Mid way through his article "
Olmert and the Jackals" Uri Avnery paraphrases Lord Acton: "'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"
"In the same vein, we say that occupation corrupts, and total occupation corrupts totally."
Uri continues:
"
Ehud Olmert is the typical product of the cynicism and lawlessness that have infected this country in the 41 years of occupation.
"That does not mean that there was no corruption before. There certainly was.
"In my view, the corruption was born together with the state, and not by accident. A lot has been said about the Naqba on the occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary.
"
But one phenomenon that accompanied the Naqba is consistently ignored: the massive theft of abandoned Arab property.
"In the course of the 1948 flight and expulsion, some 100 to 150 thousand Arab families abandoned their homes.
"Many of them lived in simple dwellings, but not a few were living in elegant houses in Jaffa, Jerusalem and Haifa.
"What happened to the interior of these homes?
"To the tens of thousands of expensive carpets, fauteuils, refrigerators, wardrobes, pianos?
"Where did the inventories of shops and stores go?
"They disappeared."
