+972 has managed to get its hands onto a draft plan of President Barack Obama’s next campaign move,  hitting back at Mitt Romney after the latter unilaterally elevated the U.S. relationship with Israel from “special” to “cherished.”

According to the leaked document, the move will consist of a similar ad, elevating the relationship further to “precious.” Visual materials in the ad are rumoured to include tank-shaped chocolates, flowers and close-up shots on Obama’s doctoral degree from Yale. Alongside the ad, an automated phone campaign will be launched, bestowing upon each Jewish and evangelical household in the United States a message recorded by the president himself. The script for the message, also obtained by +972, runs as follows:

One of the most odious features of the bi-annual budget approved by the cabinet last week and slated for an upcoming Knesset vote is the tax hike for the middle class (including a one-point increase in both VAT  and income tax for anyone earning a dime above the average monthly wage of  $2,100), contrasted with a ludicrous one-off $7 billion tax break for several huge multinationals. The note below, posted by a young IDF female soldier named Sapir Bachar on Netanyahu’s Facebook wall, garnered nearly 80,000 “likes” – a huge number in Israeli terms. It’s a very good illustration of just how absurd the situation of the Israeli middle class has become:

The front page of Israel’s main financial daily, The Marker, pretty much says all you need to know about the capital-government-military relationship in 2012 Israel:

Top headline: “They earned 120 billion – and will only pay  3 billion in taxes. A new proposal from the treasury to the tycoon companies increases tax break to 70 percent.”

Second headline: “Costs of gas rig security soars: The IDF demands 3 billion.”

The context here is that some of the largest companies operating in Israel have around NIS 120 billion worth of profits “stuck” inside the country: they haven’t registered the profits as dividends, so as not to pay corporate taxes, which would have amounted to about NIS 30 billion. The government is, as always, concerned about hurting their tender feelings and “scaring off investors”, so it’s bending over backwards to let them get away with as much as possible: The treasury originally demanded 25 billion, then the tax authority said 15 billion would be enough, then the finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, went down to 5 billion, and today, climbed down further, to 3 billion (and possibly as laughably little as 1 billion).

Meanwhile, the navy is asking for up to NIS 3 billion (for among other things,  acquiring four new warships) to do what the navy is supposed to do, which is to protect Israeli interests at sea. Only the interests, in this case, are not so much Israeli as Israel’s tycoons, who will be pocketing the vast majority of the profits from the gas fields. The previous estimate for the costs the state will incur in securing the rigs stood at NIS 20 million, and the commander of the navy told The Marker no more than three months ago that all the infrastructure for securing the gas fields was already in place.

In other words: Instead of gathering the actual taxes owed by tycoons – 20 billion or so – Israel agrees to take just 3 billion, and, literally on the same day, is required to pump these 3 billion back to the tycoons in the form of security for their gas rigs. What goes around comes around, and quickly, too.

Ehud Olmert, one of the erstwhile “princes” of the old Likud, was convicted today of breach of trust and acquitted on more serious charges of corruption in two cases, Rishon Tours and the Talansky money envelopes. Somehow, this seems apt: breach of trust is a term that might well be used to sum up the entire legacy of a prime minister who was elected as a ‘centrist’ committed to the ‘peace process’ or at least (perish the thought) to unilateral withdrawals, and proceeded to squander thousands of lives – Palestinians, Israelis, Lebanese – in two atrociously unnecessary wars.

Fortunately, we don’t yet have to deal with the  scenario of Israel’s worst-ever prime minister returning from the netherworld: The most serious and complicated case against Olmert, that of the Holyland apartment complex in Jerusalem, is still outstanding, and even if acquitted, Olmert is held in such contempt by most Israelis (largely for his disastrous mismanagement of the Second Lebanon War), the chances of him returning to power are blissfully slim.

But there’s one detail of the ruling I’d like to turn your attention to: While Olmert was acquitted, his principal assistant and secretary, Shula Zaken, who supposedly served as the go-between in the alleged bribe money transfers, was convicted. Among other things, of fraud. Yet the person on whose behalf she committed fraud, walks scot-free. Jupiter and oxen much?

At any rate, this is as good a day as any to reflect on the two most visible monuments to Olmert’s legacy: The separation wall and the Holyland project. The thousands of people who would have been alive if it wasn’t for him – Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese – are, as usual, off-frame.

Photo: Dimi Reider

Call it a postcard from Putin, if you will: The account below was posted by Gil Yardeni, one of my favourite Israeli poets and a Hebrew University biology major, who happened to be passing by the visiting Russian president’s convoy in Jerusalem, a few hours ago. The weirdest thing about the whole affair is that leaving out the odd demonstration here and there, Gil can hardly be even considered an activist, much less a high-profile one. She doesn’t organise protests, she’s not member of any movement or party, and does not work for a human rights NGO. That the secret service (whatever branch that was) would have so much information available on her, and would be happy to flaunt it on the preposterous pretext of crossing the street in proximity to Putin’s convoy,  is nauseating. Here goes:

Veteran Yediot Ahronoth reporter Sever Plocker published the following account on his Facebook page earlier tonight:

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein announced on Wednesday his intention to indict Uri Blau, one of Israel’s top investigative reporters, for possession of classified materials without permission. The materials in question are documents given to Blau by whistleblower Anat Kamm; Kamm, then a conscript clerk in the office of GOC Central Command, copied them from the GOC’s computer, believing they constituted evidence of war crimes carried out in defiance of international law and Israel’s own Supreme Court, including summary executions of terrorism suspects who could have been detained.

Kamm is presently serving a four and a half-year prison sentence following a plea bargain in which she admitted to possession and transfer of classified documents.

The decision today marks a crucial milestone in a process that has been dragging on for more than two years, as prosecutors considered the implications of indicting a journalist for doing something well established in his trade. Almost every journalist with claims to be anything but a stenographer for the army spokesman has held onto classified information – written or otherwise – that was received outside official channels, without authorisation.

Although Blau, in the early days of the investigation into the leak, had already given over to the state all the documents he used to publish the story on summary executions, the state demanded the rest of the cache. During the investigation, Blau spent time in political exile in London, waiting while his lawyers negotiated with the state the terms of a deal under which he would not be prosecuted. Once the deal was struck and Blau did his part, however, the state got greedy, and demanded full access his entire archive, amassed over a decade of investigative work. Then it said it might prosecute him anyway. Blau remained in limbo, his ability to work severely curtailed: few sources would go out on a limb for a journalist likely to be tightly monitored by the security agencies. He only began writing regularly a few months ago, publishing a few stories on the behind the scenes workings of the Israeli right, mostly through deft use of freedom of information requests.

Obtaining and retaining classified information is the bread-and-butter of a civilian journalists monitoring the country’s most powerful and insulated institution – the military. Although Israel has no laws to protect journalists, in most cases (barring one prosecution concerning the revelation of cooperation between the Israeli and Morrocan intelligence agencies half...

Following up on Noam’s report on what’s developing into a night of unprecedented violence against African asylum seekers in Tel Aviv, here is a testimony uploaded onto Facebook after yesterday’s protest, by one of the many community activists who walked home a group of African children to make sure they weren’t attacked.

Turns out that the Arab cab driver – any Israeli cab driver who happens to be Arab – is deemed so much a security risk simply by virtue of his excessive Arabness that he can’t be allowed to drive staff to and from Ben Gurion Airport. We learn this from an urgent letter sent today by the Association for Civil Rights Israel (ACRI), to the director of the Israel Airport Authority, Yaakov Ganot, demanding he cancel forthwith a directive issued from the office of the director of Ben Gurion Airport to a cab company servicing the employees of Israel’s main international hub.

The directive, signed by the airport’s transportation director Shuki Shemer, quite simply bans the company from employing “drivers from minorities, including all routes.” Palestinian citizens of Israel  are commonly referred to as “minorities”, a euphemism comparable in sophistication to using “coloureds” instead of “blacks” in American discourse.  The letter (Hebrew, .pdf) is so refreshingly blunt in its unmitigated racism it merits a full translation, with loving preservation of the officious clumsiness of the original:

ACRI’s attorney Tal Hassin stressed (Hebrew) that the directive is illegal, being in explicit violation the Basic (constitutional) Law on Freedom of Occupation and the law on equality of opportunity in employment. I can only add to that that the IAA and Ben Gurion Airport are not private companies but state authorities. As Noam often says, if you don’t like the word “apartheid”, you’re welcome come up with a new term that will describe our situation with all its precious exceptionality – and nefariousness – thrown in.

The weekend supplement of Ma’ariv ran an exhaustive investigation of the effect the Palestinian rocket threat has on Israeli children living within their range. On the left is the “illustration” by one Ophir Bagon, which opened the story. On the right is the original photo. See the difference?

And here is the pic as it first appeared, on Ma’ariv’s front page just two months ago:

h/t John Brown 

The stray winds of the Internet brought to my desk the following piece by Rex Murphy. It doesn’t add much (anything) new to the debate, but it does offer a rather neat digest of a pseudo-liberal argument; the argument used by conservative commentators who enjoy applauding distant Middle Easterners fighting to find a voice, but quickly get cold feet when the same struggle erupts a little closer to home.

Look: It doesn’t matter that in Cairo the original rallying flag was protesting a dictatorship, in Montreal – tuition fees and in Tel Aviv, originally, rent. Quebec, Wall Street, London, Tel Aviv, Madrid, Cairo, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain are all part of the same Spring, because in all those cases multitudes of people are realising that it’s not that they are apolitical, but that the political system in their countries is inadequate at safeguarding and expressing their interests. That each system is geared primarily to preserve the status quo, and that status quo no longer tolerable, and needs to and can be overthrown. So someone sneeringly comparing “future elites having a self-indulgent fit” to the Brave Egyptians or the Fearless Syrians isn’t supporting the Arab Revolution. He’s merely revealing what side he is really on, and, whatever plaudits he pays revolutions happening at a safe distance, what side he would probably be in any other place the Spring has visited: The side of the status quo.

A Swedish tourist trying to enter Israel was made to sign a “contract” promising she won’t get in touch with “pro-Palestinian” organisations, and acknowledging she’ll get deported if she “gets caught doing even one of these things.” Meanwhile, Prime Minister’s Office released a letter that will be handed to deported Flytilla activists: Go to Syria. 

Check this out. This is a “contract” that a Swedish citizen was required to sign upon entering Israel via the Eilat land crossing:

Please, stop snickering at the “nine-tens,” the “passpot,” and the bizarre grammatical construct in the first sentence. This is quite serious. The person in question told +972:

Earlier this morning, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted this uncharacteristically laconic message:

The smug announcement was further drilled home by a press release from the Prime Minister’s Office, which gushed at the prime minister surpassing the 200,000 “likes” bar, noted opponents trail “far behind” and crowned the prime minister’s Facebook page as an instrument “linking the people and the leader.” The website of Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich (with a self-confessedly humble 20,000 plus ‘”likes”) quickly shot back with the following observation from the head of its Internet volunteer teams, Amichai Saragovi:

Saragovi then takes the gloves off and proceeds to accuse Netanyahu of deliberately misleading the public.

Screenshot of the searches can be found at the bottom of Saragovi’s post. It should be noted that Netanyahu has been advertising his page relentlessly in the last few months – even if none of the “likes” on his page have been purchased, as activists were quick to suggest, the financial investment in the page is a considerable one.

The Prime Minister’s Office is yet to respond to the stats.