With Friends LIke These by Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery
17.5.08

With Friends Like These…

LATELY WE are flooded with friends. The Great of the Earth, past and
present, come here to flatter us, to fawn on us, to grovel at our
feet.

"God, save me from my friends, my enemies I can deal with myself!"
says an old prayer.

They disgust me.


LET'S TAKE for example the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who made
the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Her pandering was free of any criticism
and she reached new heights of obsequiousness in her speech to the
Knesset. I was invited to attend. I relinquished the privilege.

I shall also pass the pleasure when I am invited to the session with
the hyper-active Nicholas Sarkozy, who will try to break the flattery
record of his German rival.

Before that we were visited by John McCain's mentor, the evangelical
pastor John Hagee, the one who described the Catholic Church as a
monster. Oozing sanctimonious flattery from every pore, he forbade us,
in the name of (his) God, to give up even one inch of the Holy Land
and commanded us to fight to the last drop of (our) blood.

However, not one of them has come close to George Bush. Approaching
the end of the most disastrous presidency in the annals of the
Republic, he really forced a lighted match into the hand of our
government, encouraging it to ignite the barrel of gunpowder between
our feet.


BUT THE list of present-day leaders who participate in the pandering
competition pales in comparison with the long parade of Has-Beens who
lay siege to our gates.

A world-wide swarm of Has-Beens is flying from place to place like
bees, all for one and one for all. This week they alighted in
Jerusalem, on the invitation of Has-Been No. 1: Shimon Peres, a
politician who in all the 84 years of his life has never won an
election, and who was finally handed, out of sheer compassion, the
largely meaningless title of President of Israel.

The common denominator of this group is that their prestige at home is
close to nil, while their standing abroad is sky-high. Their mutual
adoration compensates them for the lack of respect in their own
countries.

One of the senior members of this club is Tony Blair, who has been
pushed from power in his own country but is not content to enjoy his
pension and raise roses. As a consolation prize he has been granted
the pleasure of playing around with our conflict. Every few weeks he
convenes a press conference to present the good tidings of his
phenomenal success in ameliorating the lot of the Palestinians, while
the actual situation in the occupied territories goes from bad to
worse. Our security establishment treats him like a bore who has to be
thrown a crumb from time to time to keep him happy.

In the conference that took place this week there were also some good
people, but the scene was stolen by the Has-Beens, from the retired
war criminal Henry Kissinger to the dethroned peace hero Mikhail
Gorbachev (whom I still consider a hero for preventing bloodshed
during the collapse of the Soviet empire.) Pity to see him in this
company.

All the participants in this orgy heaped mountains of fawning
adulation on Israel. Not one of them had a word of criticism. No
occupation. No settlements. No Gaza blockade. No daily killings. Just
a wonderful, peace-loving state that the bad, bad terrorists want to
throw into the sea.

Not one of the guests stood up to warn us against going on with the
present policy. Not one of them stood up to proclaim the truth: that
the continuation of this policy may lead our state to disaster.

He who has friends like these has no need for enemies. A person who
sees his friend playing Russian roulette and offers him bullets - is
he a real friend? One who sees his friend standing on the brink of an
abyss and tells him "go ahead" - is he a friend?


AMONG THE fraternity of flatterers, the ones that attracted the most
attention were the Jewish billionaires from America (who also paid for
the extravaganza).

Several of them were summoned to police headquarters immediately on
arrival to give evidence on the affair that is rocking Israel now -
the corruption investigation of Ehud Olmert.

A smell of corruption has accompanied Olmert right from his beginnings
in politics, 45 years ago. But this time, the smell is overpowering.
The police has made it known that the American-Jewish billionaire
Moshe Morris Talansky has been supplying him with cash-filled
envelopes for years.

Where have we seen this before? Of course, in American movies and
TV-series. Somebody opens a suitcase stuffed with bundles of
banknotes. The donor invariably belongs to the Mafia, and the
recipient is generally a corrupt politician. Can it be that Olmert has
never seen these films - he of all people, who started his career with
demagogic speeches denouncing "Organized Crime"?

But it is not Olmert who interests me in this affair so much as Talansky.

He belongs to a species of "Israel-loving" billionaires, most of them
resident in the US, but also in Canada and Switzerland, Austria and
Australia and other places.

They are all Israeli patriots. They are all philanthropists. All
contribute millions to Israeli politicians. And almost all of them
support our extreme Right.

What makes them run? What induces these billionaires to do what they are doing?

A research in depth discovers that a great many of them made their
money in dark corners. Some are gambling barons, casino-owners with
all the inevitable connections with violence, crime and exploitation.
One at least made his fortunes from brothels. Another was involved in
a scandal involving old people's homes. Yet another is a scion of a
family who made their money bootlegging during prohibition days. Some
are arms merchants of the most despicable kind, selling weapons to the
political gangs which sow death and destruction in Africa.

But money, as is well known, does not smell.

Most of the multi-millionaires of this kind feel that they are not
receiving the honor due to them. Their co-billionaires, high society
people, treat them with disdain. A person reaching this position is
not satisfied with money alone. He craves honor. Such honor can be
bought in Israel, on the cheap.

Israel is selling honor of all kinds, no questions asked. For a
suitable donation, even a gambling-hell owner will be received by the
Prime Minister, dine with the President, put his name on a university
building.

(Once I wrote a light-hearted piece about the Third Temple, may God
build it soon, Amen: the Rosenstein Holy of Holiest, the Rosenzweig
altar, the Rosenberg cherubim, etc.)

Just after the Six-day War, during the great days of our generals, a
new fashion spread among the best Jewish billionaires: to keep an
Israeli general, in order to present him to friends as a pet. Some
generals found no fault in this. It was owed to them, after all.

One billionaire kept Ezer Weizman, the Air Force hero (who had to
resign from the presidency when it came out). Two billionaires adopted
Ariel Sharon and set him up in the largest farm in the country. Shimon
Peres was no general (and not even a soldier), but at least three
billionaires took him under their golden wings.

No billionaire ever lost money by keeping an Israeli general,
supporting an Israeli politician or making a generous donation to an
Israeli cause. Ego is ego, patriotism is patriotism, but business is
business.

That's where the corruption set in. A person who donates millions to a
politician in Israel (or, for that matter, the US, or Italy or any
other place on the globe) knows full well that he will get it back
with interest. When the politician becomes a minister, or Prime
Minister, or President, the supporter has hit the jackpot.

In politics there is no innocent donation. One way or another, the
donor will reap his reward - many times over. That's true in the US,
that's true in Italy, that's true in Israel, too. If the donor
declares to the police that he has no business interests in Israel,
all it means is that they must dig deeper.


THE OLMERT affair confirms anew what we have known for a long time:
the fuel Israeli politics runs on is not just money, but money from
abroad. To win primaries and campaign in elections, a candidate needs
millions, and these almost always come from foreign donors.

Foreign billionaires financed Olmert in the party primaries, and they
financed him in the general elections, in which he was assured of
becoming Prime Minister. After being elected, he started Lebanon War
II, with all its death and destruction. It can be said: American
Jewish billionaires killed the soldiers and civilians, Israeli and
Lebanese, who lost their lives in the war.

In his speech to the Jerusalem conference, Shimon Peres lauded Israeli
chutzpa. What we need is more chutzpa, he said. That sounded fetching
and naughty, but was pure poppycock.

I want to speak about another chutzpa. Not metaphorical, but real.
Simple chutzpa. The chutzpa of billionaires in New York and Geneva and
all the other places who interfere in our elections and determine the
fate of our nation. The chutzpa of donating for a war in which not
their sons, but ours, are killed. The chutzpa of sending billions for
the establishment of settlements in the occupied Palestinian
territories, and especially in Jerusalem, which are put there for the
express purpose of preventing peace and imposing on us a permanent
war, a war that threatens our future - not theirs.

Let's be clear: I am not criticizing well-meaning donors, who feel a
moral need to contribute to a hospital wing or a university building
in Israel. I appreciate people who send a few hundred dollars to a
political cause close to their heart. I object to foreign billionaires
who aspire to dictate the direction of our state.

Perhaps in other countries, too, politicians receive donations from
foreign sources. But it is generally a marginal phenomenon. Here it is
a major factor.

That is one of the ill effects of the definition of Israel as a
"Jewish State". Because of this, these donors do not look like what
they are - impertinent foreigners who interfere in our lives and
corrupt our state - but like "warmhearted Jews" who support a state
that belongs to them as well.

Gideon Levy has recently written an article in which he begged them to
"leave us alone". Being a less refined person than he, I shall say
this in a ruder way: Go home and take your money with you. We are not
for sale. Stop trying to manage our life (and death)!

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