Israel has its warmongering war profiteers just as we do.
The BBC notes today that Lt Gen Dan Halutz, chief of staff of the Israeli military, sold his entire stock portfolio just hours after the two soldiers he ordered into Lebanon were seized and hours before he ordered massive bombardment and invasion of Lebanon. This comes at a time when Halutz is also on the defensive for the way the war was conducted, having admitted in a letter to troops to failures of military logistics, operations and command.
Halutz would have saved himself a nasty loss on the market by liquidating in advance of the airstrikes and invasion, as the graph below illustrates (see collapse in mid-July).
Halutz is also almost certainly at the top of the list of war criminals in the reports being drawn up by Amnesty International.
"Many of the violations examined in this report are war crimes that give rise to individual criminal responsibility," Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, said in a report on the Israeli campaign.
"During more than four weeks of ground and aerial bombardment by the Israeli armed forces, the country's infrastructure suffered destruction on a catastrophic scale," the report said, contending this was "an integral part of the military strategy."
"Israeli forces pounded buildings into the ground," the report went on, "reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble and turning villages and towns into ghost towns as their inhabitants fled the bombardments.
"Main roads, bridges and petrol stations were blown to bits. Entire families were killed in airstrikes on their homes or in their vehicles while fleeing the aerial assaults on their villages. Scores lay buried beneath the rubble of their houses for weeks, as the Red Cross and other rescue workers were prevented from accessing the areas by continuing Israeli strikes."
Halutz is being attacked in Israel for incompetence in the prosecution of the war, as well as for his corruption in profiteering off of it. He may well have to step down, but the insider dealing allegations give his critics a means of attacking him that do not bring support for the military or the invasion of Lebanon into the issue. It is unclear whether he can actually be prosecuted, but the fact of his conduct is enough to be damning as corruption for many.
Arutz Sheva:
Halutz criticized Maariv for what he called its "tendentious and wicked" report. "I do not intend to be dragged into an issue that casts aspersions on my integrity," he said today. "I am a citizen of this country and I have my own farm."
Politicians in the opposition do not agree. MK Gilad Erdan (Likud) said, "The Chief of Staff is not just like everyone else; he is supposed to symbolize the strength of the IDF... It used to be that leaders would ask what they can do for their country, but now apparently they ask what the stock exchange did today."
MK Zevulun Orlev, head of the National Religious Party, went even further, calling upon the Attorney General to investigate the matter. Orlev said he suspects a possible use of insider information, abuse of one's position, and breach of trust.
"We expect that at critical hours," Orlev said, "the Chief of Staff would be spending all his time and all his efforts only in running the war, and not in managing his personal affairs of profits on the stock exchange."
The Jewish Leadership (Manhigut Yehudit) faction of the Likud called for Halutz to be fired: "No commission of inquiry is needed to reveal the ethical rot of one who received his job in order to expel thousands of Jews from their homes [Halutz was appointed Chief of Staff just ten weeks before the expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Shomron - ed.], thus abandoning the State of Israel to an existential threat."
"One who is busy with selling his stocks at the time that he is supposed to be leading the army to war is a person who is corrupt to the core, and is not worthy of heading the Israel Defense Forces," said Manhigut leader Michael Puah.
I've pretty much given up on hoping any warmongering, war profiteering, war criminals actually are brought to justice, whether American or Israeli, but it's still worthwhile to keep count of their crimes and teach the young the evils that militarism breeds.