Offbeat Israel: Barak's Paris Spending Spree and a Proposal for Diplomatic Dormitories
By Nathan Jeffay
Will somebody please teach Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak how to use Travelocity or Orbitz?
Barak, leader of the Labor party that has spent decades fighting for social equality, managed to rack up a hotel bill of 96,000 euro for a visit by him and his entourage to the Paris Air Show in the summer — up from 25,000 euro last year. A euro is worth around $1.50.
This revelation isn’t from some questionable newspaper expose but rather from the State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss.
Lindenstrauss lambasted the trip, writing that there is “no place for such spending on hotels and lavish suites particularly during an economic crisis when most citizens are struggling to make ends meet.” See articles here, here and here.
The suite for Barak and his wife, Nili Priel, cost 2,500 euro a night, compared to a relatively bargain-basement 1,800 euro last year.
One of the reasons for this year’s large bill is that Barak’s team booked a couple of extra nights in the hotel and didn’t use them — six nights were reserved but several of the rooms were empty for two of these nights. Another reason is that when it came to make reservations, all of the cheaper hotels that fit their security criteria were full. The booking was made at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand. Israelis love to travel, and the country is full of budget holiday-makers who could initiate Barak in the joys of thinking ahead and finding cheap deals online.
Flippancy aside, this revelation points to a serious problem in the culture of Israel’s political leaders, which has come to be characterized by a hankering after expensive things on somebody else’s bill.
September 24, 2009, 4:25pm
French Comic, Dieudonné, on Trial for Inciting Racial Hatred
By Joseph Manning
French comedian Dieudonné, who went on trial this week accused of using antisemitic racial insults, claims that the offending section of the performance was only a joke: “l’attentat humouristique” (“humorous attack”). The charge, as previously reported by the Forward, was brought after an incident that took place during Dieudonné’s performance in Le Zenith Theater, Paris, December 22, 2008.
During that show Dieudonné invited academic and Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson to join him onstage. Faurisson was then presented with an award for “social unacceptability and insolence” by an assistant wearing striped pajamas and a yellow star with the note ‘Jew.’
Dieudonné, previously a popular mainstream comic, has achieved more recent notoriety for his increasingly irrational antisemitic and anti-American slander.
He has been repeatedly sued for inciting racial hatred, describing Jews in one newspaper interview as “former slave traders who have turned to banking, show business and, today, terrorist action” through support of Israeli policies.
In front of the tribunal this week, he claimed of the episode with Faurisson, “it was a spectacle, a humorous work, it was a game with the media, I gave them a humorous attack” before adding: “their hysteria on seeing antisemitism in everything seems to me suspicious and obscene…I am the barometer of freedom of expression.”
If found guilty of the charges held against him, Dieudonné could be sentenced to one year in prison or a fine of 10,000 euros. The tribunal will reach its decision by October 27th.
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