It has been a few years since I left Israel, but I still visit regularly, and I have a different outlook about Israeli politics and public sentiment. I believe that the sad reality is that the Israeli government does indeed represent the public opinion of a majority of the Jewish population there. The 15 Knesset seats that Israel-Beiteinu holds, along with the 4 seats of the “National Union” party, which was too nationalistic for even the former “Labor” lead by Ehud Barak to sit in coalition with, are only the tip of the iceberg that is a more substantial political bloc. Their voters are Israeli Jews who feel no shame or discomfort in calling for radical population transfers, and are generally enthusiastic about any expansionist Israeli policies. Underneath the surface, there are many more Israelis who recognize that openly calling for transfer is beyond the pale, but would still like to live in a country with no Arab residents.

Even among the large swathes of the Jewish-Israeli body-politic that are self-described liberals, the ingrained sense of being constantly endangered trumps the realities of Israeli military and economic domination of the area, as well as any abstract notion of universal moral standards for justice. Most Israelis believe that security can only be truly maintained by remaining an overwhelming majority (hence the appeal of the so-called “demographic ticking time-bomb” meme); the fear of ever relinquishing that precarious feeling of security fuels tacit support to government policies that can hardly be reconciled with genuine liberal values.

I often receive angry retorts from moderate Israelis to any suggestion that Israel should consider questions of justice or international law, or that the crimes Israel is guilty of are not only historical, but rather include routine contemporary IDF policy and practices. Any position that challenges the prevailing “security” rhetoric is pushed back with questions like “so you would give them Jaffa? and Haifa? and Tel Aviv?”, even if I make no such suggestions. This fear, which permeates the collective Israeli psyche after over 2 generations of Zionist education, is at the core of prevailing Israeli political attitudes towards the occupation and any prospects for its dismantling.

There’s a bitter irony in the fact that the “National Left” is calling foul in response to the revelation of Tzippi Livni’s intransigence as a peace negotiator, when their own grand vision for peace hinges on more talk of separation and security barriers, and their draft “blue book” still throws around the old “no partner” myth even after it has been definitively refuted by the “Palestine Papers.” This is a movement that recycles the old mythology of  an innocent Zionism that depicts 1948 as a year of unadulterated heroism. This is not a real alternative to the so-called “Peace Process” any more than Kaddima is.

Until a substantial political force emerges in Israel that goes past the old worn out mantras that framed the public discourse in the state’s founding decades, and recognizes Israeli Jewish society’s ongoing culpability and moral decay, we will not see any real change in the Israeli leadership. All the “Palestine Papers” revealed about the Israeli side of the “Peace Process” is the diplomatic details of policy that was always only very thinly veiled as real peacemaking, and has enjoyed continuous public support from Jewish voters.

Harold E. Ford, Jr.

Ford is a high-profile Democrat with serious money connections who’s thinking of challenging Kirsten Gillibrand - the incumbent senator – in the Democratic primaries. Gillibrand was a congresswoman from an upstate district until governor Paterson appointed her to temporarily fill Hillary Clinton’s senate seat when Clinton resigned her seat to become secretary of state last year.

Kirsten Gillibrand

She took her seat in the senate and pretty much aligned herself with the rest of her caucus, diligently preparing for the special elections she faces this coming November, even slightly tempering her NRA-endorsed positions on gun control, and raising a whole lot of money. In support of the new senator, the Democratic establishment has been effectively pushing aside potential primary challengers as soon as any emerged and the New York Times was very good about reporting about it as far back as last July. There seemed to be some genuine public interest since one of the two senator representing the great state of New York was not elected by the people she represents, and challenging her in an open Democratic primary would be the only fair thing to do.

Jonathan Tasini

All this time, there was another primary challenger lined up –  Jonathan Tasini. As soon as I read about where he stands on the issues I care about a few months ago, I knew that he would have my vote if I was still living in NY. He unequivocally supports a national single-payer health care system; having lived in Israel part of his life, and having family there, he seems to have a very measured and constructive position on the the US’s necessary role and attitudes in resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict; he also supports robust campaign finance reform. He is deliberately trying to fight against the domination of the political landscape by big corporate interests and their money. I immediately fan’ed his page on Facebook.

Naturally, The New York Times has had quite a bit to say about the primaries since Ford floated his first feelers. Having a clear preference for another candidate in the same race, I was surprised by the comprehensive absence of any mention of Jonathan Tasini in any of the news items the Times ran about the primary. It is true that Tasini has managed to raise about 1% of the money that Gillibrand has, so it’s reasonable for the mainstream media to consider him a longshot in the race. But still – wouldn’t the Times’ readers be well served to get a complete picture of this primary race, including arguably fringe candidates? How would fringe candidates get any traction if they are not even mentioned in mainstream news media?

I assumed this was an oversight. Maybe the reporters on these stories were just not aware. There must be some mention of Tasini in other stories. So I ran a quick google search last month for Tasini Gillibrand under nytimes.com and found that the only mentions of them together during the last year were in readers’ comments. No reporter mentioned Tasini in any of the stories about any of Gillibrand’s other potential primary challengers. This could not be a coincidence or a simple oversight. The most egregious of these supposed omissions was in the editorial the Times ran explicitly calling for a fair and open primary for the Democratic nomination.

A few weeks ago I emailed several addresses at the New York Times, as well as Tasini’s campaign, to ask them if they had any response to this. Tasini’s campaign agreed with my observation, saying “The Times, like many of the establishment press, does not believe in actually a debate about the issues or evaluating candidates based on their experience. It is all about money–which is the only criteria that computes for The Times.”  It turns out that the Times reporter on this story actually hung up the phone on Jonathan Tasini when Tasini called him up. It’s been over three weeks and I’m still waiting for a response from the Times.

Last week they did actually publish a piece about Tasini. It was placed on page A23. It’s a fluff piece; it opens with Tasini having breakfast with his mother. It gives you some information about him, but it clearly doesn’t try to frame his candidacy as one of substance, not even in terms of his positions on the issues. Of course, he’s not mentioned in yesterday’s front page piece about the fight between Ford and Gillibrand over who will get more of the Wall Street money they need to dominate the compaign.

I suggest that if you want to make informed decisions when you vote, you take a few extra steps and seek out news outlets beyond the obvious ones. At least the New York Times, it seems, cannot be fully trusted to report on everything you need to know.

At an unrelated social event a few nights ago I met a guy who told me how he used to be active in Democratic political circles during the campaign — ” … I think they now call it ‘Organizing for America‘ …” he said — and apologetically admitted that he has since kinda fallen off that bandwagon, as he would admit to slacking off on his carefully planned daily exercise regimen. He didn’t offer any reason. He didn’t say that the man he had helped put into the highest office in the land no longer deserved any more of his time and energy. I saw it in his eyes.

One thing that strikes me is how feeble the outrage over this very clear case of “Bait and Switch”  is on the left. Yes, the progressive blogs, and press offer some pointed criticism of the president’s underwhelming leadership (if you’re charitable) and misguided policies (if you’re not) on the issues: war, health care, regulation of the financial institutions, don’t-ask-don’t-tell, government transparency, etc. But I haven’t been able to find any form of large-scale, organized progressive backlash. There does not seem to be any movement that cries out with a clear voice “We’ve been duped!” and explains to the president and to his brand of Democratic elected officials that we will not stand for this. We’re all expected to just keep on fighting the good fight, and support our president and the Democrats because if we don’t, we’ll get 8 more Bush years or something. After all – at least he’s not ruining “Lost” for us.

Even Gov. Howard Dean, who was the supposed liberal firebrand in the 2004 primaries, recanted his call to kill the senate’s health care bill only a few days after he made his emphatic and subversive arguments against it. His arguments for his eventual support for the bill were somehow more delicate, and strangely echoed the party line. This falls in line with one of Noam Chomsky’s key arguments about the respective roles of the “elite press” outlets and the educated class in this country: that the media is as effective in keeping democratic societies in order as it is because it manages to fully indoctrinate the upper 20% of society – the educated and affluent – and the rest of the populace just follows their lead (if his books are too numerous to read, then you can watch the 1992 film about him online). Howard Dean turns out to join the party of barely palatable compromises and the rest of what could possibly be a genuine mainstream movement of grassroots protest shrugs and sighs and turns back to go about their business.

Like every other left-leaning consumer of mass media, I find some small comfort in the enraging outcries voiced by the like of Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann. At least we have them to console ourselves on these cold winter weeknights while the sausage is being made up on capitol hill. Enjoy.

When I left Israel I was not concerned with public health policy. In all my years in Israel I never had to think twice about seeing a doctor, and not just because I was young and healthy. Israel’s national health insurance system worked well for me and all I needed to pay out of pocket was a small quarterly copayment (and only in quarters when I actually visited the doctor’s office). I didn’t mind paying the national health tax. It made sense to me. When I moved to the US, I knew that in this new place I’m not entitled to any health care as a basic right so I made two choices about health care: 1-buy insurance, 2-never use it, so as not to find out how good or bad it actually is. It took a few years of being mostly self employed before it fully struck me how dysfunctional and unjust this system was, and just how good I had it back in Israel, where I did not have to worry about taking care of my health.

The book I read about today is “Circles of Exclusion: The Politics of Health Care in Israel” by Dr. Dani Filc. I learned about it from a posting on the Physicians for a National Health Program Facebook page. I’ve been following this organization and others similar to it, which are trying to move American public health policy towards eventually adopting a nation-wide, “socialized”, single-payer health care system. It’s an uphill struggle, and for me it’s the single domestic American political issue I feel most strongly about. Just from reading the forward I learned that the Israeli health care system is actually not so great – it works pretty well for young, healthy, educated, well to do, Jewish citizens of Israel (like me) and increasingly worse as you fall further away from that description. It turns out that Israel has been adopting the worst of American ideas in the field of public health policy, like in so many others. I ordered the book on Amazon. Stay tuned for a full report.

The resignation is Ophir Pines‘. Earlier in his career, as recently as a few years ago, he worked from inside government in various positions, including minister of interior, to fight for justice and for the rights of the disenfranchised. He resigned his ministerial post in 2006 when that government took a turn to the right, and away from its moderate core principles, and today he left the Knesset after futilely fighting for months to keep the Labor party honest and true to whatever ideas it seemed to have and to its voters. Over the last decade or so the Israeli parliamentary and overall political landscape has been stricken with a severe shortage of any real leaders who could demonstrate both political acumen and some kind of moral fortitude. The only ideological stalwarts in Israel are the radicals on the right that have ridden the wave of general malaise and public attrition after years of occupation-driven violence into power. There is no representation of any real left (no one in the Israeli media even bothers to count politicians that are not considered Zionist). Pines seemed to be one of the few people in the dwindling left/center block that had any ideas he clung to even at the cost of losing his hold on power. He follows a long list of once-idealistic, and later dispirited and deflated Israeli parliamentarians who realized, after many years in the system, that they just could not work it any more.

Why am I writing about both of these items in one post? In my mind they resonate off each other. I have been struggling to define my identity for many years; the Israeli component is clear and undeniable, and I often wonder if it will ever pull me back to live in Israel. Over the years living in the US I’ve become more and more interested in the national political arena, and have been learning more and more about how fundamentally corrupt it is. I feel that these two places are my only two options for a place to call home, and they’re both in steady decline. Each of these countries is destroying itself from within through bad governance and bad policy that come from two very differently structured political systems. These two systems have some common traits, like the preference for political gamesmanship over public integrity. The image of two drunken college kids comes to mind, as they drink each other under the table, downing shot after shot of bad tequila. Israel is mimicking the US, of course, so this might be the better place to try to bring about some kind of change.