Chillin’ out on the boardwalk in Miami Beach.
Is Incompetence the Supreme Threat?
What Next for Israel’s Leadership?
Russia Market Ready for Free-Fall?
Why Don Imus is Good for Business….
I am in the middle of enjoying a lovely month of some work and lots of play. We just returned from a weekend in South Carolina highlighting the Sanctuary resort at Kiawah Island. See the travel notes below. There wasn’t anything scenic to see at Kiawah Island so there are no pictures – just a beach. Charleston has been visited twice before so there are other pictures online. Last month I also visited Salt Lake City, Utah and you can see some pickies and notes in this edition. This Sunday I am heading to Santorini, Greece, Rome and the Chewton Glen resort just outside London. Later in the month we have a family trip heading to Nantucket, Massachusetts, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Acadia National Park in Maine. So stay tuned. Also this month my wife and I are being honored at a charity dinner for the American Friends of Nishmat, a women’s seminary in Jerusalem that is dedicated toward improving the status of women in the Orthodox Jewish community through education and community development. Karen attended their program years ago and is being showcased as an example of alumni who done good.
Turning to world news, the top story out is the Winograd Commission interim report in Israel on the performance of the country’s leadership during what is now being called the Second Lebanon War last summer. I was surprised at how strongly worded the report was and the reported level of buffoonery that was going on at the top of the country’s political and military leadership. Prime Minister Olmert and defense minister Peretz have no choice but to resign on an immediate basis and should have by now in any event. The army’s chief of staff resigned 2 months ago. Assuming the truth of this report, I am really disappointed; one thing I expected from Olmert was that he was a clubby kinda guy who would be expected to consult with others. He didn’t and that’s a major reason he failed. The report essentially says that he went shooting from the hip by himself; Peretz had no idea which end was up (not surprising when you see the footage of him viewing military exercises through binoculars with the lens cap on) and the chief of staff was simply unprepared for the event. As I wrote several months ago when I found out what was going to be the result, the fact that the report blamed everyone is a problem because now nobody in particular feels the need to reform. I believe the military has made adjustments and the new chief of staff is expected to do a better job. As for the political echelon, the need for a national security council with teeth still exists and Olmert did nothing to implement it. It is true that Lebanon was a festering problem because previous chiefs of staff and prime ministers allowed it to become that way, but it is also true that Sharon would have dealt with Nasrallah differently and that Nasrallah did not expect the Israeli response which followed his original action. During the campaign I wrote that what the Israelis were doing made no sense; we were all sitting around trying to discern their grand strategy. Now we know – there was no strategy and they simply didn’t know what they were doing. Ah, now it all makes sense. That is probably the only thing that is saving Nasrallah from a commission of inquiry for starting this war.
Nevertheless, Olmert is a good politician who knows how to block his opposition and he won’t resign unless either the public demand becomes so great that he cannot resist or if one of the corruption investigations stick. The Kadima party will not survive the next election because Olmert cares more about himself than the party. He told Tzippi Livni yesterday that if she took over the party, he would make sure enough ministers left so that it would have only 29 seats going into an election; 61 is needed for a majority of the Knesset. So as you can see she didn’t resign and nobody said anything by yesterday afternoon. The most important thing to remember is that the people in government don’t want to go to new elections and see themselves voted out. Even if they know that if they hold on for dear life they will lose their seats in the future, they want to keep what they have and hope for the future. Also, the public is still apathetic because they know they don’t like what they have in government but see no alternative that could do better.
What does Bush, Olmert, Assad and Ahmadenijad have in common? They are all inexperienced weak leaders who have demonstrated that they will make up for their shortcomings by using the military to score points. The common denominator is that the #1 Threat Worldwide is not some strange strategic threat but the level of incompetence at the highest levels that has to make anyone worry that the other side might not respond professionally to a given act even if one should expect a higher level of rationality from a state actor. Syria’s Assad take note: You can walk the walk about making war with Israel, but you’d be a fool to actually start one. They might actually respond or take your feint on the Golan as a reason to start one. Last summer, the Israelis were so far away from dealing with Syria that the head of the Knesset Defense Committee had to issue ultimatums to the army because they left the Golan totally open while they were diverted to Lebanon. No way the same kinda of negligence will happen again this year. A competing view brought to my attention is that the Knesset member was nuts and that the reason the army went off the Golan was that the intelligence was clear that the Syrians meant no harm. You can choose which story you want to believe. I don’t know if the Winograd report was on target or not, but the fact that the commission of inquiry did its job in a straight-forward way even brought praise from Nasrallah who said that it was an admirable trait that Israel engages in open self-criticism even of its top leaders.
Iran also needs to take note: A poll this week in the Yediot Achronot (#1 daily newspaper) says that 47% of Israelis think the country will not exist in another 40 years. 26% of them feel the reason is a nuclear-armed Iran. 53% of the country thinks they will exist and the leading cause of extinction at 45% was natural disaster. Less than 20% thought the reason was military actions by its neighbors or demographic displacement. So if you’re sitting around in this world, you cannot have a country where 26% of its citizens think that Iran will put them out of existence and think they are not going to do everything they can to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear threat. That fact and the speech by the liberal editor of Haaretz newspaper last December at Limmud in the UK where he said that he could not live normally in a country threatened by a nuclear Iran has to tell you that the problem has to be dealt with by the world at large or else the Israelis will at some point try to deal with it themselves calculating that the consequence of failure is still more favorable than the cost of doing nothing..
If Olmert’s party Kadima wants to have a shot at survival, it would be smartest for Olmert to step aside and let Tzippi Livni, the foreign minister, take over the prime ministership. She is the leading popular figure in the party. If she like Olmert before her has a chance to demonstrate incumbency, she like Olmert will develop a certain comfort level with the populace that would enable her to survive in the position. In an open election, she would probably fail to others who would appear to have more experience in security and military matters. One thing she has going for her is a clean reputation (which is good after all this corruption) and a distance from the Lebanon fiasco for which she escaped censure from the Winograd Commission. I don’t have a position on Livni; she basically doesn’t have a lot going for her except that you’d hope she would put someone in like Ehud Barak at the Defense post and she would be more likely to open talks with the Syrians. I still subscribe to the view that it pays for Assad to go to war that he would lose because it’s the only way he has a chance of getting the Golan back – as long as the Israelis refuse to talk to him in the present state of affairs (because Olmert can’t function and Bush is refusing), he has no reason not to go to war. I think the Bush position will change under Rice and Gates to be more exploratory toward Syria. A competing view is that Syria will never start a war with Israel that it has no chance of winning; the humiliation of losing and the instability a war would cause will drive the Alawites from power and Assad and his cronies would be killed by his own people in the process and a fundamentalist regime would arise in his wake. Again you can choose which scenario you wish to believe.
More on the Israel stuff below with reports from various amigos in the region giving different viewpoints.
Turning to economics, there was a front page story last month in the Financial Times of London regarding Russia’s economy. The story had a prominent figure in the marketplace warning of a free fall in equities in that country. I don’t like Russia’s economic system, think it’s totally manipulated and a place where anyone from the outside should stay out. When the next fallout comes, it will be quick and dirty just like the last one in 1998. Until Putin sees the value of rule of law for economic investors and not trying to hoard everything in his own state-owned clique with its own league of oligarchs, it will just be a different version of failure. The only thing propping up his show right now is the price of oil.
As for the rest of the world, what can I say? In a world where Don Imus’s remarks about a college girls’ basketball team steal the headlines for a solid week, it means that not much is going on. I don’t have tons of stuff to write about these days. But that’s good for business and as long as it stays that way, stocks will keep going up. Here’s to No news is good news.
Back to Israel’s domestic situation. To give you an idea of what I’m up against trying to figure this all out, here are snippets from conversations I had today with various people in the country. The notes may not be perfect but you get the idea.
ODED: Olmert will last at least a year. Nobody wants Bibi. Livni is not qualified. Olmert at least was courageous to go to war; made right decisions; war resulted in gains in Lebanon with the lebanese army doing israel’s dirty work for them now; nasrallah is isolated; Iranians don’t give as much money to Lebanon and Saudi Arabia doesn’t give as much to Hamas which is now in the hands of Iran. Winograd commission looked at the wrong things. Army was at fault; result would have been the same under any chief of staff; they killed 900 hizbullah last summer and the arabs all know that good people died and that hizbullah is a sucker’s job. Syria will never risk alawite holdings going to war; wants peace; olmert has no time for them and nobody needs them. Within 12 months will deal with iran. Economy is great inside Israel and soon its rate of economic growth will be like Ireland. Palestinians have nothing but walls, pigs and goats and 10,000 a month are emigrating in an increasingly dire situation. After BBC man is freed, nobody will hear anything from Palestine anymore. Only 120 guys died in the whole Lebanon campaign; in 1973 war 100 people died each day. There has always been corruption and morons running Israel in times of war; Olmert was nothing special in this regard.
DAN: hizbullah is right back on the border say soldiers on the front lines and most israelis view the war as a fiasco. Livni is more qualified than olmert but unelectable; bibi will be the PM within 1-2 months. Olmert is a disaster and doesn’t care enough about his party to try and save it by resigning and putting someone else in his place.
Mohammed: Problem with Winograd is that everyone relied on another while stating it was a consensus (ie: the prime minister and defense minister relied on the chief of staff); nobody questioned or thought for themselves. The whole country is involved in CYA (cover your ass) and nobody is acting for the sake of the country. Too much judicial meddling in politics; Barak said everything is justiciable and now everyone simply complains to the judiciary every time they don’t like a political decision so with everyone not wanting to be sued, nobody acts and just worries about CYA. Thinks Bibi will win unless Barak runs and then it will be a close call; arabs will back barak even though they don’t like him for making promises he didn’t keep last time he won. Government might survive over the summer because maybe there will be US action against Iran and they don’t want to be in the middle of elections when it happens – notice that in the morning the Kadimah politicos criticized Olmert but by afternoon they were softening on him. Bush is pushing Saudi Arabia hard and is running out of time with which to deal with Iran. The arab states are all geared toward making sure the Iranian-sponsored Shiites don’t take over Iraq and have a foothold throughout the region especially if the Americans are leaving; that’s why Bandar is aside from the Americans; the Saudi interest is not parallel to the Americans. The reason why the Palestinian issue matters is that even though the sunnis want to take on the Shiites in iran, there are so many Shiites in these states that the sunni rulers in Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar etc have to have cover for the decision to go after Iran and showing something with the Palestinians will give them the moral cover for going partners with the yanks on this one. Let the Saudis bankroll the Palestinians instead of trying to boycott them and once the Palestinians rely on the Saudis instead of the Iranians they will have to take their dictates. Also, the Saudi peace plan continues to mention the concept of Sulha, reconciliation with the Jews on a religious level, something the Jews and Israel have yet to realize the significance of.
Itzik: Doesn’t like Olmert. Thinks he will not survive and that Bibi will take over. Nobody in Labor is electable. Not thrilled; Winograd stated that Begin and Ben Gurion would have also been emasculated in front of similar commissions; there has been negligence always. Bush has been no better. It will matter to Olmert if the mass demonstration on 3 may to be held in Tel Aviv is very well attended.
All agree that the Arab Knesset member Bishara did bad things meeting with the enemy, regardless of whether or not he possessed classified information. They may have been monitoring him for years but it seems they recently found evidence on him and anyway didn’t want to blow the sources beforehand by going public on the investigation. It is a bad stain on the Israeli arabs and the fact that he says it is all ideological but refuses to stand trial means he is corrupt and full of shit. His biggest sin is that he was taking money from all these enemies of the state while being a member of its parliament. None of the Arabs believe him now says Mohammed. I personally believe the Israelis sent him out of the country not wanting to make him into a martyr and except for the money trail I assume he didn’t have much confidential information to share — the value to his Hizbullah operatives was in his opinion based on his position inside the government.
Visit to Charleston SC and Kiawah Island April 2007
Return visit to Charleston staying in a kosher bed & breakfast: Broad Street Guest House. Very good location near to everything in walking distance. Nice rooms – better than expected and good food. Small inn with only 4 rooms but they are very nicely appointed, are full suites with kitchenettes which is great with kids and they have a lovely sitting porch. Good service from the innkeeper. Perfectly nice place for a couple to have a nice weekend; the inn is under orthodox rabbinical supervision and about a mile from the synagogue within the town’s Eruv. They serve meals on Shabbat. We flew in Thursday night and walked around the city on Friday morning. They have pedicabs (people riding bicycles) if you can’t catch a taxi. Dinner at Charleston Place hotel (an Orient Express property) was excellent. Transferred Friday afternoon in a 45 minute taxi ride to The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island, a 5-star hotel on a private island on a beautiful stretch of beach. Our suite overlooking the ocean was very nice and the hotel is a nice place for a relaxing weekend as long as the weather is agreeable. Food and beverage was good; our beef was with service issues more so than usual. We were constantly told that reservations in the dining rooms and whatever were not available and I had to keep looking for managers to get us what we wanted especially since the concierges working the Club floor had no pull whatsoever to get things done. Not the way one should be treated when booking a top suite in a top hotel. We thought it was overpriced for what you get but it is a nice hotel in a somewhat secluded spot and Elizabeth had a great time picking flowers, walking on the boardwalk and the beach, swimming in the pool and sitting in the breakfast room. When arriving in Charleston, it is good to take a card from the taxi service for use on the return trip; the hotel doubles the price of the cab if you arrange it through them. Call Pat at 843.296.0455 for a taxi; hers has a car seat built in for kids. Other good B&B’s we saw near the kosher one were Governor’s House Inn, for romantic couples – no kids under 12 – and the Rutledge House Inn across the street from both of them. This is a good place to put overflow if you had an event headquartered at the Broad Street Inn which as I said only has 4 rooms.
Visit to Salt Lake City, Utah March 2007
There may be Mormons here but they did not drive any of the taxis I took. “Skis up” as you exit the airport, say the exit doors. Just a 10 minute drive to downtown from the airport. Several Marriotts here. I had a few hours to see the town and 3 hours will do it; Temple Square is at dead center of town. View of the center city area from the top of the Joseph Memorial building; you can search family records here. They have a data base tied into death certificates and social security numbers. At this center is the temple, conference center (see the Auditorium and the rooftop garden). The auditorium seats 21,000 and hosts the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. There are visitors centers in Temple Square to acquaint you with the Mormon Church. There are minders everywhere to tell you stories. Also nearby is Beehive House, the house where Brigham Young, the church’s “prophet” and one of its co-founders, lived. The room with the children’s toys is particularly interesting. Twenty minutes drive out of town is the “This is the Place” monument where the Mormons decided after a journey of 1,000 miles that this is where they wanted to settle. Take this tour in the morning for best views; otherwise the glare covers all the good parts. Salt Lake is beyond the town. Dinner at Market Place Grill, for very good seafood. Contrary to belief you can drink alcohol in Utah. The state is actively seeking international relations for economic development; at Brigham Young University many languages are spoken in great part due to the Mormon missionary program which sends so many of their young ones overseas. More Hispanics here than I expected; Univision television network has a big office across from my hotel.
