The China Daily, China's official English newspaper, published a picture of Ehud Olmert on its front page last Tuesday. The picture showed Olmert milking a cow at a demonstration dairy farm set up by Israel near Beijing. Under the photograph - without any connection to Olmert or the cow's udders - the newspaper published its main story. President Hu Jintao had launched an all out campaign to fight corruption.
Nine senior officials in the communist cabinet and party, above the ministerial level, were arrested within the last year, and this is just the tip of the iceberg: During the first eight months of 2006, no less than 17,505 state officials faced corruption charges.
Before suggesting that the legal system in Israel dispatch its best investigators to China to learn abut cleanliness and order, we should remember that China is deemed to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
There is almost no way of doing business there without first padding the state officials' wallets. This is what happens to a nation whose turnover totals unimaginable amounts of money, where there is no transparency, no independent legal system and everything is left to the arbitrary decisions of officials and party dealers.
Corruption is like pornography: The more vociferous statements to combat it are made, the more it flourishes.
The report in the Chinese newspaper intrigued me for one main reason. Evidently, the Chinese regime attributes the same level of severity to criminal offenses such as theft or taking bribery and to what other nations tend to call "perks."
For example, a senior detainee who was formerly in charge of building the Olympic facilities in Beijing was dismissed from the party after being accused of corruption. "The investigation also revealed (it was written in the newspaper) that his lifestyle was corrupt and atrophied. He misused the powers vested in him to pamper his mistress."
Then there's the deputy commander of the Chinese navy and a member of parliament. He is accused of "moral corruption." The newspaper noted that he had been turned in by one of his mistresses. "She had had inappropriate relations with him for quite some time."
And the list goes on. The message the Chinese regime is trying to convey to its subjects, and particularly to its officials, is that it's all one and the same: He who takes a mistress also takes bribery. It all comes from the same source, from that same moral atrophy. It is reminiscent of a joke about a man who caught his wife in bed with a strange man. "You'll end up smoking as well," he told her.
In the war against corruption our situation is far better than that of the Chinese. The courts of law here, the attorney general's office and the police often err and suffer from many shortcomings. However, it cannot be said that they function as servants of the government. Their independence is our greatest asset.
Those same politicians and journalists who just two to three years ago ran a destructive campaign against the legal system and called it the "Rule of law gang," contributed to the rise in corruption. This hasn't prevented them from sounding a painful cry against the corruption prevalent today.
Economists are wondering why the sensational news coming out of the investigation rooms haven't managed to crush the stock exchange. The prime minister is after all about to be investigated on one affair while the finance minister will be investigated on another; the heads of the tax authority are being investigated on a third and more severe affair, and other affairs are still pending. How could this be, ask the economists, that such a series of earthquakes hasn’t affected the stocks?
This question has two possible answers, and readers are invited to select the most appropriate. The first is that the faith in the stability of Israeli rule is so great that no personnel-related upheaval could affect it. If the prime minister is suspended another will come in his place. The same applies to the finance minister and the president.
What has transpired at the tax authority can serve as a good example: When the head of the tax authority was apprehended for questioning, the cabinet immediately took steps to find an appropriate replacement even though no indictment had been served yet.
The second option is that Israelis have become so experienced in the process that begins with sensational headlines and ends with nothing, that they refuse to get excited.
Israelis no longer trust their politicians, not a single one. However, it appears that despite all the disappointments, despite the cynicism, the ridicule and jokes, and despite what they say in opinion polls, they continue to believe in the State and its institutions. Otherwise investments would have disappeared from here long ago.
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