JANUARY 2004

israeli society

Another kind of terror: Israel grapples with murderous gang wars and corruption

By Ed Blanche

The Daily Star, Beirut, Dec. 12, 2003

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/27_12_03_e1.asp

BEIRUT: Three Israelis were killed and more than 30 wounded on Dec. 11 by a lunchtime bomb explosion at a moneychanger’s office in a seedy district of south Tel Aviv notorious for its prostitutes and illegal gambling dens. But it wasn’t an attack by Palestinian militants. For ordinary Israelis, this was another kind of terror a war in the streets of unprecedented ferocity between the country’s organized crime families who commentators say now control much of the political system.

With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his two sons currently under suspicion of involvement in illegal financial transactions, including under-the-table funding for political purposes, the degree to which criminal organizations have penetrated Israel’s body politic amid what many see as a worrying deterioration in public morality is becoming a national scandal.

High-profile corruption cases involving political figures such as Sharon who could conceivably be pushed out of office by the graft charges and the broad daylight mayhem on the streets of Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, Haifa, Eilat, Hadera and other cities is drawing demands for greater scrutiny and more effective police action.

The underworld’s gang wars, with Israeli killing Israeli, has jolted a nation already traumatized by suicide bombings, forcing Ariel Sharon’s Cabinet to address the problem. But the gangland mayhem appears to be endemic of a deepening malaise in Israeli society on various levels. After monitoring the Israeli press, and the barrage of reports about official corruption and intifada-induced road rage among citizens of all classes and background in recent weeks, one could be forgiven for thinking that Israel was on the verge of social disintegration.

That would, of course, be an exaggeration. But the fault lines in Israeli society, between orthodox and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, left and right, Jewish and non-Jewish (including 1 million Arabs and a large proportion of 1 million Russian immigrants) are being widened by the severe strains of the intifada, the state’s worst economic crisis and mounting international opprobrium. Old values, embodied by the pioneers who built the state, are eroding. Even the revered kibbutz movement, a pillar of Israeli unity, is falling apart in a globalizing world these days. The younger generation is more materialistic and no longer considers military service a duty, as their fathers did.

It is far from clear how all this might affect Israeli perceptions and actions in the years ahead, as the Middle East undergoes profound changes. But if the shifts in Israeli society continue, the impact could be considerable. The Israeli center, traditionally more tolerant and pluralistic, seems to be shrinking while other less tolerant segments of society, including the religious right and its messianic Puritanism, are expanding.

Israel has always boasted that it was an island of democracy in a sea of dictatorships and autocratic regimes in the Middle East. But a study by the Israel Democracy Institute and the Gutman Center published Friday showed that support for democracy among Israeli Jews had plunged to its lowest level in 20 years, down to 77 percent from the steady 90 percent of recent years. That reflects what many see as a troubling erosion of Israelis’ perception of democracy and the necessity for it to exist.

In public opinion polls relating to support for democracy conducted in 32 countries between 1999 and 2001, Israel now ranks in the lowest tier. But even more worrying, the new survey showed that 50 percent of respondents said in the event of conflict between security interests and the rule of law, the former should take precedence. That’s not going to help George W. Bush’s crusade to bring democracy to the Arab world.

In recent weeks, the Israeli media has been packed with reports of rising drug abuse in the country, by just about every segment of society, including military personnel. The parliamentary Committee on the War Against Drugs was recently told of “a significant increase in the number of officers and soldiers involved in the smuggling of drugs in exchange for intelligence information, which reaches Hizbullah, about the military deployment along the border” with Lebanon. The committee ruled on Dec. 7 that drug abuse was now “a strategic threat to Israeli society” after a study showed a sharp rise in drug use among university students.

Soldiers and airmen from elite units have refused to serve in the ravaged West Bank and Gaza Strip because they consider the government’s harsh military policies to be illegal and inhumane. Zeev Schiff, Israel’s leading military commentator, said that these “refusenik movements, originating at opposite ends of the political spectrum, are now threatening the unity of Israeli society and the Israel Defense Forces.”

On Dec. 22, the Knesset’s House Committee voted against stripping two legislators of their parliamentary immunity to answer charges of forgery, fraud and breach of trust made by Attorney-General Elyakim Rubenstein. In what was seen as a closing of ranks by an institution increasingly seen as a repository of sharp practices, commentator Gideon Alon wrote in Haaretz: “The lawmakers have lost all shame. The panel’s decision … constitutes a further blow to the Knesset’s already faltering image.”

There is growing pressure on the Likud-dominated government to dismantle the Religious Affairs Ministry because of rampant corruption, “the Soddom and Gemorrah of the Israeli administration,” as one newspaper branded it, that distributed state money to nonexistent religious institutions and pays vastly inflated salaries to judges of the High Rabbinical Court. The dispute has underlined yet again the deepening rift between religious and secular Jews in Israel, one of the critical fissures in Israeli society.

There seems little doubt that the three years of the intifada, and the remorseless chainsaw of suicide bombings that has caused immense psychological damage in Israeli society, has wrought primal changes in the nation’s social behavior, including a disturbing lurch toward individual violence.

Talia Sasson, head of a state prosecution team dealing with ideological crimes involving Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, the army and the police, told The Jerusalem Report magazine recently that the potential for another crime similar to the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is a clear and present danger in the current highly charged climate of incitement, particularly by the extreme right, she said.

She said there is an “absence of a social code as to what is permissible and what is forbidden in public discourse” in the current highly charged climate of incitement. “Sometimes the very people who would be expected to restrain and calm the public are the ones from whom you hear inflammatory statements.”

The police have reported a dangerous increase in random crimes and “motiveless murders” over the last three years, more or less since the intifada erupted and triggered the bloodiest period of Palestinian resistance to three decades of occupation.  

Chief Superintendent Haim Rahamim, head of Haifa’s police investigation unit, told the media in November: “In the past three years I haven’t had a weekend without people being wounded by stabbings or cases of death by stabbing. This is something we didn’t have before, certainly not in these numbers. And I’m not talking about criminals, I’m talking about a 35-year-old man who went to the supermarket to do some shopping with his wife and his kids. He starts to quarrel with another guy about a shopping cart. He pulls out a knife and stabs the other guy. Those are the kind of cases I’m talking about.”

“We’re undergoing an intensifying brutalization process,” according to Professor Simcha Landau, director of the Institute of Criminology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “We’re a society with great economic, security and social pressure. The fuse is getting even shorter. There’s a process of internalization of the values of violence. Violence starts to trickle down into a society that is undergoing an armed, violent struggle, and into the way of life of its citizens.”

The target of the Tel Aviv bomb was underworld boss Zeev Rosenstein, often described as Israel’s Public Enemy No. 1. It was the seventh attempt to kill him since 1996 and most of those believed to have been involved in those attacks are now dead. In the last year, 10 innocent bystanders have been killed and dozens wounded in the crossfire of the gangland wars.

 Rosenstein, 50, embodies Israel’s underworld, which has become immensely powerful. Crime syndicates have expanded globally in recent years and now operate from the United States to South Africa, from Eastern Europe to Asia, from Japan to Latin America, narcotics, gambling, sex slaves, illegal diamonds, extortion and murder.

At a Cabinet session on Dec. 14 that was devoted almost entirely to the worsening criminal violence, Sharon gave Internal Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi 30 days to draw up a battle plan. But the damage may already have been done.

“The connections between the criminal organizations and the local ‘establishment’ … are growing tighter,” Haaretz lamented last week in a commentary headlined Crime is Busting Out All Over that decried the growing political influence of the crime syndicates and their power in society at large. “A mayor who received help from a criminal organization has his fate linked to it for all eternity. And in the Knesset … there are politicians who began their careers in local politics.

“The recession that has grown worse during the past two years has dragged a great many law-abiding citizens into cooperation with the criminal organizations. More and more people need money. And in the gray market there is a great deal of money.  

“In a few years’ time, every party head in Israel who wants to get more votes will have to relate to this awful inferno called organized crime. And the moment will come when the primitive slogan about the need for a ‘party of law and order’ will win supporters, because there is no law and order in large parts of this small country.”

Ed Blanche, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, has covered Middle Eastern affairs for more than 30 years and is a regular contributor to The Daily Star

Israel: Elite commandos refuse to serve in Occupied Territories
By Julie Hyland www.WSWS.orgThe News Report,issue 798 news-report@wiretapped.net

24 December 3003
  The refusal of thirteen reservists in Israel's elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, to serve on missions in the Occupied Territories is the latest expression of the growing opposition within the armed forces to the Sharon government's repression of the Palestinian people.
The Sayeret Matkal is Israel's most celebrated commando unit. Comparable to the US military's Delta Force, it has been involved in some of Israel's most high profile security missions, and senior military and political figures have served within its ranks-including former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu.
  Thirteen of the unit's reservists wrote a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on December 21, stating they were no longer prepared to defend illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their letter stipulated that their refusal to participate in the operations, which have involved brutal raids on Palestinian homes supposedly targeting senior militants, was motivated by "grave concern for the future of Israel as a democratic Zionist and Jewish state, and with concern for her moral image".
"We say to you today, we will no longer give our hands to the oppressive reign in the territories and the denial of human rights to millions of Palestinians," reads the letter, "and we will no longer serve as a defensive shield for the settlement enterprise."
  The letter branded Israel as an aggressive occupying force in the Palestinian territories that is riding roughshod over the democratic rights and lives of the people:

• "We shall no longer lend our hand to the quelling of human rights of millions of Palestinians.
• "We shall no longer serve as a defense shield for the settlements campaign.
• "We shall no longer deface our human image as an army of occupation.
• "We shall no longer deny our commitment as fighters in the Israel DEFENSE forces."

The letter stressed that the reservists were not refusing to protect the security of the Israeli people, but indicted the Israeli government for undermining that security through its provocative and murderous actions in the Occupied Territories.
  "We fear for the destiny of the children of this land, exposed to an evil that is unnecessary, and to which we have lent our hands. We have long transgressed the border of soldiers, just in their ways, and have become warriors suppressing another nation. We shall cross this border no more!" The reservists letter ignited a furious response from across the military and political establishment, not only for its unreserved condemnation of Israel's actions, but because at least one of the signatories is a Major. Of the thirteen, nine are on active duty.
Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim said, "These soldiers should be stripped of their uniform and face judgement for their disobedience and rebellion." The signatories, who were "infected with this 'leprosy' of refusal must be stripped of their military aura and tried for disobedience and even, I would say, incitement to mutiny," Boim went on.
  National Religious Party whip Shaul Yahalom said the group should be "put in jail", while Labour Party MP Danny Yatom, a former head of the Mossad overseas intelligence agency and deputy commander of Sayeret Matkal, branded the protest as "illegal". Regardless of whether Sharon's policy was "exacerbating friction" with the Palestinians, this could not justify soldiers' refusal to serve, he said.
Ehud Barak demanded that the 13 "immediately" retract their protest and issued a naked apologia for Sharon's crimes, stating, "In a democracy there's no place for refusal because it is the elected government that issues the orders to the army. As much as we are divided over the hesitant and confused policy of Sharon's government which is endangering Israel, it is essential that this battle be waged in the public sphere, and for the army to defend all of us."
  Sharon declined to comment, but an army spokesman decried the reservists-stating that the fact the thirteen had addressed their letter to Sharon rather than military commanders proved they had a political axe to grind.
"It is very serious that reserve soldiers are using their military past and the name of the unit in which they served as a vehicle to publish their political views," he said. Netanyahu also denounced the reservists for "using military service as a political axe", whilst Deputy Education Minister Zvi Hendel (National Union) said there is "no limit to the moral corruption of the extreme left [which] does not hesitate to use the military to spread its ideas."
  One of the signatories, identified only as "Zohar" rejected the accusation that the thirteen had a secret political agenda, telling Channel One Television: "This is not a political letter ... we spoke of the phenomena of occupation which corrupts."
"I was sent to suppress another nation. I was sent to be an occupying army. I don't know what the political solution to this war is. But what I have to say is that I cannot bury my head in the sand-like so many in the army do. The IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] is out of control. The country is out of control.
  "I was sent to serve as a defensive shield to the settlements, and this I refuse to continue doing. I shed my humanity in many little deeds and actions in the past, which I will not tell you about, and I will not do it any longer."
It was true that insubordination led to the disintegration of society, he went on, "but Israeli society is disintegrating anyway. I can only hope that the brakes we are applying will somehow slow down the disintegration."
  Reports indicate that the reservists are coming under intense pressure to withdraw their statement, or face ejection from the army. Moshe Ya'alon, Chief of Staff in the Israeli Defense Forces, told Army Radio on December 22 that each of the signatories could expect to be thrown out of the army. They would be interviewed individually by their commander, Ya'alon said. "The severity [of their actions] will be explained to him and he will be given the chance to back down. If he doesn't, he will be thrown out of army reserve duty."
The problem for the Israeli government is that the thirteen join an ever growing number of military personnel who are refusing to participate in illegal actions against the Palestinians. Hundreds of reserve soldiers have been imprisoned for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. Earlier this year two officers, David Sonnschein and Yaniv Itzkovitz posted a letter at Tel Aviv University offering support for those refusing to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Within weeks, they had been joined by more than 200 reservists stating their refusal to serve.
  In September, 27 pilots issued a letter to Air Force Chief General Dan Halutz stating their refusal to participate in political assassinations, so-called "targeted killings", in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, branding them "immoral and illegal".
The statements by the pilots and now the commando's are particularly significant because of their elite status, causing some MPs to caution against too heavy handed an approach.
  Labour MP Ophir Pines said the letter showed that a serious discussion had to be held on Sharon's policies in the Occupied Territories, whilst Meretz MP Roman Bronfman called the statement a brave step intended to save Israel from the consequences of the occupation.
 
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