Israel elects its own pres Bush
RolandTD20Kdrummer
Posts: 13,066
Well folks....here we go...here we go. Get ready. How long until Iran now I wonder?
I'm REALLY (really) starting to garner a deep deep love for Israel these days.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1039947.html
"The elections for the 17th Knesset have already been decided: Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next prime minister. Nothing will change the current trend, which was reflected in polls this weekend. At a time when the entire world, including Israel, is amazed and moved by the miracle election of Barack Obama, Israel is on the verge of electing George Bush.
Tzipi Livni will not become less feeble, and Ehud Barak will not fix his waywardness. And the new left-wing party in the works will not make a difference one way or the other - it is too little, too late. Israelis intend to vote for the conservative, right-wing, nationalist, bellicose candidate - the Israeli Bush. The world is moving forward, while Israel is taking a step backward.
Netanyahu may not be as awful as it would appear for the left, but the sweeping support he enjoys in the polls signals to us and to the world, including the Arab world, the true nature of Israeli society. Good riddance to the deceptive myth that most Israelis want peace; you can forget about all the deceitful polls that showed most of the public supports a two-state solution. No solution and no two states, but only the truth, which once again has been exposed: a nationalistic, belligerent society electing its spitting image as its leader. "
I'm REALLY (really) starting to garner a deep deep love for Israel these days.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1039947.html
"The elections for the 17th Knesset have already been decided: Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next prime minister. Nothing will change the current trend, which was reflected in polls this weekend. At a time when the entire world, including Israel, is amazed and moved by the miracle election of Barack Obama, Israel is on the verge of electing George Bush.
Tzipi Livni will not become less feeble, and Ehud Barak will not fix his waywardness. And the new left-wing party in the works will not make a difference one way or the other - it is too little, too late. Israelis intend to vote for the conservative, right-wing, nationalist, bellicose candidate - the Israeli Bush. The world is moving forward, while Israel is taking a step backward.
Netanyahu may not be as awful as it would appear for the left, but the sweeping support he enjoys in the polls signals to us and to the world, including the Arab world, the true nature of Israeli society. Good riddance to the deceptive myth that most Israelis want peace; you can forget about all the deceitful polls that showed most of the public supports a two-state solution. No solution and no two states, but only the truth, which once again has been exposed: a nationalistic, belligerent society electing its spitting image as its leader. "
Progress is not made by everyone joining some new fad,
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
'...the broad support for Netanyahu has deep significance. It reflects the nation's prevailing spirit: Israelis want the Arabs "to disappear," or at the very least to leave them in "quiet," it does not matter how. Forget about all the rest...
We are on the verge of electing a candidate who has explicitly declared that there is nothing to discuss with the Palestinians regarding a settlement, someone who has already proven his extensive pyromaniacal skills in opening the Western Wall tunnel, someone who tries to mislead the public with baseless statements about Palestinian industrial zones in place of evacuating settlements, and providing economic aid instead of granting the Palestinians political independence - as they are entitled, as every nation is entitled.
Netanyahu will once again deceive, Obama will keep his distance due to other urgent problems, opportunities will be missed and the fire will flare up again. This is what we want, and this is what we will get. Nonetheless, the inauspicious polls do contribute one thing: They rip off the disguise. An Israel that votes Likud does not want peace - no ifs, ands or buts.'
Gazans despair over blockade
Aleem Maqbool
BBC News, Ramallah
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7739063.stm
"People in Gaza are waiting in lines for almost everything, and that's if they're lucky enough to find something to wait for," says Bassam Nasser, 39.
An aid worker in Gaza City, he, like so many others there, including the UN relief agency, says living conditions are the worst he has ever seen in the strip.
"People queue for two or three hours for bread, but sometimes there's no cooking gas or flour, so no bread.
"People wait in line for UN food handouts, but sometimes there aren't any. The suffering is reaching every aspect of life."
As well as working for an American development agency, Mr Nasser is a Gazan, and a father.
"I've got three young children. It's difficult to explain to them that it's not my fault we don't have electricity and that it's not in my control."
Since June 2007, Israel has allowed little more than basic humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
Many there hoped that policy would change, five months ago, when Hamas and Israel agreed to a truce.
But while there were some increases in the amount of aid allowed in, Israel's strict restrictions on the movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza largely remained.
Two weeks ago, an already fragile humanitarian situation resulting from the mounting effects of months of shortages, saw a dramatic downturn.
The fighting resumed, with an Israeli army incursion into Gaza and a retaliatory barrage of militant rocket fire. With that, Israel all-but shut the Gaza Strip.
Although there are some goods being smuggled into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt, little else is reaching the territory.
Serious fuel shortages have led to widespread power cuts across Gaza City. That, in turn, has caused problems in pumping water to homes, and sewage to treatment plants.
Israel is preventing many aid workers, and all journalists from entering Gaza too, so our interviews have had to be conducted over the telephone.
"I never thought we would see days like this," says Monther Shublak, head of Gaza's water authority.
"The water system was severely stretched even before this crisis, but now, things are much worse.
"For the last four days, around 40% of people in Gaza City have had no access to running water in their homes at all."
"People ask me 'When will we get water?' I simply can't answer them," Mr Shublak says.
"But we are putting all of our resources into sewage pumping. The health consequences of that system totally failing are too worrying to think about, but it could happen unless things change."
Alongside attacks by its military, Israel's government says its Gaza closure strategy aims to deter Palestinian militants from firing rockets across the border at Israeli towns.
It also wants to choke Hamas, the Islamist faction in charge of Gaza, an enemy Israel sees as one of its most deadly.
But the rockets keep being launched and Hamas shows few signs of losing its grip on power.
There is much discussion among Palestinians as to why this sudden increase in pressure on Gaza is happening now.
Some say Israel is preparing for a big invasion; others feel there is an element of political posturing ahead of an Israeli general election in February.
Many will tell you that they feel a time of deep division in Palestinian society is being taken advantage of.
Few take Israel's explanation, that it is only protecting its citizens from the horror of rocket attacks, at face value.
"Isn't it enough that their army kills the people who fire rockets?" asks Mr Nasser.
"We are not responsible, so why are we all being punished? It makes no sense."
He talks of the long-term impact on children in Gaza, including his own, aged six, five and two.
"It's getting harder for us to answer our childrens' questions about the situation, without instilling hatred in their minds about the people responsible for our suffering," he says.
He does not just mean the Israeli government.
"People here see everyone as responsible for their miserable lives. They see Israel closing Gaza, but they also see people around the world doing nothing.
"They see Hamas making things worse by using the blockade as an excuse not to be accountable, and they do whatever they like.
"People see the silence of the PA, [the Fatah-dominated Palestinian government in the West Bank] and blame them too," he says.
"It's so hard to see where the hope is, and so hard to stop these conditions breeding more hatred."
I don't believe the people of Israel support this madness.
"Although most of them don't know it, the majority of Israeli citizens favor an end to their country's occupation of Palestinian territories. According to pollster Mina Zemach, 63% of Israelis support "unilateral withdrawal," and 69% support the evacuation of "all" or "most of' the settlements. Other polls have yielded similar results.
Zemach also found that 60% of Israelis support the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a future peace agreement. "Similar trends appear on the Palestinian side in surveys conducted by my Palestinian colleagues," she says.
If anything this is another example of the power media holds over the people.
In almost every poll I've seen regarding the issue Israelis want a 2 state settlement, including a withdrawal back to the 1967 borders.
Like anywhere, the people of the country want one thing, while their leaders pursue something else.
And I believe media has a very large impact on who the population elects, anywhere. If the election is about domestic issues, it can easily be construed -by a foreign press-as whatever they want. I'm sure in Iran they are talking about how the US just elected a Zionist supporting, aggressive hawk in Washington.
I'm used to 7 major parties in my country, but even I get a bit dizzy from the amount of parties in the Knesset. With many single-interest parties, ethnic parties, traditional right and left parties etc how one votes as a total judgement does not necessarily reflect opinion on a single issue. (For instance would you vote to end the war and have socialist policies, or vote for conservative fiscal policies?) So I'd rather look towards direct questions of whether they support the occupation and treatment of palestinians or not, to gauge the Israeli sentiment. the majority wants an end, but that sentiment must navigate through a swamp of ingrained political divisions and compromises to get anywhere.
(edit) go here to see just how many parties there are with representatives in the Knesset: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Israel#Latest_elections
To summarize, there are 2 parties that gathered between 15-22% each, 4 parties hovering around 10 % each, and 6 parties hovering around 5 % of the vote last election.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
'As Prime Minister Netanyahu emphasized a policy of "three no(s)": no withdrawal from Golan Heights, no discussion of the case of Jerusalem, no negotiations under any preconditions.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break
'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, commonly referred to as the "Clean Break" report, was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then-Prime Minister of Israel. The report explained a new approach to solving Israel's security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on "Western values". It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy and advancing right-wing Zionism...
The report was "a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto" according to journalist Jason Vest.
In Vest's analysis, the report proposed "a mini-cold war in the Middle East, advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes, destabilization and containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as to articulate a way to advance right-wing Zionism by melding it with missile-defense advocacy."
Patrick J. Buchanan wrote that the report "urged Bibi to ditch the Oslo Accords of the assassinated Yitzak Rabin and adopt a new aggressive strategy."
Because of the shared organizational membership of the paper's authors, Vest wrote that the report provides "perhaps the most insightful window" into the "policy worldview" of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and Center for Security Policy, two United States-based thinktanks.
Sidney Blumenthal's summary of the report:
"Instead of trading land for peace, the neocons advocated tossing aside the Oslo agreements that established negotiations and demanding unconditional Palestinian acceptance of Likud's terms, peace for peace. Rather than negotiations with Syria, they proposed weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. They also advanced a wild scenario to redefine Iraq. Then King Hussein of Jordan would somehow become its ruler; and somehow this Sunni monarch would gain control of the Iraqi Shiites, and through them wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria."
According to Sidney Blumenthal,
"Netanyahu, at first, attempted to follow the clean break strategy, but under persistent pressure from the Clinton administration he felt compelled to enter into U.S.-led negotiations with the Palestinians."
Brian Whitaker reported in a September 2002 article published in The Guardian that
"With several of the Clean Break paper's authors now holding key positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to transcend its foes by reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives to achieve it."
John Mearsheimer wrote in the London Review of Books that the 'Clean Break' paper
"called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush administration to pursue those same goals. The Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that Feith and Perle 'are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments ... and Israeli interests'."
Ian Buruma wrote in the New York Times that:
"Douglas Feith and Richard Perle advised Netanyahu, who was prime minister in 1996, to make 'a clean break' from the Oslo accords with the Palestinians. They also argued that Israeli security would be served best by regime change in surrounding countries. Despite the current mess in Iraq, this is still a commonplace in Washington. In Paul Wolfowitz's words, 'The road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad.' It has indeed become an article of faith (literally in some cases) in Washington that American and Israeli interests are identical, but this was not always so, and 'Jewish interests' are not the main reason for it now."
Buruma continues:
"What we see, then, is not a Jewish conspiracy, but a peculiar alliance of evangelical Christians, foreign-policy hard-liners, lobbyists for the Israeli government and neoconservatives, a number of whom happen to be Jewish. But the Jews among them -- Perle, Wolfowitz, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, et al. -- are more likely to speak about freedom and democracy than about Halakha (Jewish law). What unites this alliance of convenience is a shared vision of American destiny and the conviction that American force and a tough Israeli line on the Arabs are the best ways to make the United States strong, Israel safe and the world a better place."
Taki writes in the September 2006 issue of The American Conservative that:
"recently, Netanyahu suggested that President Bush had assured him Iran will be prevented from going nuclear. I take him at his word. Netanyahu seems to be the main mover in America’s official adoption of the 1996 white paper 'A Clean Break', authored by him and American fellow neocons, which aimed to aggressively remake the strategic environments of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. As they say in boxing circles, three down, two to go."
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
Without the backing of Labor (which Kadima has), Netanyahu/Likud plans to form government with the ultra-right parties. These same parties asked Livni to remove discussions of Jerusalem with the Palestinians off the table to accept forming government with her. She rejected and dissolved the government.
Even with many parties in the mix you can still see where a government headed by Likud will go.
You have a point in that all the corruption charges against the ex-PM from Kadima would of shot the parties public support to shit. Still, doesn't mean they should vote for Likud considering all the moaning and groaning you hear from Israelis regarding their "security".
I see the Likud+right wing religious, but I wont worry about it until it has actually happened. The strong showing for Kadima last time is an encouragement. but we'll see. (The op was an editorial, after all)
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Last numbers I saw about a week ago were roughly 33% for Likud and 29% for Kadima (they were the results of a poll). I'm not sure how statistically significant they were but what was striking is that Kadima lost a lot of ground from the previous election, hence the article's assumption of a Likud win. We hope, then shall see.
It is always written or referred to as some whacko idea, yet it was the real plan in other words! What does one think of themselves to beleive they know just how to re order the world! Perle has the most sinister face ever!
Anyway thanks for connecting this.
writing checks that others pay
peace
Don't forget Mr. World Bank Paul Wolfowitz and his paper in the 90's which was pretty much rewritten in 2000 as 'Redefining America's Defenses'
'How a culture can forget its plan of yesterday
and you swear it's not a trend
it doesn't matter anyway
there's no need to talk as friends
nothing news everyday
all the kids will eat it up
if it's packaged properly'