Why Diogenes Can’t Find an Honest Man in the Knesset
“Diogenes in Israel” is the title of a report I made on Israel National Radio on September 8, 2008. In that report I set forth compelling evidence confirming the public’s assessment that 95 percent, hence 104 of the Knesset’s 120 members, are not honest. In fact, the evidence indicates that the public was being generous in its judgment!
If we consider the various parties which propped up the Sharon government and which are therefore complicit in the crime of disengagement, there is hardly a single honest MK, even if he or she subsequently voted against disengagement. (See “Diogenes in Israel” for further clarification.)
The day after “Diogenes in Israel” first appeared, The Jerusalem Post published an article entitled “Who’s in charge here?” (September 9, 2008.) The author is professor of law Amnon Rubenstein, a former minister of education. He asks:
Who are Israel’s leading personalities? The Marker, an economic supplement of Haaretz last Tuesday selected the 10 most influential. The list begins with the all-powerful attorney-general, continues with a number of officials—the state comptroller, the state attorney, two senior police officers, the president of the supreme court, the governor of the Bank of Israel—and ends with a number of bankers and tycoons. It can be summarized as a who’s who of “wealth and law-enforcement,” as distinct from the much-touted “wealth and government.”
Rubenstein discerns in this list of influential personalities a “total absence of elected politicians.” Only “appointed officials and not [cabinet] the ministers … make the list.”
“Such a list,” he observes, “can hardly be imagined elsewhere. It is inconceivable that bankers, real estate billionaires and police officers would oust any politician from a similar list in other democracies. The Marker’s choice is a testament to the downgrading of the democratic process itself in our country. Indeed, one may ask what is the purpose of elections?”
Professor Rubenstein’s classification of Israel as a democracy is questionable, if only because—as he well knows—members of the Knesset are not individually accountable to the voters in constituency elections. This enables MKs to ignore public opinion with impunity, and this reduces elections to a charade. Indeed, the absence of political accountability in Israel is the all-important institutional fact that enabled the government to expel 10,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria—a crime that has no name.
This same institutional fact is a major cause of official corruption in Israel. Properly understood, it goes a long way toward explaining why the public despises the Knesset, including cabinet ministers. It also helps explain why the public deems tycoons and police officers more influential than politicians.
Although Rubenstein mentions “corruption in high places,” it is only when he refers to Israel’s parliamentary system of Proportional Representation that he touches the heart of the problem. He rightly sees that “No new elections will remedy this malaise unless accompanied by a series of structural reforms to mitigate the weakness of a purely proportional system, enable the government to govern, and redress the balance between elected and non-elected functionaries.”
He might have added that proportional representation leads to multiparty cabinet government, that this is not only a basic cause of corruption, but also of the government’s inability to govern, that is, to pursue coherent, consistent, resolute, and long-term national policies.
He might also have added that proportional representation leads to a multiplicity of parties that undermines the ability of the government—that is, of cabinet ministers—to foster Jewish national unity as well as Jewish national pride.
Hence, it is precisely Israel’s divisive political system—above all, the ego-generating tendency of multiparty cabinet government—that results in the public’s contempt for politicians vis-à-vis tycoons and police officers.
The conclusion is obvious: Israel needs a Unitary Executive or Presidential System of Government, where the cabinet does not consist—as have all previous Israeli cabinets—of rival party leaders animated by their own personal or partisan interests.
Unfortunately, Professor Rubenstein refrains from drawing this conclusion, although we ought to assume it is not far from his thinking. Hence, allow me to recommend two of my books: Jewish Statesmanship Lest Israel Fall, and The Myth of Israeli Democracy: Toward a Truly Jewish Israel. They outline institutional reforms that would increase the probability of Diogenes’ quest for an honest man.
