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After four months in office, Avraham Burg's supporters point to his consensus-building efforts in the Jewish Agency, while critics worry about his management skills and his penchant for playing the press card. Two boxes at end of text.
Is Avraham Burg a healer or a revolutionary? A consensus-builder, or a loose cannon? Only he knows for sure.
Since he was elected acting chairman of the Jewish Agency in February, the charismatic, 41-year-old Burg has told the English-language press some positive things about the organization whose recent reputation seems to be caught between scandal and irrelevance.
"It is a great organization, with great people," says Burg the cheerleader. "All it needs is to be shook up a bit, with a few basic strategic decisions, and off we go."
Avraham the Healer.
To the Hebrew press, however, Burg has been considerably more strident. When he's not singing the agency's praises, it seems he's trashing it.
He speaks of finding "time bombs" - potential crises and scandals that threaten the work of the entire enterprise. Last month, in the Hebrew-language weekly Yerushalayim, Burg called the institution "politically deformed," characterized by a "lack of governing culture," and beset with "blurred boundaries" and a "lot of rot to clean up."
As if to drive home his point, Burg heaped criticism on agency professionals, in one instance announcing the retirement of a 38-year executive before the official was told. For many inside the agency, Burg came across less like a cheerleader and more like a Stealth missile.
He brings to mind his close friend and political ally, Haim Ramon, whose strategy of reforming the Histadrut was to uncover the layers of its corruption and then dismantle it.
Avraham the Revolutionary.
As he officially assumes the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency next week, the question remains: Who is Avraham Burg and what does he want?
Israelis know him simply as "Avrum," the handsome, telegenic, iconoclastic - and above all, outspoken - MK whose public career was on a trajectory ever since he took the spotlight as an eloquent opponent of Lebanon War. Elected to the third place on the Labor list in the party's 1992 primaries, it looked like he was unstoppable. Then he fell victim to the Peres-Rabin rivalry and...