The Big Question
// Why Dan Halutz Matters More than Ehud Olmert
A criminal investigation is being opened in Israel against the country's prime minister – a prime minister who has not yet left office, no less. In other words, a criminal investigation against the head of the government. That sounds intriguing. However, that bit of news is really intriguing only for those who are untutored in the ways of Israeli politics. There is nothing unusual about the Ehud Olmert affair. No less notorious scandals have raged around other Israeli prime ministers, including Ariel Sharon, who rose to heights of political and moral authority unattained by any Israeli politician before or since, and in whose shadow Ehud Olmert, never the brightest party functionary, came of age politically. Scandals are an inseparable companion of Israeli politics. That the fate of the country's number one politician might wind up in the hands of the prosecutor general or some humble bureaucratic official may seem unimaginable by Russian standards, but such is the dissipated state of Israel's ungovernable democracy.
So it can thus be asserted that the biggest news in Israel today is not what's going on with the prime minister, and that the main question facing the country is not whether he will manage to hang on to his seat. The biggest news, in fact, is the resignation of Israeli army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. That's really something serious.
Dan Halutz's departure, which has opened a tiny secret window on the profoundly unsound condition of the Israeli army, is unprecedented in the 60-year history of the existence of the Jewish state. After all, until very recently the army was a kind of sacred institution, a foundation on which the state of Israel stood firm. The army was a monolith that was threatened neither by corrosion nor by destruction. In the first place, it was the army that, from the very first day of Israel's existence, successfully fought off the hostile Arab world, helping the Jewish state not to survive by the tips of its fingers but to live and thrive. Secondly, the army has forged many Israeli politicians. Generals or officers reeking of gunpowder, such as Benyamin Netanyahu, have dispersed to the left or to the right across the political spectrum to become leaders of political parties and, after their parties won elections, have gone on to take up government posts.
Until very recently, this self-regulating system ran like clockwork, and Israel emerged victorious from all of its wars and domestic upheavals, of which there have been more than a few. But now the system seems to have either mutated or failed for the first time. It has turned out that, in the triangle of the prime minister, the defense minister, and the chief of staff, trust and the feeling of fellowship have been lost, and there is none of that mutual understanding that is so critically important for Israel. Instead, the military men are busy accusing each other of misconduct and of missing chances to secure victory for the Israeli army in the recent war in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
But that's still not all. Now that the country's top posts are finally occupied by people who do not have the erstwhile charisma of the solider (Prime Minister Olmert was a military correspondent, and Defense Minister Peretz is a former labor union leader), that begs the question of whether we might be witnessing the slow death of the institution that made Israel what it is today. That is what the current Israeli scandals should really be making us think about.
Sergey Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 18, 2007
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