A fire and racist flames

By URI AVNERY | ARAB NEWS

A fire and racist flames

The judge: "You are accused of murdering your wife and two children. How do you plead: Guilty or not guilty?" The accused: "Your honor, I do not deal with the past. I think about the future!"

No, not a scene from a comedy. Something very similar really happened. That is how Eli Yishai, the minister of the interior, Benjamin Netanyahu and the other nincompoops responded this week to the accusations of gross negligence which resulted in the unprecedented giant firestorm that ravaged large parts of Mount Carmel and caused the deaths of 42 people.

The epitome of chutzpah was reached by Eli Yishai (Shas). He addressed the public on the last day and claimed that he was the victim of a lynching because he is "Orthodox and Sephardi." But even if he had been a blue-eyed secular Ashkenazi, he should have been thrown down the government stairs. If Yishai had faced the judge mentioned above, he would have answered: "Your honor, all my predecessors also murdered their wives and children. So why do you single me out? Only because I am Orthodox and Sephardi?"

One shocking piece of evidence suffices to attach personal blame to this individual. When the fire broke out, Haifa airport, where the fire-fighting planes were stationed, did not stock a single kilo of fire-retardant material. The stock in the entire country was enough for the first 20 minutes only. Israel had to send SOS messages to all the countries throughout the world to beg for the material. If Yishai had invested in the fire-fighting services a fraction of the energy and enthusiasm which he invested in promoting the man-hunters of the "Oz" immigration unit, the fire would have been conquered within an hour, instead of blazing in unabated fury for three days.

The main responsibility, however, does not rest with Eli Yishai, but with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is he who appointed this good-for-nothing to this job, just as he appointed Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister and Limor Livnat as minister for culture. And all the other ministers, almost all whom are quite unsuited for their tasks 

Netanyahu's own conduct during the crisis bordered on farce. While the firefighters were busy trying to extinguish the fire, he was equally busy trying to extinguish the growing criticism of himself. He hurried from place to place, immortalized himself in every possible pose and talked and talked. Nothing was spontaneous, nothing came from the heart. Everything a pose, everything unserious. One moment he entrusted Interior Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch with the responsibility for the entire operation, the next moment he forgot all about him, as if he had never existed. He appointed the mayor of Netanya, appropriately named Miriam Feirberg ("Mountain of Fire") as special commissioner for compensation. Two days later he accepted her resignation.

Netanyahu also invented a substitute for a Commission of Inquiry: A press conference.

But it appears that Netanyahu knows his people. The polls show that a large part of the public has been profoundly impressed by his dynamic leadership.

But beyond the failings of individual politicians who pose as leaders, a frightening picture of the entire ruling establishment has been revealed. The picture that has emerged is of total chaos. The flames shed light on only one accidental part — the fire-fighting services — but there is no doubt that a similar situation exists in almost all other departments of the government, from the Defense Ministry to the education system.

Many years of party corruption have led to a situation where at every crucial point the wrong person occupies the wrong position. The crime of "political appointments" has crippled the civil service.

The lack of an efficient fire-fighting service is only a symptom of the disease. The same situation prevails in the education system, which is producing a generation of ignoramuses, as was revealed this week by PISA, an authoritative international study. We do not know what is really happening in the army, but Lebanon War II revealed a picture of a military not much better than the fire-fighting service this week.

In order to turn Israel into a modern state, we need a thorough change in the entire establishment. Instead of busying ourselves with empty slogans, like "a Jewish and democratic state", we should see to it that Israel becomes, first of all, a state capable of safeguarding the security and well-being of its citizens — all of them.

That brings us straight to the overturned hubble-bubble (Nargileh in Palestinian Arabic). From the first moment on, I was worried that the fire would ignite a huge conflagration of racist flames. After all, the fire did break out near an Arab locality. I asked myself: How long will it take until the racists are falling over themselves fighting to exploit this opportunity?

At first I was pleasantly surprised. In many ways, the disaster brought out the most positive sides of Israeli society. But the police — who are deeply stained by anti-Arab discrimination — could not restrain themselves for two whole days. Thus, at the height of the disaster, when the public was glued to the TV screen and emotions were running as high as the flames in the forest, the police released a sensational piece of news: They had caught two Arab boys, aged 14 and 16, who were guilty of starting the whole thing.

Even if the boys had inadvertently caused the fire by their negligence, was there a need to treat them like hardened criminals, drag them brutally from their home in the middle of their family lunch, interrogate them harshly and try to get them to incriminate each other? In the end they were released and the police grabbed another boy of 16.

The event did actually have a racist face, but from a quite different perspective. Racism played a major role in it. The fire started near Ussafiyeh. In this Druze locality, with its 10,000 inhabitants, there was no fire station. Nor was there any is the neighboring Druze locality of Daliyat Al-Carmel, which has 15,000 inhabitants. The Arab local councils, which are discriminated against in most spheres, are disadvantaged in this sphere, too.

This week, racism revenged itself. If there had been fire stations in the Druze localities, the fire could have been put out in short order, even with the East wind and the dry trees, before it could develop into a disaster. The neglect of the Druze localities had a dramatic effect on our ability to extinguish a fire on the Carmel. The 42 victims paid with their lives for this racism.

It is clear that the Israeli political establishment is in need of a general overhaul, nothing less. That is impossible with types like Eli Yishai and his master, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who proclaimed this week that the courageous female police officer, Ahuva Tomer, and the 41 cadets who were killed by the fire died because they broke the sabbath. What is needed now is nothing less than an awakening of the "silent majority". They must understand that by their indifference, they are no less guilty than the politicians who were, after all, elected by them.