the-"masses" politicos are trying to one-up each other in the vividness of their description; all, presumably, to get more votes next time their sorry asses are up for reelection. Loophole-ianski went for gold by writing, "it's inconceivable that at the entrance to our nation's capital, there will be one slow, clogged road for the poor, while next to them the Mercedes', Volvo's and luxury cars of the wealthy will be whizzing by". Yep, you write 'em, boy. Tug on the hearts of your constituency you must think are really, really, stupid. Thanks for the professional assessment.

I can't get over this incredibly annoying habit politicians have - a complete and utter disconnect between action and rhetoric. Do anything you want, absolutely anything you feel like; just remember to give it a ridiculous, shamelessly see-through spin for the "masses" you must scorn so much.

A couple other recent examples come to mind: the laughable stipend the government has offered Holocaust survivors, and the bread price wars. In the first affair, Prime Minister Olmert's Office offered an 83-shekel (around $20) monthly stipend for Holocaust survivors, to begin next year (and gradually grow). I couldn't believe this when I read it. It's like a government course in shamelessness: let's give our people, who have endured the worst horror ever wrought in history, as little money as possible. Holocaust survivors are old, so let's start next year, since progressively more are dying every year. Then, let's not give a lump sum, but again - a monthly stipend, so we can stop as soon as those costly survivors drop off. As if that's not enough, let's make that monthly sum the price of, well, nothing. Sure, we'll increase the amount as time goes on - once virtually none of them are left.

Of course, Olmert's office describes this is as somehow having righted an historical injustice, patting themselves on the back like this has been a major achievement. Said Olmert, (I can't believe he's still in power! I can't!) "Survivors living in Israel deserve to live with respect without reaching a state where they can't enjoy a hot meal or a slice of bread [..] over the years nothing has been done to take care of this, and the neglect on the part of past governments won't continue. With us, this [problem] will be taken care of." With $20. starting next year. Bull.

Same with the bread wars. Events conspired to make the price of flour go up. This meant the price of the plain, price-controlled bread was liable to go up as well. Eli Yishai, Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor, immediately started swearing up and down that bread prices won't go up. It's so transparent: He has to say that, purely for votes' sake. No serious discussion, nothing. In the end, of course, the prices went up, because you can only fight simple facts on the ground - transportation costs are not what they were in 1999 - for so long. But no, like a mother pacifying her baby, he has to tell the "people" one thing while whatever has to happen goes ahead anyway. Can't you give the public a little more credit and share some of the considerations? No dilemmas? What, would our tiny little brains explode trying to wrap our heads around notions like, "listen guys, the price of wheat worldwide, has gone up. So has gas. Bread is made of wheat. Bread has to be brought to the store using gas-consuming vehicles. We may have a problem here"?

That's really what it is - the mother pacifying the baby. But we're not babies. I would hope most readers have reached this conclusion long ago, but in case you haven't:

whenever you see or read anything uttered by a politician, screen it out. Its connection to reality is arbitrary at best.

Why I Went to the Demonstration: Hubris

It was enough to stand in line for a bus at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station to see how wide the spectrum of people was for the demonstration on Thursday. In the long queue for Tel Aviv, an obvious old-school Jerusalem-intelligentsia left-winger was having a low-level argument with a family of settlers, even as they were headed to the exact same rally. No point in specifying types: everyone was represented.

I consider myself a somewhat intelligent person, and I'm not normally one to go for mass rallies, typically over-politicized and dumbed-down for the perennially underestimated "masses". Indeed, the demo on Thursday had several predictable detractions to it - first and foremost the shameless attempts by various political parties to claim ownership over the cause at hand. Several giant banners, splashed with the usual political sloganeering, were raised above the crowd. Also, while most of the speakers maintained a surprisingly respectful tone towards the protesters' intelligence, the cheesy Galgalatz pop-shmaltz of the musical interludes occasionally made me question what I was doing there. Adding insult to injury, Israel's favorite goat-voiced Lennon-wannabee, who had not served in the army, sang at a rally largely protesting the shameful preparation and direction of the IDF by the current administration.

But I was not there for any political reason. The two main (interconnected) arguments I had heard for not going concerned the inherent watering-down of the message at a mass rally, and the claim that forcing our Prime Minister to resign immediately may not be the best course of action at the moment, rocking-the-boat-wise.

I was well aware of both those points when I went. But after some deliberation, I reached the conclusion that by that same last point, I had to go - the alternative was worse. I knew few if any of the speakers would be speaking for me. I also knew factions across the political spectrum had all sorts of irrelevant personal and, of course, political axes to grind with Olmert and Defense Minister Peretz. But I went for one reason: not going would be an expression of apathy towards the incredible hubris of Olmert and Peretz. And that I couldn't live with.

No country deserves such shamelessly opportunistic "leaders". If it were the only bad move Peretz ever made, that he did not voluntarily refuse the position of Defense Minister due to utter lack of compatibility would be enough for me to brand him unfit for politics for life. And Olmert - well, where do I begin? Long story short, I watched him badly mismanage and spinelessly sell short my hometown of Jerusalem during his period as mayor. Surrounded by empty-rhetoric politicians, Olmert really takes the cake. During last elections, well before he had so many opportunities to screw up, and facing nothing but bad options, I knew one thing: there was no way I'd ever vote for that man. After the war, both men's desperate attempts to shun responsibility and keep their seats was sickening to me.

Not going would have meant I don't oppose these people - their conduct and their values, as leaders - to the core; and I most certainly do. On a larger scale, not going would be an indication to our leaders that Israel's citizens are not watching, do not care, and/or might even forgive their conduct. This had very little to do with politics. It has to do with leadership, and we currently have none.

The Israeli Disease

(warning - rant coming up)

A friend of mine was kind enough to fly me on a business trip with him once. We were going to have a stopover in Europe, and I wanted to duck into the city for something. I was certain I could do it and come back in time for the connecting flight. He wasn't too thrilled about my plan, but I kept pressing - "It'll work out, c'mon!".

He then asked me The Question - the one question Israelis avoid bringing up, or even contemplating privately, ever:

What happens if it doesn't work out?

This is really a simple question. I couldn't word it any more simply. It means exactly what it says, and doesn't insinuate anything beyond. To an Israeli, however, this question is negative thinking at best, an out-and-out accusation at worst. "What do you mean 'what happens if it doesn't work out'? what, you don't trust me? nothing will go wrong!". And that's exactly it - to an Israeli, nothing will ever go wrong. It's an amazing, widespread delirium. If you don't live in Israel, you may think I'm exaggerating; but if you do, this should sound pretty familiar - it's the Israeli Disease.

While completely detached from reality, the Israeli Disease has its (few) advantages - this eternal optimism is behind our renowned ability to improvise, to miraculously create a solution out of thin air at the last second. It can also be said to be the result of a traditionally more cohesive, trusting society. However, its main problem is that it entails the wholesale sidestepping of consequences to one's actions. Everything will work out because "somehow, it always does", and the results - well, we see the results every day: in the news, and all around us.

Ahh, we lucky Israelis. Since nothing will ever go wrong, we allow ourselves to ask for any favor, big or small, damned the consequences. For the same reason exactly, warranties are nice pieces of paper that give an American-esque aura to a purchase or a service, but not much else. Since nothing will ever go wrong, we can build a rail system and then discover later the rails don't fit the cars. We can build event halls with floors that cave in, not to mention bridges. Since nothing will ever go wrong, government ministries and municipalities needn't concern themselves too much with, say, doing anything. The expression "cover for me" should be in the national anthem.

The Israeli Disease is responsible for us finding ourselves, again and again, up s#!t creek without a paddle. We see our politicians spreading promises left and right with no hope of fulfilling them, blabbing to the press, groping subordinates and taking bribes with no thought of consequence; we see wars fought under the assumption that winning them is somehow an ingrained Israeli "trait"; we see social security messing up, hospitals messing up, the police messing up, the army messing up, companies messing up, drivers messing up. As a good friend pointed out once, the common line you'll hear from a reckless driver - "haven't been killed yet!" - applies to every single person who has, one second before the crash.

So if you're Israeli, by birth or by symptom: please, stop and think. Ask yourself what happens if it doesn't work out exactly the way you planned*. By doing this you're not paranoid or self-defeating, you're merely being smart. By all means, go ahead with your plan, just remember it's only that- not a certainty.

As for my plan? As soon as my friend asked The Question, I dropped it. And surprise surprise: turned out there was no way in hell I could've pulled it off.



* if there even was a plan; "assumed" might be more appropriate.

"They are Trying to Get Rid of Us in any Way Possible"

..said Ahmed Tibi. This is in response to various proposals for electoral reform that suggest raising the electoral threshold to five percent. Tibi's claim is that the Arab sector is harmed in that the three major Arab-sector parties - Rahat-Ta'al, Balad and Hadash - will be forced to merge, thus proving anti-Arab electoral tinkering. Without getting into politics (though, I suppose, who am I kidding really..), Tibi's accusations are unfounded.

Tibi's claim of discrimination in the proposed new electoral systems is only valid if they cut back dispropotionately more on the choices facing Arab voters than those for the rest of the population. The irony is that right now, in sharp contrast to Tibi's wailing, Arab voters are actually more "spoiled for choice", per voter, than the remaining population: in the last elections, the three Arab parties picked up a combined 252,944 votes, or roughly one party for every 85,000 Arab voters. The remaining 2,884,120 had 25 parties to split between them, or one for every 112,000. So per voter, the Arabs face more sector-based parties than do the voters represented by those Tibi is so certain "are trying to get rid of us".

Tibi claims the proposed changes will eliminate choice altogether by forcing the three parties to merge. I disagree.

The parties currently hold 10 seats in the Knesset. the proposed threshold will be 6 seats, and so this would still allow for two large Arab parties, provided the Arab parties invest enough effort in encouraging their constituency to care enough to vote. True, this eventuality will cut back on the choices - two parties instead of three - but is a far cry from no choice at all, and is presumably what most of the population wants in order to bring about a less fractured, more efficient Knesset. That a sector making up one tenth of the voter population will be faced with two large sector-oriented parties is still certainly reasonable.

Like any downsizing, like any act of "trimming the fat", the smaller contestants in the next race will all have to work harder to swim and not sink - Jewish and Arab alike. But there's no foul play here.

Qana, and What You'll Never See on the News

Politics. Who knew I'd end up writing on it.

The deaths of 60 civilians at Qana on Sunday was a serious blow. I think every Israeli knows to stop and recoil from such a horror. While the Israeli army does not target civillians, and has actually refrained from firing in situations of reasonable likelihood of innocents in the crosshairs unless it's a "ticking bomb", Israel still cannot but take a certain degree of responsibility.

If I don't dwell more on this, however, it's only because anyone taking a marginal interest in this "crisis" has already been hearing all of this over and over from all the major news networks. No doubts cast, no question marks, no critical reading, no gray, nothing - Israel's guilty.

(Not just in the media: When I dared raise some questions in the office where I work, I was actually attacked by a (Jewish, Israeli, not particularly left-leaning) co-worker for being "heartless". This wouldn't be the first time that suggesting a picture is somewhere in the gray, proposing there's more than meets the eye, quite literally, is considered inappropriate because "innocent people are dying - what can you possibly say?".)

With the Qana incident, the news channels truly had no shame. When interviewing Israeli representatives, They stretched the fine line between interview and mafia-style interrogation awefully thin. Israel's guilt was so obviously glaring and one-sided to them, it was almost comical to watch. The news channels' glee was quite apparent in having again found a perfectly black scapegoat. Assuming unanimous global agreement for its aggresive indictment, mainstream media could dispense with the oh so boring "fair and balanced coverage".

Unfortunately, all that the news has really been giving us is a blow-by-blow account of reports on the ground and the most simplistic assumptions of causality - completely circumventing matters of intent, historical background, (il)legitimacy and ideological enmity. My humble opinion is that these count more than ever. It's obviously true that a reporter's job is to report the facts as they occur; but this can paint a very slanted picture of the big bully attacking the innocent little puppy...

This is in no small part a built-in problem. The major international news channels will give far more screen time to the pictures of destruction in Lebanon - so easy to get - than to its direct equivalent: the rocket firing at Israel. This is simply because Hezbollah won't let reporters film their daily firing from densely-populated civilian areas. after all, that would be bad for PR... To the viewer, these rockets are mere numbers occasionally running on the ribbon at the bottom of the screen, while the picture of the weeping mother in the rubble easily outweighs it.

With this pictures-as-complete-story mentality, it becomes easy to forget to use ones common sense. A common statistic regularly used as an indictment of Israel is how far fewer Israelis have died during the war than Lebanese, as if this scorecard mentality has ever been used anywhere else*. The problem is, though, that this isn't for lack of trying.. Hizbullah have fired nearly 2,000 rockets by now, which would have killed far more if it weren't for Israel's bomb shelters. Israel only has these shelters because we've been attacked so many times before, and so decided to effectively mandate them.. less Israeli deaths, then, should hardly be Israel's "fault". Lebanon, on the other hand, rarely bothered building shelters.. So holding death tolls as some kind of yardstick becomes very problematic. Meanwhile, the reality on the ground is that Hizbullah is firing over 100 rockets a day, often from civilian areas. This puts the Israeli army, in charge of defending its civilan population, in a serious bind. These rockets are potentially just as deadly as our attacks, it's only that Israel has invested far greater effort in minimizing its civilian deaths - effort it should not have ever been asked to invest. Hezbullah's tactics essentially cause the high Lebanese death toll.


Something else you won't see on the news: Hezbullah members have, in the past, actively threatened civilians lest they try to flee areas they're firing from. I consider this very relevant information that any news viewer should have when constructing his/her opinion on this war. But you'll never hear this watching any of the mainstream news channels. I'm baffled why.. Such dirty tactics, also commonly used in Gaza, have been ignored by mainstream media for years. the reason is simple - no picture, no story. Plus, reporters who were granted the privilege of close-hand reporting near terror groups are wary of giving a damaging report, lest these groups refuse to allow them access in the future. Israel's open press policy is commendable, and I completely support it, but when pitted against self-selecting reporting from the "other side", I can't say it hasn't harmed our image and international standing...Yet another of many ironies here in the Middle East.

The problem is, that beyond the picture-as-complete-story and self-selecting availability of news stories, Journalists continue to mirror these limitations instead of using their supposed expertise to try and balance it. In the countless hours since this incident, no one, on any of the three major international news channels (CNN, BBC, Sky News), asked an obvious question: what were those civilians still doing there? This was clearly a warzone - bombing had begun 8 hours before, and was resumed shortly before the incident. Leaflets warning the civilian population to leave had been dropped well in advance. The Israeli air force confirmed that Hezbullah were indeed firing rockets from the immediate proximity of that building. If I were there, I would've gotten the hell away at all costs; if I could, that is. Needless to say, I don't know and can't know what happened there. But what infuriates me is that not one reporter asked such an obvious question.

One can claim that the "built-in" limitations and biases in reporting on this war are just that - and that thus the networks and reporters are not to blame. But the fact is they consistently miss the opportunity to try and rectify these biases, even somewhat. With a growing trend of self-examiation and "behind the scenes" corners, there are plenty of platforms for any journalist who wants to point out some of the objective, non-visual points I've made so far.

Even if it is discovered that the civilians were there of their free will - for some crazy reason I have yet to guess - why doesn't the mainstream international media clearly and regularly present the other important fact: that Hizbullah literally fire rockets from civilian centers? the closest I've heard to this is the occasional mention that they mix with the general population - which sounds almost harmless, when it's anything but - but never that they fire from those areas. What is Israel expected to do in response?

With Hezbullah daily exploiting Israel's moral stance, who is really to blame for a catastrophe of this sort? The one firing in self-defense to try to save his own life, or the one attacking whilst using an innocent bystander as a shield?



* To take an extreme example, in WWII over 2 million German civilians were killed. How many US civilians killed? a nice, round 0. Disproportionate use of force, I say!