Selections From Israeli Newspapers

by Israel Shahak

The U.S. Loan Guarantees: So Much for Promises

Jerusalem Post, Feb. 4, 1996.

By David Bedein

Remember those loan guarantees to help immigrants? They have been used to further conspicuous consumption instead.

The anger that boiled over during the demonstration of Ethiopian Jews in Jerusalem last Sunday may have had something to do with the economic morass in which Ethiopian Jews and other immigrants now find themselves.

Those who have worked intensely with Ethiopian Jews know that honor, trust and credibility will often determine the level of patience they will maintain, despite all the difficulties associated with the absorption process.

When that trust breaks down, the gentle posture of a patient immigrant can turn into outrage. That is what we witnessed outside the prime minister’s office.

Ethiopians and other immigrants had been promised that the loan guarantees obtained from the U.S. in August 1992 would go a long way toward solving their economic distress, that they would be used to provide vocational training and create jobs.

In lobbying for the loan guarantees, Israeli representatives spoke of the trials and tribulations of immigrant absorption that the funds would alleviate.

The effort was so intense that U.S. President George Bush commented in an exasperated speech on Sept. 13, 1991 that he felt like the entire Jewish world had descended on Capitol Hill, and that he was more than overwhelmed with unprecedented pressure to grant approval to grant the loan guarantees.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, later described the loan guarantee battle as the greatest victory of the American Jewish lobbies.

When the U.S. government finally approved the loan guarantees—after the Labor Party’s ascension to power—Congress placed severe restrictions on the use of the funds, specifically restricting them to immigrant projects, while allowing the Israeli government to use a “reasonable sum” for infrastructure development.

But none of the $5 billion which has already been provided to Israel under the loan guarantees package has been used by the Israeli government for direct immigrant economic development.

Instead, the loan guarantees gave Israel’s banking system (taken over by the government after the bank shares scandal) greater liquidity and willingness to extend credit to corporations, small businesses and private individuals.

Thanks to the guarantees, the banks have been able to provide generous loan terms so that Israeli consumers can more easily purchase automobiles, foreign travel packages, or speculate on the stock market.

Some $800 million of the loan guarantees was used for the expansion of Israel Electric Corporation, which had been privatized, even though its stock is owned mostly by the Ministry of Energy. More loan guarantee money went to the expansion of the road system. Yet another $200 million went to plans for a Tel Aviv subway.

The destination of much of the loan guarantee money has not been published. The 1995 state comptroller’s report notes that the government has provided no accounting for $1.4 billion that it allocated during 1993-4.

In May 1994, Natan Sharansky, the head of the Zionist Forum, a coalition of immigrant organizations, accused the Israeli government of misusing the loan guarantees. He said it would have been difficult to campaign for the loans under the slogan “let them build highways.”

Absorption Minister Yair Tzaban has said that the loan guarantees are being administered in such a way as to be able to cover any deficit incurred by the Israeli government for any reason, even though specific clauses of the U.S. legislation expressly forbid use to help Israel’s budget deficit.

People who have raised concerns about how the guarantees are being used have received one standard response: All allocations have been with U.S. government approval. That means that the president and State Department, not Congress, have approved such use.

The government has used the loan guarantees to encourage conspicuous consumption instead of advancing immigrant absorption. No wonder immigrants have lost faith in Israel’s political system.

Pollard: Peres Himself Employed Me

Yediot Ahronot, Feb. 12, 1996.

By Ilana Baum

Jonathan Pollard, imprisoned in the United States, claims that it was Prime Minister Shimon Peres who employed him in person as his agent in the U.S. Navy in order to obtain information necessary for Israel. For the first time since he was imprisoned about 10 years ago, Pollard has accused the Israeli government directly and publicly and named Peres explicitly. Until this time, the questions of who were Pollard’s real bosses, did Yitzhak Rabin, Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres¹ know about his activities, and the chain of command above his official boss, Rafi Eitan,² were among the unsolved mysteries of the affair.

But this week, in a message delivered to Prime Minister Peres by Pollard’s wife, Esther, Pollard writes: “Mr. Peres, allow me to remind you that it was you, yourself, and your government³ who sent me to act as your agent so that I would obtain the necessary intelligence which was being prevented from reaching Israel. If there is somebody who knows about the true extent of my actions, it is you. If there is any serious crime connected with what I did, it is your appointment of me as an Israeli agent.”

Pollard’s message is an answer to Peres’ declaration that Israel is requesting Pollard’s release solely for humanitarian reasons, since it cannot disregard the harm he caused to the U.S. According to Pollard’s wife and his lawyers, the prime minister’s declaration caused great harm to Pollard’s central claim since his imprisonment in the U.S. According to Pollard, the intelligence he transferred to Israel was only intended to benefit it, not, by any means, to harm the U.S. According to Pollard’s lawyers, throughout his imprisonment Pollard avoided, until now, naming the members of the Israeli government who knew about his activities and who approved of them.

NOTES:

1 During the time of the “national unity” government, all the top-secret and really important affairs were decided by those three.

2 Nominally, only Rafi Eitan knew about Pollard. Americans had agreed to accept the Israeli pretense that the troika which then ruled Israel didn’t know anything about Pollard’s activities and their results, and that Rafi Eitan employed Pollard without the government’s knowledge.

3 Peres was prime minister in 1984-1986.

The Union of Tsomet with Likud May Make the Notorious Rafael Eitan Israel’s Defense Minister

Ma’ariv, Feb. 9, 1996.

By legal correspondent Moshe Negbi

It is not my task to judge the wisdom and political advancement which will accrue to the Likud from its union with the Tzomet party and the putting of Rafael Eitan (Raful) as number 2 in its list of candidates for the next Knesset, immediately after Benyamin Netanyahu. However, to those who haven’t lost their conscience—and there are plenty of such people even in the leadership of Likud—this development, even if it will supposedly improve Raful’s chances of becoming Israeli defense minister, is nothing to rejoice about. Perhaps it is a reason for being afraid.

The problem with Raful is his moral record. For those who have forgotten, the last time Raful had power over our army he led it into a war that became the most opposed war in Israel’s history, and his behavior was condemned, not only by many of our writers and artists but by the most senior of our judges.

But even before that, from the beginning of his service as the chief-of-staff, Raful showed his lack of moral values. Take the case of the soldier Israel Lederman, who murdered an innocent Arab near Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem and was sentenced by a military court to 20 years’ imprisonment. Raful gave him amnesty, freeing him after only three years of imprisonment.¹ Lieutenant Daniel Pinto, who murdered captured Lebanese civilians in 1978 during the Litani Operation,² was sentenced by Judge Meir Shamgar³ to 12 years’ imprisonment, but Raful gave him amnesty also saying that two years were enough. These amnesties—which testify to Raful’s contempt of military justice—caused the late district judge Dov Eitan to refuse to continue to serve in the reserves as a military judge, as a form of protest.

During the Lebanese war, two Supreme Court judges, one of them then-president of the Supreme Court, Yitzhak Kahan, the other the current president, Aharon Barak, joined those denouncing Raful. According to the report⁴ that they wrote together with General Efrat, the errors of Chief-of-Staff Rafael Eitan were an important factor in allowing the notorious massacre of the Sabra and Shatila refugees by Phalangists to take place. Although in the Israeli collective memory this massacre is more connected with the name of Sharon, the errors of Raful were still greater than those of Sharon, as is apparent to those who read again the report of that committee. True, the committee did not ask that Raful be removed, but only because his period of service was going to be ended anyway and because “prolongation of his period of service is not being contemplated by the government.”

The Supreme Court judges Kahan and Barak, together with General Efrat, found after an investigation that Raful should have known, because of “special intelligence” he possessed, that “there is a strong possibility of the killing of the refugees by the Phalangists and that he did nothing to prevent that danger.” In this, his guilt was similar to that of Sharon. But the committee attributed to Raful another error, seemingly even worse. After he had already received intelligence about the “unusual acts” committed by the Phalangists, he met their commanders and did not demand that they remove their forces from the camps. “On the contrary,” the committee wrote, “the Phalangist commanders could deduce from the chief-of-staff’s behavior that they could carry on undisturbed their actions in the camps.”

It is, again, important to emphasize that it was not disinterested politicians signed the condemnation of Rafael Eitan’s behavior but two of our best judges. More than this, Menachem Begin and the entire Likud government of that time, with the exception of Sharon, approved those severe conclusions. Dan Meridor,⁵ who was the secretary of that government, surely knows this well. It seems that only a movement which lost both its sense of direction and its conscience can permit itself to glory in putting a general with such a past history to the first security-linked position on its list.⁶ More important, only in a society whose capability to remember its history and its moral sensitivity both are near zero, can such a general be regarded as “an electoral advantage.⁷

NOTES:

1. Lederman was and is an active follower of the late Meir Kahane.

2. This was an especially shocking case. Pinto kept those people in ‘’his own’’ prison compound where he tortured them for several days, without anybody in the unit (paratroopers) saying anything. Finally he murdered them and threw their bodies into a well, covering them loosely with stones. The bodies were discovered when another army unit encamped on the site.

3. Shamgar, then a Supreme Court judge but not yet a president, was called to the reserves to judge this case as a military judge. His verdict was criticized at the time as scandalously lenient.

4. Better known as Kahan Committee Report.

5. Now one of the most important of Likud’s leaders.

6. Generally, such a position means that, if Netanyahu should win, Raful will become his defense minister, even though Netanyahu has not promised Raful anything and many in Likud detest Raful.

7. Although I agree with Negbi’s evaluation, the awkward fact remains that Raful is “an electoral advantage” in the coming elections.