For  nearly two decades the Institute and Professor Alvin Rabushka, director of IASPS’s Division for Economic Policy Research, have been writing of the unprecedented sums of foreign aid received by Israel. Rabushka has repeatedly noted that no nation in the history of the world has received such large sums of unearned money for so long.

One would think that the response to this truth would be that Israeli policymakers would slap themselves on their foreheads and declare in shock and disgust: “By Heaven, we have put an entire nation on the dole! This cannot continue.”

Rabushka has further pointed out that the effect of all this unearned money has been destructive in the extreme: the billions of dollars that have poured into Israel have inflated the public sector, crowded out private initiative, strengthened bureaucracy, delayed necessary reforms, and more. All told, the aid has helped the Israeli economy become the basket case it is, and endangered national existence.

One would again think that Israeli policymakers, confronted with the evidence, would awake one morning and say: “By Heaven, I do not want to part of this system! Either I am going to change it or resign!”

Yet, in the course of all these years, only two policymakers ever reached these conclusions or tried to cut aid: former Army Chief of Staff and cabinet minister Raphael (Raful) Eitan, and former MK and minister of energy Gonen Segev. Many students have used the IASPS evidence. When IASPS analysts publish op-eds on the bureaucratic mire drowning Israeli businessmen and consumers, we get letters from “average Israelis” who thank us for expressing their own thoughts. But aside from two policymakers – the policy community of Israel pursues aid as if it were oxygen.

What, then, are the policymakers and bureaucrats thinking when they are enlightened as to the detrimental effects of aid?

Before answering this question, another issue comes to mind that may call for a similar question. A few weeks ago Israeli cabinet ministers, including the defense minister and the prime minister, expressed an interest in having the U.S. send CIA observers to Israel to oversee implementation of the current war which goes by the Orwellian name of a “cease-fire.” One could repeat Rabushka’s formula, adapted to this issue: Never in the history of the world has a sovereign state asked for foreigners to come in and run its affairs. The question only becomes more pointed when one notes that these are not only foreigners, they are foreign intelligence agents – spies, as they are known. When in the history of the world has one nation invited foreign spies into its territory to report on its handling of a dirty, far-from-the-public-eye, war?

Answering these questions based on today’s newspapers is possible, but interestingly enough, the same questions could be posed about newspapers in Israel fifty years ago. Because the stories then were the same. In the spring of 1950, Israeli policymakers were debating amongst themselves the benefits of international observers coming in to oversee the conflict. They were supporting the internationalization of holy sites. They supported the removal of Christian and Moslem sites from Jewish control, though no one ever showed that Jewish control had in any way harmed those sites. The Israeli foreign minister Moshe Sharrett expressed satisfaction when Britain sent arms and support to the Jordanian forces on the West Bank, because Israel got…a piece of paper: England recognized Israeli existence. Does the enemy getting arms and Israel getting nothing sound familiar? Of course, it is the same policy being pursued by Israelis fifty years later.

There is an ancient Jewish Midrash about the evil inclination in people, which ends with the statement: You let him into your house as a guest, and pretty soon he’s the landlord.

Herein lies the explanation for the Israeli interest in foreign observers and international forces and internationalization and foreign aid, too. Of course no nation in the history of the world has called for outsiders to observe and recommend and oversee its territory. Because no nation wants this; they would fight such an idea tooth and nail, and if they were a serious nation, with any strength among nations, no one would even dare suggest such international interference. And of course it is obvious that the outside states send spies, and of course it is obvious that their numbers grow, and of course it is obvious that the home-state loses thereby its independence.

If all this is obvious, and still the Israeli foreign minister in 1950 Sharrett, and in 2001 Peres, support this move – then the conclusion is also obvious: this is the policy they are deliberately pursuing. Either that, or these foreign ministers, cabinet ministers, opposition and coalition leaders, bureaucrats, journalists, and others are all profoundly stupid. One could argue that former prime minister Barak was that stupid, given his repeated deadlines for the end of terror, his non-enforced threats, his give-all-before- they-ask negotiating style. But have all Israelis been that stupid since 1948?

Returning to the question of aid: the fact that no country in the history of the world has received so much aid for so long, and that the aid is crippling the local economy, are not the shocking facts. They are the explanation for why Israeli policymakers continue to seek the aid. It is as if the policymakers who read Rabushka smile smuggly  rather than slapping their foreheads, saying: “Well, of course. We know that. That’s why we want the aid.”

The people who want the aid are the same people who want the observers. They are the same policymakers and journalists who want internationalization. They are in fact the same people who until the creation of Israel in May 1948, did not want a state. They fought against independence from Britain; they fought against the need for a Jewish army; they fought against religious or historical ties to Jerusalem. Thus Davar, the Histadrut’s newspaper, was arguing against the need for statehood up until statehood was declared. Ha’aretz fought against Jewish militarism and against independence. The Labor movement fought, literally, those Jews who fought to oust the British from the land of Israel. They fought, literally, Jews who fought against Arabs, They advocated in the pre-state days a policy that will sound familiar to us fifty and sixty years later – Restraint.

These people have not changed. External circumstances have changed, but the policies have not changed. All the policies advocated by the socialist Zionists before statehood, which had no precedent in the history of the world (all the more so since as socialists and communists they supported revolutions and “fought” imperialism around the world, yet at home, they were counterrevolutionaries and denounced independence-minded freedom fighters, and supported British imperialism). They said then and they are saying now – without using the same words, but by pursuing the identical policies – that: “We are not a nation. We are not a real state. We are still dependent on others. And we want to be dependent on others.”

Thus, we see that the various policies are really one: internationalization, observers, declaring that Arafat is responsible for fighting terror and ensuring Israeli security, asking the U.S. to be responsible for the Israeli economy. These are all the same policy. It hasn’t changed in fifty years. The ministers and bureaucrats thought to themselves then: how can we stay on top, how can we best be opportunists, no matter what happens. They fought nationhood, an army, statehood, borders, religion and God then – and they are fighting them now.

Telling Israeli bureaucrats that aid has made the economy a mess – is telling them that they have succeeded. It isn’t going to convince any of them to stop asking for aid. They want the economy to be a mess, and have adapted themselves to the mess to ensure their own survival. Cutting aid will not change them, either; the creation of a state in 1948 did not convince those who took over that state that a state is necessary, or that independence is worthwhile. They learned to function in the state just as they did without a state: get the foreigners in, submit to whatever the foreigner says, hold back the army, don’t win wars, show restraint when your people are killed, ask for contributions from abroad. Internally, the motto is, as poet Uri Zvi Greenberg once wrote: “No God, no king, no heroes.”

Israel will stop taking foreign aid when enough people want to be a real nation. When that happens, you won’t hear any talk about internationalization or CIA observers or UN resolutions or who will provide Israel’s security for her, either.

Printer-Friendly Version