Caroline Glick has new column on the Ilan Halimi murder. In it, she complains about the lack of coverage given by the Israeli media to this story. She also complains about the silence of the interim government, blaming that silence on their political philosophy and supposed cowardice:
No Israeli government minister, official or spokesman has condemned his murder. No Israeli official has demanded that the French authorities investigate why the police refused to take anti-Semitism into account during Ilan's captivity. No Israeli official flew to Paris to participate in Ilan's funeral or any other memorial or demonstration in his memory. The Foreign Ministry's Web site makes no mention of his murder. The Israeli Embassy in Paris -- which has been without an ambassador for the past several months -- only publicly expressed its condolences to the Halimi family on February 23 - ten days after Ilan was found. This, when the French Jewish community considers Halimi's murder to have been the greatest calamity to have befallen it in recent years; when aliyah rates from France rose 25 percent last year; and when Ilan's mother has told reporters that her son had planned to make aliyah soon and was just staying in France to save money to finance his move to Israel. For its part, as Michelle Mazel pointed out in the Jerusalem Post Thursday, the French press has noted smugly that the Israeli media has not given the story prominent coverage. Halimi's murder has not appeared on the front pages of the papers or at the top of the television or radio broadcasts in Israel.
Although appalling, the absence of an official Israeli outcry against Halimi's murder is not the least surprising. Today, the unelected Kadima interim government, like the Israeli media, is doing everything in its power to lull the Israeli people into complacency towards the storm of war raging around us. Against the daily barrages of Kassam rockets on southern Israel; nervous reports of Al Qaida setting up shop in Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the ascension of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority; and Iran's threats of nuclear annihilation, Israel's citizenry, under the spell of Kadima and the media, appears intent on ignoring the dangers and pretending that what happens to Jews in France has nothing to do with us.
Israel's societal meekness accords well with Kadima's ideology. Its creed was best expressed by Foreign Minister, Justice Minister and Immigration Minister Tzipi Livni last month at the Herzliya Conference and is most aptly characterized as "conditional Zionism." In her speech, Livni explained that Israel's international legitimacy is conditional. Unless a Palestinian state is established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, she warned, Israel will lose its legitimacy as a Jewish state.
Glick damages an otherwise good column with her smears. (See for yourself.) Israel's reacion to the Halimi murder is indeed puzzling. But, as any Diaspora Jewish community will tell you, Israel often ignores issues of local import, and steps on community toes in others. This is not a new phenomenum, and it is not limited to Paris or the Halimi murder.
This does not excuse Israeli behavior. But it adds perspective which Glick intentionally removes. Why? Because Glick formerly worked for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud candidate for Prime Minister. She is a Likud partisan – and a right-wing one at that. This explains why Glick digs low and dirty, and turns the Halimi murder into an anti-Kadima story. (Glick did not disclose her relationship to Netanyahu in this column, a clear breech of ethics.)
Further, those Israeli officials apparently asleep at the switch in Paris and Jerusalem were, for the most part, put in their positions by a Likud government. Others are career civil servants with no public political ties. Yet Glick ignores this fact in order to smear Kadima.
Even more so, the men she trumpets for high office, Netanyahu and former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon acted no better than PM Olmert and Co. Neither men sent their condolances or made any public remarks of the type Glick craves.
This sad story can do without cheap political posturing. Unfortunately, Glick (and her former employer) personify exactly that.