Damning the majority... again

Yesterday, I sat in, again, on the Constituion, Justice, and Law Committee. The topic of the session was how the Knesset passes the budget. The first proposal stated, "A proposed law will pass, when dealing with budgetary issues, with at least 50 votes among Knesset Members." In other words, a simple majority is not sufficient. There could be 49 votes in favor, zero votes opposed and 71 abstentions, and the budget would not pass. From the other extreme, as worded, the 50 votes in favor of a budget proposal would pass even with an opposition of 70, as the proposal does not mention the word "majority." When I asked whether this last point was a possibility, committee chair Menachem Ben-Sasson referred me to small print in the footnotes of the bill, which states, "this majority is necessary in the first reading, the second reading, and the third reading..." A key question... Is the concept of majority not central enough, in principle and in practice, to the passage of laws the it should not be clearly specified in something so crucial as a protocol for budgetary legislation? Ben-Sasson instructed his legislative law aide to look into the matter.

This is another instance in which the concept of majority rule is either neglected or perverted. In the United States, both houses of Congress pass budget bills on the basis of simple majority. For one thing, it is unlikely that a significant number of U.S. legislators would not weigh in and vote on a budget proposal. Their constituents would not be very forgiving. So, what is the significance of the proviso of a majority consisting of at least 50 MKs? In the parliamentary coalition system that is the shame and the bane of Israeli governance, the threshold guarantees that narrow interests would be courted in order for the party with executive power to pass a budget. In the current system, minority interests and the opposition parties don't even have to coordinate a "nay" vote to defeat a budget they deem unacceptable. The implication, once again, is the very "European" Israeli perspective of not considering the national population as a single, diverse "public," but rather as separate interest groups, whose fractionating influence continues to prevent the development of a mainstream, public political majority.

When Good People Get It Wrong

Sarah Honig is one of my very, very favorite columnists... anywhere. When it comes to pinning the the pinheads who, through greed or sheer incompetence, place our security at risk and violate our democracy, nobody does it as eloquently as Sarah. So, when I read her column in the Jerusalem Post almost two weeks ago ( Another Tack: I am the state, 18 October 2007), I felt surprised and disappointed. She described the movement towards a constituency system as essentially a naive, falsely-euphoric "quick-fix" approach.

Nobody I know who works towards instituting a majoritarian system here has any illusions of how quick it might be changed, or how it might fix all of our problems. This isn't like some magic tonic that lets us be "just like America." Those of us pushing for a constituency system have a very basic belief in some intrinsic values:

• the individual accountability to the public that is possible only when one is directly elected
• the tradition of real debate and shared destiny, across social divides. that occurs in majoritarian systems
• the priority of public service - to a single, national public - over the sectarian patronization institutionalized by proportionalism
• that an individual voter should have the last word to express his preference for who, specifically, will influence law and policy in his name; that no vote is transferable by anyone other than the voter himself.
• that minorities must not be able to force a majority to act against that majority's own interests.
  

These are values that not only guide a system of governance, they transform and characterize a nation. It's a question of commitment to the principle that we must make national decisions as a single nation. Those who do not want to be part of that nation will just have to make an adjustment, either by participating and thereby throwing in their lot with the mainstream, trying to influence from within by appealing to the majority, or by disenfranchising themselves and removing themselves from the process of influencing policy. Proportional systems enable some factions, and their MKs, to openly manipulate our political system without committing to its national well-being. This alone should make Sarah an enthusiastic advocate of a constituency system.

Sarah hinted that Israeli corruption in gerrymandering would result in single-party hegemony. Well, we live under a hegemony right now: the hegemony of a sacred status quo among the power elite that has no association in the public. Yes, gerrymandering is a constant challenge in constituency systems, however there are political mechanisms in constituency systems that can address this issue.

The question is, what motivates the public to demand and produce political excellence? What system produces and benefits patriots who serve a true national vision? Not the proportional system, with its built-in sectarian entitlements; the majoritarian system does, because it pushes the public to form a mainstream majority.

Sarah's blames Israelis for just voting poorly. We Israelis, who vote for parties like Gil (the pensioners' party), or the Green Party, or other parties with narrow interest, just don't take voting seriously. She fails to consider that our proportional-parliamentary system, with its post-election horsetrading, makes it impossible for voters for major parties to actually know whom or what they are supporting with their votes. A person's vote becomes a fungible resource of a party central committee, which acts as the citizen's proxy. The Israeli voter is vulnerable to trendy whims because such a system will not reward individual excellence or integrity. Coalitions effectively end up making liars out of each elected leadership. Tragically, the only parties that can be relied upon to stick to their election promises tooth-and-nail are those narrow-interest parties.

Elections are a major part of a democracy's sensory-cognitive center, the mechanism that provides a living vertebrate with reliable sensory information and efficient response functions. It should be clear to all of us, especially Sarah, that our system makes us politically aphasic; we are unable to translate our national will into a choice that can be reliably perceived or expressed. Give us a system in which individuals commit their names and careers to campaign platforms, one that actually empowers the winners to execute on those promises, and we Israelis will make good decisions. It's not the people, Sarah, it's the system.

My letter to today's Jerusalem Post

A letter of mine, clarifying my perspective regarding the direct election of the Prime Minister in the 1990s, was published in today's Jerusalem Post. You can read it at the following web address.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411413619&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer

It reads as follows.

For real reform

Sir, - Kudos to Gil Hoffman for his recent pieces on electoral reform efforts ("Power to the people" (September 7) and its follow-up on Shelanu ("New electoral reform," September 10). Articles like these should remind us, especially those who feel alienated and helpless in Israel's quagmire of poor governance, that the source of political power in any democracy is the public. Citizen activism can make a crucial difference.

I would like to clarify one issue on the reporting of my perspective: While I do believe that the direct election of every Knesset member is vital, I don't claim that its absence primarily caused the direct election of the prime minister to fail. That effort at reform was acutely flawed because of a different combination of incompatible principles in action.

Individual accountability and executive discretionary authority, facilitated by the direct election of the prime minister, were trumped by a coalition system of executive power-sharing meant to deny that very same discretion to the prime minister. Once Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak were directly elected by the public, the Knesset could circumvent the public's choice by bringing down the government in a vote of no-confidence at any time thereafter, upon a coalition's weakening. This constant threat forced these PMs to prioritize coalition demands over the public interest and campaign promises. As non-separate entities with shared personnel and management, either the legislative branch hobbled the functioning of the executive branch, or vice versa.

A presidential executive system, effectively separating the legislative from the executive branch, would go a long way toward rectifying this problematic situation. It should be an integral part in a comprehensive change, including the direct election of legislators, to rehabilitate our system of government into one that truly serves the interests of the Israeli public.

MICHAEL JAFFE
Director, Shelanu
Zichron Ya'akov

Jerusalem Post Follows Up on.... US!!

After I sent a quick email to Jerusalem Post reporter Gil Hoffman, (who penned last Friday's piece on political reform, "Power to the people,") Gil called me on the phone and interviewed me. That interview was reported in today's Jerusalem Post in an article called, "New electoral reform movement Shelanu launches plan to directly elect 120 MKs." You can read it at the following web address.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188392576615&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer

The article was short and to the point. While he was a bit fuzzy about my views on the the direct election of the prime minister, I am very grateful for the opportunity he's given me. Now, I really have to get that amutah (non-profit organization) application finished and submitted!

In Today's Jerusalem Post

Today's Jerusalem Post included an article in the "In Focus" magazine section, titled "Power to the people," dealing with currents and undercurrents of electoral reform. You can read it at the following address:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188392551714&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer

Among other things, the article describes the work of the people at CEPAC. CEPAC is the Citizens' Empowerment Public Action Committee. CEPAC advocates, among other reforms, the direct election of 60 MKs (half the Knesset) in 60 single-representative districts. The CEPAC web site's "Background and Goals" page, at http://www.cepac.org.il/Site/Site_ViewPage.asp?id=3, states

"Ideally we would like all 120 M.K.'s elected by district (perhaps a future goal) but realistically we feel that the 60-60 split has the best chance of being adopted."

Just because an alternative is easier to achieve in the short term doesn't mean it is the better alternative. CEPAC has good intentions and good people working for it; I know and respect their leaders. However, compromising on vital principals of governance in order to achieve quicker results is not a winning strategy. Such a compromise may nullify any potential gains in public service that these good people are working so hard to achieve. It's worth waiting a while longer, working a little harder, to get it right. It's worth being stubborn.

We, at Shelanu, don't think that the public should have to compromise on principles of true representation. We certainly don't owe senior members of the major parties guaranteed job security as MKs. We believe that all members of Knesset should be elected by the same criteria. We believe that the public should have the last and only say in how it wants to be served, in which form of representative democracy. We believe that the public can bring about the changes it wants if it well organized around focused, principled goals.

We have good reason to believe that such partial compromises will not result in progress towards our goal of the direct election of all Knesset members. When the influence of directly elected MKs is diluted, such that they constitute only half of the Knesset, narrow interests and corrupting influences have a good chance of derailing legislation in the public interest. In the past, we saw an important reform, the direct and separate election of the prime minister, become tainted and then abandoned because of a tragic "compromise" of its applied principle; the cause of government reform was set back over a decade.

Real reforms don't occur very often. If we're going to make the effort to reshape Israel's political culture, there is no point in aiming for the mediocre, no point in gratefully accepting what today's failed legislators are willing to offer. An unsatisfied employer does not let a mediocre employee decide how to run the business. It is time to get serious about reform, time to decide what we, the People, want and pursue it. It doesn't take a PhD to understand the principles of good governance. It does take steadfast determination to achieve worthwhile change.

Party for Sale

The travesty that is Israeli democracy has hit a new low in absurdity. On Tuesday, Ehud Barak announced that the Labor party would not be leaving the government coalition. Might this have something to do with any feeling of solidarity between Labor and Kadima? Is this a case of uncharacteristically galant political non-partisanship towards addressing national issues? Apparently not.

Barak explained that the Labor party must stay in the government because it is too broke to run in an election. "We cannot win an election as a charity case," Barak told Labor's executive committee. Under his leadership, Barak promised that the finanacial situation would be rectified, "and after that face the political challenge ahead..." While campaigning for the leadership of Labor, Barak promised that he would inititate early elections upon release of the Winograd Committee Report on last summer's Lebanon War.

Two troublesome and inescapable conclusions arise from Barak's financial justification. First, never has it been so clear that political principles are for sale in Israel. That Israelis tolerate it, and individuals still vote for parties with leaders that flaunt it, is good reason to worry about Israel's public political culture. Second, there is an easily imagined possibility that Barak plans to exact financial advantages from his position of leverage in the coalition. Might public tax money end up paying for the financial rehabilitation of the Labor party?

Not only is Labor's bank account empty, so are its ethical principles and the promises of its leadership. This isn't Labor's problem alone, though. In this political system, with proportionalism denying the direct influence of the public in the selection of representatives and leaders, the game is musical chairs. Do whatever you can to maintain your seat; how you do it is unimportant. Lots of Israeli voters want to vote for "a winner;" what many don't realize is that by electing the party leadership choice, they are usually electing mediocrity. So, while they might be voting for proportionally elected "winners," the resulting mediocre, corrupt, inept public service the voters eventually receive makes them, and all of us really, losers.

Back in Sderot: A Day With Lev Echad

Last Wednesday, I returned to Sderot to volunteer with Lev Echad. It was an experience that I highly recommend to anyone and everyone who can make the trip down. Unlike my trip the week before, I didn't think of this trip as a fact-finding, dangerous excursion to the city where Kassams fall almost daily. I went to help the people of Sderot.

I arrived at Lev Echad's compound at around one in the afternoon. A short while later, I was briefed about what to do if a condition red was sounded. When outside, find a wall that faces east and crouch against it. If you're near any family dwelling, don't knock, just enter and find a shelter or fortified doorway. The idea of entering a home uninvited can be strange or uncomfortable for an outsider to contemplate. For the locals and volunteers who have been in Sderot for a week or more, the practice is second nature.

My first assignment of the day was to respond to a request by a 20 year-old woman to help her mother, who suffered from extreme anxiety, to seek help. We arrived at the address around two in the afternoon. My partner, a yeshivah student, was reluctant to knock on the door as it was siesta time. Knowing when the call came in, I insisted. The mother opened the door and made it clear that we were most welcome to enter. She set up some refreshments for us despite our protestations; we were there for her. Sderot's people are so happy and grateful to have others visit them. They are grateful to see others stand beside them to face the fallout of the government's lack of moral clarity, to face the inability of so-called leaders to deal decisively with outright, deadly attacks.

Her daughter joined us shortly and after about twenty minutes her husband arrived from his job in the municipality. Sitting in the salon, talking about family and the situation in the country, the mother seemed at ease. However, when the topic of going outside came up, she seemed to clench in from the center of her chest. We spoke about her anxiety. For weeks, she had not left the house, had not shopped for food or worked.

We discussed our views on the source of Israel's apparent national paralysis in dealing with its problems, the disconnection between the people and those ineffectively chosen to ineffectively govern. While discussing this topic, a condition red was sounded and we huddled under a reinforced doorway. We left about a half-hour later.

My next assignment found me on the other side of Sderot about two hours later. That evening, an information session was organized to showcase government officials and policy makers. A mother of five children needed a babysitter so that she might attend. The hour we were supposed to spend there turned into two. The children were absolutely delightful. A two year old played for a while and then went to sleep. The other children were happy to watch a DVD. We talked for a little while about what it was like to go to the park.

When the mother came back home, she spoke about how the government officials said nothing of importance. The main message was that the rockets would continue. Get used to it. It was simultaneously a disgrace and an outrage.

The mother drove us back to the Lev Echad compound, where volunteers were preparing for the nightly march throughout Sderot. Once underway, the volunteers waved flags and bear torches, singing and dancing from one neighborhood to the next. They sang Hebrew songs, psalms, and "Sderot, we love you." People would come to the windows. Some would come down from their apartments to sing and dance along. There were embraces as volunteers and citizens became reacquainted from earlier assignments. In parking lots, we passed cars with shattered windshields and holes peppered throughout their steel bodies, damaged by Kassams. We walked along roadbeds gouged and scarred from shrapnel.

The parade lasted over two hours. By the time the volunteers arrived at the school where they slept it was almost eleven in the evening. We were then informed that Elya had arranged for a bus to take us to the beach at Ashkelon for a midnight swim. So, at half past midnight, I was swimming in the Mediterranean with a bunch of pre-army and post-army kids, some younger than Tamar. We could see the lights of Gaza. Swimming about fifty yards from the shore, I felt I was swimming in a photographic negative of a world.

When I came out of the water, Elya had just gotten the chance to swim. As we passed, he asked me, "What do you think of them?" "Very impressive," I replied. These young people, and all who came down to support Sderot, these people understood what is important, what is crucial. When I lamented that more people weren't volunteering and visiting Sderot that Wednesday, Elya informed me that it was a light turnout relative to the norm. On weekends, numerous busloads of people, some privately arranged, some through yeshivahs and communities, came to spend Shabbat with the people of Sderot. Lev Echad arranges to house them and feed them.

We arrived back at the school at two-thirty, pre-dawn. After waking several hours later, I had one assignment: to help a mother convince her eight year old daughter to go to school. It turned out that the daughter was not overly-anxious, she was exhausted. She had slept only two hours the night before, which was normal for her. She had health problems and the rockets aggravated her sleeping patterns. We sat with mother and daughter for a while and returned to the compound.

I hope to return to Sderot in the coming weeks, spending two or three days at a time helping out. It's good work, good people, both volunteers and Sderot citizens. It's not only about the responsibilities to one's country and countrymen. It's about the the feeling of reconciling who we are as Jews and free people facing down barbarism.

Lev Echad is doing great work. If there is a drawback, it is that Lev Echad does what it does so well that the government might not feel the need and responsibility to do all that it should in relieving Sderot and eliminating the threat from Gaza. So, while Sderot is justifiably grateful to Lev Echad, I hope their indignation towards their government of mediocrity remains strong and vociferous. Until we have a system that rewards achievement and punishes failure, this outrage of a neglected public must not abate.

You can contact Lev Echad at 054-7587462/3.

Sderot: Afternoon in a Ghost Town

It's hard to imagine that the town of Sderot, bordering the northeast tip of Gaza, is only an hour's drive south of cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, forty-five minutes if you avoid rush hour and liberally interpret speed limits. It's like driving from Manhattan to Atlantic Beach, Miami to Hallandale, Malibu to Pasadena. For the past seven years, the people of Sderot, and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, have lived under the shadow of Kassam rocket attacks. I imagine that if rockets fell on any of these places, the entire population within a two hundred mile radius would be in an uproar. Six years of Kassams in Sderot has not seemed to spark much in Tel Aviv.

Last Monday, I made the trip from Zichron Yaakov, officially the "north" of the country, in a little under two hours. Towards the end of the drive, right before turning east on route 34, I saw the zeppelin-shaped reconnaissance balloon hovering over the southern edge of the city of Ashkelon. The balloon carries a sophisticated array of cameras and sensory equipment. Looking at it swaying in the wind, it seemed simultaneously ominous and flimsy, a ridiculous-looking, blow-up sentry that is an integral part of what protects us.


I arrived shortly after one in the afternoon. Few cars were in transit on the town's streets. I needed directions to get to the office of Noam Bedein, who runs the Sderot Media Center, which provides foreign journalists with background information and news about the continuous assault on Sderot. After spending ten minutes mentally reviewing the internet-sourced road directions, I parked and walked up the street looking for a local to guide me. After a few moments, I flagged a passing car. Before answering my requsst for directions, the driver briefed me on what to do if and when a "Tzeva Adom," a "red alert," sounded. I asked when the last one had sounded and he looked at me incredulously. Ten minutes earlier, just as I had entered the town limits. I made a mental note to keep the car stereo turned low or off. The announcement of a tzeva adom signals an imminent Kassam explosion, within 20 seconds. I later learned that most Kassams are launched in the morning hours between six and nine, and then at twilight, between seven and ten in the evening. This is done to coincide with Israel's broadcast television news cycle.

Kassam rockets are unpredictable, lethal projectiles capable of travelling up to 10km, around 6 miles. They can carry up to 10kg (22 lb.) of explosive payload. A major portion of this payload is devastating anti-personnel shrapnel: nails, bolts, and other packed bits of sharp metal intended to pierce skin, muscle, bone, and vital organs. These are not weapons intended to damage property or infrastructure; they are meant to injure, kill, and maim civilians. Kassams are meant to terrorize and after seven years of almost daily bombardment, many people in Sderot are indeed terrorized. Children are afraid to go to school and adults fear going outside to go to work.

Israeli defense officials categorize Kassams as "more a psychological rather than physical threat." Though Kassams alone will not physically harm the great majority of citizens in Sderot, their capacity for physical devastation and death is not subject to debate. At least eleven Israelis have lost their lives to Kassam rockets.

What is debatable is whether Israel's artificially-proportionally elected government is performing its mandate of responsibility for safeguarding Israel's citizens. The government of Ehud Olmert has promised a firm response to the Kassams, however even after the latest deaths most talk is of reinforcing structures in Sderot. Mayor Eli Moyal is quick to point out that injuries and deaths from Kassams occur outside. Moyal and his constituents want their national government to eliminate the threat of Kassams period. This means stopping the terrorists who launch the rockets. Unfortunately, there is no way of stopping the terrorists without insulting the politically correct sensibilities of Ehud Olmert's coalition partners, without contradicting the government's commitment to "disengagement."

I arrived at the Sderot Media Center, located at 12 Rakefet Street, nestled in a Dutch style subdivision of private houses. The enterprise was established eight months ago by Noam Bedein, a 24 year-old Ben-Gurion University student who hasn't been to classes much lately, thanks to his work in Sderot and the university student union strike. After serving in the IDF on the Lebanese border, Noam spent a year backpacking Asia. A budding photographer, Noam's prints of bamboo Thai countryside, snowcapped Tibetan peaks, Buddhist monks walking with tigers, and Sderot adorn his living room. If there is a thread that connects them, perhaps it's the beauty and savagery that exist in the real world, beyond the margins of our collective attention. In the near future, he will exhibit photographs and drawings on a more immediate subject, the terror and fear etched in the faces of the citizens of Sderot. Noam and his coworkers try to keep attention riveted on Sderot and provide essential details to help describe what, almost anywhere else, would be an unthinkable situation. An otherwise peaceful town absorbs daily rocket attacks from a clearly identified neighboring territory. The attacks are sanctioned by the neighboring local government, while the sovereign government of this peaceful town refrains from decisive response.



Noam updated me on the two red alerts in Sderot and the nine other Kassams, launched from residential areas in Gaza, that landed elsewhere in Israel's Western Negev that morning. Then Noam guided me on a Kassam-centered tour of Sderot. Our first stop was a home that took a direct hit last Saturday night. A rocket punched a hole in a wall at ground level and peppered shrapnel across a second floor bedroom wall, destroying the room's window. This is typical of Kassams, which usually diperse shrapnel in a reverse umbrella pattern. Fortunately, the twelve year old who normally sleeps in the room was elsewhere in the house at the time of impact.

Shula and David, whose front door walkway was covered in shattered glass, bits of masonry, and other debris, warmly welcomed Noam and me into their home. On our heels, a busload of foreign journalists were shepherded inside by Aryeh Green, director of MediaCentral, a journalist liaison service business in Jerusalem. Shula displayed shrapnel and bits of the rocket tube that remained after the police and army personnel removed most of the rocket's mass. Shula mentioned that neighbors up the street were hit earlier in the month. According to Noam, just about every neighborhood has been hit, sometimes causing property damage and sometimes ripping up the street. Structural repairs are made almost immediately.

After about twenty minutes, a car arrived to take Shula, David, and their sons to a hotel until the structural damage is repaired. Shula and David did not want to leave Sderot, unlike the 65% of Sderot residents who, according to Noam Bedein, have accepted offers at one time or another to leave the town for a short respite. At this point, some estimate that roughtly 20% of Sderot's residents are staying elsewhere.


Noam took me to the center of the commercial area, where a Kassam killed a woman on a street ten days ago. A meter wide crater and a small bouquet of flowers mark the spot; shrapnel gouges can be seen on the buildings on both sides of the street. Many of the businesses are shuttered. We bought felafel from a man named "Prosper," who stated that some looting had taken place. He also remarked how Kassam payloads have become more explosive and damaging over time. His block has suffered several Kassam hits over the years. Noam shows me a row of stores that have been rebuilt. In between the shops are walls that extend a bit into the sidewalk, making the stores look like large cubicles. The compartmentalized design is intended to minimize the shrapnel spread at the point of impact.


Noam guided me past several schools. According to his investigations, none of the schools are completely fortified against rocket attacks. There are however some very peculiar measures taken to at least partially protect the schoolchildren. One school has part of its gabled roof covered in an additional layer of latticed steel. Another has the entire building shaded by a sloping cover whose design reminded me of the some post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies.


We drove past a house where a Kassam had slammed into a third story corner balcony and torn a gaping hole in a side wall. A crack ran from the newly ventilated adjoining bedroom to the opposite side of the house. Noam informed me that a commanding officer of the nearby United Nations peacekeeping force likens Kassams to "firecrackers."


Next, we visited Sderot's police station, where the mangled remains of Kassams are stored in the rear parking lot. Over the past two weeks, 250 deployed missiles have found their way to the scrap heap. You can tell some of the older Kassams by the rust coating the fuselage. All are marked with phosphorescent chalk indicating the date and neighborhood of impact. Some have messages written in Hebrew from their manufacturers. "Al-Quds," Arabic for Jerusalem, is written on one. The fuselage tubes are fashioned from the poles of street signs. The Palestinian Authority apparently views the manufacture of anti-personnel weaponry as a function of civil infrastructure. Before we left, Noam and I tried to find the remains of the rocket that had killed Oshri Oz the day before.

Throughout the afternoon, as we drove through neighborhood after neighborhood, I saw teenagers walking in pairs. Some of the girls dressed in long skirts and sleeves, some in jeans and tank tops. Some of the boys wore kippot, some did not. All were carrying annotated street maps. These were the volunteers of "Lev Echad," Hebrew for "One Heart," a group that has tried to ease the humanitarian fallout of various recent tribulations in Israel. They helped the residents of Kiryat Shmona during rocket barrages last spring and summer. They helped the evicted residents of Gush Katif two years ago. After I finished looking at the spent Kassams at the police station, I visited the offices of Lev Echad. Some volunteers allowed me to take their pictures. Most did not, on instructions from the organizers, who say that they do not yet want to make publicity an issue for the volunteers to deal with.

Lev Echad volunteers were checking homes throughout Sderot for people who needed special help; mothers with young children, families handicapped dependents, elderly or handicapped persons who needed someone to shop for food, otherwise healthy people who succumbed to hysteria and the unrelenting emotional trauma of sirens and explosions. Every evening, Lev Echad stages a parade with flagbearers marching through Sderot, proud, optimistic, defiant of the savagery emanating from the border four kilometers southwest.


In the office courtyard, I noticed a group of volunteers old enough to be the parents of the teenagers and post-army twenty-somethings who made up the vast majority of Lev Echad. These were members of a community service organization from Beit She'an called, "Bonei Kehilah," Hebrew for "Community Builders."

I decided to put off my return trip north for a couple of hours to help with Lev Echad's efforts to follow up on individuals and families who had requested help. I was paired with twenty year-old Gilad, who was spending two days, out of his weeklong army furlough from army service, volunteering in Sderot. Meeting Gilad reminded me that it is individuals, not committees, who move the earth. We visited families, who were happy to have Lev Echad volunteers ask about them.

Gilad dropped me off at my car shortly after seven in the evening and I left Sderot shortly before Lev Echad's parade. Two Kassams landed in or near Sderot an hour or so after I left. Not far north of Sderot, I passed the hastily constructed housing project for evicted ex-Gush Katif residents in Nitzanim. I thought of the insult of added to the injury of these families. These Israeli patriots had lived for decades, much of the time in peace with their Arab neighbors, cultivating the land with citrus and vegetable crops of the highest quality. They were forcibly uprooted in order to let the Palestinians prove that they could govern Gaza peacefully. Now, they live within earshot of the missiles falling so close by. They know that Hamas and Al-Aqsa brigades are using the land in and around Gush Katif, their former homes, to stage deadly rocket attacks.


Why did I go down to Sderot and what does it have to do with Direct Representation? I needed to see what was real. The same bubble of self-delusion that lets many of us believe that Israel's democracy is sound also lulls us into thinking that Sderot is someone else's problem. If we do not act, speak out, or even bear witness as individuals, then we, as a society, will achieve and fix nothing. Direct Representation for Israel proposes the selection of our leaders and representatives as individuals; individuals chosen by the public because they are of the public and will work for the public. Individuals whose sense of moral clarity would not allow Sderot to suffer under Kassams for one month, let alone seven years. I found hope and moral clarity in some very special individuals in Sderot. People like Gilad and the other Lev Echad volunteers, who won't let citizens in Sderot suffer neglect. People like Noam Bedein, who won't let the world ignore Sderot. I spoke one-to-one to some about the need to assert individual responsibility as a political foundation, to institutionalize this in the way we choose our representatives and leader. For the most part, I found a receptive audience.

You can contact Lev Echad at 054-7587462/3.

How Difficult Can it Be?

As the Hebrew saying goes, "all beginnings are difficult." This rings true with nascent national movements, especially movements aspiring to real change in Israel. For months, we've been planning to form a recognized amutah (non-profit organization) with tax-exempt status, a step that would enable us to operate with tax exempt cash flow and for donors to receive tax deductible credit. This has not been a trivial undertaking and here's why.

In a 1990 Israeli legal precedent, an organization called "Constitution for Israel" failed to attain tax-exempt non-profit status from the Ministry of the Finance. According to Israeli tax law, tax exempt status can be conferred on four types of organizations: local municipalities, Mifal HaPayis (national lottery), retirement investment funds, and "public institutions." "Public institutions" are dedicated solely to "public purposes," and "public purposes" are defined by tax law as those related to "religion, culture, education, science, health, nourishment, sport, and other causes approved by the finance minister as public purposes."

Constitution for Israel sued the Finance Ministry, however the Supreme Court ruled in support of the then finance minister. "Constitution for Israel," the court opined, was not an institution with "only" cultural and/or educational purposes, not an organization "whose assets and income were used only for the attainment of public goals." According to the court, "Constitution for Israel" also wanted to influence legislation promoting a written constitution for the state of Israel. In other words, Constitution for Israel's public purposes became impure because the political realm was engaged in the service of those same purposes.

The Aharon Barak Supreme Court also rejected the argument that the finance minister was acting with any sort of political bias. No political bias? Many non-profit, public-minded institutions extend their mandates to influence political outcomes, which in turn serve the values of these organizations. The Israel Cancer Society has rightly lobbied and influenced legislation when it comes to tobacco and smoking restrictions. Religious organizations, including yeshivot, become involved with political initiatives when policy affects religious life. Constitution for Israel, however, sought to promote a process that would more clearly define the court's authority and its power in relation to other branches of government. Indeed, the selective denial of tax exempt status to organizations with public purposes could be viewed as a prime example of self-serving political bias. It exemplifies why our political system is a national embarrassment.

Practically speaking, most non-government non-profit organizations require tax-deductible status in order to recruit funding. The Israeli Supreme Court has effectively limited citizens who form the public from choosing, with their wallets, what they think is important for the public. The continued influence of that precedent underscores the gaping absence of public service norms; applied values which our organization seeks to instate. It also indicates the depth of the challenge that we must take on.

We are being advised by legal and accounting professionals to navigate the application processes with the non-profit registrar and the Ministry of Finance. This is a difficult time for us, but we are moving forward. The educational, cultural designation is, in fact, quite appropriate to our organization's mandate and goals. We have maintained, all along, that our goal is to revitalize a culture of citizen participation and empowerment as a bottom-up, grass roots initiative; that the route to real change runs via the Israeli public.

We will meet the challenges ahead of us and continue to organize whatever the immediate bureaucratic outcomes.

How our system helps our enemies

In today's Jerusalem Post, you can find a prime example of why those trying to destroy Israel from within favor the current proportional system over a majoritarian one.

In "Dismantle Israel's tyranny of the majority," Shawki Khatib advocates the "Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," a set of principles published by the "High Follow-Up Committee of the Arabs in Israel" and the National Committee for the Heads of the Local Arab Councils in Israel.

Khatib and others, including some of the nominal Jewish elite in Israel, declare the need of a "consensual system." Well, there is no such animal. Politics is about decisionmaking and when you decide in favor of one thing, you are inevitably deciding against something else. This doesn't mean that compromise or win-win situations are not possible; these are possible and usually desirable. It does mean that certain values in a national democracy are be paramount and that some decisions will make some people unhappy.

Khatib bemoans the lack of civil equality. For him, "civil equality" entails the right of a minority to set up its own separate civil society or government. Khatib and the other signatories are demanding self-determination within the borders of Israel.This is simply unacceptable. True "civil equality" exists when members of minorities have as much right to access the symbols of the government as do members of the majority. Civil equality does not entail a minority carving out its own separate rules and regulations while demanding special access to national resources. Minorities all over the world face the choice of either accepting the civil culture of the majority in the public sphere and enjoying its benefits, or of shutting itself off and facing the results of removing itself from the mainstream.

In truth, Shawki Khatib is not promoting a defense of a minority within the system. Israel's democracy has provided its Arab citizens with equal and adequate access to the legal and material resources under the stewardship of the government. What is being promoted, in different language, is the subjugation of the majority against its own will and against its own interests. This is known as the Tyranny of the Minority.

Our proportional system of legislative representation encourages and fuels this type of tyranny. It does so by preventing a popular national majority from taking form. When the popular vote in a proportional system is divied up by interest groups, no electoral majority can make itself felt. In Israel's case, it damages the national identity and is exploited by groups who wish the Jewish State to disappear. Healthy democracies know how to recognize the tyranny of the minority; they are also aware of the importance of confronting it.