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
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
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
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
Several of them were summoned to police headquarters immediately on
arrival to give evidence on the affair that is rocking
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
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
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
(Once I wrote a light-hearted piece about the
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
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
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
I want to speak about another chutzpa. Not metaphorical, but real. Simple chutzpa. The chutzpa of billionaires
in
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
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
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)!