Kahane won

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By Gideon Levy

Rabbi Meir Kahane can rest in peace: His doctrine has won. Twenty years after his Knesset list was disqualified and 18 years after he was murdered, Kahanism has become legitimate in public discourse. If there is something that typifies Israel's current murky, hollow election campaign, which ends the day after tomorrow, it is the transformation of racism and nationalism into accepted values.

If Kahane were alive and running for the 18th Knesset, not only would his list not be banned, it would win many votes, as Yisrael Beiteinu is expected to do. The prohibited has become permitted, the ostracized is now accepted, the destestable has become the talented - that's the slippery slope down which Israeli society has skidded over the past two decades.

There's no need to refer to Haaretz's startling revelation that Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman was a member of Kahane's Kach party in his youth: This campaign's dark horse was and is a Kahanist. The differences between Kach and Yisrael Beiteinu are minuscule, not fundamental and certainly not a matter of morality. The differences are in tactical nuances: Lieberman calls for a fascist "test of loyalty" as a condition for granting citizenship to Israel's Arabs, while Kahane called for the unconditional annulment of their citizenship. One racist (Lieberman) calls for their transfer to the Palestinian state, the other (Kahane) called for their deportation.

Now the instigator of the new Israeli racism will apparently become the leader of a large party once again in the government. Benjamin Netanyahu has already pledged that Lieberman will be an "important minister" in his government. If someone like Lieberman were to join a government in Europe, Israel would sever ties with it. If anyone had predicted in Kahane's day that a pledge to turn his successor into an important minister would one day be considered an electoral asset here, they would have been told they were having a nightmare.

But the nightmare is here and now. Kahane is alive and kicking - is he ever - in the person of his thuggish successor. This is not just a matter of disqualifying Yisrael Beiteinu; it is not even a matter of this party's growing strength to terrifying proportions, becoming the fulcrum that will decide who becomes prime minister. This is a matter of legitimization. All society bears responsibility for it.

Kahane was ostracized; Lieberman is a welcome guest in every living room and television studio. Imagine: Ehud Barak does not rule out a coalition with him; Uzi Landau, considered a "democrat," is now Lieberman's number two; a former senior ambassador and a retired police major general also adorn the list. Did we know that Israel was being represented in Washington by an avowed racist in the person of Daniel Ayalon? Did we know that former Border Police chief and deputy police commissioner Yitzhak Aharonovich was one, too? They have come out of the closet, these racists, breaking out of the heart of the establishment to the despicable right, and the attitude toward them has not changed a bit.


more,,,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=1062338

[bemildred]

1. Apathy uniting voters in Israel

---

Election campaigns in this fractured country are often tense affairs. Not this time. The campaign posters on street corners are the only sign that Israelis will choose a new government on Tuesday.

Why a country that prides itself on the quality of its democracy has turned away from this election is explained by those competing for power and the issues at stake. The contenders are uninspiring and the defining decision over Israel's future -- whether to conclude a deal with the Palestinians -- is hardly a glimmer on the horizon.

Of the four main party leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu from the right-wing Likud and Ehud Barak from Labour, have both been prime minister.

As for the other contenders, Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the centrist Kadima party, is new on the political stage. The final contender, Avigdor Lieberman from the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, is shaping up to be the sensation of this election. Most polls suggest he will beat Labour and win third place to hold the balance of power between Likud and Kadima.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/middle-east/apathy-uniting-voters-in-israel-1632651.html

[bemildred]

2. Yesha Council founder: Kadima's anti-Netanyahu propaganda is true

See, sometimes propaganda is true.

Yesha Council founder Israel Harel expressed his support of the Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish home) party for Knesset. Harel said, "The National Union is not a democratic party run by the public. Its nature makes its pseudo-haredi and is run by – and actually belongs to - the rabbinical arena."

Harel also slammed Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, "The things said about him in Kadima propaganda are, unfortunately, true." (Kobi Nahshoni)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3668425,00.html

[bemildred]

3. Chabad Rabbis: Vote for National Union

(IsraelNN.com) While the official Chabad-Lubavitch movement is staying out of politics, several leading Chabad rabbis have issued a proclamation with instructions to vote for the Ichud Leumi (National Union) party. The proclamation was issued last week, including a specific imperative “upon every one of our brethren in Israel to vote for the National Union.”

The proclamation is signed by Rabbi Gedaliah Axelrod, former Rabbinical Court President and the rabbi of the Chabad community in Haifa; Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, author and head of the Task Force for the Land and Nation; and Rabbi Yigal Pizem, founder of yeshivot and Chabad institutions in northern Israel.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/160443

[Vegasaurus]

4. Sad but not surprising

Hamas might have been the political result of ongoing occupation, so to is religious right wing nuts the political result of ongoing terrorism.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

5. "They *made* us become ugly rascists!"

If the Palestinians had simply gone along with the plan to destroy their society and national aspirations, these Israelis wouldn't have been forced to become what they have.

We can't forgive them for *making* us kill their children, steal their land, imprison them without charge or trial.

I suppose we can now add "making" us become ugly racists to the list of things Palestinians are blamed for.

[LeftishBrit]

6. Nobody's 'made' anyone become ugly racists...

however ugly racism on each side reinforces ugly racism on the other. It's a two-sided thing. Hamas are 'donors' to the Israeli Right, just as the Israeli Right are 'donors' to Hamas.

Nobody is 'making' anyone do anything, however. People have choices. And it is time that people on both sides start making choices in the direction of a PEACEFUL solution; not yet more hate and violence.

www.allmep.org

[ProgressiveMuslim]

9. Nah. Your ubiquitous attempts to equally distribute blame fall flat on this one.

Palestinians already made the choice for Oslo, and it got nothing but exponential land expropriation and settlement expansion.

The problem isn't that citizens make wrong choices.

It's that the gov't of Israel consistently enforces a program of land colonization and suppression of those they occupy that flies in the face of international law.

Nothing "two-sided" about taht.

[Vegasaurus]

12. As usual

you like to paint the Palestinians as pure as snow innocent victims.

They didn't do anything to deserve their lot in life.

It is just those terrible bad Israelis that MADE them turn into terrorists and suicide bombers.

Right.

There has been Arab/Palestinian violence on Jews from the first Zionist stepping on the soil.

The Palestinians have made their own lives so miserable.

They could have had a state several times, a prosperous land for their people, instead of a cesspool.

[shira]

7. I thought that was your argument

almost everything nasty that Palestinians do and say is directly caused by Israel's actions.

Right? Wrong?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

8. Not I.

I may not agree with tactics that are used, but I believe Palestinians have the right to resist.

They will never be passive in the face of Israel's attempt to destroy them, their culture or their national aspirations.

[Vegasaurus]

13. Pity the Palestinians

since they have never been allowed to take responsibility for anything in their lives.\

60 years on massive aid, still refugees, still being promised that they are "going home" to their former land.

They take no responsibility for terrorism, murder, or refusal to make peace.

They choose eternal war, and you think that is a good plan.

No wonder that Palestinians have such miserable lives.

People don't want anything better for them.

[LeftishBrit]

14. Do you genuinely think that the Palestinians' main problem is that they have 'never been allowed to

take responsibility for anything'?

Unless you mean 'they've never been in the position of self-government' that is simplistic. They've been in a mess for a long time. And it's not entirely due entirely to Israel or entirely to their own leadership choices or even entirely to their being treated as expendable pawns by the Arab states. It's all of these. As it often is.


'They choose eternal war, and you think that is a good plan.'

'They' don't. Nor do 'they' all choose peace, if it comes to that. Polls generally suggest about a 50/50 split between hawks and doves in Palestine as in Israel. Unfortunately, hawkishness on either side tends to increase hawkishness on the other.

Don't get me wrong, I think Hamas are a crap government. But I don't think that the whole problem with Palestinians' situation is a lack of responsibility.

[Violet_Crumble]

22. I'm still wondering what Veggie means by 'take responsibility for anything'...

I wonder if it means that she thinks the Palestinians should take responsibility for Israel occupying them, or the Palestinians should take responsibility for the recent bombing of Gaza by Israel? Because from what I've read, there's nothing that she doesn't blame the Palestinians for. And I suspect in the case of the post, the words 'blame' and 'responsibility' are interchangable...

[Scurrilous]

10. Israeli Election: Theodor Herzl vs. Meir Kahane (Kahane Wins)

<snip>

"Two provocative columns in Haaretz today.

In the first, political scientist Shlomo Avineri writes about the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl's, fear that the Jewish state he envisioned would ultimately turn to anti-Palestinian racism.

In his novel, Old New Land, published in 1902, which purported to describe Israel in 1923, Herzl described a critical election in which an Avigdor Lieberman type runs for prime minister.

"In the book, not only do the country's Arabs have the right to vote, some of them serve in key posts. Among them is one of the novel's heroes, an Arab engineer from Haifa named Rashid Bey. To use a term from our day, Herzl envisioned a state that would be both Jewish and democratic, both a Jewish nation state and a state of all its citizens.

"A new party appeared in the 1923 campaign, headed by a man who had recently come to the country and wanted to annul his old citizenship and rescind the right to vote of all non-Jews. Herzl named the founder of the Jewish racist party Geyer (which in German means a bird that eats carrion), modeling the character and his ideology after the Viennese anti-Semitic leader Karl Lueger.

Geyer's argument was simple: This is a Jewish state, and only Jews should have the right to citizenship. Others can remain as tolerated residents, but they do not deserve equal political rights."

In other words, Lieberman.

The good news (this is fiction) is that the Lieberman character loses big.

Today's second column is by Gideon Levy. He writes that the current election campaign demonstrates that the racist rabbi Meir Kahane, who favored expulsion of all the Arabs, is back big time."

more

[azurnoir]

11. I find it sickening that the "Geyerists" may well win

but I must also wonder why.

[Scurrilous]

15. Rabbi Aviner refers to Baruch Goldstein as saint

Asked by a reader whether Jewish doctor who murdered 29 innocent Palestinians erred, Zionist rabbi says answer is 'complicated'

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3680518,00.html

<snip>

"Baruch Goldstein was a righteous man, but what he did was wrong, Zionist Rabbi Shlomo Aviner said in a response to a question regarding the Jewish doctor who murdered 29 Palestinian civilians and injured another 125 at the Cave of Machpela on Purim eve 14 years ago.

Aviner replied to a reader's question posted on the Ma'ale website. The reader was wondering whether Goldstein's act was justified, "seeing that at the time many innocent Jews were murdered by Arab terrorists," or whether his act constituted "a heinous murder."

Rabbi Aviner agreed that the issue was complicated: On the one hand, Goldstein's act could not be viewed separately from the man himself, who, according to Aviner lived during a time of multiple terror attacks and dedicated his life to saving Jews; and on the other hand, a man cannot act of his own accord on behalf of the nation.

"Clearly Baruch Goldstein did not act out of personal vengeance. This is precisely why he should have asked for the nation's permission, because it is the nation that would later have to shoulder the responsibility.

"Had he asked us we would have told him not to do it. This is not the way to act. But he didn't. And he got killed. He knew that what he was doing was dangerous, so may the memory of the righteous be for blessing, may the memory of the saintly be for blessing. But what he did was wrong."

[HamdenRice]

16. IMO, America made Israel Kahanist

because we offered them unlimited power without responsibility. Politics, especially democratic politics, is supposed to be self-correcting. Do something stupid in power, and society has to pay the consequences, and if they are angry enough, they throw the bums out.

For the last 30 years, Israel has paid no consequences for its increasingly shrill, racist, impractical and irresponsible policies. The Israeli electorate learns no lessons and pays no consequences for its bad decisions. Militarism has no fiscal consequences in the form of higher taxes. Settlements are costless. The expanding occupation is a free ride. Human rights abuses are shielded from international condemnation with actual consequences.

The US and the Israel lobby in the US have more to do with the fascist turn of politics in Israel more than any external "threat."

[azurnoir]

17. Yes America has and is acting as "enabler" to Israels

addiction to militarism, land, and power.

[LeftishBrit]

18. What is it about so many people here assuming that...

the Israelis or Palestinians, depending on which group they support, are suffering mainly from not being made to take 'responsibility'?

I've seen such posts about both sides.

They - both sides - are suffering from fear, anger, the many bad decisions that these cause and have caused, and other countries' pressures in the wrong direction. I am quite sure that some American governments have actively encouraged Israeli hawkishness because Israel has some of the same enemies as America.

But neither side is a bunch of spoilt welfare queens out of Reagan's 1980 textbook, and IMO it doesn't help the situation to look at things from this perspective.

[HamdenRice]

19. What percentage of the average Israeli's tax bill goes toward defense and settlements?

When you understand the answer to that question, you might change your point of view.

[oberliner]

20. Massively large percentages of the average Israeli's tax bill goes towards those things

Military spending represents about 10 percent of GDP the budget in Israel, one of the highest percentages of any country in the world.

[Scurrilous]

21. Introducing Israel's next foreign minister: Avigdor Lieberman

<snip>

"No, it's not official yet, but what seemed like an odd joke just a week and half ago, is looking more and more like a done deal.

Ha'aretz reports that Avigdor "minorities are the biggest problem in the world" Lieberman has moved from making his case for the position to making demands. He wants "full autonomy" in his new post and is worried that Benjamin Netanyahu will bring in trusted Likud aides to do the heavy diplomatic lifting . It makes sense that Netanyahu would be a bit worried about Lieberman becoming the face of Israel to the world, this is the man after all who:

has called for the execution of Israeli Arab MPs who had dealings with Hamas, for Gaza to be "treated like Chechnya" and for Israel to fight Hamas "just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II."

In October, he told Hosni Mubarak to "go to hell" for not coming to Israel, and after Israeli leaders apologised to the Egyptian president for the remarks, slammed them for acting toward Cairo like a "battered wife."

Doesn't look like Lieberman is quite ready for his close up yet. I'm sure Netanyahu hopes he gets ready quickly."

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/03/introducing-israels-next-foreign-minister-avigdor-lieberman.html