Israeli elections: Be afraid. Be very afraid

[IndianaGreen]

Israeli elections: Be afraid. Be very afraid

Donald Macintyre reports from Jerusalem on an election campaign that is still too close to call, but one with ominous portents

Sunday, 8 February 2009

Israel's Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, last night launched a concerted final effort to become her nation's first woman leader since Golda Meir, despite the rightwards shift in public opinion that has threatened to propel Benjamin Netanyahu back into the premiership.

The leader of the centrist Kadima party, who began the closing stages of her campaign with a rally for Druze Arab voters in Galilee last night, issued a direct personal challenge to Mr Netanyahu to agree to the television debate which he has consistently refused.

As polls showing the lead of Mr Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party has narrowed to only two seats ahead of Kadima, Ms Livni's campaign team believes she can overtake her rival by the time Israel goes to the polls on Tuesday.

Mr Netanyahu has emphasised the threats from Hamas and a nuclear Iran in his campaign.

Ms Livni, who strongly supported the recent invasion of Gaza, but has pledged to continue talks on a two-state solution with the moderate West Bank Palestinian leadership, said there was a public demand from potential leaders "to specify with which policies they plan to cope with the threats, and lead (Israel) to a better future of peace and quiet". Meanwhile the outgoing Kadima premier, Ehud Olmert, was making what the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, said were "supreme efforts" to leave a positive legacy by securing the release of Gilad Shalit, the army corporal seized by Gaza militants in 2006, before polling day.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-elections-be-afraid-be-very-afraid-1604052.html

I don't know what bullshit weed these people are smoking, but Gilad Shalit is as dead as Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. :-(

[MaraJade]

1. People are voting their fears. . .

and who can blame them. To so many over there, the whole so-called "two-state" solution
is the "camel's head in the tent" that will lead to the destruction of the Jewish state and
genocide of the Jewish people. Many remember the Pogroms, the persecution and the horror of being chased from
place to place. Many remember the Holocaust, because many in Israel lost family and friends in the
Holocaust.

I am not Jewish, but I can fully understand.

When I went to Israel many years ago, lots of Israeli people told me that never again
would they be victims of the world's cruelty and hatred. Many had vowed to take as many
haters with them as they could if ever their backs were against the wall again. They will never go
quietly into the night. They WILL rage against the dying of the light.

That MUST be understood and never forgotten. Israelis are a people who will not allow
themselves to to conquered ever again, and I cannot blame them.

[delad]

2. muppet n/t

[Idealism]

3. Who doesn't understand that the Israeli military is one of the best in the world?

Or that they are the only country in the region that has nuclear weapons? What do they have to fear, exactly from a rag-tag group of militants? Qassam rockets that kill 25 Israeli's since they began in 2001? Suicide bombers from Hamas that have killed less 500 people since 1994? Are either of these things an existential threat to Israel? No. Neither is an independent Palestinian state. Just break bread with the Palestinians already and stop treating them like they are the bringers of the apocalypse, and I think Israel will be fine.