So who's to decide? Whom to believe? Which politicians are telling the truth and which are spewing hot air?
Well, let's take a look at just who was doing what in the past month, and which ministries currently remain without ministers. First, though, it should be noted that where there is no minister, the Prime Minister has legal control of that portfolio, and by extension that ministry.
The biggest news of the past month was the miserable failure of the Camp David summit, one for which any right-thinking Jew should be plenty thankful. Five cabinet members, representing 16 ministries, were in the United States for the summit. Three of them, representing 14 ministries, were actually in the Camp David compound.
Camp David was supposedly a diplomatic event with national security implications. But the Foreign Minister, David Levy, was not at the summit. Instead, Levy was in Jerusalem complaining loudly, and properly, about the worsening situations on Israel's roads. During the two weekends of the summit, record numbers of accidents, injuries, and deaths occurred on the highways of Israel.
Of course, the Transportation minister, whose job it is to ensure the safety of Israel's roadways, was in Camp David attending the summit. And the Public Security minister, who supervises the national police, including the traffic police, was also in Camp David. What these two portfolios have to do with high stakes international diplomacy is beyond me. Actually, three portfolios if you consider that the Transportation minister is also serving as Tourism minister, another portfolio with tremendous relevance for Camp David.
Of course, the Prime Minister should have been there (once you get past the question of whether there should have been a summit in the first place). Even more so, since he is also serving as minister of Defense. But while Ehud Barak was hob-nobbing, the ministries of Labour and Social Affairs, Housing, Health, Education, Agriculture, National Infrastructure, Interior, and Industry and Trade were being ignored, left to run on their own.
Many of these ministries operate in fields that formed the cornerstone of Barak's campaign: social and economic issues. Those issues are important in Israel. Most of this country believes that those issues are the most important for this country, and the Knesset just this week elected a President whose expertise is in these areas over one whose expertise is in the foreign diplomatic sphere. But for Ehud Barak, currently the minister in all these ministries, none of these issues is as important as selling out what's left of Israel to the world's arch-terrorist and leading anti-semite.
David Levy was right to resign from what's left of this government today. He did so out of conviction -- something he has not been too adept at mastering in the past. Levy was the foreign minister of a country where domestic issues are being ignored. Without solving the domestic issues first, this country is on the road to a far worse crash than any experienced on our highways.
Levy's resignation, along with those of the Shas, National Religious Party, and Yisrael Ba'Aliya ministers in July, serves to point up the fact that Barak is ignoring his core issues. Those issues, which got him elected, are now about to bring about his downfall. The nation will be the better for it.
Copyright 2000. Yehuda Poch is a writer living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
