Lieber-fear II: The real issue is why Israelis voted Lieberman

[bemildred]

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Most of them are our friends and neighbors who are fed up with a political system that awards graft, failure and lethargy, and a criminal justice system where there is little if any reliable law enforcement, and the inmates run the entire country as their personal asylum. Ironically, Lieberman is also under investigation for alleged graft, but it only seems to have made him more popular.

Furthermore, these secular and wholly rational colleagues and family members are fed up with risking their lives serving in an army protecting a religious community that does not share their burden and lives off their dime, all the while making no effort to hide their hatred of the secular majority that shelters them and puts food on their table.

That may be the true irony of Yisrael Beitenu, and it's an aspect of the party that is missed entirely in Hitchens' article. That is, that a party painted as fascist and racist may be the only one well positioned to protect secular values and release the stranglehold exerted by the religious on the definition and image of Judaism in Israel.

Furthermore, with all due respect to the nice Jews of Meretz and Labor, Yisrael Beitenu may be the only party that stands a chance of ending the nationalist wing's devotion to messianic, Greater Israel ideology and the retention of every inch of territory from the river to the sea. For better or for worse, Lieberman sees Arabs through geopolitical crosshairs, not the prism of biblical promises and cherry-picked rabbinical commentary.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067240.html

[bemildred]

1. Avigdor Lieberman's Chutzpah

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Yet if you are a former bouncer born in former Soviet Moldova, like Avigdor Lieberman, you can come to live in the Holy Land as of right and become the leader of a party that proposes to institute a "loyalty oath" not just to the Arab citizens of the state of Israel but to all Jewish members of religious Orthodox sects that do not declare themselves Zionist. And this grotesque party, named Israel Beiteinu or "Israel Is Our Home," is now the power broker, and its leader is the kingmaker in the Israeli electoral process.

In his early days as an immigrant in Israel, Lieberman was briefly a member of Kach, the hysterical group led by Rabbi Meir Kahane that was morbidly obsessed with the sex lives of Arabs and that yelled for their mass expulsion or—to employ the common euphemism—"transfer." He has now somewhat refined his position, calling for an exchange of territories and people that would more nearly approximate partition or even a two-state solution. But as with every such proposal, this still leaves a large number of Arabs under Israeli sovereignty, either on the West Bank or in Israel "proper." I doubt that Lieberman is really serious about any "land for peace" negotiations—he quarreled even with Ariel Sharon about disengagement from Gaza, so if it were up to him, there would presumably still be Israeli settlers in the strip. He has changed the whole tone of the argument by deciding to question the presence of Israeli Arabs who, unlike their cousins under occupation, enjoy the right of citizenship and voting as well as the privilege of living under the Israeli flag.

The best book about this highly interesting and neglected community was written by the Israeli novelist David Grossman in 1993 and is called Sleeping on a Wire. It contains micro-flashes of illumination (such as the probability that more Israeli Arabs than American Jews speak Hebrew) and also some memorable reflections on language and its relationship to literature and culture. We all remember that Maimonides wrote in fluent Arabic, but it's perhaps less well-known that:

The everyday conversation of Palestinian Israelis sparkles with expressions from the Bible and the Talmud, from Bialik and Rabbi Yehuda Halevy and Agnon. Poet Naim Araideh effuses: "Do you know what it means for me to write in Hebrew? Do you know what it's like to write in the language in which the world was created?"

http://www.slate.com/id/2211915

[bemildred]

2. Lieberman's anti-Arab ideology wins over Israel's teens

The Yisrael Beiteinu youths gather for a final consultation as dozens of elderly party supporters slowly make their way into the white tent where the movement's conference is being held, behind the Plaza Hotel in Upper Nazareth.

The youths, ages 16-18, many of them good friends from school, had stood for a long time before the event began at the intersection near the hotel, waving Israeli flags and shouting "Death to the Arabs" and "No loyalty, no citizenship" at passing cars. In the tent, they deliberate over what to shout when Lieberman enters: Calling out "The next prime minister" may sound a bit presumptuous with regard to the leader of what's likely to be the third-largest party in the next Knesset. But during a week when Yisrael Beiteinu won the highest level of support in mock high-school polls - the sky's the limit.

Not even the investigation of several close Lieberman aides, announced by the state prosecutor that very morning, could dampen their enthusiasm. To the sounds of kitschy Russian music, the party's candidates take their places behind a long table. The young people gather right in front of the stage and lovingly greet the new heroes of the right. Even Lieberman's rather colorless deputy, MK Uzi Landau, evokes strong, passionate cheers. But these pale in comparison to the reaction when the party chairman makes his entrance.

Now the youths are beaming, holding their flags aloft and shouting so loudly it makes them hoarse: "Here comes the next prime minister!" If not in the upcoming election, then maybe in the one after that, when these young people will vote for the first time.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061910.html

[madrchsod]

4. a religious tribal war over who was Abraham`s favorite son

nothing really changes but the names of the dead in the land of Canaan

[no_hypocrisy]

3. He's holding himself out as a "maverick", ready to fight "the system" if it

protects Israel.

[bemildred]

5. The meme I find most interesting is: "Israel needs a Putin, there's no order here".

I have noticed a tendency for some pro-Israel posters to have a low view of Mr Putin, so it is interesting to see him put in a positive light by people supporting Lieberman.

[LeftishBrit]

7. I don't think even most pro-Israel posters here would be pro-that particular faction!

Certainly there is a decidedly authoritarian streak to Lieberman's party. And as he is deliberately appealing to the Russian immigrant base in particular, this gets expressed in terms of 'Putin'.

There are certainly lots of contradictions and ambivalences here. Some people, who disliked the Russian system of government sufficiently to choose to leave, nonetheless have a certain nostalgia for its authoritarianism. A political leader who corresponds closely in most respects to leaders of RW-xenophobic parties in Europe differs from them in two crucial respects: (1) most such leaders are first and foremost anti-immigrant, while he seeks to represent an immigrant group in particular; (2) he would like Israel to become part of the EU, whereas almost all his Europaean counterparts HATE the EU and would like their countries to withdraw from it.

In any case, he's disgusting!

[bemildred]

8. "Big Man" politics is nothing new, no need to get defensive.

But it bears watching, and the rise of Lieberman bears watching too. A yearning for the "restoration" of some fancied previous order and security is not a good sign. It's one of the things I worry about here in the USA too, unless we get our house in order soon.

[LeftishBrit]

10. I agree nothing new; I do tend to feel 'defensive' just because there are people like that everywher

and I consider them to be dangerous. Authoritarian politicians may bring the world down, if global warming doesn't get there first! The one hopeful sign is that people are more aware of the danger now than they once were. I doubt that British schoolchildren now would be encouraged, as they were in the early 20th century, to recite poems vowing to give their country:

"The love that *asks no questions*; the love that stands the test,
That casts upon the altar the bravest and the best".

Or as in the famous Victorian poem by Tennyson:

"Theirs not to make reply.
Theirs not to reason why.
Theirs but to do and die..."

In many ways, of course, life is simpler if you do 'ask no questions' and do not 'reason why' - and there are many here, too, who daydream of supposed earlier simplicities.

[LeftishBrit]

6. Sounds like a typical xenophobic-isolationist when seeking populist appeal

Enoch Powell...Several of the Daily Mail columnists..LePen...Ron Paul...etc.

[geek tragedy]

9. If Lieberman had been born/raised Orthodox Christian, is there any doubt

he'd be anti-Semitic?

[LeftishBrit]

11. Probably. He's that xenophobic type.