The News Behind The News
December 29, 1999
Shas and Free Money: A Game Known in Advance
By IASPS StaffYesterday, December 28th, the New York Times and Deborah Sontag, the Time's Jerusalem-based correspondent, informed us that Shas' threat to quit the Prime Minister Barak's ruling coalition "shocked" the country because its departure would send the government and its peace process into "chaos." We here at IASPS thought Ms. Sontag and the Times editors to be asleep when she wrote that nonsense because everyone in Israel knew, certainly this News Behind the News knew, that Shas wouldn't quit and that Barak would pay them off. Why? Because the system and the peace process is all about free money. Now we see that they weren't asleep. Their job, as they see it, is to characterize Barak as a political hero keeping order over an unruly Sephardic, "ultra-religious" bunch of hooligans. Now we see that their job is to convince the Times readership that free money for Israel (i.e., US taxpayers' money) is what it takes to buy peace.
Read how Ms. Sontag characterizes her hero in the all-important opening paragraph of today's front page follow-up story (December 29, 1999): "Resolving a potentially destabilizing political crisis, Prime Minister Ehud Barak today convinced the third-largest party in Parliament to remain in his coalition by offering increased funding and debt relief for its state-subsidized religious schools."
Now, just why was it so important to "pay-off" Shas to keep them in the coalition? Simply to maintain power? No, that would be too crude. To buy time to implement economic reforms so that the country might become what the Times has already called it: The New Economic Engine of the Middle East or the Second Silicon Valley? No, because apparently an economic engine (albeit stagnating at 1% growth) needs no economic reform, only political pay-offs. To eliminate corruption within the highest ranks of the police (a la the Nimrodi affair)? No, that would be too mundane. To eliminate bribe-taking at the highest bureuacratic levels (a la the planning and zoning bureaucrats of Jerusalem)? No, that would be just a plain waste of time.
Instead, the Barak political payoff, according to our own Ms. Sontag, was to secure the following: "With the agreement, Mr. Barak has escaped an 11th-hour crisis as his budget goes to Parliament and he prepares to fly to the United States in early January for the second round of talks with the Syrians. Shas's support of the peace effort is vital to Mr. Barak's plans."
Ah, all in preparation of the "peace process." But, alas, there is something amiss here. What comes first? The chicken or the egg? Does the political pay-off come to secure the peace process or does the peace process come to secure the political pay-off? How might we know?
The answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind. It's right there in Ms. Sontag's piece, buried as a rationalization by the government itself for its political pay-off: "The [government] spokesman, Gadi Baltiansky, described the horse-trading as business as usual when Israel's fractious, sectarian Parliament revs up for a budget vote. 'It's a game known in advance," Mr. Baltiansky said. 'They always threaten two minutes before the vote and reach an agreement one minute before. Every year it's the same.' Compared with the past, he said, the amount of money involved was almost insignificant."
Imagine that! Every year it's the same. (Didn't Ms. Sontag describe it as a "shock" just yesterday? What is it?) Mind you, this is Barak's first budget, so the spokesman is not talking about Shas last year in the Netanyahu government or this year's haggling. He is honestly describing what goes on with everyone in the system. So what comes first? That which has taken place every year at least for the past 25 years or the peace process? This is no chicken and egg problem. It is clear what comes first and foremost. (For Ms. Sontag, let us spell it out again: Show me the money! Once you find that, you'll find what drives our so-called "peace process."
Does it surprise anyone that the government describes NIS 500 million ($120 million) paid to Shas and the hundreds of millions paid to the other "horse-traders" getting a piece of the budget pie at the 11th hour as "almost insignificant?" Mind you, this is a country living on $8 billion of free money, mostly from U.S. taxpayers. Imagine that! A welfare recipient walks out of the welfare office with his check in hand only to publicly give it to other welfare recipients in exchange for what were earlier characterized as extortion!
Ms. Sontag and the Times were neither sleeping nor brain dead. They were and are, wittingly or unwittingly, co-conspirators in the whole process.