December 15, 2010 Lack of Acountability in Israel, Lack of Accountability in the American Jewish Establishment?

A Daily Analysis

This week, Prime Minister Netanyahu used his best deal making skills, not with the Palestinians or with the United States, but with his coalition partners to make sure there were not enough Knesset votes to approve the establishment of an official State inquiry into the Carmel fire. Instead he convinced State comptroller Lindenstraus to issue a special report on the fire. Of course the fact that Lindenstraus had just issued a report, underscoring the fact that the government did nothing in response to the non-binding report after the Second Lebanon War, was exactly the outcome Netanyahu wanted… An investigation that will join together a long list of comptroller reports that are never acted upon and for which no one is ever held accountable.

This is phenomenon, of lack of accountability, is nothing new. When I was growing up my grandmother’s cousin, who we called "Yup", (the son of the chief Rabbi of Cologne, who moved to Israel in the 1930's) worked as the assistant comptroller (for investigations) at the Jewish Agency. At that time, I was in College and worked for the Agency in New York. Yup would tell me stories of the investigations he would conduct and how his reports were never heeded. Working at the Jewish Agency I saw much evidence of dysfunction and corruption back then first hand. While a lack of accountability is nothing new, what has been new in the last 30 years has been the incompetence of the ministers serving in the Israeli government. In the past, the ministers may have been politically corrupt, but they were never such poor administrators as Eli Yishai. In addition, there had never been someone in charge of the Health Ministry who could barely speak Hebrew and whose primary interest is in the treatment of Gur Hassidim I wish Israel was New Zealand, a place where governing is not generally of dire importance.

Now, on to the second half of this story...I worked for the Jewish Agency in New York once again 15 years later. My cousin Yup was gone. I served for one year as the Asst. VP of the Agency in New York. In that capacity, I saw a a number of cases of corruption, including the infamous suits that Simcha Dinitz bought using the Agency's credit card. A few years later, when I was back living in Israel, Dinitz was charged (and ultimately cleared on appeal) of embezzlement. Part of Dinitz's defense was that his needed to be dressed appropriately for meetings with his top American counterparts-- all of whom (the professionals and not the lay leadership) were earning at least four times as much as he was earning. I certainly do not want to be the defender of Dinitz, who, like to many public servants, believed he deserved the best in accommodations money could buy. However, this part of the story held a certain grain of truth. Since, during that time I learned that the top administrators in Jewish Federations were earning $250,000 salaries, a sum that, back then, I thought was outrageous. I further believed that these mega salaries were the cause of major structural problems to the Jewish community. However, that is a different, and much longer discussion.

This brings us up to today. T did its second annual survey of Jewish professional leaders. According to the latest statistics, the highest paid professional in the Jewish World today is the head of the Cleveland Federation, who earns north of $650,000. It is important to note that his pay went up last year, as did the salaries of most of the heads of Jewish organizations. If you were to factor inflation in for what I thought were high salaries of 1990, then the highest paid Jewish professional should be making about $450,000. It appears that since these salaries are being paid with “other people's money” who is to say, what is proper compensation. Especially since the communities of Jewish professionals have banded together, with their teams of consultants, to ensure that lay people have generally been emasculated over time. This has left the professional people firmly in control, through good times and bad. The best proof of the professional stronghold over Jewish organizations is the fact that almost everyone on that list (of Jewish professionals) I worked with 20 years ago, while at the Jewish Agency. These same people have remained in power all these years, just slowly but surely increasing their salaries over the years. With two exceptions they are also all male. In a similar, but slightly different vain, I received an e-mail appeal today from the New Israel Fund. Considering the news of the last few days, I would have expected to read about an appeal to influence of fight right wing rabbis or something along those lines. To my surprise, instead the NIF was trying to, as Israeli would say, "take a tramp" (hitch hike) on the Carmel Fires, in an appeal for money for the Carmel fires. Shame on them.

Today, the Israeli news today was filled with a story about the head of the Technion complaining how far behind Israel is falling in Science and Math education, based on the latest PISA test results. The comparison results are indeed discouraging, with Israel ranking at the bottom third, behind Jordan and Qatar. It should be noted, though, that when I took a closer look at the results, Israel's position in the ranking is static, as is the ranking of the US. There has been little change in Israel’s case since 2006, and no change for the US since 2003. (Israel’s students, were not part of the study prior to 2006.) The rest of the world has been moving steadily forward, while Israel and the US have stayed in the same place. The Technion’s President had a simplistic solution - eliminate the electives in Israeli high schools and just concentrate on Math and Science. Somehow I doubt that this is the right solution.

If you have chance read by Bradley Burston