Israel is Taking Option # 1. The Pending Appointment of Mr. Ben-Ami
by Robert J. Loewenberg, IASPS President
The
Israeli press has rightly made much of Mr. Ben-Ami's pending appointment
as Mr. Barak's acting foreign minister seen in Israel as a good sign: Mr.
Barak is loosening up in sharing the peace process with major party cabinet
members; he is making an effort to get a deal while the Knesset is out of
session by using his most extreme pro-peace process cabinet member. Ben-Ami
is Minister of Internal Security (police). The press is also making much
of Mr. Ben-Ami as THE most frequently flying cabinet minister. He's seeking,
Peres-style, international backing for Camp David concessions.
In
AN EARLIER OP ED ON THIS SITE ("THE FOUR OPTIONS
AFTER CAMP DAVID"); and a prior NBN ("DISPATCH
FROM CAMP DAVID: ISRAEL AND BARAK ROUTED"), Mr. Ben-Ami is identified
as the most extreme ("civil" in the New York Times) of the
Israeli cabinet on three related policies: 1. He is Israel's most extreme
supporter of US aid-driven socialism; 2. He openly prefers the peace
process in which the Russians call the largest percentage of military moves
(the Golan Heights) and some oil ones (Iran deal with Kuwait
on Straits of Hormuz) for the powers of the Gulf, over entente with
Turkey; and 3. He most of all has pressed for concessions on the peace process
beyond the present concessions.
If
the reader will check the two web items above posted before the announcement
of Mr.Ben-Ami's appointment, the Sephardic academic appears as leading a
fifth column assault on Mr. Barak at Camp David (he denies this), pushing
him, already the most extreme conceder, further than he knew Israel would
now support. Also Mr. Ben-Ami is Israel's most powerful government voice
against a strategy with Turkey (see Option # 4). Finally, Mr. Ben-Ami is
the government's most extreme exponent of still more money for the State
beyond the current 50% of Israel's stagnant GDP, including the 10% of this
figure that comes from outside money making socialism immovable and the
peace process necessary. See Option # 1.
The
"text book" phenomenon on how socialist regimes shred leftward, in Israel
this means more socialist and more driven by outside money, is called the
iron law of factions or "oligarchy." This process has now been pushed and
accelerated by outside money and by the vast distortions of internal politics
made possible by the outside power, the US. Mr. Clinton and the Jewish State
Department bureaucrats running the peace process are now hoping to use the
Jews, who are in their turn using them, for this year's October surprises
in both countries. Mr. Ben-Ami has taken the bait he baited like Mr. Barak
once did and as his predecessors did.
In
a system already driven by dizzying numbers of outside dollars, these being
what powers Israel's socialist system, all of Israel's political parties
are trapped. Effectively Israel has today two deathbed options if political
competitors want the money being offered to them, and it is now clear to
everyone that Israel is, as Mr. Barak has said in justifying his concessions,
[the Israelis] are in a "weak" condition. In other words, the people want
peace and the government has said repeatedly "if you will not accept this
peace process we cannot protect you."
What
is clear is the money drives the process --look at the parties. As for the
"people," its choices are narrower still. On the Swiftian principle that
non-constitutional systems can only rule what they divide, it is the first
part of the politician's business to make the most useful division, whether
about the existence of the nation, about Jerusalem or whether people must
open the small or large end of their hardboiled egg. But this high-stakes
reliance upon exciting the passion of citizens by threats of death and destruction
by the Arabs is a recipe for fanaticism and destruction.
Do
we have any signs of these things in Israel or perhaps even America? At
least it is plain the Israeli system has made desperate men fanatical.
Power belongs to those who can preserve the divisions without breaking the
egg. Nothing fancy is required to see this is now at work: Mr. Barak is
acting without a majority,in fact without a government, using the recess
of the parliament to make a "deal" on the boundaries of a distracted state
as a political package for his own election. He says "a million eyes are
on him,"hoping for peace. In such circumstances he is obliged to use ever
more extreme "supporters" to retain his own power but this impels his embrace
of still more extreme positions endangering himself politically and the
existence of the country. And every step in this process raises the stakes
and the numbers of those to whom he has already promised most of what he
now promises to new-minted additional groups and constituencies in a daily
and spiraling metastasis of strikers, groups, activists and demanders that
compose the devouring system he heads.
After
more than a decade of camouflage Israelis are coming to see that the country
is shredded; that this is a process triggering more shredding and faster
shedding. As yet, however, there is no public awareness why this is happening.
As for the US, complicit in the process, its policy community does understand
what is happening in Israel. However, not understanding the strategic consequences
for America (Option #4), and now several decades into its own version of
non-constitutional order, the America elites cannot stir themselves to act
in America's interests but only to politicize them; the "continuing campaign."
This
is the "problem." In the policy business we say "fix it." IASPS has advanced
Option # 4. Take another look at it: The Four Options after Camp David.
References for further research on the site on
issues related to this op-ed:
-The
Great Israeli Tax Grab of 2000, by Dr. Alvin Rabushka
-Economic
Freedom in Israel, by Dr. Alvin Rabushka
-The Peace
Process: An Introductory Essay, Part I, by Dr. Robert J. Loewenberg
-Why
Israel's "Second Silicon Valley" Emigrates To The Real Silicon
Valley, by Dr. Alvin Rabushka
-The Bear is Back, by
Paul Michael Wihbey
-No Bread, No
Circuses, by Robert J. Loewenberg
-Turkey and the
Peace Process, by Paul Michael Wihbey
-The Story behind the
Peace Process, by IASPS Staff
-The Caspian
Project (archive of articles)
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