At Maskiot, the Bulldozers Speak

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Gershom Gorenberg

You could call the timing mere coincidence. Yesterday Bibi met Barack Obama, who told him to stop settlement building:

Now, Israel is going to have to take some difficult steps as well, and I shared with the Prime Minister the fact that under the roadmap and under Annapolis that there’s a clear understanding that we have to make progress on settlements.  Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward.  That’s a difficult issue.  I recognize that, but it’s an important one and it has to be addressed.

And the day before, as if to answer Obama in advance, contractors visited Maskiot in order to prepare bids to start construction of a settlement at the site. (A Ma’ariv report in Hebrew is here.) The Jordan Rift Regional Council – the local government for Israeli settlements along the Jordan River in the West Bank – issued the call for bids last week.

Let’s say this is just business as usual; no one was even paying attention to Obama.

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A Hebrew Lesson For Obama: Hu lahitz

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Gershom Gorenberg

As I write,  Barack Obama and  Bibi Netanyahu are still meeting in Washington. The meeting has been extended for half an hour, Ha’aretz reports. Until the protocol is released in 25 years or so, we can guess that Bibi is lecturing to Barack about the Spanish Inquisition, Masada, the Holocaust and Iran, and Barack is too polite to shush him. In the meantime, my curtain-raiser is up at the American Prospect.

Hebrew is a compressed language. Much disdain can be packed in a few syllables. To say of the prime minister, “He’s someone who cracks under pressure,” takes just two words: hu lahitz.

When a television mike caught the Israeli Finance Ministry’s budget chief using those words last week, the budget chief denied he was talking about Benjamin Netanyahu. The denial was hard to take seriously.

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Interview with the Science Minister

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Haim Watzman

My interview with Israel’s new minister of science, Daniel Hershkowitz, now up on the Nature website, offers food for thought on two fronts, one a matter of policy implementation and one a matter of policy principle.

If you have trouble understanding the arcane details of how the state of Israel funds basic research (why do we have a science ministry when the lion’s share of research funds are handled by another agency?), then you’re not alone. A high-level source in the ranks of science policy makers told me in frustration a few days before my talk with the minister that he doesn’t have reliable data on how Israeli scientists fund their work—there is a welter of agencies and funding sources and no one who tracks them all. How can the nation formulate a rational basic research program without accurate information?

As Hershkowitz notes, free, untrammeled, and well-funded basic research is vital to the development of Israel’s human resources. The country is a scientific powerhouse compared to its size, but it’s slipping quickly, largely because scientists have difficulty finding money to pay the costs of their work. Many Israeli scientists now do most of their actual research on holidays and sabbaticals overseas, where grants are easier to obtain and laboratories better-equipped.

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Bibi’s Taxes–Value Subtracted

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Haim Watzman

Gershom and I had an argument back in 1996, when Binyamin Netanyahu was elected to his first term as prime minister. Gershom claimed that Bibi was, at core, a radical right-wing ideologue, whereas I argued that he was an opportunistic hack.

In that term, Bibi went on to prove himself a devout Republican-style capitalist on the economic front and a territorial maximalist on the diplomatic front. But, in the wake of the government’s approval of the national budget yesterday, I think I might win the argument this time around. Over the past week, Bibi has swayed, bent, and ended up breaking most of his principles. The result is a budget that is a mishmash. It’s not the tax-cutting, small-government budget he promised, nor is it an Obama-style Keynesian economic recovery budget. It’s the worst of both.

One of its weirdest provisions is the hike of one percent in the value added tax, to 16.5 percent, and the decision to levy the tax, for the first time ever, on fresh produce. No one likes tax hikes, nor do people like filing their tax returns for the year. Luckily, software exists to help people do this and you may even find TurboTax deals online too. If you are running a business, you may want to try professional tax services similar to those from somewhere like Dave Burton, that may be able to provide you with a tax accountant nyc who might be able to help manage or sort the taxes for your business.

With Israel, like the rest of the world, facing recession, national economic policy needs to encourage consumption. Raising this consumption tax does the opposite. Goods and services will cost more, and people will buy less. Economic activity will slow, jobs will be lost, and people will buy even less.

Furthermore, the VAT is a regressive tax. It’s paid by all Israelis, and since the poor and middle class (this includes the authors of the South Jerusalem blog) spend nearly all their income and have little to save, they pay a higher proportion of their income in VAT than do rich people. Imposing it on basic goods like produce makes it even more regressive.

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Ghosts of Gaza

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Gershom Gorenberg

The questions from the Gaza war don’t go away. They stay in the air, seep into conversation like smoke into a room.

In the course of some reporting I recently spoke with a rabbi at a West Bank settlement. The conversation meandered to the ethics of war. He raised the question of whether, in order “to strike a terrorist who endangers the Jewish nation,” it’s permissible to cause harm to additional people around him.

“In parentheses, I don’t call them ‘innocent,'” he said, referring to people who live, work or go to school near a terrorist. Rather, he said, such people “envelop” the terrorist. The word he used in Hebrew was otef, which means to wrap or package – the hint being that simply by being nearby, non-combatants have voluntarily become human shields.

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The Holy City, Wholly Mad

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Gershom Gorenberg

My friend Yehudah Mirsky has written a column about one day in Jerusalem that I highly recommend reading. Any further comment would be superfluous.

“The sword without and terror within” (Deuteronomy 32:25)

Nobody who has lived in Jerusalem in recent years needs any educating about the sword from without. A week ago Thursday I discovered the terror within. It coils through Jerusalem’s streets, and us.

Usually I’m not one for rallies. I don’t like to shout, and waving placards isn’t me. But I went to the Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood on the outskirts of Mea She’arim for the counterdemonstration to a large haredi [ultra-Orthodox] demonstration on behalf of the inauguration of several sexually segregated public bus lines. Tzniut (modesty) is a noble and crucial idea, an ethical relation in which I recede in another’s presence and refrain from imposing myself and erasing his or her essential dignity. I have thought for some while that the relentless, in-your-face sexuality of Israeli society and the recent taking of the age-old ideal of tzniut to hitherto undreamed of extremes are two sides of the same coin.

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Bulldozing Bill’s Borders

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Gershom Gorenberg

It was a busy Friday. Besides my New York Review of Books essay on 1948, my new piece also went up at The American Prospect. This is an on-the-ground report on construction projects in Jerusalem designed to erase the Clinton parameters for peace:

So far, the bulldozers have carved a large hole in the chalky hillside for foundations. On the street, a developer’s sign shows a picture of three multifloor apartment buildings that will rise on the site. The name of the developer, Bemuna, is written in Hebrew and means “in faith.”

A lot of work will have to be completed on this site before we start to see any glimpses of a building. The construction company will have to make sure that they have enough building site security in the meantime as there could be a lot of expensive equipment lying around, and anything that goes missing could cause some disruption to the entire process. And this would not benefit the residents in the area. Construction sites also need to be sure that health and safety are as tight as possible too. This will prevent any accidents or injuries from occurring. Construction sites should really look to get some health and safety signage put up to make sure workers are aware of any potential hazards. This should ensure work can be completed quickly as fewer accidents should occur. Construction sites should also be using functioning equipment to help workers do their jobs. For example, a lot of construction workers will have things to do on higher points of the building. To make sure they can all reach these points on the building, some construction sites use mobile platforms from Platforms and Ladders to help workers get closer to the area they need to complete work in. Perhaps more construction sites should consider this. Additionally, with safety signs and workers all wearing safety equipment, there should be an even lower chance of accidents occurring. Each construction worker will need to have different health and safety equipment, so it’s vital that construction sites make sure their workers are wearing the appropriate gear. For example, any on-site welders will need to make sure they’re wearing welding safety gloves to keep their hands safe from the sparks and power tools that they’ll be using. Health and safety equipment is created for a reason, so it’s important that construction site workers do use this equipment.

The company’s Web site says the project is located in East Talpiot — one of the Jewish neighborhoods that Israel built after it annexed East Jerusalem in 1967. That’s a stretch, as I found when I visited the building site this week. The hole in the ground is surrounded by the houses of Arab a-Sawahra, a Palestinian neighborhood that borders East Talpiot. Once completed, the buildings will be three emphatic statements of Jewish presence in the neighborhood, three declarations that a political border can’t be easily drawn between Arab and Jewish areas of the city.

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The War to Begin All Wars

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Gershom Gorenberg

My new essay on 1948, Benny Morris, and how the presents shapes our view of the past is up at The New York Review of Books:

In 1963 the young Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua published Facing the Forests, a novella destined to become a classic of Hebrew literature. It is a nightmarish story, the kind of dread-filled dream from which you awake shuddering, about a student who takes a job as a watchman in one of Israel’s newly planted forests. His task is to watch day and night for fire; his only company is an old Arab whose tongue was cut out in “the war”—meaning Israel’s war of independence in 1948—and the Arab’s young daughter. The forest, as the watchman learns, hides the ruins of an Arab village, the remains of an erased past: once other people lived here, members of a different nation. Their departure has to do with vague, unrecorded violence.

At the end, the mute Arab ignites the forest. The watchman-scholar does not participate in the arson, but welcomes the climax of fire and what it reveals: “And there, from within the smoke, from within the mist, the little village rises before him, reborn in its most basic outlines, as in an abstract painting, like every submerged past.” As a watchman, the Israeli has failed. Perhaps as a scholar he has succeeded: he has uncovered history, as if in a hidden archive.

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Deduct the Kids: The Israeli Supreme Court Gives The Nod to Child Care

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Haim Watzman

When I read in Friday’s newspaper that a Israel’s Supreme Court had ruled that the country’s tax authorities must allow tax deductions for child care costs, my feelings were mixed. As the holder of a B.A. in public policy sciences, I winced. Wasn’t the Court inserting itself into a policy detail better left to planners in the executive branch and to the legislature? As the husband of a long-time child care provider, I was gratified. The highest court in the land had recognized the essential nature of Ilana’s work.

In today’s Ha’aretz, the newspaper’s legal commentator, Ze’ev Segal, offers a cogent explanation and defense of the Supreme Court decision. According to Segal,

The ruling admittedly overturned a well-entrenched norm that had been accepted by the tax authorities for years—namely, that such expenses should not be recognized for tax purposes. But a careful reading shows that the court was not seeking to assume the role of the “great reformer” who overturns the established order in cases where the legislator has refrained from taking action.

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Missing Mahatma: Last Thoughts (for Now)

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Gershom Gorenberg

Once, while writing an article on Abu Nidal, leader of the most extreme Palestinian faction in the 1970s and 80s, I went to speak to one of my favorite wise men, political scientist  Yaron Ezrahi.  I was asking about Franz Fanon, the revolutionary theorist of the Algerian revolution, whose views on the necessity of armed struggle were adopted by the early PLO.  I was interested in Fanon because Abu Nidal was the most unbending of believers in Fanon’s theory of violence.

Yaron immediately compared Fanon’s approach in The Wretched of the Earth to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The difference between the two philosophies of liberation, Yaron said, is this. For King,  liberating blacks in America also meant liberating their white oppressors. For Fanon, eliminating mastery had to be physical:  The masters had to be eradicated.  Fanon could only imagine liberating one side. King believed in liberating both.

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Harms and the Man–“Necessary Stories” Column from The Jerusalem Report

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Haim Watzman

<em>Such fifid language,” Dr. Tchernikovsky observed.</em>
Such fifid language,” Dr. Tchernikovsky observed.

“I haf seen dis before,” the psychiatrist sighed, “und I know its name. ILSS – Inter-Literary Stress Syntrome.”

I’d sought out Dr. Tchernikovsky after a nearly sleepless week of a recurring nightmare in which I’d reverted to my army days. Except that instead of being dressed in my IDF fatigues, I had on a scratchy bronze helmet and a cuirass a size too big for me. Something heavy, large, and uncomfortable was strapped to my left arm, and my right hand gripped something long and hard.

Yes, that’s what I thought, too, but when, in the morning, I pieced together the other details of this nocturnal horror show it didn’t seem to fit the standard Freudian typology. It was very dark, I was thirsty and horribly cramped, and the meager air smelt of timber mixed with flatulence.

“Inter-Literary Stress Syndrome?” I asked. “This deathly panic and paranoia, the self-loathing that segues into macho elation and bloodlust? Are you sure a rugby-playing dybbuk hasn’t possessed my body?”

Dr. Tchernikovsky placed his elbow on the armrest of his overstuffed chair and stroked his soup-strainer mustache, staring hard at me, as I lay stiffly on his analyst’s couch.

“I haf encountered some rugby-playing tybbuks in my time,” he said after a long pause, “und dey haf more sense dan dat.”

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The Cream of the Drop: Shamenet as an Economic Indicator

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Haim Watzman

Shamenet 055Forget economic indicators, price indexes, and production figures. Here’s the most salient sign that Israel’s economy is plunging from exuberance into recession: today’s issue of Shamenet (in English the name would be Cream), Ha’aretz’s monthly supplement for conspicuous consumers, runs only 66 pages rather than the usual 80-100. But don’t be depressed—an economy where Shamenet is reduced to skim milk is just what Israel needs.

Once a month I pick up my copy of Ha’aretz from my doorstep and this heavy, glossy magazine falls out. There’s never anything in it for a guy with my limited line of credit, but I leaf through it as an anthropological exercise. What can I discern about the lives of Israel’s top socioeconomic decile from the ads for imported organic Provencal deodorants, diamond-inlaid watches, and high art auction houses? Here I can discover what the simple folk of the garden suburbs north of Tel Aviv do. What they do, it seems, is agonize over what brandy to display in the glass-fronted liquor cabinets in living rooms into which my entire apartment could comfortably fit.

It’s clear this month that times are tough. The article about choosing the right brandy focuses, gasp, on domestic brands. “Herod’s Palace Will Always Be In Fashion,” proclaims the headline over an interview with one of the owners of the swankiest hotel in Eilat. The article reassures us that we need not be embarrassed to show our face there; after all, even Bernie Madoff won’t be making it to San Remo this season.

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