>What Are Friends For?
>
>A satirical column has offered the Likud party of Israel a new slogan:
>'The whole world is against us, except the underworld.'
>Uri Avnery
>
>Sharon's election campaign started like the triumphal march of a Roman
>emperor returning from victorious battle. The imperator stood in his
>carriage accepting the roars of adulation, while the chained captives (the
>Labor Party leaders) shuffled behind.
>
>But the march hit a mud pit. And with every step, it sinks more.
>
>It started with the primary elections in the Likud party. They were
>conducted on a pure business basis. Since the public opinion polls
>promised the Likud a third of the 120 Knesset seats, it was worthwhile to
>invest money. The politicians paid the vote-traders, some of them known
>criminals, who hired more than a hundred thousand "new members". These
>stuffed the 3000-men Central Committee. The newly elected Committee
>members sold their votes to the highest bidders among the various
>candidates for the Likud Knesset list. Pure business.
>
>All this would have passed quietly, if the direct connection between some
>of the candidates and organized crime had not been apparent. A scandal
>broke out, the police was compelled to start an investigation.
>
>In the uproar about the role of organized crime in the ruling party, a
>much more severe phenomenon was ignored: among the candidates about to
>enter the new Knesset is a former senior Security Service officer, who has
>killed with his bare hands a handcuffed Palestinian captive, bashing his
>head in with a rock. At the time, he was quickly issued a presidential
>pardon. The coveted place on the Likud list was given him mainly for this
>act of heroism.
>
>The highest place on the list went to Tsakhi Hanegbi, who became famous,
>at the start of his political career, for organizing pogroms against Arab
>student on the Tel-Aviv University campus. In order to attract votes, he
>published a list of 80 Likud functionaries whom he had provided with jobs
>in his Ecology Ministry.
>
>The appointment of party hacks to positions in the civil service and
>government-owned corporations is a glaring violation of public trust. Not
>only do these functionaries live off the taxpayer's money, but the
>appointment of party apparatchiks, instead of qualified experts, does
>immense harm to the public interest.
>
>(It was not by accident that Hanegbi achieved such an elevated place on
>the party list. Some years ago, the Likud Minister of Education asked the
>3000 members of the Central Committee: "Have we come to power in order to
>distribute jobs to party members?" Her rhetoric question was answered with
>a thunderous: "Yes!!!")
>
>The Likud election list started to stink. But the party stalwarts could at
>least comfort themselves with the thought that at the top of the list
>stood a knight of impeccable honor.
>
>Until last week, when a scandal exploded around Ariel Sharon himself.
>
>It started with the disclosure of an official document: a request by the
>Israeli Ministry of Justice that the South African government allow the
>interrogation of a South African millionaire concerning criminal
>suspicions against Ariel Sharon. Who has leaked it? Some suspect the
>Foreign Office, headed now by Binyamin Netanyahu, Sharon's bitter rival
>and nemesis.
>
>The story, in brief, is that during the last elections, Sharon received a
>huge, illegal donation from a mysterious company whose owners were
>unknown. The State Comptroller demanded that Sharon return the money. He
>was compelled to do so, because otherwise he would have had to pay a
>four-fold fine. Miraculously, he received a huge loan from a mysterious
>source.He states that he got the money from the South-African millionaire.
>But everything was done in an opaque and suspicious way, the money reached
>him by a circuitous route through several countries. The South African
>millionaire himself refuses to talk about it, behaving as if he had
>committed a crime. When Sharon was asked about it by the police, he
>shifted the responsibility to his two sons, Omer and Gilead, answering
>questions with "I don't know" and "I am not sure". As if anybody can
>believe that he did not ask his sons before the interrogation.
>
>One has to know the background in order to understand the story. This is
>not the first time that the relationship between Sharon and Jewish
>millionaires in several countries has caused people in the know to raise
>their eyebrows, but these things were never brought up in public.
>
>In 1973, when it became clear to Sharon that he would never be appointed
>Chief-of-Staff, he resigned from the army. Within a few months he became
>the owner of the biggest private farm in the country. A major-general does
>receive a handsome salary (more than a cabinet minister), but how does one
>acquire a huge farm with that? In Hebrew slang, such questions are
>answered with "What are friends for?"
>
>One of Sharon's best friends is the American ex-Israeli billionaire
>Meshulam Riklis, who made it possible for Sharon to acquire the farm.
>Riklis is also the patron of the Jewish American ex-Israeli billionaire
>Aryeh Genger, who is now acting as Sharon's unofficial emissary to the
>White House. Genger's legal council in Israel is Dov Weisglass, now
>Sharon's cabinet chief. The South-African millionaire, who is playing now
>a central role in the Sharon scandal, is Richard Kern, who served in the
>IDF in 1948. All these millionaires know each other.
>
>This week it was not clear at all which millionaire gave Sharon the money
>(some 1.5 million dollars) and who served only as camouflage. What is the
>real source of the money? Is it black or white? The more Sharon denies,
>the more suspicious it looks.
>
>The connection between Israeli generals and Jewish millionaires from
>abroad is an arresting subject by itself. It is a two-way deal: the
>generals receive generous support from the millionaires, the millionaires
>acquire dignity. Generally, these are millionaires who thirst for
>recognition and believe that they are not accorded the honor due to them
>by the "goyish" society in their homelands. They mention at every
>opportunity "my friend, the general", have their photos taken with him at
>state events, entertain him at their home and are guests at his. When
>General Ezer Weitzman was the President of Israel, it became known that he
>had been supported by a friendly millionaire for many years. He was not
>the only general who was helped by an admiring millionaire.
>
>The admiration of the millionaires for the generals is real. Some of them
>are ashamed of the fact that they had emigrated from Israel without
>serving in the army, facts which at the time were considered shameful.
>Yitzhaq Rabin once gave them a Hebrew title that can best be translated as
>"refuse of cowards". They believe that their proximity to Israeli war
>heroes gives them back their lost honor.
>
>But the proximity to generals is not only a matter of honor. When the
>generals become ministers in the Israeli cabinet, they are expected to be
>generous to their generous benefactors. The fact the Genger is receives at
>the White House as Sharon's confidant is not hurting his financial status
>in the United States, nor does it necessarily induce the authorities in
>Haifa to remove his accident-prone big chemical enterprise from the
>densely populated Haifa Bay area, where it endangers, according to some
>experts, the lives of many thousands. Friendship with the Prime Minister
>has never yet hurt a captain of industry or finance.
>
>All this is not new. What is new is the glare of light that suddenly
>illuminates dark corners. The connection between some of the Likud leaders
>and organized crime is exposed more and more, and the personal scandal
>involving Sharon, that also brings new disclosures every day, can do what
>the intifada, the bloodshed, the economic crisis and the social breakdown
>could not do: to undermine the foundations of the Likud government. The
>party already has gone down in the polls from 37 to 27 seats.
>
>A satirical column has offered the Likud a new slogan: "The whole world is
>against us, except the underworld."
>
>It can all be summed up with the saying coined some 150 years ago by the
>British statesman, Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
>corrupts absolutely." Few know the second sentence of Lord Acton's
>admonition: "Great men are always bad men."
>
>
># You may be missing other accompanying blurbs, related stories, graphics etc.
>Link to this story as it appears on the site :- What Are Friends For?
>www.outlookindia.com
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