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Jonathan Ariel is a veteran journalist and former editor of the english edition of Maariv, a leading Israeli daily.
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By Jonathan Ariel
August 29, 2006
Everybody failed in the war. The country's political leadership displayed a lack of guts and unbelievable strategic ineptness. In addition, the leadership showed itself incapable of dealing with the economic and social consequences of the war. There was no plan for the orderly evacuation of the north: those who could afford to leave did so; the others, primarily the poor, aged and infirm. were stranded in unsanitary and often uninhabitable bomb shelters.
The IDF did not cover itself in glory. Some of its sub-standard performance can be justifiably blamed on the government, which failed to deliver the strategic goals it wanted to achieve, and, even worse meddled in operational matters, modifying and curtailing planned operations.
However, the politicians cannot be blamed for the army's lack of preparedness, as witnessed by the fact that the IDF's logistics turned out to be in shambles. Troops were sent into battle with inadequate, inferior and often broken equipment. Many units did not receive orderly supplies of food and fresh water, and were forced to loot Lebanese stores and homes to eat. Dozens of soldiers were hospitalized due to the enemy's bullets, but dehydration, resulting from the lack of drinking water.
Israeli society also gets a failing grade. True, despite the government's severe shortcomings, the home front showed it had the guts to take whatever Hezbollah dished out, and remain steadfast, even those deserted by their government in sweltering shelters.
However. these shortcomings did not develop overnight. For far too long, Israeli society has tolerated corrupt and incompetent leaders. It preferred to turn a blind eye as Ariel Sharon institutionalized corruption and tried to intimidate and silence journalists who exposed the dirt. When that PM became incapacitated, we as a society chose to elect a man with a dodgy reputation, who has twice been indicted, but both times got off by the skin of his teeth.
Our society stood by passively as successive governments pursued a policy of crony privatization. Privatizing the economy is a positive step, provided it's done properly. This has not been the case. Public assets were sold at a pittance to a small coterie of a dozen or so well-connected families, creating a class of oligarchs not too different from those of the FSU.
Not content with quasi-privatizing the economy, the political leadership of the past decade has seen fit to privatize society itself. The government has deliberately embarked on a policy designed to tear the fabric of Israeli society, by ignoring all its social obligations. The result is a pervasive atmosphere that encouraged ethical corner-cutting to make an extra buck, and allowed the oligarchy to maximize their profits at the expense of an increasingly exploited workforce. The gap between the lowest and highest salaries is the highest in the western world, and is rapidly approaching third world levels.
The sad fact is that over the past decade we have increasingly become a third world country. We have adopted and accepted third world business and social ethics. We allowed the political establishment to gut our society while, at the same time allowing it to create a situation in which more and more wealth flowed into fewer and fewer hands, till we reached our current situation in which around two score families control over two thirds of the GDP.
The fact that the IDF displayed so many third world symptoms during the war, primarily regarding its logistical capabilities, should therefore not be so surprising. Third world ethical norms produce a third world society. A third world society leads to a third world army.
We cannot afford to accept this state of affairs. Already it is clear that a new war, likely against Syria and Iran as well as their proxy Hezbollah, is in the offing.
If we are to rebuild the IDF as a first world army, we have to rebuild ourselves as a first world society. This means accountability, an end to ethical corner-cutting, and zero tolerance for corruption and politicians' shenanigans. Accountability starts by admitting that when you vote for a party or leader that you know to be corrupt, you become a collaborator to that corruption.
World Jewry also has a vital supporting role to play. By continuing to donate vast sums to organizations that are an inherent part of what they know is a corrupt political establishment, it, like Israeli society, has also become a collaborator of that corrupt establishment. What is required is tough love, a blanket refusal to donate a cent more to organizations that are an integral part of Israel's political establishment until it cleans it act up. There is a viable alternative -- direct donations to the dozens of NGOs that make a real contribution to Israel's sorely pressed civic society -- and make a real difference to real people's lives.
As Edmund Burke, the famous British statesman and political philosopher so eloquently summed it up, "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (and women) to do nothing." We saw evil, corruption, perverted norms and a total lack of ethical backbone, and we did nothing. Hopefully we will be saved by the fact that this eye-opener occurred during the curtain-raiser, and not the main game, coming soon.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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