Most people saw this picture, and had a quick laugh. But in Israel, the photograph of Defense Minister Amir Peretz touched off a full-fledged political and media feeding frenzy.
Since entering office in early 2006, Peretz -- like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a lifelong civilian and a long-time back-bencher whose rise to the top has been meteoric and unforeseen -- has had to combat the sense that he doesn’t belong in a top office. Last summer's bloody and inconclusive war against Hezbollah only widened the confidence gap between leaders and electorate. Then came the bino gaffe.
Israelis are famously impatient, and a mismanaged war has led to the downfall of politicians far more popular than Peretz. So you might expect Peretz to be gone by now. But his durability – and his career arc – tell us a lot about the factors driving Israel domestic politics. And, as we all know, what happens inside Israel can have worldwide consequences.
The first reaction that most Israelis probably had when they saw
Peretz’s binocular blunder – I know it was mine – was “that never would have happened to Ariel Sharon.” Never mind that it once did, as evidenced by a picture the Israeli paper Yediot ran alongside the
Peretz picture. The point that the picture drove home is that a civilian, Peretz, is filling an office once inhabited by such outsized military figures as Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak and, most recently, Sharon.
Now, a working familiarity with military materiel is no guarantee of strategic competence, and even brilliant generals like
Sharon have made their share of bad decisions as statesmen. But Peretz has the remarkable distinction of being probably the first politician in the history of any democracy to become Minister of Defense precisely because he’s patently unqualified for the position.
For most of his long political career, Peretz was known as a fiery, controversial representative of the working poor. After decades as a local politician, chief of the national labor union Histadrut, and on-again-off-again back-bencher for the Labor Party in the Knesset, Peretz rose meteorically to the party leadership when the party’s crushing defeat to Sharon’s Likud Party in 2002 created a vacuum at the top. By 2005,
Peretz had shouldered aside perennial also-ran Shimon Peres, the
Walter Mondale of Israeli politics, and claimed the party’s top spot.
In 2006, Peretz’s Labor Party finished second in the general election to the new Kadima Party, led by Ehud Olmert and the ghost of the
persistently vegetative Ariel Sharon. The election results left
Labor in plum position for coalition negotiations with Kadima. Many expected Peretz to use this leverage to push through the neo-socialist domestic agenda he had ridden out of obscurity on the back of. Instead, he decided to prepare for another, future run at the Prime Minister’s seat by patching up the most glaring hole in his resume – his lack of experience in defense issues. Peretz asked for, and got, the Defense portfolio.
But if Peretz had hoped that a stint in the Ministry of
Defense would make voters forget he’d been a materiel officer and not a fighter, history had some cruel surprises in store for him. In his first year in office, war broke out against
Hezbollah, and it didn't go as promised.
The Israeli public, always eager to let its leaders know just how it felt, soon pegged Peretz and Olmert as incompetent. The unprecedented lack of personal military experience at the top of
Israel’s ladder of command became a hook for the public to hang its ever-present concern that the country was losing the mental edge it had always relied on to stay one step ahead of its enemies.
An independent commission of inquiry, known as the Winograd Commission, was appointed to investigate – though not before Olmert managed to make himself look like he was obstructing the process. (Israeli voters’
faith in public commissions of inquiry is intense, and often leads to serious political consequences.)
(Disclosures, my grandfather was on the Agranat Commission, and I think The Or
Commission would make a decent name for an alt-rock band.) When Chief of Staff Dan Halutz resigned in January, many Israelis felt that Olmert and
Peretz should obey historical precedent and follow suit. But they have both refused to do so.
It was into this whirlpool of public dissatisfaction that the picture of Peretz gazing sagely through capped binoculars dropped, like a personal gift from God to a nation that believes political satire is the highest form of art.
So, why is Peretz still in the picture? The short answer is, the same thing that got him there: parliamentary politics. Firing a cabinet minister is always more complicated in a parliamentary system than a presidential one – especially when the minister is the leader of your coalition’s junior partner.
There are three ways Peretz could get shitcanned, and none of them is very politically palatable. One way would be if Peretz’s own party,
Labor, decided to replace him – always unlikely, especially since there are no strong challengers within the party at the moment. A second would be if Olmert got rid of Labor and formed a new coalition with a different party – also unlikely, since the alternative would be
Binyamin Netanyahu, Olmert’s personal and ideological arch-nemesis. The third would be a new election – but that’s not too likely either, since neither Kadima nor Labor will push for an election that right now could only benefit Netanyahu’s Likud Party and its right-wing allies.
Think you’ve got it all covered? Almost. There’s one other factor that plays a vital role in this drama and has gone virtually unnoticed in the US: race. Throughout its history, Israel has been dominated politically, culturally and economically by Ashkenazi Jews (Jews from
Europe, and particularly Russia and Poland). Mizrachi Jews (from the
Middle East and North Africa), like the Moroccan-born Peretz, have been routinely marginalized – to the extent of occasionally comparing themselves to African Americans in the U.S.
The divide between Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrachi Jews is no longer as stark as it was as recently as the 1970s, but Peretz is still one of the most prominent Mizrachi figures in Israel. Had Labor defeated
Kadima in 2006, he would have become the first non-Ashkenazi Prime
Minister in the country’s history. And at this very moment, Moshe
Katsav, the country’s first Mizrachi President, is being pressured to resign after being indicted for rape and sexual assault.
In this charged environment, it’s no surprise that some are chalking the media feeding-frenzy over Peretz’s gaffe to plain, ol' fashioned racism.
(The situation is complicated, however, by the fact that Peretz is something of a political line-crosser – Mizrachi Jews traditionally vote for Likud and other right-wing parties, and identify Labor with the discriminatory politics of the country’s early years.)
So, what’s the moral of all this? For one thing, it’s that you can’t understand a country’s defense policy without understanding its
domestic politics.
For another, it’s that sheer voter outrage, if it’s widespread enough, can do a great deal to affect a government’s policies. The wrath of the
Israeli electorate, when spurred, is unlike anything any American politician since Nixon has faced, and the rather modest concessions it has earned – the appointment of the Winograd Commission and the resignation of Halutz – are far more impressive in light of the fact that Olmert and Peretz’s governing coalition faces no credible electoral challengers, especially from the left.
But perhaps most importantly, the lesson is that if you’re going to bungle a war and survive politically, you’re probably better off staying away from the easy visual metaphors.
