Israel Matzav

Kadima: Follow me to the middle of nowhere

...

Israelis love slogans. Come up with the right slogan, even if it makes no sense, if it’s a total lie, and they will support anyone, and any cause. Sell them “Peace Now” wrapped up in little white doves, and they’ll vote for that. And if instead they get exploding buses and pizza parlors, dead babies on the streets, they won’t stop believing. They won’t look back and say: “Gee, those politicians were incompetent liars, let’s kick them out of office and keep them there. “ Not at all. Come up with another slogan and the exact same politicians will get their vote again.

Take Shimon Peres, architect of Oslo; author of the “The New Middle East” which has to go down in history with “Peace in Our Time” as the political blooper of the century. Peres has a new slogan: Kadima! Peres is now “in the center.

Olmert was the worst mayor Jerusalem ever had

Kadima is a great slogan. It’s the cry of a general leading men on a battlefield. Follow me; don’t look around at the fallen and dying all around you! Keep going. Don’t look back! Never mind that it was founded by a controversial general known for his impulsiveness and determination – qualities sometimes helpful on the battlefield, but quite disastrous in matters of state.

Never mind that his greatest accomplishment in office, carried out with bulldozer determination, has in record time already proven an unmitigated disaster: The disengagement was the Hamas’ successful campaign slogan:” Ten years of negotiation, five years of intifada.”

Never mind that daily rockets now land in the Negev and Ashkelon and Ashdod and Sderot. Never mind that for the first time in our history the national consensus towards Tzahal has begun to unravel. Never mind that. Kadima!

So the head of the party and its moving force is now incapacitated? Replace him! Never mind that Ehud Olmert was the worst mayor Jerusalem ever had. A man whose coalition with the haredim turned the city into a filthy, poor backwater full of ugly high-rises. In between his own police investigations, Mr. Olmert has had a chance to totally change his political slogans with the times. He is a man who stands for nothing and has accomplished even less. But never mind that. Kadima!

We have made so many mistakes

Never mind that the party has collected such Israeli political luminaries as Dalia Itzik, Haim Ramon, Ruhama Avraham, and Omri Sharon. Never mind that Tzachi Hanegbi now sits with them, and that Avi Dichter, a former head of intelligence, who said: "The numbers speak for themselves. . . it is clear that disengagement has decreased terror" is number five on their list. Never mind. Give them your vote. Kadima!

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:45 PM