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Haaretz
original article
Thu., January 07, 2010 Tevet 21, 5770 | Israel Time: 05:26 (EST+7)
Last update - 05:24 07/01/2010
Most Israeli diplomats know nothing about Jews or Zionism
By Israel Harel
In the middle of a visit to Dimona, Avigdor Lieberman was summoned for
urgent consultations with the prime minister. But his security people, he
later told friends, prevented him from traveling at night using the shortest
route. When he insisted, he was told that the ban also applies to pilots
from the nearby Nevatim air base. The stunned foreign minister protested: I
have an armored car and enhanced security; the road to my home in Nokdim (a
West Bank settlement) ought to be more dangerous than a road through the
Negev. But it didn't help. Those are the orders, he was told.
Two weeks passed, and Lieberman once again complained - this time, during a
gathering for Israeli diplomats overseas. "I saw several ambassadors," he
said, "whose identification with the other side is so great that they always
want to justify and explain it ... There must be no bootlicking and
self-abnegation."
Has Lieberman requested a cabinet discussion on the law-enforcement
agencies' failure to eliminate the security risk to travelers on that road
through the Negev, or the arms and drug smuggling, the protection racket,
the takeover of lands in the Negev and the sabotage of water and electricity
lines there? The answer is no. Did he categorically demand that the public
security minister, who used to command the police's southern district,
impose Israeli sovereignty on the Negev? If he did, there is certainly no
sign of it.
Lieberman is not a member of the opposition who can make do with expressing
his pain and frustration over our loss of control over the Negev, or over
ambassadors who, in his words, bootlick the nations of the world. He is a
senior minister in the Israeli government, and to a far greater extent than
most other ministers, he has the power to change things in this country -
first and foremost, in the Foreign Ministry and the police. After all, he
only has to wink and Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, a member
of the party Lieberman heads, will hasten to do his bidding.
Diaspora Jews have been complaining for years about Israeli representatives
who represent Israel weakly or even unwillingly. Some even identify with
most of the Palestinians' claims. An intellectual who immigrated here from
Europe told me of one Israeli ambassador who was close to Leila Shahid, a
senior PLO official. At a meeting with intellectuals, Shahid claimed that in
1948, the Haganah prestate militia conquered Palestine, which was then an
independent state, and perpetrated ethnic cleansing. The ambassador, who was
sitting in the audience, remained silent. It was a local intellectual, an
ardent leftist, who got up to refute Shahid's lies. A veteran Foreign
Ministry official confirmed this story and added that two years ago he
witnessed an identical situation - this time involving a different
ambassador.
Rebukes, however justified, are not the solution. The Foreign Ministry's
fundamental ailments, which include a lack of identification by some
officials with the justice of the Jewish state's cause, require a thorough
root canal.
Most Foreign Ministry personnel, one former ambassador said, want to serve
their country loyally. But they are handicapped by a severe lack of
knowledge about the history of the Jewish people and Zionism, and above all,
by a lack of leadership. I can't recall, he added, that the current foreign
minister ever issued clear and binding written instructions about which
precise policies the ministry's envoys are supposed to represent.
When the government is hesitant, unfocused and, with regard to foreign
policy, even divided, it's the people in the field who wind up setting
policy. This is true even in the most sensitive areas, where the country's
leaders would prefer ambiguity to clarity of either word or deed. And it is
especially true when the people in the field are serving far away from the
centers of power - whether in the Negev or overseas. After all, from the
point of view of consciousness, Paris is much closer to Israelis' hearts
than a road through the Negev on which they are not even allowed to travel
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