Pilfering From the Public for Pluralism by Martin Oliner

Israel Today Pilfering From the Public for Pluralism

By Martin Oliner

Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt once joked that the politicians of his time were so corrupt that “when they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘not guilty.’”

Unfortunately, the same holds true in Israeli politics today.

Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak were all investigated, Olmert went to prison for bribery, and Netanyahu is currently on trial facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

It is possible that Israeli politicians were always corrupt, and there is just more scrutiny nowadays. Maybe it is just the system that is problematic. Perhaps our standards have risen, and our leaders must now be more careful than ever to go well beyond the letter of the law. The final option is that corruption has not increased at all, and the press and much of the public are making mountains out of molehills.

Nevertheless, if Netanyahu can be tried for accepting gifts and positive media coverage, every politician in Israel must be held to the same high standard.

It must hold true for politicians across the spectrum, not just Netanyahu and his political allies.

That is why this week’s investigation of Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai and his Labor Party colleague, Knesset member and Reform Rabbi Gilad Kariv, must be taken seriously.

The investigation by Ma’ariv newspaper columnist Kalman Liebskind found that Shai had funneled 30 million shekels from his ministry’s coalition allocated discretionary funds to a small non-profit organization to advance religious pluralism in Israel.

That organization, called Panim, had only two workers and a small budget, but it had Kariv as a board member until nine months after he became an MK. Panim was chosen to run the Diaspora Affairs Ministry’s new Jewish Renewal Department without a required government tender.

Panim’s director-general Yotam Broom is a Labor Party member and Kariv confidant who praised him on social media during his election campaign and bragged about the funding that would be given to his organization long before the decision was made officially. Broom helped the ministry form the department he would later be chosen to head.

The final revelation in the article was that the Diaspora Affairs Ministry was allowed to fund pluralism projects inside Israel, because they are deemed “societal.” That preposterous decision calls into question why the ministry even exists.

It highlights the point that there is too much money coming from the State of Israel to the Diaspora, which certainly can fund itself. If Israel has more money than it needs, it should go to feeding the poor and improving housing and U.S. organizations need to rethink their fund-raising efforts.

The Reform Movement, in particular, can raise its own money instead of taking it from Israeli taxpayers. If the time has come to reverse the direction of giving to make it so Israel helps the Diaspora, it should not be for such a divisive, controversial issue within Israel.

The Kariv affair highlights the absurdity of money going from Israel to America. Conceptually, it is an outgrowth of the funding that is allocated to the religious streams which itself needs to be revisited.

It was Naftali Bennett who first changed the paradigm of Israel-Diaspora relations in 2017, when he approved a $1 million aid package from the Diaspora Affairs Ministry he headed for the Houston Jewish community to repair the damage caused by flooding from Hurricane Harvey.

“The Jewish State is measured by its response when our brothers around the world are in crisis,” Bennett said at the time.

But that was to help relieve an American Jewish community in distress due to a disaster, which should have been a very rare exception and not what initiated a new rule. It should remain that the Diaspora helps fund Israel and not the other way around. And clearly the notion that Diaspora Affairs Ministry funds can be used internally inside Israel to advance a religious stream should be unimaginable.

The very fact that the government allocates discretionary funds to parties to use for their pet causes is problematic to say the least, no matter what the cause. But it may explain why Kariv did not believe he was doing anything wrong by earmarking it without prior approval.

Now that it has been proven that the Diaspora Affairs Ministry’s money was allocated without following proper procedures, the allocation should be frozen immediately. Especially with an election going on in Israel, Shai and Kariv cannot be permitted to give out taxpayer money that may have been tainted.

Finally, Kariv and Shai should be given the benefit of a fair investigation while the money is frozen. They deserve to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

But perhaps if the information in the article about Kariv had been disclosed before the race, he would not have done as well in the Labor Party primary, in which he won the third slot on the party’s list as Labor’s top male candidate. Labor members would have known that he gave away their tax money to an organization alleged to be myopic and even fake.

Normal process needs to be applied to determine whether Kariv can be allowed to run just as it was to Netanyahu and his former ministers Yakov Litzman and Aryeh Deri and Likud MK David Bitan.

The same rules must be applied to Kariv and Shai whose alleged crime may have been worse than the cigars Bibi accepted. Clearly, their actions could be seen as a blow to good governance, in which there cannot be two sets of rules. Their apparent behavior certainly does not foster trust in government.

Only if they will be held accountable to the same standards can Israeli politicians prove themselves unworthy of comparison to the American politicians of the Roosevelt era.

The writer is co-president of the Religious Zionists of America, chairman of the Center for Righteousness and Integrity, and a committee member of the Jewish Agency. He was appointed by former U.S. President Donald Trump as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. The views expressed are his own. Martinoliner@gmail.com