The Void and the Villain
In a time of trouble one cannot just step aside in disgust, fatigue or despair. To do this opens a way for bad forces to rush in.
On February 01, 2006 the Olmert care-taker government sent masses of police, dozens of them mounted, to beat and trample Jews who were sitting and standing in front of nine Jewish homes to protest their impending destruction as part of the Bush-mandated Road Map. The homes were built on long-empty land within the Jewish town of Ofra, about eight miles north of Jerusalem. Many videos exist (see israelreporter.com or israelnationalnews.com) of the savage police riot that occurred, resulting in 350 injuries.
Encouraging, praising and protecting the police, Mr. Olmert demonstrated his ‘toughness’: but where was Benjamin Netanyahu, supposed leader of the national camp of Israel?
Netanyahu, as number two member of the Likud during the previous election should have become Acting Prime Minister when Sharon was incapacitated by strokes and massive cerebral hemoerhaging almost two months before Amona. A legal-medical fiction, — that Sharon was only “temporarily permanently disabled” allowed back-bencher Olmert, a Deputy PM to take the reins. Bibi did not contest the blatant institutional fraud. After all, when you’ve got your health you’ve got everything…
On July 12, Hizballah, part of Iran’s armed forces attacked Israeli border guards, killing six and abducting two. This act of war was followed by five weeks of rocket barrages, nearly four thousand in all. The Olmert-Peretz (Kadima-Labor) government kept the IDF on a choker, stifling strategic plans of attack, showing flagrant contempt for Israeli soldiers and hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens.
This betrayal of one’s own was predictable from those that pushed through the expulsion of ten thousand Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, flattened their homes and gave the area to terror groups.
The German navy now patrols the coast, French, Italian and Muslim troops are in the upper Galilee (south of the Litani River) alternately touring, stimulating the economy (French Commander Jean-Paul Ducharme explains) and threatening to shoot down Israeli jets doing recon on Syria’s continuing shipments of Iranian and Russian arms to Hizballah.
Where is Benjamin Netanyahu and why is he hiding? Why the void when so many Israelis yearn for a clean sweep in leadership at the top of the State’s institutions? And Israel needs it to survive.
About ten days after the crimes at Amona, crimes unpunished to this day Israel entered its six-week election season. Mr. Netanyahu, leader of the rump of Likud left after Ariel Sharon took the hacks to form the expulsion party, Kadima, ran a non-campaign. While he spoke often to western groups and media (buffing his nationalist façade in the west) his disinterest in competing recalled the Dole milk-train of 1996. His most vigorous words targeted Moshe Feiglin and the Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud whose policies could reverse Israel’s slide to oblivion.
Mr. Netanyahu still is useful to the grand-gamers and their Israeli toadies. He also has learned what it means to feel the relentless left wing lash of Israel’s primary media.
Result of Bibi’s quietude: the smallest voter turnout (62%) in Israel’s history. Olmert-Kadima, a State Department subsidiary, remained the largest of many medium and small parties, winning 24% of votes cast, about 17% of registered voters. They joined with Labor (about 16% of votes cast, 11% of those registered) to form a coalition with two ‘gimme my piece of the pie’ groups. Thanks to the non-campaign of its leader, Likud lost many nationalist votes to Yisrael Beitenu (“Israel, Our Home”) led by Avigdor Lieberman, a party that previously appealed mainly to Russian immigrants. Lieberman cast himself as strongly opposed to further expulsion of Jews from Judea and Samaria, talked tough about terror groups, Syria and Iran and demanded full exposure of the government’s failures during the summer conflict.
Not any more… here’s what happened and what it means.
Having positioned himself as the main parliamentary critic of the Road Map regime, its botched war and ceasefire, early in October, after the Jewish high holy days, Lieberman presented a list of demands that would allow him to enter Olmert’s tottering coalition and ‘move it to the right.’ The key phrase here is “allow him to enter the coalition.”
One by one his five conditions for entering the coalition were jettisoned. “It is not essential” Lieberman or his spokeswoman would explain. When the key “no more expulsion of Jews” criterion was dropped it became clear that Lieberman is an ambitious opportunist dangerous to Jewish settlement and sovereignty in the Promised Land; that he is moving, or being moved into government for a bad purpose.
Having been made a Deputy PM (note the pattern) and “Security Minister,” a position that will involve foreign strategy planning (?) but no Ministerial portfolios for his party (which is very unusual), Lieberman revealed a plan for reorganization of Israel’s government that would further decrease its accountability and ensure Caesarism.
The President will be directly elected and will select Cabinet Ministers who are not in the Knesset (Parliament) and accountable only to him. He will not stand for a party or its platform but only the sum of his campaign speeches. This is even less representative than the current system where voters vote for a party list, shaped mainly by the party boss, not individuals. The President and his gang, the Cabinet will negotiate and make treaties with foreign powers.
Lieberman has positioned himself to sell Israel out to a State Department – EU – Russian grouping. He may protect Olmert from the prosecutions already in view. He will be a strong man in foreign capitals and tough on his own people. The wall, its inutility demonstrated this summer, will be built, bankrupting Israel and ghettoizing Jews. A jihadist state will be created behind it, astride the nation’s ancient heartland, strategic high ground, holiest sites, and mountain aquifer and guarded by EU-UN and perhaps NATO troops.
Benjamin Netanyahu stepped away, leaving this dangerous political void because he knows the outlines of the deal going down, doesn’t like it, and wants little part in it aside from his assigned role of keeping the Likud neutered, Ariel Sharon having made the main cut. Things being as they are, he may even have been ordered to step away.
So there it is: a void, a betrayer and a dangerous opportunist sprung by relentless foreign pressures and loss of faith. The Road Map rolls on toward the dark end of the street.