Accountability vs. Treachery

POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY DOES NOT EXIST IN ISRAEL: HENCE THE PERSISTENCE OF TREACHERY
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Foundation for Constitutional Democracy
Jewish Indy

In his article “Awakening the Left” (Jerusalem Post, April 15, 2010), Michael Freund writes: “The Anat Kam affair has sent shockwaves throughout Israel's military and political establishment….The young [left-wing] reporter allegedly stole reams of sensitive IDF documents and passed them along to Ha'aretz reporter Uri Blau …” After mentioning Mordechai Vanunu, the former nuclear technician who disclosed details of Israel's atomic-energy program to the Times of London in October 1986, and Marcus Klingberg, one of Israel's top military scientists, who passed data to the Soviets out of ideological conviction before his arrest in 1983, Freund asks: “Why does the Israeli Left seem to produce so much treachery against the state?” To answer this question I ask: “How is it that the Knesset elected, as Israel’s president, a leftist like Shimon Peres, once known as the “saboteur”?

In 2007, my colleague Professor Wolf Perlman and I published an article and distributed it to the Knesset when Peres was running for the office of Israel’s president. The article, “The Betrayal of Israel: Shimon Peres and Lebanon,” had as its head note a statement of former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, who, in his 1957 memoirs Personal Diary, had this to say of Mr. Peres: “I have stated that I totally and utterly reject Peres and consider his rise to prominence a malignant, immoral disgrace. I will rend my clothes in mourning for the State if I see him become a minister in the Israeli government.”

Here is the remainder of the article co-authored by Perlman and myself.


Shimon Peres is again campaigning to become Israel’s President. We shall show that his election to that office would constitute, in the words of Moshe Sharett, a “malignant, immoral disgrace.”

Last summer (2006) Israel suffered an incalculable defeat in the Second Lebanese War. According to former Chief of General Staff Lt. Moshe Ya’alon, what precipitated that war was the government’s policy of “unilateral disengagement” from Gaza. That policy not only led to the ascendancy of Hamas, a proxy of Iran; it also encouraged Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, to attack Israel from the north.

No one who supported withdrawal from Gaza, which involved the expulsion of 8,000 Jews from their homes, should be elected President of Israel—certainly not the most persistent advocate of that policy of retreat, Shimon Peres. But there are other reasons why Mr. Peres should not be elected President of the state of Israel—reasons that go back to the First Lebanese War of 1982, otherwise known as Operation Peace for Galilee….

A visiting American congressman expressed astonishment by the vast chasm between Israel’s abysmal media image and the truth he had himself witnessed at the front in Lebanon. Aryeh Naor, a former cabinet secretary, maintains that Operation Peace for Galilee was subverted by the scathing criticism of the Likud Government by opposition politicians, journalists, and Peace Now demonstrations.

Chilling confirmations are found in Tsali Reshef’s book Peace Now (1996). Reshef admits that Peace Now’s propaganda campaign went into full swing on 16 June 1982, ten days after the start of the Lebanese war. This was followed by a “100,000” demonstration on 6 July 1982 (with chants for Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s resignation), culminating with an anti-Government rally joined by Labor leader Shimon Peres.

To undermine the Government, the Peres camp accused Sharon of having failed to inform Prime Minister Menachem Begin of the true aims of the war. Yet, as early as 1983, Yossi Sarid (then a Labor MK) revealed that “the Labor Party leadership knew from the start that the Peace for Galilee Operation would [go beyond the 45 kilometer line and] reach Beirut.” (Ma’ariv, 26 April 1983.)

This revelation propelled MK Yitzhak Zinger (Likud) to demand that Peres apologize to Mr. Begin for disseminating “falsehoods,” namely, that Labor was from the outset unaware that the operation would go beyond the 45 kilometer line, and that Sharon was deceiving the Government vis-à-vis the Beirut stage of the campaign.

Credence to Mr. Zinger’s charges is given by a 1984 report attributed to the late Yitzhak Rabin: “Two months before the war [April 1982], Begin and Sharon revealed the ‘Big Plan’ to the Labor leadership—Peres, Bar-Lev, and himself.” (Ma’ariv, 7 April 1984.) Communist MK Meir Wilner confirmed this in a speech to the Young Communist League. Although he should not have been privy to such highly classified information, Wilner boasted that he knew, on 10 April 1982, that the “war plan of Begin and Sharon is to conquer Lebanon including Beirut and transfer power to the fascist [sic] Phalange.” (Ha’aretz, 11 April, 1982.)

[The question arises:] Who leaked Israel’s war plan?

At 10:00 p.m., on Saturday night, 5 June 1982, Shimon Peres hastily convened a meeting of his inner circle of colleagues, among which was Yossi Sarid. According to Sarid, in an article published five years after the war (Ha’aretz, 21 August 1987), Peres reported that “the war in Lebanon would commence the following morning with the operational intention of reaching Beirut to join up with the Christian forces.”

The article goes on to say that Peres, upon returning from a visit to the front on 15 June 1982, told his party’s inner circle: “Comrades, we have to admit they [the Likud Government] have got a trump card going for them. The Americans are supporting and collaborating. The Russians have simply disappeared. Many of our chilling forecasts have proved to be hollow. Contrary to our earlier fears the war is one big success. The war is near to attaining all of its principal goals. In a few days—it is impossible to deny the facts—a peace treaty between Lebanon and Israel will be signed. This will be their [the Likud’s] second treaty [the first being with Egypt]. They will also succeed in expelling Arafat and all his terrorists and disperse them to the winds. In short, they will break up the PLO”!

Sarid concluded (without realizing he was incriminating himself!): “On one substantial issue I agree with Ariel Sharon: the Labor Party must be investigated regarding its stance and behavior during the various stages of the war! If the party critically damaged the war effort—as others contend—it must certainly render an account to the nation.”

No such investigation has ever been made, even though the withholding of Peres’ favorable assessment of the Government’s goals and achievements in Lebanon on the tenth day of the war had devastating consequences. It largely explains the media’s denigration of Israel, the shattering of the nation’s morale, and the succumbing of public opinion to the propaganda of Peace Now.

Recall that Tsali Reshef admitted that Peace Now’s propaganda campaign went into full swing on 16 June 1982. This was the day after Peres told his inner circle that the Likud Government was on the way to destroying the PLO and signing a peace treaty with Lebanon—two accomplishments that boded ill for the Labor Party’s political future.

Fourteen years later, Reshef boasted, in Peace Now, that “the majority in Israel have now internalized both the message and ritual of Peace Now as mouthed by us over the years.” Already in 1987, however, veteran members of Ben-Gurion’s party accused Peres of transforming the party into an imitation of Peace Now. (Ha’aretz, 2 November 1987.)

Responsibility for Israel's fiasco in Lebanon and its perilous consequences to Jews living near Israel's northern border can be traced to Shimon Peres. That the same Peres was also responsible for the Oslo Agreement, which brought Yasser Arafat into the Land of Israel, where he established a base for terrorists that murdered more than 1,500 Jews—that this same Peres remains in office and is once again campaigning to become Israel's President is surely a pathetic commentary on Israel’s political system.

But this recalls former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett's warning: "I have stated that I totally and utterly reject Peres and consider his rise to prominence a malignant, immoral disgrace." Yes, but that Peres could remain in office for five decades despite his malignant deeds and policies is also indicative of a malignant system of government. He must not become Israel’s President.

Words in vain—in vain because, thanks primarily to its political SYSTEM, political accountability does not exist in Israel. And this is why one prime minster after another can remain in office despite his complicity in the treacherous policy of “territory for peace.”


Prof. Paul Eidelberg is a political scientist, author and lecturer; Founder and President, Foundation for Constitutional Democracy, a Jerusalem-based think tank for improving Israel's system of governance. He is a valued contributor to JewishIndy.
His books are available at Lightcatcher Books, http://www.lightcatcherbooks.com. His most recent book is: Toward a Renaissance of Israel and America. His recent books are: A Jewish Philosophy of History and The Myth of Israeli Democracy: Toward a Truly Jewish Israel. His previous book, Jewish Statesmanship: Lest Israel Fall, provides the philosophical and institutional foundations for reconstructing the State of Israel. It has been translated into Hebrew and Russian. He is the author of Toward a Renaissance of Israel and America (Lightcatcher Books, 2009).

The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy
POB 23702, Jerusalem 91236
E-Mail: Eidelberg@foundation1.org

Guest Comment: Israeli Left produces much treachery against the state...Shimon Peres is a saboteur of the Israeli people interest and his rise to prominence in Israel is malignant, immoral a disgrace ... Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett wrote: "I will rend my clothes in mourning for the State if I see him become a minister in the Israeli government.” And Peres did serve in the government all the way to Prime Minister, and he is still serving... he delivered the disastrous Oslo Accords to Israel for which he got paid with one political honor after another, now to serve as the current president of the State of Israel...no one who supported withdrawal from Gaza, which involved the expulsion of 8,000 Jews from their homes, and who is the most persistent advocate of the policy of retreat should be elected President of Israel...AND so said for Ehud Barak...If Peres and Barak are forever recycled in different political posts, it is surely a pathetic commentary on Israel’s political system, indicative of a malignant system of government!...But words in vain, because thanks, primarily, to the terrible political SYSTEM, political accountability does not exist in Israel and this is why one prime minster after another can remain in office despite his complicity in the treacherous policy of “territory for peace.”

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Shalom,
Nurit