Obama's hatred of Israel isn't just personal animus against Netanyahu
When Barack Hussein Obama ordered his UN ambassador to abstain in Friday's vote against the 'settlements' at the United Nations,
it wasn't just personal animus against Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Mr. Obama’s animus toward Prime Minister Netanyahu is well known.
Apparently Mr. Obama took it as an affront that the President-elect
would express an opinion about this week’s U.N. resolution.
It
is important, though, to see this U.S. abstention as more significant
than merely Mr. Obama’s petulance. What it reveals clearly is the Obama
Administration’s animus against the state of Israel itself. No longer
needing Jewish votes, Mr. Obama was free, finally, to punish the Jewish
state in a way no previous President has done.
What Obama did on Friday went against the views of the vast majority of the US Congress, the vast majority of the American people, and of course, the vast majority of Israelis - including the sane part of the Israeli Left.
For those who speak Hebrew, there's a video of Lapid blasting the resolution on Saturday
here.
What Obama did on Friday will permanently cloud the possibility of any kind of peace. This is from the first link, a Wall Street Journal editorial.
No effort to rescind the resolution, which calls the settlements a
violation of “international law,” will succeed because of Russia’s and
China’s vetoes.
Instead, the resolution will live on as Barack
Obama’s cat’s paw, offering support in every European capital,
international institution and U.S. university campus to bully Israel
with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Here in Israel, there's a palpable fear that the mamzer in the White House isn't done '
punishing' us yet.
At the cabinet meeting yesterday the experts on foreign affairs
presented a scenario in which Obama could even on his last day in office
cause harm to Israel.
The concern is that Obama may promote a move in the UN Security
Council giving guidelines for a peace agreement between Israel and the
Palestinians and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel would
find it hard to present an alternative model after these guidelines are
set.
The experts on foreign affairs also posed another concern regarding
the Paris conference which is supposed to take place during the course
of February. At the conference a pro-Palestinian peace initiative may be
presented and could be viewed as authoritative if it is adopted.
I'm less concerned about what could happen in February - when Donald Trump is President - than I am about what could happen in the next three weeks.
Obama has earned the title ימח שמו וזכרו - may his name and memory be obliterated. May God Bring that about speedily and in our time.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, BDS, Binyamin Netanyahu, China, Russia, two-state solution, United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, Yair Lapid
When Yair Lapid put on a kipa (skullcap)
Giving credit where credit is due. This was posted to the Yesh Atid party's Facebook page.
Yair Lapid wrote the following for Tisha B'Av (translated from Hebrew):I was at the Western Wall. We celebrated a...
Posted by Yesh Atid on Sunday, July 26, 2015
I'm very impressed. But the point is not just to practice baseless love on Tisha b'Av - it's to practice it all year long. If we can do that, maybe next year will be different. I hope Yair Lapid agrees.
Labels: baseless hatred, baseless love, Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid party
One of the darkest days in history
Prime Minister Netanyahu blasted the agreement between the P 5+1 and Iran in a statement to the media today.
Let's go to the videotape.
And he's not the only Israeli politician to
speak out against the deal.
Netanyahu’s hard-line coalition partner, Education Minister Naftali
Bennett added: “Today a terrorist nuclear superpower is born, and it
will go down as one of the darkest days in world history.”
Yeah, but that's only because he's hardline, right? Hmmm. Maybe not.
Israeli social media accounts were filled with images of former
British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who pushed a policy of
appeasement toward Adolf Hitler and the Nazis on the eve of World War
II.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders blasted the deal even as
negotiators in Vienna were still making the announcement and providing
details.
“Israel will defend itself,” Bennett warned, vowing
that military action is still an option for the Jewish State.
Like-minded Israelis feel they are in the crosshairs of a belligerent
enemy, where last week protesters in Tehran were chanting “Death to
Israel!”
Israel’s security cabinet unanimously rejected the Iran
deal, also saying that Israel reserves the right to take action to
protect the state.
But an Israeli attack seems unlikely right now....
Opposition leaders were united in condemning the Iran deal, but they
also called its signing a major diplomatic failure for Netanyahu.
Speaking
on Israel Radio, Efraim Halevy, former head of the Israeli intelligence
agency Mossad, said that perhaps it would have been better to avoid a
head-on clash with Obama and, instead, seek to apply pressure through
more discreet channels and have more of a role in shaping the
negotiations.
Because after all, former Mossad heads have just been
so helpful in helping the government deal with this. Nearly as helpful as Israel's 'loyal opposition.'
Yair Lapid, a top opposition figure and leader of an Israeli
political party, said there is “no daylight” between Israelis in
condemning the Iran deal. But he said Netanyahu bungled the diplomacy.
On
the evening news in Israel, a rough consensus among political
commentators concluded that Netanyahu has been rendered irrelevant,
dismissed by the U.S. administration.
The United States remains
Israel’s closest — and sometimes only — ally in the world, supplying
diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in military aid over the years,
including some of the most sophisticated U.S. arms technology.
In
an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, main opposition leaders Isaac
Herzog and Tzipi Livni both criticized Netanyahu for allowing the deal
to be reached.
“If you go to a deal, as bad as it may be, the way
to minimize its damage is by arriving at an agreement with the U.S. on a
very significant security package,” said Herzog.
And that could still happen after (and when and if) the deal is signed. But Obama wouldn't talk about that before the deal with Iran was done.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ephraim HaLevy, Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iranian nuclear threat, Meir Dagan, Mossad, Naftali Bennett, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid, Yitzchak Herzog
Israel's 'loyal opposition' responds to the Iran deal
It was just Monday (yesterday) that Israel's opposition
expressed its opposition to the then-impending deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. Now that the deal has been signed, Israel's opposition is opposed to it, and has
blasted the excessive concessions made to reach it. There's one small problem.
Instead of circling the wagons to oppose the sellout to Iran, and blaming the Obama administration and the Europeans for it, Israel's opposition is placing all the blame on a man who wasn't even in Vienna this week or month. Can you guess whom they're blaming?
“In the next month, we need to work vis-employ a different tactic
vis-a-vis Congress. We should not ask our friends in the Senate and
Congress to try and topple all the sections in the agreement, because
then they don't listen to us, but to concentrate on the matter of
inspection, which is the Achilles heel, the weakest point in the
agreement.”
"I started to conduct talks with them on this matter in my visit to
Washington last month,” [Yair] Lapid said, “and on this issue they are willing
to listen. We have to ask them to insist only on this point and to say
that without real inspection they will not approve the remval of
sanctions.”
Lapid argued that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is not the man
who should lead the campaign vis-avis the US administration, because
“the White House's door is closed before him, half of Congress won't
listen to him.” He called on Netanyahu to resign.
Like it or not, Netanyahu is Prime Minister for the next month - in fact for the next three months - even if the government were to fall tomorrow. Congress has 60 days to vote up or down on this agreement. This is not the time to undermine Israel's elected leader in that fight.
But Yair Lapid is all about self-promotion. Always was and always will be. It's kind of like Obama blaming Bush for everything when Bush has had no connection to the US government for six and a half years.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, P 5+1, United States Congress, Yair Lapid
Barack Obama must be wondering what hit him
President Hussein Obama must be wondering what hit him. Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren continues to hammer away at the President, publishing two more op-ed pieces in the US media on Friday, one of which
really gets into Obama's kishkes.
In Foreign Policy, Oren took Obama to task for not joining the
solidarity march in France after the attack on Charlie Hebdo or the
kosher supermarket earlier this year, nor for sending two senior
officials who were in Paris at the time to the march. He also took the
president to task for not admitting that the attack on the kosher
market was directed a Jews, but rather an act perpetrated by “vicious
zealots who... randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli.”
“Obama’s
boycotting of the memorial in Paris, like his refusal to acknowledge
the identity of the perpetrators, the victims, or even the location of
the market massacre, provides a broad window into his thinking on Islam
and the Middle East. Simply put: The president could not participate
in a protest against Muslim radicals whose motivations he sees as a
distortion, rather than a radical interpretation, of Islam,” he wrote.
“And if there are no terrorists spurred by Islam, there can be no
purposely selected Jewish shop or intended Jewish victims, only a deli
and randomly present folks."
During his first year in office,
Obama, Oren argued, offered in essence “a new deal in which the United
States would respect popularly chosen Muslim leaders who were
authentically rooted in their traditions and willing to engage with the
West.”
...
Oren
attributed this orientation to the intellectual milieu in which Obama
grew up, as well as his personal history. “I could imagine how a child
raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural bridge
between her two Muslim husbands. I could also speculate how that
child’s abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to
seek acceptance by their co-religionists.”
The tragedy, he said, was that Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world was rejected.
“Historians
will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a
combination of curiosity and incredulousness,” he wrote. “While some
may credit the president for his good intentions, others might fault him
for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal
reality.”
In the LA Times piece, headlined “Why Obama is
wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes,” Oren quoted Obama’s
comment in a recent interview that being anti-Semitic, or racist,
doesn't preclude one from from being interested in survival, and that
just because Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei is anti-Semitic
“doesn't mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”
Oren
wrote that the dispute whether Iran was a rational or irrational actor
was “ever-present” in the discussions between the US and Israel when
he was ambassador. While the American view the Iranians as logical
actors, Israel could not rule out the idea that “the Iranians would be
willing to sacrifice half of their people as martyrs in a war intended
to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’”
“Obama would never say that
anti-black racists are rational,” Oren argued. “And he would certainly
not trust them with the means – however monitored – to reach their
racist goals. That was the message Israeli officials and I conveyed in
our discreet talks with the administration. The response was not, to
our mind, reasonable."
Oren, while he served in Washington, was
considered very cautious and diplomatic, and rarely caught flack for
comments deemed “undiplomatic.”
Oren has been blasted by opposition MK's Tzipi Livni (goes without saying), Avigdor Liberman and Yair Lapid (the latter also goes without saying). But
Lee Smith wrote some similar things in Tablet Magazine last week, but from a slightly different angle.
Whether Obama is an honorary Jew or not, the evidence suggests that
he keenly understands certain peculiarities of the Jewish communal
psyche—survival strategies that distinguish the Jews from other American
minority groups. The president’s use of Jewish aides and organizations
to advance his policies with the Jewish community shows that Obama is
correct in believing that Jewish politics are often motivated by fear,
which can range from the existential fear of mass extermination to the
more prosaic fear of looking shabby in front of the goyim. And Obama
isn’t using his energy and inspiring leadership skills to help these
people rise above their fear; he is instead capitalizing on
it—masterfully, ruthlessly—by manipulating American Jews in ways that
other minority groups would find unbelievably insulting.
Consider recent statements from Jewish aides to the president.
Netanyahu is the kind of politician, said David Axelrod, “who run[s] for
public office because they want to be somebody.” Israel doesn’t know
what’s best for it, Obama’s former envoy to the Palestinian-Israeli
peace process Martin Indyk told Israeli media last week. “You are an
emotional nation, not a rational nation,” he sniffed. “You work from
your gut and not your mind.”
It’s very hard to imagine Catholic policymakers helping a U.S.
president undermine and insult the Vatican and then defending the
president when he says that he understands what the church stands for
better than the pope does. During the darkest moments of the AIDS
crisis, there were no gay organizations that encouraged U.S.
policymakers to cut funding for a cure. There are no transgender
activists who argue that the real threat to the community comes not from
people who fear and hate transgendered people, but from within the
transgender community itself. Eric Holder doesn’t scold people of color
that they’re an emotional, not a rational, people, or imply that black
officeholders get into politics because they “want to be somebody.”
The issue in America today is clearly not that pro-Obama people or
organizations are leading the American Jewish community to destruction.
Yet at the same time, it is also clear that two millennia of diasporic
dependence and insecurity have left a deep and probably permanent
imprint on the Jewish communal psyche. Even in America, a free country
in which Jews have never been subject to European-style mass oppression
or persecutions, the role performed by “court Jews’ still makes
structural and emotional sense to people who like to think of themselves
as independent thinkers. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why
Obama still has the support of the majority of the Jewish community for
policies that from any rational perspective—the perspective of any other
minority group—cannot be seen as anything other than detrimental to the
Jewish state.
In other words, Oren is right about Obama's bad treatment of Jews as compared with any other ethnic group. Obama isn't playing any other ethnic group - only Jews. And according to Smith, Obama is playing the Jews like a master.
But what about the Jews who speak for the administration? None of
several former high-ranking Jewish officials was willing to speak on the
record on this subject, but every single one of them agreed that this
moment was an extraordinary one. “No administration will always do what
the Jewish community wants or what Jews think best for Israel, just as
none will ever always do what Catholics want or Greek Americans or
farmers,” said a former Jewish American policymaker who served in
high-level positions in several administrations. “When you are in an
administration you know this is coming. If the variance is in the
particular area you cover, it can be painful. If it gets repeated, you
need to change jobs or leave the government. That’s normal.”
But: “The Obama situation is not normal,” he continued, “due to the
length and depth of the confrontation with Israel and the harm that’s
being done. It should give rise to soul searching by Jewish appointees.
In my view they’ve become enablers, in the worst sense of that word.
That not one single Jew has left in protest is remarkable considering
that relations have not been worse in a long, long time.”
By not resigning in protest, Obama’s Jewish aides have arguably not
only harmed their community; they weakened their own position—which was,
in a sense, ultimately far more detrimental. In a town where the
appearance of power is power, Obama’s Jewish defenders had no idea which
way the president was actually going. They got played, and now everyone
knows it. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wasn’t in the room when Obama was
making Iran policy with Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarrett. Martin Indyk
didn’t know that a central part of Obama’s Middle East policy—without
which the Iran deal would be impossible—was to weaken AIPAC,
the cornerstone of the pro-Israel community. AIPAC, in turn, didn’t see
itself as a target of the Obama Administration. Instead, it kept
telling itself that bipartisan support for Israel was the very premise
of its power. Had these actors actually participated in helping the
president pull a fast one on the Jewish community, at least they’d have
showed they had connections to power. The biggest problem with the Jews
around Obama is not that they spoke up on behalf of policies that may
very well turn out to be harmful to the Jewish state; it’s that they
were so clearly out of the loop—a status quo they will now bequeath to
future administrations.
In this regard, even AIPAC’s ostensible rival J Street got played. As
one senior official in the pro-Israel community told me, he believes
that “their standing has diminished a lot. The administration used J
Street and included them, and went to their conferences, because they
believed they would be a useful tool.” But J Street is weakened not, as
the pro-Israel official believes, because it plowed its own field
recklessly. If you describe yourself as a pro-Israel organization then
your power is directly proportional to how important a role Israel plays
in American foreign policy. If your actions, like J Street’s,
contribute to making Israel about as important to American foreign
policy as Malaysia is, then you aren’t very important either.
Read the whole thing.
What Smith is describing is what I have called the
Poritz Syndrome.
Oren is an historian and he has an historian's perspective. I'm sure he sees everything that Smith sees and has many more facts and data points to prove what Smith is saying. Unfortunately, Oren is getting no support here in Israel, other than Netanyahu's refusal to disown him.... Yet Oren disowned Netanyahu by running for the Knesset with Kahlon's party. Perhaps there's a lesson there for the historian too.
In the meantime, my copy of Oren's book is on order. Can't wait to read this one.
Labels: Avigdor Lieberman, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, court Jew, Jack Lew, Martin Indyk, Michael Oren, Moshe Kahlon, poritz syndrome, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid
Labor party says it's going to opposition, Netanyahu may already have a coalition
More tweets from Israel Radio's Chico Menashe.
Translation: Former Labor party leader (and Israel Radio broadcaster) Shelly Yacimovich says that the people have spoken, that they want Netanyahu to be the leader, and that her party will be going to the opposition.
A similar announcement came this morning from Yair Lapid regarding his Yesh Atid party.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Netanyahu may already have enough MK's for a coalition.
Of course, he'd still have to get them all to agree on ministries....
In any event, it sounds like President Rivlin's push for a national unity government is already a failure. And that's good news for Israel.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, coalition government, Knesset elections 2015, Labor party, Likud party, Shelly Yacimovich, Yair Lapid
Hmmm.... Lapid: We won't recommend Left form next government
For the Hebrew impaired, the tweet above from Makor Rishon columnist Haggai Segal says "[Yesh Atid party leader Yair] Lapid claims that his words were taken out of context, but the recording of the interview with Makor Rishon proves that he said 'you won't find me recommending [that] the Left [form the next government].' 'And Buzi [Herzog] is the Left,' we asked. 'Yes.'
The way Israel's government works is that after the elections, the President calls in the leader of each party and asks who should be given the first opportunity to try to form a government. The President then charges the leader of the party who seems most likely to succeed to form a coalition. That's why sometimes,
even if a party has the most votes, it will not be asked to form the government.
Hmmm.
Labels: Israeli Knesset, Kadima, Knesset elections 2015, Labor party, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid party, Yitzchak Herzog
Israeli elections can be so creative
Heh.
Labels: Knesset elections 2015, Shas, Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid party
The Netanyahu kindergarten video
I think this ad has actually been banned from the airwaves, but it's really good and it's still on YouTube, so let's go to the videotape.
With apologies to the Hebrew-impaired....
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Knesset elections 2015, Naftali Bennett, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid
Obama vetted Lapid as future Prime Minister of Israel
Is the Obama administration trying to unseat Prime Minister Netanyahu? Almost definitely, yes. Is it trying to
replace him with Yair Lapid? Well, maybe. Here's Aaron Klein.
Let’s look at the clues. Netanyahu’s decision last week to disband
his coalition came when he dismissed his finance minister, Yair Lapid,
and his justice minister, Tzipi Livni, both of whom have not disguised
their ambitions for the country’s highest office. Tellingly, both took
advantage of the steady stream of US criticism toward Netanyahu by
leading an escalating public campaign in which they repeatedly accused
Netanyahu of causing this dangerous rift in relations with Israel’s most
important ally.
Case in point. In October, Israel’s Ynet news website reported
that a request by Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon to meet with US Vice
President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security
Adviser Susan Rice during his visit to Washington had been denied by
the White House. This reported move is highly unusual, and was a nearly
unprecedented snub of Netanyahu’s government. It helped to set off a
firestorm against Netanyahu in Israel, particularly among the center and
the left, with Livni and Lapid leading the charge.
Also in October, in what can only be viewed as an orchestrated
campaign, the US espoused uncharacteristically harsh language to oppose a
plan for Israel to build 2,610 new homes on empty lots in Givat
Hamatos, a Jerusalem neighborhood in the eastern section of the city
where Palestinians want to build a future state.
Immediately following a meeting between Netanyahu and President
Obama in October, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki and White House
spokesman Josh Earnest took the Israeli leader’s delegation by surprise
when they released nearly identical statements slamming the Jerusalem
construction. They warned the housing plans could distance Israel from
its “closest allies,” a clear euphemism for the US, and questioned
whether Netanyahu was interested in peace. Netanyahu for his part said
at the time that he was “baffled” by the US criticism, stating the
American position “doesn’t really reflect American values.”
As if on queue, Lapid and Livni raced to endorse the US
condemnation and accuse Netanyahu once again of damaging US-Israeli
relations. That month, Lapid took further issue with Netanyahu’s plan
to build roughly 400 homes in Har Homa and about 600 in Ramat Shlomo.
“This plan will lead to a serious crisis in Israel-US relations and will
harm Israel’s standing in the world,” Lapid said.
In another seemingly orchestrated development, The Atlantic’s
Jeffrey Goldberg in October described relations between the US and
Israel as a “full-blown crisis” and reported that senior Obama
administration officials had called Netanyahu “chickenshit” on matters
related to the so-called peace process. Goldberg gratuitously added
that Bibi is a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat.
...
Adding more fuel to the anti-Bibi firestorm, Ha'aretz
reported last week the Obama administration had held a classified
discussion a few weeks earlier about possibly taking more proactive
measures against the “settlements,” including mulling sanctions or
punishing Israel at the United Nations. While the State Department
dismissed the claims as "unfounded and completely without merit," the Ha'aretz article is already providing more fodder to target Bibi.
Here’s the kicker. In March, an informed diplomatic source in
Jerusalem told me that representatives of the Obama administration held
meetings with Lapid to check him out politically and to discuss the kind
of prime minister he would make if he won elections in the future. The
diplomatic source said the Obama administration identified Lapid as a
moderate who would support Israeli-Palestinian talks. While the alleged
meeting might have been as innocent as getting to know the powerful
finance minister, the claim does fuel the perception of Obama
administration tentacles working surreptitiously to change the political
order in the Jewish state.
Read the whole thing. Shabbat Shalom.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli elections, Knesset elections 2015, Yair Lapid
Lapid burns
With Yair Lapid out as finance minister, the Knesset Finance Committee has released funding to the Jewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria. Lapid, who was holding up the money, is furious, and has labeled the release '
bribery.' (He didn't really think he was going to get any votes from the 'settlers,' did he?
Yesh Atid is outraged at the request of Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu to transfer additional funds via the Finance Committee to
regional councils in Judea-Samaria, the party said in a statement on
Monday.
"This is an election bribery - this is an inappropriate course of
action in a democratic state," the party stated, asking the Knesset's
Legal Advisory to intervene over the issue.
Budgetary transfers to the regional councils had been frozen for months
by Finance Minister and Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid, who was sacked
from his ministerial position last week and whose party left the
coalition in a dramatic political move.
Lapid's dismissal has finally paved the way for tens of cash-strapped
communities in the region to receive their funds, leaving leftists
livid.
But the issue is not the only budgetary transfer finally on the table
with Lapid's dismissal; the Finance Committee is expected to make
decisions on dozens of requests for government funding Monday in Lapid's
wake.
Rumor has it that the man behind the transfers is that
'settler' lover,
Moshe 'Boogie' Yaalon.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon may be easing up on his own crackdown
on Judea and Samaria, it was revealed Monday, after leaks from closed
conversations Ya'alon had with unnamed officials indicated his support
for lifting a freeze on funds to Judea-Samaria regional councils.
"Our goal should be the immediate release of funds for the
development of settlements in Judea and Samaria, and I am working to do
this," Ya'alon allegedly stated. "These funds former Finance Minister
Yair Lapid held for political reasons, and now they [the Knesset - ed.]
have to release these funds."
Ya'alon's statements surfaced just as the Knesset Finance Committee announced that funds for Judea-Samaria regional councils had been unfrozen, after months of an on-and-off freeze instituted by Lapid for political purposes.
...
The report, if true, also shows a sharp reversal in Ya'alon's policies thus far. The Defense Minister has been personally behind the continuation of a military seizure of the Yitzhar Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva [Torah academy - ed.] and froze funds for a project to build new housing for IDF soldiers over 1949 Armistice lines just last week.
Heh.
Labels: Israeli Knesset, Judea and Samaria construction, Knesset elections 2015, Moshe Yaalon, settlements, Yair Lapid
Israel introduces new bill
Heh.
Labels: humor, Israeli currency, Yair Lapid
What if we didn't have elections?
Haaretz claims that Prime Minister Netanyahu is still trying to avoid elections - at least until Monday.
According to recent reports, Likud activists have been sounding out Yesh
Atid Knesset members about defecting from the party and remaining in
the coalition, while the ultra-Orthodox parties might yet join the
coalition without going to elections.
All of the politicians
involved strongly deny that they have any intention of reconstituting
the coalition, but stranger things have happened in Israeli politics.
The dissolution bill is due to have its second and third readings on Monday. Until then, anything can happen.
Where have we
heard this before?
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Knesset elections 2012, Knesset elections 2015, Yair Lapid
Israel to hold elections on March 17
Prime Minister
Netanyahu fired Ministers Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni on Tuesday, effectively bringing about the government's fall. It's been less than 21 months since the last election.
One reason he felt comfortable doing this is the tweet above. Lapid's party (which currently has 19 seats) will be cut in half, while I've seen polls that indicate that Livni's party will disappear.
The likely beneficiary of the move is the Jewish Home party leader,
Naftali Bennett.
Bennett stands to gain because, according to every single poll, his
party is the only one that can be expected to grow by 50% or more in the
ballots. Presently, Jewish Home has 12 MKs. The polls predict 17, 19,
maybe more. These numbers are commensurate with those Bennett had in the
polls in late 2012, before an extremely hurtful – and self-injuring –
Likud election campaign reduced his public support.
Bennett is now the likely candidate for minister of defense, come
April. Since defense is Bennett's forte – although finances are
certainly not a point of weakness for the all-Israeli hi-tech superstar
economics minister – this is without a doubt the position he is angling
for. The public is not ready for Bennett as prime minister, and people
close to him, like Minister Uri Orbach, say so too. But a successful and
dominant defense minister who brings security back to the Israeli
streets, and possibly spearheads a strike on Iran's nuclear industry,
later in his term, is a shoo-in to replace Binyamin Netanyahu at the
country's helm, when the time comes.
Leaks from Netanyahu and Bennett's immediate surroundings confirm
that Bennett has been talking to Netanyahu about the position of defense
minister, post-elections, and that Netanyahu has come to accept that
Bennett will be his most senior partner in the next government. Bennett
confirmed as much – most likely intentionally – when he scolded Minister Uri Ariel
the other day, and told him that his insistence on taking up more space
on the Jewish Home list than Bennett is willing to give him will cost
the party the defense minister's position.
For more analysis of Bennett's moves,
read the whole thing.
Others who may benefit from the March 17 elections (which were agreed upon by party heads on Wednesday morning - the government should officially fall on Wednesday afternoon) are the
Haredi parties.
Primaries will be held in Likud and Jewish Home in early
January, with votes on the head of the Likud on January 6 and similar
votes for leadership of Jewish Home the day before.
Hareidi MK Menachem Eliezer Moses (United Torah Judaism) spoke about
the recent polls that indicate Netanyahu will need the hareidi parties
in order to form a new coalition, saying "according to the polls we see
that without the hareidim it's impossible to move, no?"
Netanyahu accused Lapid the night before of trying to form an
alternate coalition to replace him with the hareidim, even as Lapid
denied siding with the hareidim in pubic statements. Netanyahu likewise
denied reports he had sought out a coalition with the hareidim.
The election's timing is likely to help the Haredim. It occurs on the Tuesday before the end of the winter semester in Yeshivas and Kollelim (the semester ends on Thursday the 19th in most of them). That means the final run-up to the election won't interfere too much with studies, while the vote will take place before many of the scholars leave for the Passover holiday. Hmmm.
For those who are wondering about my relative silence over the last couple of days, I have been busy earning a living this week....
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Haredim, Jewish Home party, Knesset elections 2015, Naftali Bennett, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid
Chicken***t
Guess who
doesn't want elections.
Lapid in his faction meeting, pleaded with Netanyahu not to initiate an
election, which he said would harm the economy and halt important
socio-economic steps the government is taking.
I wonder whether
this has something to do with it.
Can you say 'flash in the pan'?
Labels: Israeli election polls, Israeli elections, Yair Lapid
Are we going to new elections?
Channel 2 reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu may ask to
dissolve the Knesset this week and go to new elections - just a year and a half after the last elections.
According to the report, Netanyahu is considering three options, but
it is believed that his preferred route would be to dissolve the
Knesset.
The first option is for Netanyahu to wait until March 31 without the
state budget for 2015 passing its second and third reading in the
Knesset, which by law requires an election at the end of June.
The second option is to approach President Reuven Rivlin and ask him
to dissolve the Knesset. In such a case, 21 days will given for an
alternative government to be formed before elections are called,
possibly paving the way for Finance Minister Yair Lapid or Opposition
leader Yitzhak Herzog forming an alternate government with the hareidim.
The third option is a bill to dissolve the Knesset. According to Channel 2,
Netanyahu's associates are attempting to find out whether the other
parties in the Knesset would support the dissolution of the Knesset if
it is brought to a vote next week. Either way, Netanyahu is expected to
decide on the issue within days, the report said.
Netanyahu and the parties in his coalition have been at odds over
several issues, the latest being the controversial Jewish State Law,
which passed a Cabinet vote this week but which Lapid and Justice
Minister Tzipi Livni are opposed to and have threatened to vote against
when it comes to a vote in the Knesset.
I don't see Lapid forming an alternative government with the Haredim, and although Herzog could, his party's Knesset delegation is too small to pull it off. Arutz Sheva goes on to report that Netanyahu offered the Haredi parties a deal on Wednesday, but that the Haredi parties are denying it.
But the Haredi website Kikar Shabbat reported this morning that in fact Netanyahu has offered a deal to the Haredim and is awaiting a response from
R. Aaron Yehuda Leib Steinman (link in Hebrew). The deal on offer would have the Haredim agree to recommend that Netanyahu form the next government after the elections in exchange for being assured that they will be part of that government.
In Maariv's Friday edition, columnist Ben Caspit reported that Rav Steinman may veto the idea - recalling that Netanyahu made promises to the Haredim that he did not keep after the last election, and not wanting Haredi 'demands' to become the key issue in the election.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Haredim, Israeli elections, Rabbi Aaron Leib Steinman, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid
Funny you should mention that
During a wild cabinet debate over a controversial bill that would - get this -
declare Israel to be a Jewish state, Yair,
son of Tommy Lapid came up with this argument against the bill (quote from first link).
Lapid recounted speaking with the family of Zidan Saif, the Druse
police officer who was killed defending Jewish worshipers in the
Jerusalem synagogue massacre last week.
“What will we tell them, that [Saif] is a second-rate citizen?” he asked.
Funny you should mention that, because the Druze community in Israel is
all in favor of Israel being a Jewish state.
Israeli Druze “are not Palestinians,” a Druze leader said regarding a proposed law to officially codify Israel’s status as a “Jewish state.”
As opposed to Muslim Arabs, members of the Druze community tend to be pro-Israel.
“We are not Palestinians and do not have religious or cultural
connections with them, but are full Israeli citizens. I want the state
to be a Jewish state and not one of ‘all its citizens,’” said Atta
Farhat, the head of the Druze Zionist Council for Israel, according to
the Jerusalem Post.
Farhat said Jews “respect others and their way of life.”
“We see what is happening in Iraq, Egypt, and other Arab countries.
We don’t want to live under a government of darkness, but where we have
freedom,” added Farhat.
Hmmm.
Labels: Druze, Israel is a Jewish state, Yair Lapid
Slimy Shimon strikes again?
Israel's Channel 2 television reported over the weekend that former President Shimon Peres was behind Yair
Lapid's Sabbath press conference. According to the report, Peres has urged Lapid and Tzipi Livni to try to
topple Prime Minister Netanyahu's government.
The report said Peres had relayed a message in closed conversations to Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid that he should quit together with Hatnua leader Tzipi Livni. If both parties would leave Netanyahu's government, it could stay together if haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties would join, but elections would be the most likely scenario.
"The Netanyahu government has reached the end of its path," Peres was quoted as saying. "It did not meet my expectations and did not advance the diplomatic process." Sources close to Peres, Lapid, and Livni did not confirm the report.
As a former president, Peres is now more free to criticize Netanyahu than when he was president, a post seen as statesmanlike and apolitical.
Peres has never been statesmanlike and apolitical. I don't think he knows what those words mean.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Middle East peace process, Shimon Peres, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid
Will Yair Lapid's Sabbath press conference become the excuse to undo the coalition?
No one is fooling himself that Yair Lapid is a Sabbath observer. But the Israeli government nominally observes the Sabbath. And when the Finance Minister calls a press conference on the Sabbath to announce that there will soon be a solution to the 'budget crisis' (not exactly a matter of life and death that would permit desecrating the Sabbath), it could lead to the undoing of
Lapid's agreement with the Jewish Home party and
the end of the current coalition.
It should be noted that in December 1976, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin broke apart his coalition with the Mafdal religious Zionist party
over tensions, after an IAF ceremony at an airbase welcoming the
arrival of the first three F-15 fighter jets to Israel desecrated the
Sabbath.
Jewish Home, the offshoot of Mafdal, has yet to issue a response to
Lapid's Shabbat gaff, which comes mere days before the Jewish New Year
(Rosh Hashana) on Wednesday.
However, Jewish Home MK Shuli Muallem hinted that Lapid's move may
indeed cost the coalition, saying on Saturday "Yair Lapid has the right
to do as he pleases in his private home - to cut down trees or pump
water (forbidden acts on Sabbath - ed.) - but Yair Lapid works on
Shabbat and desecrates the day of rest with the goal of gathering a few
lost mandates."
"Jewish Home as a religious party in the coalition can not sit in the
government with someone who gathers mandates and desecrates the Sabbath
as if it's a normal work day," said Muallem, without elaborating on
what exactly her statement will mean in terms of practice.
Surprisingly, the criticism of Lapid didn't just come from the Right.
Surprisingly far-left Meretz party chairperson Zehava Galon joined the criticism of Lapid on Saturday.
"While you were enjoying your day of rest, Finance Minister
Yair Lapid decided to drag all the financial journalists from their
homes in the middle of Shabbat, inviting them to park at the entrance to
his house in Tel Aviv so that they could hear him read off a
thoughtless announcement," charged Galon.
"The reading took exactly a minute-and-a-half, but it certainly was
enough to destroy the Shabbat of the camermen and journalists forced to
arrive to hear the utterances of his excellency the finance minister,"
added Galon tongue-in-cheek, noting the "unfairness" towards Sabbath
observant journalists wasn't the only problem about his "futile
announcements" on Shabbat.
Hmmm.
Labels: Jewish Home party, Sabbath observance, Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid party, Zehava Gal-On
Lapid to be thrown out of coalition in favor of Haredim?
Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party may be
replaced in the coalition by the Haredim.
Knesset Coalition Chairman MK Yariv Levin (Likud) on Saturday
indicated in a TV interview that the coalition may be in for a shake-up
in the near future - and that "childish" Finance Minister Yair Lapid
(Yesh Atid) does not have high chances of being invited back in.
"We must weigh the possibility of a change in the coalition composition through the addition of the haredi parties," Levin told Channel 10. "It might be that there's no choice but to leave Lapid out."
Lapid has long been at odds with the hareidi parties of Shas and
United Torah Judaism (UTJ), particularly through his push for the
Enlistment Law requiring a mandatory hareidi IDF draft, and recently
through his 0% VAT bill that would give those who serve in the IDF
benefits buying their first home.
The latter bill has received such harsh criticism that one hareidi MK from UTJ recently threatened "apartheid" Israel with an "Arab rebellion" over the bill.
Levin also slammed Lapid for his statements during Operation
Protective Edge in Gaza; not long after Israel reached a ceasefire with
the terrorist group Hamas, Lapid called for a return to the "diplomatic"
process, urging a return to peace talks.
"If such not serious, irresponsible and even childish behavior
continues, then we certainly must consider the possibility of a change
in the composition (of the coalition)," said Levin, subtly targeting
Lapid.
The Coalition Chairman added that because of the need to consider a
change, he is not worried about Lapid's threats last Wednesday to quit the coalition if taxes are raised following Operation Protective Edge.
This would really be rich if it happened.... But don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen.
Labels: Haredim, Shas, United Torah Judaism party, Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid party
