Tel-Chai Nation

Silly Avigdor Lieberman has made a fool out of himself this past week or so, by trying to propose legislation to change the electoral system in a way that's either almost reminiscient of how it was already changed in 2004-2000, or that's supposed to be similar to the presidential system of the US. Of course, the difference is that this is not the US, and is much smaller than it too, and would billions to use too (we'd need a whole Senate as well as a Knesset if there were to be something like that!). But worst of all about Lieberman is that, he's corrupt. Caroline Glick talks about him in her latest column this week:

...we haven't the time to think about the growing threats to our country because we are wholly engaged in a vacuous debate about electoral reform. Indeed, from our political leadership's perspective, Iranian nuclear bombs are nothing compared to the "chronic instability" of Israeli governments.

The man responsible for making us talk about governmental reform is Israel Beiteinu Party leader MK Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman, the uber-hawk of "expel the Arabs" fame, now wishes to join Olmert's dovish government. Lieberman claims that in exchange for his support, Olmert must embrace his proposal for a constitutional reform that would turn Israel from a parliamentary democracy into a presidential system of government.

Lieberman's public persona is in many ways an encapsulation of all that is wrong with Israel's leaders today. Like his colleagues on the Left, Lieberman touts an attractive sounding policy for dealing with the Arabs which only suffers from the marginal defect of being completely irrational.

The Left demands that we give our enemies Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights in exchange for a piece of paper. Lieberman intends to keep the Golan Heights, forgo the paper and throw in the Galilee to advance what he sees as ethnic partitioning.

When you get right down to it, the greatest difference between Lieberman and the Left is rhetorical. Lieberman is willing to give our land to our enemies because he hates the Arabs. The Left is willing to give our land to our enemies because they hate the Jews.

That's an interesting observation there alright, and while the Christian Arab community does have its downside, I do not think that they should be put in the same boat as the Muslim Arabs. Lieberman, to say the least, has advocated segregation, but no, that's not the way go.

Segregation is what led to a lot of the contemporary jihad/intifada, and without integration, there's no unity or understanding with one another. And aside from the fact that Lieberman's notion of giving land to our enemies is wrong, it's also wrong to put the better crowd in the same boat as the real problem.

If the Left truly wanted peace with the Arabs, rather than signing deals with our enemies, its leaders would help to strengthen those lone voices in Palestinian society and in the wider Arab world that express a substantive, meaningful desire to live at peace with Israel.

If Lieberman were serious about solving the problem of growing irredentism among Israeli Arabs, he wouldn't be talking about partitioning the land between Israel and its enemies. He would be talking about partitioning Israel into electoral districts for direct elections of Knesset members. A review of Israel's demographic situation clearly indicates that by moving from a proportional to district electoral system, it would be possible to largely neutralize the threat to national security posed by anti-Israel forces among Israeli Arabs. But judging from Lieberman's past, it is far from clear that solving Israel's problems is his primary interest.

Lieberman first rose to prominence as the director-general of the Prime Minister's Bureau under Binyamin Netanyahu. When Lieberman resigned in 1998, he went into private business. Lieberman always claims that his business dealings are no one else's business. But ongoing criminal probes into his business dealings raise suspicions that they are intimately connected to his political activities.

Lieberman has been the subject of police bribery and fraud investigations since 1998. According to press accounts, in August 1998 Lieberman was briefly hired as a consultant for Bank Austria Creditanstalt. At that time, the Russian ruble had just lost some 80 percent of its value. Bank Austria Creditanstalt, which had invested in ruble futures, stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. The bank paid Lieberman $3 million in the hope that he would be able to intervene somehow to raise the value of the ruble.

As one bank official told The Jerusalem Post in 2004, "We were in a difficult situation. We were told that Lieberman had contacts in Russia and that he could help with the Russian crisis." Coincidentally or not, after Lieberman was hired, the ruble's value rose. The police reportedly suspect that Lieberman worked with members of the Russian mafia to raise the value of the ruble.

In 2000 the criminal probe of Lieberman was widened following the publication of the State Comptroller's Report regarding the financing of the 1999 Knesset elections. The report claimed that Lieberman financed his party's 1999 campaign with a million dollar line of credit from an Austrian bank. The investigators suspect that Austrian billionaire Martin Schlaff, the part owner of the casino in Jericho, was the source of the line of credit. In 2000 it was reported that Lieberman the super hawk met with Yasser Arafat's close advisor Muhammad Rashid. Rashid was a partner in the Jericho casino's revenues.

In February 2004 Lieberman's name came up in connection with the African diamond trade. Yossi Kamisa, a retired officer who served in the Israel Police's counter-terrorism unit, filed a lawsuit against the diamond merchant Dan Gertler. Gertler had asked Kamisa to partner with him on a deal for a diamond mining franchise with the Democratic Republic of Congo that entailed the raising and training of the Congolese army in exchange for the diamond franchise. Kamisa claimed that Gertler and others breached their contract with him and he sued for NIS 2.5 million. The case was dismissed after Gertler agreed to pay Kamisa NIS1.4m.

In his court filings, Kamisa claimed that he was initially introduced to Gertler in 2000 by Lieberman who claimed to be Gertler's silent partner. Kamisa alleged that at the time his deal with Gertler went sour, he was fired from his position as adviser to the Director-General of the National Infrastructures Ministry. The director-general at the time, Yair Maayan, was appointed by Lieberman, who served as national infrastructures minister in 2001-2002.

The column is worth reading in full, but for now, let's take note of the fact that Lieberman is, if anything, a most suspicious fellow. He's also one of a few people who, you could say, betrayed Netanyahu and went against him. And by now, I'd say he's an embarrassment, and not worth voting for.

Labels: Moonbattery, political corruption