Welcome, welcome one and all to the Weekend Holyland Update[TM], brought to you courtesy of the Jerusalem Syndrome and other assorted mental disorders. This week we have revolution in the air, state-sanctioned sabotage, Holocaust memory wrangling, and… this being the damn Middle East, war sirens. Let’s get to it:
(Photo: Flash 90 - פלאש 90)
As you’ve probably heard, our sometimes purple-haired imperial lord, Benjamin Netanyahu (aka “Bibi”), is inching closer to a defendant’s box, after the police have announced that they recommend he be indicted on charges of corruption in two cases, known to the media and its consumers as “Case 1000 and 2000”. Case 1000 involves his habit of having rich businessmen provide him with a regular stream of luxury items (high-end cigars, bubbly) in return for access and the occasional intercession, be it on personal matters (helping with a US visa problem) or legislation impacting the access-purchaser’s business. We’re not talking a stogie and a bottle once in a while, btw. The total is about 260 thousand dollars worth, or 40 grand in “leaves” and “pinks” (the code words the Bibster used to order the deliveries) year in, year out for seven years.
Bibi’s line of defense on the quid is “gifts between friends”. Ionno ‘bout you, but even though most of my friends are doing much better than I am financially, there’s not a single one I regularly instruct (the same way you text your friendly neighborhood weed dealer) to bring me regular “gifts” in the scope of 3-4 times my monthly income every year, specifying the brand. Then again, the rich are different than you and I. It is known.
On the quo, his defense is to either justify the intercession (“My sugar-daddy’s visa thing? Nothing to do with the smokes and drinks. It’s because of his great [and of course clandestine] contributions to Israel’s security!") or to cherry pick cases where he supported legislation that would ostensibly harm sugar-daddy’s interests. Ostensibly, as the devil’s in the details, and in fact he did much for his generous friend’s business.
Which brings us to the far more grave Case 2000, in which our Bibi is on tape, promising legislation that will cripple a competitor (Bibi’s personal free daily, Israel Hayom, which is owned at operated at a $3M monthly loss by Bibi’s personal patron, 9th richest man in the world, casino magnate and thoroughly vile fucking ghoul Sheldon Adelson) in exchange for favorable coverage in the country’s largest newspaper, Noni Mozes’s Yediot Aharonot (he's a horrible man too). Here I can’t even wrap my head around the defense. They have the whole dang thing on tape. Oh yeah – the deal fell through, so neither the quid nor the quo actually happened! No harm no foul, right? Except that the law is clear that when incontrovertible evidence of negotiating the bribe happens, the deal doesn’t have to come to fruition. Negotiating it (and not reporting said negotiations immediately, which you DID NOT) is enough.
So yeah, Bibi’s fucked, unless one of two things happen:
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblitt, who Bibi personally appointed despite an outcry of them being too close for impartial execution of the office of AG, braves the explosion that will follow and decides, despite overwhelming grounds, not to indict. Mandelblitt has been the personal target of impressively persistent protests for about a year now for not indicting the schmuck on anything long ago, and that’s before the police formally recommended to indict. If Mandelblitt was honest, there’d be indictments by now. But I don’t know if he really has it in him to really and fully die on this hill.
And far less likely, that he’s indicted but somehow the judges find some subtle nuance, or enough problems with the investigative/prosecutorial process, and don't convict, or convict on much diluted charges.
If neither of those happen, seeing that his predecessor Ehud Olmert got 27 months in the slammer (after all appeals, partial reversal on appeal and a third off for good behavior) for infractions lesser in severity monetarily and in the nature of the corrupt quos, Bibi’s going away for several years.
Oh and those are just Cases one and two thousand. There’s also 3000, in which Israel somehow bought three more nuclear submarines than ANYONE, and I mean anyone in the entire fucking Security Establishment thought necessary but which made the middlemen a HELL of a windfall. His chief advisor/special personal envoy, also one of his endless battery of personal attorneys, also his cousin, David Shimron, is the main suspect and is in house arrest.His other personal emissary, Shimron's law partner Yitzhak Molcho, is also a suspect and also released with restrictions. Another guy is already state’s witness (we don’t know all that he gave yet, but some of it has caused the above house arrest).
Then there’s Case 4000, which deals with getting his (other) media tycoon bestie Shaul Alovitch amazingly good legislation and regulatory decisions in exchange for favorable coverage at Israel’s #1 news portal, Walla!, which used to be a ballsy internet-culture juggernaut that punched up and above its weight when yours truly was a star there, and has indeed become a cringe-inducing lickspittle of a place in the past 10 years or so. Walla is the least of Alovitch’s (heavily leveraged) "holdings". He also “owns” telecom behemoth Bezeq, formerly a telecom monopoly, now one of two in a duopoly in landline infrastructure. He got away with ALL KINDS of shenanigans under Minister Bibi.
Here, too, the fire’s getting hotter and closer by the minute. See, Bibi has held the Communications Ministry personally until forced very recently to have some fucking shame and give it to a lackey (this in addition to him holding the Foreign portfolio and some other bottom-of-the-pack ministry), and appointed his former chief-of-staff and notoriously shady political hatchet man Shlomo Filber (again, over strenuous objections of impropriety) as Director General of said Communications Ministry. Said Filber has been in house arrests for months on suspicions of giving Alovitch whatever he wanted from the ministry supposed to regulate him.
Filber can try to be a monkey and take the rap, but ain’t nobody gonna believe it was all his idea, and even if they do, the buck stops with the Minister, who happens to be the Prime Minister, who insisted on retaining the portfolio over STRENUOUS objections that it’s all kindsa fucked up for him to do so, and to appoint this particular dude despite... etc,. So this case 4000? It’s just been moved from a securities authority case (like an SEC investigation) to a criminal case, and senior Bezeq execs (that plural) have been arrested pursuant to this upgrade in seriousness. So… yeah. Have we mentioned that Bibinochio is f-u-c-k-e-d? And not in the plenty-of-lube-by-the-dick-of-your-choice-in-a-consensual-and-life-affirming-way, either.
We’ll keep you updated on the twists and surprises on AS THE BIBI TURNS (slowly, in the wind, like a piñata.) However, it can well be years before we political porn pervs get our cum-shot of this utter douchenozzle in an orange jumpsuit.
Next up on our list:
SABOTAGE!
Imagine your country had a government ministry for culture (and sports). Now imagine your country was having a “Your country’s films” festival in another, culturally significant country (Say… France), and the festival was headlined by a critical and commercial runaway hit made in your country. Would you expect the culture minister to
a) Pour hella resources into promoting this opportunity to showcase her country as something other than its immediate, unflattering associations.
b) Because she has some reservations about said headlining film (which she has neither seen nor read the script to but has decided anyway that it’s offensive to patriotic sensibilities and the sainted military, even though actual leftists say it’s a paean to the IDF and nobody in the IDF has a problem), to refrain from personally leading the proverbial parade, but simply doing nothing and letting the local diplomatic presence milk the event for all the good PR it’s worth.
c) Because of the above reservations (which, again, are not based on the actual content of the film, which she doesn’t know) to actively boycott the festival and pull your weight to have the ambassador boycott (refrain from attending) the opening of said festival.
If you answered anything but c), you do not know the Princess of Provocative Pseudo-indignation, the Knight Errant of Know-nothing land, the representative of pimps and slave dealers (sorry, foreign labor agency owners….) in the Knesset, the odious Miri Regev. Seriously, the film in question portrays the men and women of the IDF as sensitive, decent, and brave both in the physical and moral meanings of the word. The IDF as an institution is depicted as sometimes obtuse and often Kafkaesque, as even the most gung-ho soldier will tell you it is. Any military is. Hence the cliché that “Military Intelligence” is an oxymoron.
Does Miri Regev (known to all but her admirers as “Rekev” – rot) care? No. This is another opportunity to show how she’s rooting out lefty “self-hate” from the state-supported cultural landscape. To recap: the Minister of Culture is actively, utterly unbidden and unprovoked, sabotaging a MAJOR cultural promotion event on foreign soil. But veteran combat soldiers who tell the truth abroad about what they’ve done and seen in the army? Them boys’re traitors! WHY DO YA HAVE TO BLAB ABROOOOOAAAAAD?
(As you see, not like the creature doesn't know how to rock the red carpet AND make a statement doing it. That was a good move. At least for her cause of worshiping the stones of Jerusalem, iconic mosque and all... This - less so, eh? Photo: AFP)
Moving right along:
Poland, one of the countries in Europe that’s moving decidedly towards the nationalist model that’s worked out so well in the past, has passed a law making it a crime (punishable by both fine and jail time) to accuse “the Polish People” of any crimes committed on Polish soil during the Nazi occupation. There’s more here than meets the eye, although the bottom line still sucks. Let’s break it down:
The ostensible intent of the law is to prevent people from saying stuff like “Polish Death Camps” which, the wisdom of trying to legislate stupid erroneous speech aside, people really shouldn’t say. Poland was occupied. Not in the “Y’all fellow Aryans, we gonna go easy on you way” Holland or Denmark was, but in a “y’all verminous Slavs, be thankful we don’t exterminate the lot of you.” They had FUCKALL SAY OR VETO over the erection of these camps on their soil. Even the highest-ranking collaborator, the Nazis would not dream of consulting on this or anything.
These were Nazi German death camps on Polish soil, and despite stuff we’ll get to in a second, they were on Polish soil for logistical reasons, not because no other population would tolerate them as some like to claim. This phrase (Polish death camps) ranks as one of Obama’s hugest foot-in-mouth utterances on any foreign or historical matter. Of course it wouldn’t crack Mango Menace’s top 1,000, but it needs to be said. I can understand any Pole bristling at that phrase.
That said, the law is vaguely worded and certainly goes further than this. Under this law, saying that “The Polish People” of (pick a location from a list of dozens) willingly massacred or helped massacre their Jewish neighbors, that the Polish People of Kielce massacred their Jewish neighbors RETURNING FROM THE DEATH CAMPS AFTER THE WAR, and saying the same about myriad such incidents – all these absolutely true statements could be actionable under this shitty law.
Second, in the course of defending the law, the mask came off from the face of Polish leadership and their real intents. This is not about “don’t call them Polish camps”. Rather, as the PM himself proved in answer to a question by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, it’s about saying that the scope and moral weight of fully willing, unforced Polish crimes during the Holocaust is equivalent to that of Jews who collaborated to escape certain death.
Um, fuck no. That’s not how it went down, all due respect to the very brave Polish underground and the many Polish people who saved Jews (Poland has more “righteous among the nation” status recipients than any country. It also has far more Jews murdered, and some of these were indeed murdered by “Polish People”, not the odd individual but entire local populations acting in concert, even if not by “[all] the Polish People”
Thing is, the Israeli government, which is huffing and puffing and threatening to – gasp – recall the Ambo for consultation (whatever will the Polacks do without Israel?!!) has no f’n leg to stand on here. The Polish government explicitly cited Israel’s “Nakba Law” (penalizing mention of the nakba, the Palestinian mass ethnic cleansing attendant to Israel’s creation, by anyone receiving any “public funds”; and Israel's “anti-boycott law” (you call to boycott settlement products, any settler can sue you for around $8500 USD WITHOUT PROVING DAMAGES) as examples of similar laws. And they’re right. Not to mention that the government of the man who felt the need to somewhat absolve Hitler so he could vilify a long-gone Palestinian leader (Yeahm, dumbfuck did that) has no leg to stand on regarding anything Holocaust related. The Polish law sucks and is dangerous, but Israel should really…
Finally, things are getting perilously close to war with Syria/Iran/Russia, after the Syrians/Iranians managed to take out one of our fighter jets last week. One report says we were Cuban Missile Crisis-close to full blown war (not an "operation", but weeks of war, against Russian forces in the mix. And this is being handled by a guy who's recommended to be indicted in two cases, close to being an official suspect in another two, and that's before they get on his case for the gas deal. As he himself said about his predecessor a decade ago - "A PM neck-deep in criminal probes has no moral mandate to lead the people and make such grave decisions and must resign." I agree.
Well, we’re past 2,000 words, which is decent return for your click should you be so inclined, even for a longform freak such as your humble narrator. Thank you for reading and keep following this space for updates. Happy Weekend!