The upcoming elections in both Israel and the United States are, in the words of Stuart Schoffman, “a tale of two Liebermans.”
“You have Joe. We have Avigdor,” said the Jerusalem Report associate editor and columnist with a laugh, referring to the American presidential candidate and the far-right Israeli politico.
The pair of Liebermans represent different sides of the Jewish coin.
After all, the last time the Connecticut senator ran for national office “he was elected vice president of the United States, a position he would hold today if it weren’t for a certain kind of technicality,” said the grinning Schoffman.
The senator, he said, “made the point that his religion was not a factor. He was elected with the popular vote.”
Yet while Joseph Lieberman is a source of nachas, Schoffman sees Avigdor Lieberman –who has called for “voluntary transfer” of Palestinians — as a symbol of the fear, anger and disgust Israelis are feeling over a “two-bit Watergate” erupting amid the continuing terror attacks. The Moldova-born politician has been likened to Rasputin in the Israeli press.
The American-born journalist was in the Bay Area on a non-political mission. The Jerusalem resident is the incoming chairman of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Amutah, a volunteer group of Israelis that identifies Israeli social programs worthy of federation dollars. He and other Amutah members were in town this week to meet with federation officials.
Nonetheless, he was glad to share his perspective on the Israeli election. As cynical voters leap off the Likud bandwagon in the wake of the vote-buying scandal and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s alleged financial irregularities, he predicts many will not run to Labor’s Amram Mitzna. Instead, he expects disgruntled voters to contribute to Israel’s “partisan proliferation,” casting ballots for the fervently religious Shas Party, Lieberman’s far-right Yisrael Beiteinu, Tommy Lapid’s secular Shinui Party or nearly 30 other alternatives.
The scandals “add to the feeling of increasing despair, frustration,” said Schoffman, whose low voice betrays only the slightest hint of his Brooklyn upbringing.
Schoffman, a writer for Time magazine and other national publications, and a Hollywood screenwriter before making aliyah a decade and a half ago, sees his adopted country as a “traumatized society.” Why else, he said, would polls show the vast majority of Israelis are willing to negotiate under fire, abandon some settlements and even send in the Israel Defense Force to protect Palestinian olive pickers from militant settlers — yet they cast their ballots for a government that opposes these steps?
Israelis are “demoralized by Likud, demoralized by the situation, but you don’t get the same numbers willing to support Labor or left-of-center parties because they fear changing horses in midstream,” asserts Schoffman.
“It’s a phenomenon of a traumatized society that is understandable and is propelled, I think, not only by common sense but by deep Jewish moral and ethical principals…People are often demoralized and some even stoop to amoral fantasies — transfer” of Palestinians.
He expects Sharon to emerge victorious, but “more dirt” could derail him. He also predicts Lapid’s secular Shinui Party may be a big winner, but he has problems with Lapid’s worldview.
“What has bothered me all along is that his demonization of the ultra-Orthodox exacerbates the gratuitous polarization in Israeli society between the religious and the secular.”
With Amutah, he works toward the opposite — a more pluralistic Israel.
“The real test of democracies are how they treat their weakest members, their most vulnerable minorities. Minorities are the miners’ canaries,” he noted.
“Israel’s greatest challenge is to live up to its pledge to be democratic and a Jewish state. We’re doing it slowly. The last thing Israel needs is to be vulnerable to demonization, to become a pariah state. Every inch of progress in terms of strengthening Israeli democracy is at the top of our agenda.”