Since the terrorist organization Hamas’s mass murder and kidnapping of Israeli civilians ten days ago, I’ve been finding it difficult to think about anything other than the news from Israel/Palestine. Like many of you, I’ve been spending a lot of time (probably too much) doom-scrolling, worrying about my friends in the region, and anxious about about what will happen next. A lot of people, including university professors and those who have public platforms of some kind, have been weighing in on various aspects of this conflict. I have been hesitant to do so, because I have basically no professional expertise in the most important dimensions of the current crisis (such as the politics and history of the Middle East, military strategy, international humanitarian law and the law of war, etc.). What I write about on this platform is corruption, and the current crisis in Israel has little to do with corruption.

Little, but not nothing. At the risk of engaging in an all-too-common form of academic narcissism (“Look how this biggest important news event relates to the narrow topic I happen to study!”), I did want to offer some brief and tentative thoughts on how corruption, and the response to it, may have played a minor but notable role in precipitating the current crisis.

I’m not going to say much here about corruption on the Palestinian side. In an insightful post from back in June 2021, GAB contributor Magd Lhroob addressed aspects of this issue, noting both how Hamas’s initial electoral success back in 2006 may have had more to do with the perception that the Palestinian Authority (PA) was hopelessly corrupt, and also how the growing frustration of ordinary Gaza residents at Hamas’s corruption strengthens Hamas’s incentives to foment violence with Israel. Here I want to say a few words about corruption issues on the Israeli side, particularly the corruption charges against Prime Minister Netanyahu. Continue reading →