Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Thursday blasted business tycoon Arkady Gaydamak for financing a free weekend in Eilat for 800 residents of the rocket-battered western Negev town of Sderot.
"The state of Israel does not allow rich men and philanthropists to gain control from the distress of citizens," said Peretz. "This phenomenon cannot continue. We will prepare an organized and established plan to alleviate these residents so they will not need to knock on the doors of philanthropists."
Peretz's reaction to Gaydamak's generosity is representative of the pompous disregard Israel's leading politicians have for the people of this country. The idea that the "State of Israel does not allow" any of its citizens to help when others are in need flies in the face of the vaunted democracy and socialist ideology that Peretz and his party claim to uphold.
Gaydamak's generosity has aroused considerable controversy in Israel, both this weekend, and over the summer when he paid to house over 12,000 residents of Israel's north who fled the Katyusha attacks on their homes during the war. That such generosity should catch people's attention is a good thing. That it should raise controversy is in itself testimony to the extremely poor level of social awareness Israelis have for one another.
Many news reports, and many opportunist politicians, scream loudly every so often about the income gaps in Israel, about the wide disparity between the haves and the have-nots. But that is not where the true social disparity lies. Rather, residents of one part of the country don't understand residents of another, and worse, they become alienated from residents of other localities to the extent that one could almost be in a completely different country rather than in a different region of Israel. People from one area view people from another with contempt, scorn, pity, or loathing, or they ignore them altogether.
It is very true that many Israelis "did not truly experience the war" as one wounded soldier recently told me when I met him in the rehab ward. For the vast majority of Israelis living in the greater Tel Aviv area, or regions further south, the war was no more than a story on the hourly newscasts. Life went on as if the war were in some far-off land, rather than a mere hour's drive away.
Along came Arkady Gaydamak, showing everyone in Israel what can be done if someone just cares enough. There are plenty of people in Israel with money to spare when the need arises. And there are plenty of charitable organizations who do so. I work for one of them, and through my work, I have the opportunity to meet people from all across Israel who have been harmed by the failures of Israeli defense, foreign, and social policy. And they are so incredibly appreciative when someone – anyone – simply holds out a hand to help. These are the true Israelis – the ones who put life and limb on the line daily just to be able to live in the Jewish homeland, and the ones who help them along when the going gets a little too tough in the adventure of the Jewish State.
That adventure is meant to have as its crowning glory a Jewish government and Jewish army pledged to defend and promote the Jewish state in all its facets and in all realms of activity. Unfortunately, the army cannot accomplish this goal without a government of strong moral clarity and conviction of the justice of our cause. And the Israeli government lacks precisely these elements which would enable it and the army to fulfill this mission and ensure the success of this adventure.
Arkady Gaydamak is a threat to the ruling classes in Israel particularly because he does what is needed. He believes fully in the Zionist enterprise. He believes fully in the people of Israel, and is willing to literally put his money where his mouth is. He is a fine example of the true Israeli.
The Peretz's and Olmert's of our country are examples of what is wrong with Israeli society. They, and others speak of preparing "an organized and established plan to alleviate these residents so they will not need to knock on the doors of philanthropists." But neither Sderot residents, nor residents of the north, nor any other group of Israelis actively seeks such aid. Sderot residents don't want to be shelled day in and day out or watch their neighbors get killed or maimed by our enemies' attacks. Northern residents don't want to have their homes destroyed, their lives interrupted, or their fathers, mothers, or children killed while strolling in the garden.
What Israelis want is a government that is prepared to put the safety, security and prosperity of its residents first and foremost on its agenda – ahead of petty intrigue and personal gain, ahead of scandals and wasteful spending, and ahead of ineptitude and negligence. What Israeli residents want is a government that takes the needs of its citizens seriously, whether those needs are military, educational, cultural, social, financial, infrastructural, environmental, housing, judicial, or any other kind.
The Israeli government is not preparing "an organized and established plan" to help anyone. If they were, it would have been in place long ago. Actually, the government should never have needed such a plan. Providing for proper defense of Israelis from enemy attack would have obviated the need for such plans, or for Gaydamak. Instead, the Israeli government has failed its citizens, and failed them miserably, being more interested in caving in to terrorists or to international tongue-waggers than in building up our national home on our terms.
We fought a war this summer and gained exactly nothing other than greater international impediments to our future security and greater military buildup on the part of our enemies for the war that every Israeli schoolchild knows is merely a matter of time away. We have been ignoring the growing war being fought on our southern flank by an enemy growing constantly more emboldened with every missile strike that deepens the confusion and impotence of our so-called leaders.
In the absence of any kind of leadership, it is up to the real "doers" of Israeli society, the Gaydamaks of this country, to do step in to the breach. That we have such people is a testament to the basic human goodness of our nation. That we have a need for such people is a testament to the failure of our national institutions to tap into that goodness and promote the fulfillment of every citizen's needs. That one of our leaders can say that the "State of Israel does not allow" such activities is testament to the abject moral bankruptcy of our national leaders.
Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
