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February 26, 2010
New report damns Israel
Lot Blitzed
Foreign Correspondent
TEL AVIV - On the heels of the controversial Goldstone Report on the Israeli actions in Gaza last year, a new, secondary report has tongues wagging in Israel.
The Silverstone Report, delivered recently by erstwhile well-respected Australian jurist Richard Silverstone, is the result of a lengthy inquiry into Israeli behavior in Israel. Response has been fierce among Israel’s seven million political commentators.
“We are dumbfounded,” wrote noted Israeli commentator Yoram haHahah. “Judge Silverstone was a respected, fair and balanced man. I heard he was a Zionist. Now, this?”
The Silverstone inquiry drew suspicion from numerous quarters and the Israeli government refused to participate in hearings into what the terms of reference called “the observable guilt of Israelis in jostling through shops, cutting into queues, refusing to say ‘bevakasha’ or to sneeze into the bend of the arm as all civilized people now do.”
Politicians and commentators condemned the report as one-sided and unfair.
“Have you ever tried picking up a few last-minute items before Shabbat?” demanded columnist Barry Ruder. “If every Israeli took the time to say please and thank you, nothing would ever get done in this place.”
The Silverstone Report condemned what its author called “the Israeli insistence on incessant arguing and nitpicking and pilpul.” Israeli sociologists disagreed on the accusation.
“Two Jews, three opinions, goes the old saying,” Ofer Enofer said over instant coffee at a sociology conference in Haifa.
“It’s three Jews, five opinions,” interjected his colleague Gilad Handler.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu dismissed the report as predisposed to find Israel guilty and condemned it, the author, the publisher, the committee that set it up and his former housekeeper.
Netanyahu seemed especially incensed at the Silverstone Report’s allegation that Israelis drive like maniacs.
“How do you expect Israelis to drive?” Netanyahu asked after a cabinet meeting Sunday. “We have places to get to, things to do. This isn’t a holiday living in Israel. You want to wait behind a zayde driving 15 in a 50 zone, you go back to Florida.”
Judge Silverstone, in London Monday, in an interview with the BBC, defended his report as unbiased, decent, fair-minded and accurate.
“The Israeli government wouldn’t participate,” said Silverstone. “I did the best I could to substantiate all the unsubstantiated allegations and libels I included in this report.”
In a statement yet to be released, the head of Israel’s government press office said, “It is the official position of the state to question the validity of any report by anyone. The government won’t comment any further, until it receives the recommendations of the forthcoming internal inquiry, headed by the Hon. Richard Bronzestone.”
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