# 252 – Guilty

May 15, 2004

So how will the World judge the fact that our ex-PM, plus quite a few other ‘leaders in our society’ is now facing a 6-year prison sentence for bribery and corruption?

First, let me say that it does depend on whom you ask. Like it or not, we’re all different, and we all have very differing views over these subjects:

Politics

Corruption

Middle East / Israel

Jews

Life, etc.

The Anti-Defamation League announced this week the release of the ADL Global 100 Index, a global survey of anti-Semitism (not quite sure why that word needs a Capital S..).

The statistics are ‘frightening’ from many points of view. I am not going to delve into that very sensitive subject. You can of course look it up. The details are there.

Suffice to say that almost 1/2 of those polled (over 50,000 in 102 countries – not something to tut-tut at) had no idea what the Holocaust is (capital H correct here…).

30% judged the Jewish population in the World to be between 1-10%, and 18% said at least 10% were Jewish. (It’s about 0.2%).

We get too much attention….

Only today, checking a few facts before writing this “Letter”, I see the following was written in the ‘more leftist daily’, Ha-Aretz, at around the same time:

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But in the Holyland affair, the “victimless crime” argument is untenable. Here there are nearly one million victims.

Jerusalem itself is the first of them.

Its inhabitants, who pass under or see the ugly buildings from their windows, are the real victims. Before it was a major corruption scandal, the Holyland Park project was an environmental, architectural and planning crime against the capital and its residents.

Its buildings, which replaced the modest Eretz Hatzvi Hotel and a green hill that had somehow survived in the middle of the city, brutalize the horizon. They are disconnected from their surroundings, impenetrable to nearby pedestrians or motorists, architecturally preposterous and, above all, ugly.

Assuming that the proposal to level the structures to the ground, doing the rounds on social media, is not carried out, Holyland’s high-rises will remain in place for decades.

Well, I’m not going to be the one who starts the campaign to knock the place down, but I AM going to find out if someone HAS started such a campaign.

Or maybe this Holyland has to remain standing, as a reminder of the seemingly masochistic atmosphere of this really great city.

Me? I’d rather see an attractive apartment complex on a hill, with a prominent plaque as a memorial to the crime that was.

And the trial itself? Of course it is a damning statement of how high corruption can go – and a strong reminder that, in a decent democracy (small C will do), no one is above the law.

Stephen