This is right time to sit up and pay
attention to the new rising culture hero, Arcadi Gaydamak,
an Israeli Ross Perot. He has guts and he has good will
and compassion. True, Third Force candidates are rather
unpredictable, but the mainstream candidates are a sure
thing – worthless. With him, Jerusalem can become a model
for One State: but much depends on the Palestinian
Jerusalemites.
The Third Force
By Israel Shamir
In
order to cut energy costs, the government turned out the
light at the end of tunnel, say the Israelis. Déjà-vu
descended on the political scene, making it so dark that a
cat needs a torch to get around. Shop-soiled once-rejected
politicians Barak and Netanyahu creep back to power, while
Ehud Olmert waits for his turn to be rejected and re-cycled
later.
At this low point, a powerful new
personality is soaking up much of the waning limelight. You
can’t open an Israeli newspaper without reading his name;
his face looks at you from posters on the streets; every
conversation, every Parliamentary hearing or TV debate
brings you the man. He is Arcadi Gaydamak, the man who wants
to save Israel.
He is an Israeli Ross Perot. A reminder
for young people: Ross Perot was the son of a Texas
cotton-picker, who “made it” in the data business, became a
billionaire and tried to save the US by running for the
presidency. In hindsight, it is pity he did not win: Perot
was an American patriot of a soft conservative-isolationist
ilk; he was for quality education, repairing US cities,
against Middle East military adventures and outsourcing.
Democrats and Republicans united to bury him and marched to
Iraq over his [politically] dead body.
Gaydamak often sounds like Perot, when he
attacks Israeli professional politicians for their
corruption and lack of concern for ordinary people, and his
message is well received – Israelis justifiably hold their
politicians in low esteem. The politicians repay him with
unmitigated hostility: he succeeds in uniting the Israeli
right- and left-wing just as did the Lebanese war. The
pundits, the Masters of Israeli Discourse, hate him even
more, for he was not created by them. The journalists and
reporters are invariably hostile and outright rude to him,
never sparing an accusation or innuendo. But he is extremely
popular with the hoi polloi, with the pre-Zionist
Old Yeshuv, that is, with Sephardi Jews and the poor Jewish
Orthodox families of Jerusalem, with non-elite immigrant
communities – Moroccans and Russians, and with the
Palestinians of Galilee. They like him for his panache, for
his generosity and compassion, for his straight talk, but
first of all for his sponsorship of soccer teams, of the
Jerusalem Sephardi Beitar and of the Galilean Arab
Sakhnin.
His new party called Social Justice is a
new and potentially powerful Third Force in the Israeli
political structure. Israeli voters are usually dissatisfied
with existing parties (aren’t we all?), but (as opposed to
the UK and the US) the Israeli election system allows for
this dissatisfaction to be expressed in the voting booth.
Thus, a third force party broke the long Labour Party rule
in 1977, and quite recently a Retirees Party also made
considerable inroads. Even the ruling Kadima party is a
“third force”, positioned between the Labour and Likud. Thus
it is quite possible that Mr Gaydamak will find a prominent
place at the top, whether in the government or – as he says
– at the helm of Jerusalem, where he is extremely popular.
Jerusalem could be the starting point for his rise to the
PrimeMinistership – Ehud Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem to
start with. This is right time to sit up and pay attention
to the rising Mr Gaydamak, for he is the man who could break
the present impasse. He has guts and he has good will and
compassion, again like Perot. True, Third Force candidates
are rather unpredictable, but the mainstream candidates are
a sure thing -- worthless!
Competing parties of the left and right
work hard to undermine his legitimacy: he is not an easy man
to control; he has an independent mind and he can’t be
bought. The right says that he is an Arab-lover (an
accusation similar to ‘nigger-lover’ of the Deep South) or a
Russian spy sent by Putin, the left… Well, the Israeli left
is an aristocratic elitist body like the Daughters of the
American Revolution, and they are always ready to knife
anybody who did not sail with the Zionist Mayflower.
Left-wing politician Colonel Ran Cohen introduced a bill
against Gaydamak, which stopped just short of banning him
personally: he objected to a man using his money directly
instead of doing it via an obedient politician. Gaydamak
returns the fight: he accused Olmert of starting the Lebanon
War in order to improve his falling ratings. Though you can
read of that in Counterpunch, you rarely hear such
views being expressed in Israel.
The man’s origins provide a key to both
the elite hostility and the mass popularity. Gaydamak came
to Israel in 1972 as an impecunious Russian immigrant who
could only hope for low-end temporary jobs. Stagnate and
restrictive Israel was not the place for a man on the go,
and the dynamic 20-year old moved on to France. After many
adventures capped with a Légion d'honneur ribbon as
proof, he “made it”, became a billionaire, returned for a
while to his native Moscow, and some two years ago came back
to Israel.
He took Israel by storm. At first, we saw
him as a local boy who made it good elsewhere and came back
to show off. An Israeli Great Gatsby, of sorts. Wonderfully
dressed, lithe, fast as a tennis player, he established
himself in Caesarea, a villa beach community of wealthy
aristocrats halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa, threw a lot
of lavish receptions, and generously supported worthy
causes.
But Israel is not the US of Scott
Fitzgerald days; under its easy-going democratic ways there
is the strict authoritarian pecking order of a more
primitive tribal society. You are nobody unless you have a
lot of Arab scalps under your belt; you are nobody if your
father did not serve in Palmach or Irgun, the
Zionist guerrilla bands of pre-1948. An impeccable wealthy
gentleman with a philanthropic touch would be knighted in
modern England; Gaydamak was as soundly rejected by the
Israeli upper class as an American upstart in Henry James’
novels. Eventually he got in, but this traumatic experience
probably influenced his next steps:
He did not follow the route of other
wealthy Jews who often visit or even settle in Israel -- he
was not satisfied with his comfortable life at the
Mediterranean Sea, with rubbing shoulders in the company of
Prime Minister, with visiting settlements and military
bases, with cutting ribbons and naming buildings after
himself, though he did all that. He discovered the illness
of Israeli society and began to speak his mind and act, and
to act in quite unusual manner.
While Israeli public figures and visiting
Jewish businessmen usually compete in ferociously chauvinist
rhetoric, Gaydamak struck a completely different tone: he
called for equality and prosperity for all citizens, Jews
and Arabs alike. He said that the solution lies in achieving
prosperity for both Israelis and Palestinians. At the same
time, he considers himself a believing and pious Jew, and
often refers to Jewish ethics. Apparently Gaydamak has an
unusual, but also possible reading of Jewish tradition. In
an interview to the Time magazine he said:
“I am a great believer in possibility of
peace. Some people misunderstood my reference to Jewish
tradition as a nationalist shibboleth, as a desire to
exclude and marginalize Arabs. Nothing could be further from
truth. I believe in humanism of Jewish tradition. It is
impossible for Jews to be happy and content as long as their
neighbours suffer. We should not push the Arab population to
be under the extremist influence. In my view, it is the
Palestinian living standards that should be increased. It
does not have to be done at the Israeli taxpayer’s expense:
the Palestinians are able to cope if we don’t block their
development.”
For these words, he was accused by
nationalist media for admitting that Israel blocks the
development of Palestinian territories. Though Israeli army
strangulates all activity in the occupied territories by
means of roadblocks and other blockades, this is usually
denied by Israeli officials.
More uncommon is his compassion for the
ordinary Israeli. During the Lebanon War last summer, when
the Israeli left and right spoke of beating the hell out of
the Northern neighbour, Gaydamak attended to the needy ones:
he organized and paid for a summer camp for thousands of
Galilee residents who preferred to stay far away from the
deadly missile rain. He was accused by media of anti-Zionist
behaviour: a good Zionist, they say, should rather die than
retreat. But the ordinary people of Galilee were grateful,
because they had no intention of dying in order to make a
point.
In the confrontation with Hamas, he also
took an unusual line. While Israeli politicians demanded the
ruin of Gaza, Gaydamak took care of poor residents of
Sderot, a small border town bombed by Hamas. He sent coaches
and ferried the inhabitants to take a rest in the luxurious
resort of Eilat. This made Olmert mad at him: Olmert, and
the government, prefers to reap political benefits from
the suffering of ordinary Israelis. Gaydamak was accused of
doing his good deeds in order to ingratiate himself with the
people; but the people were happy that somebody cared for
them.
The Israeli establishment fears him
because he is trying to upset the apple cart of Israeli
politics. In such cases, whenever an outsider becomes too
visible, the bosses send for the police. This was the case
with prominent Sephardi leader Arye Deri: police followed
him for ten years, until they succeeded in patching together
a case against him and putting him in jail. Other Sephardi
leaders: General Mordecai (who was dangerously close to the
PM seat) and ex-President Katzav were also disgraced by
means fair and foul. It is a mistake to believe that the
legal system can be dishonest for Arabs and honest for Jews:
if it was permitted once, the system stays dishonest. The
judges who justify Jewish killers of Arabs are perfectly
able to imprison a Jew who is considered dangerous for the
regime. Meanwhile, accusations against Gaydamak do not
stick, but the system does not relent.
There is a media campaign against him, of
rather crude kind. If he is Russian, they say, he’s got to
be a KGB agent. If he is wealthy he’s got to be crook. If he
is in Israel, he’s got to be in need of refuge. But he is
not fragile, this Mr Gaydamak. I had the real pleasure
of watching him some time ago
on TV: he was invited
to appear on a show the same way a bull is invited to a
bullfight; but it was the matadors who were carried out from
the arena on stretchers. Since Galloway's
fighting of a hostile reporter
from SkyNews, I have not witnessed such ability to withstand
an attack on the air. The man on the other side was the
infamous Matti Golan, ex-chief editor of Haaretz, who
said once that he hates all Germans. It turned out he hates
all Russians as well. He was complaining about why anybody
would attention to Gaydamak at all, as he does not belong to
the Salt of the Earth (this is the appellation for real
true-blue Israelis).
This media onslaught was rather
counterproductive for it made him an underdog and brought
him much sympathy. “He is a criminal!” a reporter would ask
the public, and will get “We do not think so” in response.
Indeed, there are many accusations against Gaydamak, though
none is confirmed. For us, none is relevant. They accuse him
of arming the legitimate government of Angola in its fight
against CIA man Savimbi and his South Africa-armed Unita.
Gaydamak denies it; but even if it were true, this qualifies
as a good deed in my book. Savimbi was a horrible creature,
always reneging on peace settlements and bloodying Angola.
They accuse Gaydamak of being charitable for political
purposes; but that can be said about any philanthropist.
They accuse him of keeping his money outside of the grasping
hands of Israeli justice, but this is just prudence.
Meanwhile, he continues to spread his
charity. He provided the poor religious Jews with a
hospital. His political capital grows. Now he starred in a
commercial of a mobile telephone company, being modelled on
a socialist Russian Zionist who founded the kibbutz movement
a hundred years ago. In the clip, he drops his elegant
attire and joins the working masses. With this clip, he rose
to the status of Culture Hero. “This is undignified!
Netanyahu would never do it!” –
insisted media. “I am the man in the street”, he
retorted.
Gaydamak is probably today the most
popular Israeli personality with humane views. He speaks of
bringing to power the coalition of the powerless: Sephardis,
Russians, Palestinians, workers, religious Jews, the whole
hog of hoi polloi. Nobody has yet succeeded in
squeezing from him a denunciation of Arabs, or support for
an attack on Palestinians, though it is considered to be
de rigueur in the polite society of Israel. He is an
opposite to Lieberman, another Russian politician, who made
his name by extreme nationalist slogans. He is a black sheep
in the company of Russian Jewish oligarchs as he keeps his
foothold in Moscow and does not fight Putin, as Nevzlin and
Berezovsky do. And he wants to save Israel, as he said in TV
interview. God knows, Israel needs somebody to save her from
her own deprivation.
An unlikely saviour, a leader of
dispossessed in a white Cadillac? On the second thought, a
poor man won’t be able to make himself heard. It is easier
for a camel to squeeze through a needle's eye, but who needs
a squeezed camel? It is harder for a rich man, but still
possible. Wealth is not a major and irredeemable fault in my
book.
His decision to run for the mayor of
Jerusalem gives us a chance to try the One State model in
One City. Our good friends Noam Chomsky and Michael Neumann
promote the Two States’ idea, while our friends on our side,
Virginia Tilley, Roger Tucker and others speak for One State
– but probably no one understands that this is not a
theoretical question. Jerusalem’s population includes some
30 to 40 per cent Palestinians who are entitled to vote in
the city elections. They are entitled, but they do not vote:
they were told that there will be Two States, and East
Jerusalem will be a part of Palestine. So they have waited
for forty years, and meanwhile Jerusalem has become less and
less hospitable for them. The City Hall carries on endless
warfare against the Palestinians of Jerusalem. They have a
means of defence: to vote in the municipal elections; but
they do not use it, to great relief of the Jewish
extremists.
A few years ago, during the last
elections, I spoke to many prominent Jerusalemites about
participating; but nobody dared to break the mould. They did
not believe that they would be able to change the way of
things and still hoped that the PNA will lead them to
freedom. Maybe now, as Mahmoud Abbas has turned his coat and
converted the PNA into a branch of Israeli security, they
will understand their error and vote en masse. They
can form a third of city council, while another third will
be formed by poor Sephardis and religious Jews.
With Gaydamak, they Palestinians have a
chance to cause cosmic change and win the city – not for
themselves only, but for themselves as well. He is not a
revolutionary, he is not even a radical, but this rather
conservative man has a positive idea of equality and fair
play, a flair for business and uncommon organisational
ability. Being brought up in the Soviet Union, he has no
racist or religious prejudice. With him, the Palestinians
may retire the good-hearted Jeff Halter and make redundant
his Committee against House Demolitions. Without him, they
are doomed to suffer. Probably this man offers us the best
chance for a change, for a good life in One City, and this
chance may lead to One State. Let us not waste it!