Column: The End of the Likud
Binyamin Netanyu’s resignation has raised speculation as to the viability of the government, the possibility of early elections, the leadership of the Likud etc.
Uzi Landau has announced that he will run for the party leadership. Netanyahu is off to the USA for a fund raising trip to finance his own campaign. Supporters of Moshe Feiglin and his Jewish Leadership faction of the Likud are hopeful that this is his chance to rise to the top.
I, for one, would like to see the party fade into oblivion. No one who has been offended by the tyranny of Sharon and his expulsion plan should ever give their vote to Likud again. Let the message be sent out that any party that turns on the electorate and abuses its mandate is finished. It is the closest we can get to representative government here at this time. If you can't dump an individual politician then let it be known that his party will be dumped. If an individual seeks to continue his political career let him act quickly to separate himself from his party should it betray its mandate – let that become his greatest and most immediate personal political concern. In this way there will be something that resembles the personal accountability that Senators and Congressmen owe to their constituents in the United States.
Only if the party as a whole is vulnerable to a sharp reprisal from a betrayed public will we see some light through this dark tunnel of years of abuse of the people’s mandate.
Let the chips fall where they will and let new alliances of the truly national camp and new parties arise if necessary, let those politicians who really seek to serve the people convince the people of that – aided by their own knowledge that their party will provide no cover for personal political maneuvers that betray the people’s will.
To a different subject:
I have posted on my blog (galileeblog) three posts now from another blog called Sultan Knish. No, I have no idea what the name means. My best guess is that it is a humorous play on something like Burger King. I don’t know. Anyway, SK does some pretty good satire and I thought I would share just a bit of it.
Thursday, August 4, SK, in a post titled “Sharon announces new ‘Victory through Retreat’ plan,” showed some of his stuff. This is a bit of it – Sharon is speaking …
" Brothers and sisters … Today as we prepare for the first of many retreats I tell you this, we have only begun to retreat. We shall retreat from Yehuda and Shomron and then from Yerushalayim. We shall retreat from the Galilee and then the Negev to which we are sending those same families we are expelling from Gush Katif, only so that we may expel them yet again. We will retreat from every town and every city which is adjacent in any way to large Arab populations and as the Arab populations grow larger, we shall retreat even further."
Cal Thomas weighed in this week with a similar warning but of a different style:
"The 'disengagement' later this month (which is actually a retreat and is seen that way by Israel's enemies) will not be the end, anymore than previous retreats, concessions, 'good will' gestures and written documents have produced security or peace in the region.
Only after Israel is destroyed will the West realize what it did and failed to do, but it will find convenient and comforting explanations to absolve itself from any blame. Jews, you see, are always responsible not only for the world's problems, but for bringing destruction upon themselves by virtue of their being Jews."
Another different subject:
Ariel Sharon and the Israeli press have succeeded in convincing many Israelis that Sharon is being pressured by president Bush. This is a convenient claim which deflects the blame and distorts the reality of Sharon's push towards expulsion. The Jewish Press reported this week that when former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger, who argues that the Oslo Accords harmed U.S. vital interests and triggered global terrorism, was asked why President Bush was pushing for the expulsion, Ettinger replied; “When I visited Washington recently, I was told that President Bush was and is against this disengagement but it was Sharon who pressured him. The tradition in Washington is that the administration does not second guess an Israeli prime minister. There was therefore no real deliberations on how this plan would affect U.S. interests in the region.”
Ettinger warned that the pullout will not be a stepping board to peace but a setback to peace because the only peace attainable in the Mideast is deterrence - driven peace. 'Disengagement undermines deterrence. Every square inch ceded by Israel to the PA, since the 1994 disengagement, has been transformed into a platform of hate - education and homicide bombing,' he said. "
Uzi Landau has announced that he will run for the party leadership. Netanyahu is off to the USA for a fund raising trip to finance his own campaign. Supporters of Moshe Feiglin and his Jewish Leadership faction of the Likud are hopeful that this is his chance to rise to the top.
I, for one, would like to see the party fade into oblivion. No one who has been offended by the tyranny of Sharon and his expulsion plan should ever give their vote to Likud again. Let the message be sent out that any party that turns on the electorate and abuses its mandate is finished. It is the closest we can get to representative government here at this time. If you can't dump an individual politician then let it be known that his party will be dumped. If an individual seeks to continue his political career let him act quickly to separate himself from his party should it betray its mandate – let that become his greatest and most immediate personal political concern. In this way there will be something that resembles the personal accountability that Senators and Congressmen owe to their constituents in the United States.
Only if the party as a whole is vulnerable to a sharp reprisal from a betrayed public will we see some light through this dark tunnel of years of abuse of the people’s mandate.
Let the chips fall where they will and let new alliances of the truly national camp and new parties arise if necessary, let those politicians who really seek to serve the people convince the people of that – aided by their own knowledge that their party will provide no cover for personal political maneuvers that betray the people’s will.
To a different subject:
I have posted on my blog (galileeblog) three posts now from another blog called Sultan Knish. No, I have no idea what the name means. My best guess is that it is a humorous play on something like Burger King. I don’t know. Anyway, SK does some pretty good satire and I thought I would share just a bit of it.
Thursday, August 4, SK, in a post titled “Sharon announces new ‘Victory through Retreat’ plan,” showed some of his stuff. This is a bit of it – Sharon is speaking …
" Brothers and sisters … Today as we prepare for the first of many retreats I tell you this, we have only begun to retreat. We shall retreat from Yehuda and Shomron and then from Yerushalayim. We shall retreat from the Galilee and then the Negev to which we are sending those same families we are expelling from Gush Katif, only so that we may expel them yet again. We will retreat from every town and every city which is adjacent in any way to large Arab populations and as the Arab populations grow larger, we shall retreat even further."
Cal Thomas weighed in this week with a similar warning but of a different style:
"The 'disengagement' later this month (which is actually a retreat and is seen that way by Israel's enemies) will not be the end, anymore than previous retreats, concessions, 'good will' gestures and written documents have produced security or peace in the region.
Only after Israel is destroyed will the West realize what it did and failed to do, but it will find convenient and comforting explanations to absolve itself from any blame. Jews, you see, are always responsible not only for the world's problems, but for bringing destruction upon themselves by virtue of their being Jews."
Another different subject:
Ariel Sharon and the Israeli press have succeeded in convincing many Israelis that Sharon is being pressured by president Bush. This is a convenient claim which deflects the blame and distorts the reality of Sharon's push towards expulsion. The Jewish Press reported this week that when former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger, who argues that the Oslo Accords harmed U.S. vital interests and triggered global terrorism, was asked why President Bush was pushing for the expulsion, Ettinger replied; “When I visited Washington recently, I was told that President Bush was and is against this disengagement but it was Sharon who pressured him. The tradition in Washington is that the administration does not second guess an Israeli prime minister. There was therefore no real deliberations on how this plan would affect U.S. interests in the region.”
Ettinger warned that the pullout will not be a stepping board to peace but a setback to peace because the only peace attainable in the Mideast is deterrence - driven peace. 'Disengagement undermines deterrence. Every square inch ceded by Israel to the PA, since the 1994 disengagement, has been transformed into a platform of hate - education and homicide bombing,' he said. "
posted by Barry Freedman at 2:57 PM
2 Comments:
glad you liked it barry, no the name has no great meaning it's just SK because the goofyness of it struck me in an appealing way
It's a cool name. Thanks for clarifying that for me. Will be checking in at SK regularly ...
Post a Comment
<< Home