Arieh Kovler

Category: Politics

  • Election roundup Monday 15 December

    Today’s election update:

    After last night’s press conference at which Shas leader Arye Deri was supported by founder R. Ovadia’s daughter, Adina bar-Shalom, today several recordings surfaced of Mrs bar-Shalom criticising Deri’s leadership of Shas.

    Eli Yishai, the former Shas leader who left the party yesterday, held a press conference tonight to discuss his own new party. Well, he tried to – but it was disrupted by Shas people calling him a traitor, grabbing the picture of R Ovadia and forcing Yishai to flee into a side-room, protected by hotel security, for his own safety. So that went well. Meanwhile, everyone is waiting to see if Uri Ariel will join Yishai to form a new party or will stick with Jewish Home.

    More trouble for Benjamin Netanyahu, as the Likud ‘court’ ruled that he’d actually lose last week’s vote on whether to make the party Primary earlier. He’s said he will appeal this ruling tomorrow, and it might end up at the Supreme Court. All this while he spent all day in Rome meeting John Kerry.

    The far-right is planning another comeback, with Michael Ben-Ari and Baruch Marzel resurrecting the Otzma L’Yisrael faction. It will probably struggle to make the new 4% election threshold, though.

    Moshe Kahlon and Yair Lapid met today in a supposed-to-be-secret meeting. Rumours say it was discussing ‘uniting the centre’, though this is not thought to be a full merged list and more of a cooperation agreement.

    Labour MK Avishai Braverman announced that he wasn’t planning to stand for the next Knesset.

  • Election roundup Sunday 14 December

    Political catch-up after a busy day (long post but short paragraphs):

    1. Eli Yishai has left Shas to form a new political party, provisionally called “Maran” (offensive much?). He might be joined by Uri Ariel of Tekuma, leaving the Bayit Yehudi. If they join up, the new CharDal (charedi-nationalist) party, probably Israel’s most right-wing party, will be called Yachad.
    2. Staying on Shas. There were rumours of big news from Shas, which initially seemed confirmed when Arye Deri annouced he’d hold a joint press conference with Adina bar-Shalom, R Ovadia’s daughter and a champion for Haredi women’s education. Rumours were that she would be on the Shas list to be an MK. The actual announcement – that she’d chair a new Women’s Committee for Shas – was a let-down. The other Shas news of the day was that Shas MKs met in secret and decided not to leave the party with Yishai.
    3. Every male Ashkenazi over the age of 35 seems to be running in th Bayit Yehudi primary. Today, Danny Dayan, the former head of the Yesha Council and a Likud stalwart, joined the party. Several other people have announced they’re standing in the primaries, including reality TV stars and political commentators
    4. Meanwhile, Yoni Chetbourn, a Bayit Yehudi MK, has quit the party tonight. Rumours he’s joining Yishai’s thing.
    5. Despite repeated rumours about people joining Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party, almost nobody is confirmed. In fact, as soon as a name is mooted someone comes out to deny they’re interested – Rami Levy, Michael Oren and Avi Katz of Cofix have all denied that they’re on the Kulanu list, though some are reportedly considering it.
    6. Last night Tzipi Livni was on the satirical news show Matzav HaUma and said some rude things about the Prime Minister, resulting in some very upset people saying rude things about her. I saw the show and actually thought she was pretty funny.

  • The Israeli Public and a Strike on Iran

    When I came to Israel nearly a year ago,  there was intense speculation that an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was imminent. Working inside the Jewish community in the UK, we had lots of worries about a possible strike, Iranian retaliation and the political and security ramfications. British news, Israeli news, world news were all talking as if a strike could happen any day.

    One of the first questions that my friends in the UK used to ask me about moving to Israel was “How is it over there? Is everyone worried about Iran?”. And I answered, no. Nobody was talking about Iran. It wasn’t being debated or overtly worried about. The topics of the day in Israel flowed seamlessly one into the other: The social justice movement, the Gilad Shalit deal, evacuating Migron and other unathorised settlement outposts, Haredi enlistment, new elections,  a new coalition, Egypt and then social justice again.

    In all this time Iran never left the headlines. It was frequently the lead story on the news here. But it somehow hadn’t permeated the country’s consciousness. It was a bit like the whole population was in denial about the fact that the air-raid sirens (which every town in Israel has) could start ringing at any minute to alert us of a counter-attack, giving us just 30 seconds to get to our bomb shelters or secure rooms.

    There also wasn’t really any debate about the wisdom or necessity of any strike. That was odd for two reasons. Firstly, retired senior Israeli security figures kept popping up on the news to say they thought a strike was a bad idea – the sort of thing that would normally start a public debate. Secondly, though, Israelis debate everything. All of the issues I mentioned above were and remain contentious. Was the Shalit deal a sacred trust to a soldier in captivity or was it a price so high that we should never pay it? Would forcing Haredim into military or civil service unify the country or pull it apart? But on the Iran issue, there was no real debate at street level. The Op-Eds and interviews didn’t filter down to café chats. It just wasn’t there.

    In the last few weeks, that seems to have changed dramatically. Suddenly I seem to hear nothing else but Iran talk – and again I don’t mean on the TV. Cab drivers will ask my opinion on the issue, old men playing chess or cards talk about whether a strike would be successful, people chatting at Kiddush after the Shabbat synagogue service question whether Hamas would join any retaliation and what Syria would do.

    I’m not sure what’s caused this. Yes, the Home Front Security has stepped up its work clearing bomb shelters and giving out gas masks (I got mine), but this has actually been ongoing for months. Maybe it just took a long time to sink in. An Iran strike is a big deal. So, of course, is a nuclear-capable Iran.

    So everyone is a bit more nervous, but that’s probably to the good. And the question is being debated, and that’s probably good too. Of course, this being Israel, the debate isn’t always the most respectful or mature. But it’s a start.

    I realise that I haven’t mentioned my own thoughts on an Iran strike. I’ll deal with that in another post.

  • The Burgas Bombing

    Israeli tourists were killed today in a bomb attack on a bus in Burgas, Bulgaria. We don’t know how many were killed yet – at least three, but there are reports of up to seven fatalities with 20 wounded. We don’t know for sure how the bombing was carried out, though initial reports suggest that either a suicide bomber carrying a backpack boarded the bus and exploded, or there was a bomb placed in the luggage compartment.

    And, of course, we don’t know who was responsible. It could be far-Rightists, though they don’t usually use suicide bombers. It could be an al Qaeda-linked bomber or a home-grown Salafi-Jihadi.

    But the biggest suspicion has to be on Hezbollah and Iran. Iran has, in recent weeks, launched or almost launched terrorist attacks against Israelis in India, Thailand, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kenya. A Hezbollah operative was stopped planning an attack in Cyprus earlier this week. Today is the 18th anniversary of the AMIA bombing, a Hezbollah operation jointly organised by Iran.

    The thing is, Hezbollah is a member of the Government of Lebanon. Iran is a sovereign state. These aren’t guys hiding in caves in Afghanistan. We know where they are and who they are.

    Bulgaria is a member of the European Union. An attack on tourists – teenagers – like this is an Act of War. It’s not 1994 any more. All countries, and especially EU countries, will have to take real steps against Iran, Hezbollah and possibly even Lebanon if there is good evidence that they’re behind it. Can Bulgarian athletes just compete against Iranians in the Olympics a couple of weeks after they bombed their country? Can EU Governments sit in international forums like it’s business as usual? Can they allow Iranian and Lebanese embassies to remain anywhere in the Western world?

    Enough. No country can ignore this anymore. Yes, this was an attack on Jews and Israelis and Jews and Israelis should respond to it. I’m sure the Israeli Government will find ways of responding, whether we find out about them or not. But we shouldn’t forget that it was also an attack on Bulgaria, Europe and the West as a whole. We shouldn’t give anyone a free pass for an act of war just because they were aiming for Jews.

  • Two-Tier Exams

    One of the commonest criticisms of Michael Gove’s proposals to reform England and Wales’ examinations is that it would recreate a two-tier system: more prestigious O-levels and less-good CSEs, instead of the universal GCSE that exists today.

    The problem with this argument is that many commentators don’t seem to realise that GCSEs are themselves a two-tier examination system.

    GCSEs have a wide grading system. There are nine possible grades obtainable at GCSE, A* (the best) to G and then U, which means Unclassified. Technically, anything other than a U is a pass-mark. Despite this, there is a de facto acceptance that a ‘Good GCSE’ is one with a grade of A*-C. School league tables measure the number of students obtaining A*-C. Many colleges, universities and employers consider anything below a C as effectively a fail-grade.

    This is acknowledged in the structure of the GCSE exams themselves. Many GCSE subjects – including core subjects English and Maths – are formally examined in two different papers: Foundation and Higher.

    The Higher track has possible grades of A*-D. Any student that takes GCSE Higher exams (and coursework) and doesn’t get at least a D fails all the way with a U grade.

    The Foundation track offers grades of C-G. The absolute best that a student in the Foundation track can do is to get a C-grade, considered the lowest “good GCSE”, but it’s actually pretty hard to fail a Foundation exam outright. Anyone who actually gets a C in a Foundation paper probably shouldn’t have been sitting it; they should have taken a Higher paper and possibly achieved a higher mark.

    In many schools, GCSE subjects with tiered exams are taught in ability-streams or sets, with the top classes being prepared for the Higher paper, the bottom sets learning material for the Foundation course, and maybe students in middle classes being assigned to a course by their teachers depending on performance.

    This initial streaming, though, would usually happen at the start of the GCSE course, at age 14.

    Interestingly, the Government’s own DirectGov website describes these as “tiers”:

    …you have a choice of two tiers: ‘higher’ or ‘foundation’. Each tier leads to a different range of grades. Your subject teacher normally decides which tier is best for you.

    Many private schools won’t offer Foundation papers at all and won’t sit students for them, so journalists who didn’t come up through the state system and whose children go to private schools might not have encountered them. Perhaps that’s why they haven’t been mentioned very much.

    So is the Gove proposal really that different? I don’t know, and certainly there is at least some fluidity in the current system. A student who improves rapidly can be moved from the Foundation to the Higher track. Perhaps this could  be preserved betwen CSEs and O-Levels?

    On the other hand, given that there’s already a two-tier system we might as well treat it with some respect. What would be more impressive: a low A in a future CSE or a high E-grade in a GCSE today? Nick Clegg’s answer would presumably be the latter, but it’s not clear to me that he’s right.