'When you bring adversaries together around a table, dialogue ensues and walls come down," asserts Dr. Arye (Arik) Carmon, founding president of the Israel Democracy Institute. "The most prominent example is our text for a constitution, which brings different views from different sectors, reflecting our vision - compromise."
Arik Carmon's credo: Israel, by its very composition, must foster and strengthen the nature of parliamentary democracy.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
Indeed, says Carmon, 66, a long-time educator, Holocaust historian and amateur photographer - who established the IDI in 1991, with the support of American businessman Bernard Marcus, of Home Depot fame - his mission is to examine and help cure the ills of what he considers to be the young country's fledgling democracy.
To this end, the Jerusalem-based IDI - located in the neighborhood of Talbiyeh, in luxurious premises (with a grand, round conference room, British Parliament-style, lined with the fruits of Carmon's photography labors) - conducts research, holds conferences and seminars, publishes studies and presents proposals to policy-makers. And it is on the basis of its work over the past nearly two decades that the IDI was among last week's recipients of the prestigious Israel Prize.
Not that the highly regarded institute hasn't had its fair share of controversy, however, most recently a petition to the High Court of Justice to have its Israel Prize nomination rescinded on the grounds that the judges were all connected to IDI in some fashion - which was rejected - and an article in Haaretz exposing the exorbitant salaries of Carmon (NIS 119,000) and other IDI honchos.
But Carmon, who lives in the upscale Tel Aviv suburb of Savyon and commutes daily to the city where he was born and raised, refutes the claims of the one and pooh-poohs the cynicism of the other.
"The petitioners [the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel and Professors for a Strong Israel] argued that three of the judges who decided to give us the award have been associated with the IDI in one way or another," he explains. "They pulled that claim with regard to one of them, because he was never involved with us. As for the other two, it's very simple. This is a tiny country in which everyone knows everyone else, and anyone who is anyone has, of course, had contact with us or participated in some of our programs. If familiarity were grounds for disqualification, no one here could ever be awarded the prize."
Where the high pay is concerned, Carmon is unapologetic. "Recruiting excellence in a competitive market means having to pay well," he insists. "In the second place, we adhere to the regulations of this country, to the letter. We have documents, year after year, that underscore the integrity of the management of this institute. Finally, what percentage of our budget comes from public funds? The answer is zero. We are not dependent on the Israeli taxpayer at all. Our enterprise is run exclusively from private contributions, and we are proud of that. And personally, I am proud that any chutzpadik Haaretz reporter can go to the NGO Registrar and look up my salary, which is completely transparent."
Why do think the IDI won the Israel Prize this year, and what achievements are you particularly proud of?
First, a few introductory remarks. The IDI is a think tank. A think tank is an entity that resides on the seam between the world of ideas and the world of practice. There are 4,000-5,000 think tanks in the world, more than half of which are in the United States. Ninety-five percent have some sort of ideological/political affiliation; 5% do not. IDI belongs to the latter. We are not partisan; we are not affiliated. Our commitment is to professionalism.
Israel is a state in formation, whose democracy is still in its formative stage, with many ills. It could not have been otherwise. When the Jewish people, after 2,000 years, started to exercise political sovereignty, we did not have a tradition of that kind of responsibility. We are a diasporic nation, even today, as we are on the threshold of a third generation here. IDI's mission is to focus on the mid- and long-term, particularly taking into account the fact that public and political agenda in Israel is more overloaded than in any other democracy in the world. As a result, decision-makers, lawmakers, policy-makers and implementers, whoever they are - left, right, center, good ones, less good ones - by necessity, must focus on the here and now. We've seen that most of the energy of any government is spent on damage control, which leaves little left for the mid- and long-term.
Furthermore, Israel does not have a constitution. This means that there are no ground rules for navigating the pressures that stem from the composition of Israeli society, which is comprised of conflicting sectors: Arabs and Jews; secular and religious; newcomers and veterans; haves and have nots; etc. More importantly, we do not have a bill of rights. Herein lies the root of our agenda.
As for our achievements, since our inception, we have published close to 230 accounts and proposals, which have been taken very seriously by different agencies. Today, the fingerprints of our research and strategies for change can be found, for example, in Supreme Court decisions. We also established a new genre in the media, through our magazine, The Seventh Eye. On top of this, we have contributed to the overall discourse through different programs. One is the annual Caesarea Conference - this year will be the 17th - chaired by the finance minister. Another is a program with the IDF General Staff, that has convened at the IDI behind closed doors twice a year for the last 10. And we are now beginning to do the same with two other prominent agencies in Israel, one of which I will refrain from mentioning - but it's a very top defense agency; the other is the Israel Police.
Most organizations that call themselves "non-partisan" are actually on the Left. Isn't the IDI, as well? After all, the editor of your magazine, The Seventh Eye, for instance, is former Haaretz veteran Uzi Benziman. Do you have any right-wing fellows?
Look, it's very hard for me to rebut this claim. But I must underscore that what we look for in our fellows is excellence. And each and every fellow here knows very well that while he is at the IDI, his political views should not come into play. So, I could look at my fellows and researchers, and ask myself who among them is on the Right, but I will not do it. By the same token, I don't know how many women, Arabs or others we have.
