Anyone involved with political life knows that that is British understatement.
Churchill also said that the best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with an average voter. How true.
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I have witnessed 20 election campaigns for the Knesset. In five of them I was a candidate, in three of them I was elected.
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As a child I also witnessed three election campaigns in the dying days of the Weimar republic, and one (the last more or less democratic one) after the Nazi ascent to power.
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(The Germans at that time were very good at graphic propaganda, both political and commercial. After more than 80 years, I still remember some of their election posters.)
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Elections are a time of great excitement. The streets are plastered with propaganda, politicians talk themselves hoarse, sometimes violent clashes break out.
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Not now. Not here. 17 days before the election, there is an eerie silence. A stranger coming to Israel would not notice that there is an election going on. Hardly any posters in the streets. Articles in the newspapers on many other subjects. People shouting at each other on TV as usual. No rousing speeches. No crowded mass meetings.
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EVERYBODY KNOWS that this election may be crucial, far more so than most.
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It may be the final battle for the future of Israel – between the zealots of Greater Israel and the supporters of a liberal state. Between a mini-empire that dominates and oppresses another people and a decent democracy. Between settlement expansion and a serious search for peace. Between what has been called here “swinish capitalism” and a welfare state.
In short, between two very different kinds of Israel.
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So what is being said about this fateful choice?
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Nothing.
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The word “peace” – shalom in Hebrew – is not mentioned at all. God forbid. It is considered political poison. As we say in Hebrew: “He who wants to save his soul must distance himself”.
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All the “professional advisers”, with whom this country is teeming, strongly admonish their clients never ever to utter it. “Say political agreement, if you must. But for Gods sake, do not mention peace!”
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Same about occupation, settlements, transfer (of populations) and such. Keep away. Voters may suspect that you have an opinion. Avoid it like the plague.
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The Israeli welfare state, once the envy of many countries (remember the kibbutz?) is falling apart. All our social services are crumbling. The money goes to the huge army, big enough for a medium power. So does anyone suggest drastically reducing the military? Of course not. What, stick the knife in the backs of our valiant soldiers? Open the gates to our many enemies? Why, that’s treason!
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So what do the politicians and the media talk about? What is exciting the public mind? What reaches the headlines and evening news?
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Only the really serious matters. Does the Prime minister’s wife pocket the coins for returned bottles? Does the Prime Minister’s official residence show signs of neglect? Did Sara Netanyahu use public funds to install a private hairdresser’s room in the residence?
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SO WHERE is the main opposition party, the Zionist Camp (a.k.a. the Labor Party)?
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The party labors (no pun intended) under a great disadvantage: its leader is the Great Absent One of this election.
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Yitzhak Herzog does not have a commanding presence. Of slight build, more like a boy than a hardened warrior, with a thin, high voice, he does not seem like a natural leader. Cartoonists have a hard time with him. He does not have any pronounced characteristics that make him easily recognizable.
He reminds me of Clement Attlee. When the British Labor Party could not decide between two conspicuous candidates, they elected Attlee as the compromise candidate.
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He, too, had no commanding features. (Churchill again: An empty car approached and Major Attlee got out.) The world gasped when the British, even before the end of World War II, kicked Churchill out and elected Attlee. But Attlee turned out to be a very good Prime Minister. He got out in time from India (and Palestine), set up the welfare state, and much more.
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Herzog started out well. By setting up a joint election list with Tzipi Livni he created momentum and put the moribund Labor Party on its feet again. He adopted a popular name for the new list. He showed that he could make decisions. And there it stopped.
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The Zionist Camp fell silent. Internal quarrels paralyzed the election staff.
(I published two articles in Haaretz calling for a joint list of the Zionist Camp, Meretz and Ya’ir Lapid’s party. It would have balanced the Left and the Center. It would have generated rousing new momentum. But the initiative could only have come from Herzog. He ignored it. So did Meretz. So did Lapid. I hope they won’t regret it.)
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Now Meretz is teetering on the brink of the electoral threshold, and Lapid is slowly recovering from his deep fall in the polls, building mainly on his handsome face.
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In spite of everything, Likud and the Zionist camp are running neck and neck. The polls give each 23 seats (of 120), predicting a photo finish and leaving the historic decision to a number of small and tiny parties.
THE ONLY game-changer in sight is the coming speech by Binyamin Netanyahu before the two Houses of Congress.
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It seems that Netanyahu is pinning all his hopes on this event. And not without reason.
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All Israeli TV stations will broadcast the event live. It will show him at his best. The great statesman, addressing the most important parliament in the world, pleading for the very existence of Israel.
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Netanyahu is an accomplished TV personality. He is not a great orator in the style of Menachem Begin (not to mention Winston Churchill), but on TV he has few competitors. Every movement of his hands, every expression of his face, every hair on his head is exactly right. His American English is perfect.
The leader of the Jewish ghetto pleading at the court of the Goyish king for his people is a well-known figure in Jewish history. Every Jewish child reads about him in school. Consciously or unconsciously, people will be reminded.
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The chorus of senators and congress(wo)men will applaud wildly, jump up and down every few minutes and express their unbounded admiration in every way, except licking his shoes.
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Some brave Democrats will absent themselves, but the Israeli viewers will not notice this, since it is the habit on such occasions to fill all empty seats with members of the staff.
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No propaganda spectacle could be more effective. The voters will be compelled to ask themselves how Herzog would have looked in the same circumstances.
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I cannot imagine any more effective election propaganda. Using the Congress of the United States of America as a propaganda prop is a stroke of genius.
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MILTON FRIEDMAN asserted that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and this lunch has a high price indeed.
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It means almost literally spitting in the face of President Obama. I don’t think there was ever anything like it. The prime minister of a small vassal country, dependent on the US for practically everything, comes to the capital of the US to openly challenge its President, in effect branding him a cheat and a liar. His host is the opposition party.
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Like Abraham, who was ready to slaughter his son to please God, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice Israel’s most vital interests for election victory.
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For many years, Israeli ambassadors and other functionaries have toiled mightily to enlist both the White House and the Congress in the service of Israel. When Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin came to Washington and found that the support for Israel was centered in the Congress, he made a large – and successful – effort to win over the Nixon White House.
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AIPAC and other Jewish organizations have worked for generations to secure the support of both American parties and practically all senators and congress(wo)men. For years now, no politician on Capitol Hill dared to criticize Israel. It was tantamount to political suicide. The few who tried were cast into the wilderness.
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And here comes Netanyahu and destroys all of this edifice for one election spectacle. He has declared war on the Democratic Party, cutting the bond that has connected Jews with this party for more than a century. Destroying the bipartisan support. Allowing Democratic politicians for the first time to criticize Israel. Breaking a generations-old taboo that may not be restored.
President Obama, who is being insulted, humiliated and obstructed in his most cherished policy move, the agreement with Iran, would be superhuman if he did not brood on revenge. Even a movement of his little finger could hurt Israel grievously.
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Does Netanyahu care? Of course he cares. But he cares more about his reelection.
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Much, much more.
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Uri Avnery – Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. Avnery was a Knesset member from 1965–74 and from 1979–81.
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Bibi Shows Cartoon of Mass Destruction to UN– based on claims Israeli intelligence experts dispute.
(image by DonkeyHotey)
If you’re an American Jew and care about Israel, you might want to consider what it means to be unquestioningly supporting an Israel led by Bibi Netanyahu and his political party. If you are a critic of Israel, you might want to consider, as a more effective strategy, targeting it’s idiot leader instead of the nation and people as a whole.
In an exclusive interview with Israel News, former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan listed a collection of criticisms that, for me, lead to the conclusion that Netanyahu, Israel’s clone of Dick Cheney, is an incompetent, dangerous for Israel bumbling idiot.
The article starts out with a title quoting Dagan, “‘Netanyahu has caused Israel the most strategic damage on Iran.’
But that’s just the beginning. Dagan points out that Netanyahu may get the approval of the US congress, but that it is the president of the US who makes the decisions. Because of Netanyahu’s behavior, Obama has cut off sharing of information with Israel about negotiations with Iran. But it’s worse. Dagan’s interviewers asked if this policy would have (what would be an even more dangerous) trickle down effect. Dagan replied:
“Yes,” Dagan said, “and it happens very quickly. The head of the CIA is a political appointee; the national security adviser is a political appointee; the secretary of state is a political appointee. They all, the lower-level officials too, work in keeping with the spirit of their commander. We’ve witnessed this phenomenon during confrontations in the past, with the (Jonathan) Pollard case, for example. We depend on the Americans for strategic weapons. When senior administration officials say that Israel is acting against the national interests of the United States, it represents a grave long-term danger for us.”
Further, Dagan, who points out that his criticism is not personal, because Netanyahu helped him get a liver transplant, suggests that Netanyahu doesn’t take responsibility. I’m making my own assessment here, but I take it to mean that Netanyahu is a blowhard coward who doesn’t have the guts to make a decision on his own without the full backing of all the experts. Dagan says, regarding the idea of taking military action against Iran
“”We were opposed to the military option” He didn’t want to take such a dramatic decision without the backing of the heads of the defense establishment because he knew he would bear the responsibility in the end. I have never seen him take responsibility for anything. I’ve seen other leaders make decision and admit subsequently that they were wrong. No one is immune from making mistakes. The difference between him and others lies in the willingness to take responsibility. He’s great when it comes to words, but not so when it comes to taking action.”
Dagan goes on, discussing how Netanyahu has set things up, with the confrontation with Obama, so now the optics are set up to rush Americans into an agreement with Iran. He asks,
“How would Obama explain his failure to reach a deal? That he gave in to Netanyahu? Or the Republicans?”
How bad could it get because Bibi has pissed off Obama? Dagan explains how the US has veto power at the UN, saying, “If we are at odds with the White House, we could lose that protection and, within a short space of time, find ourselves facing international sanctions.”
As far as the recent massive assault on Gaza, Operation Protective Edge, Dagan concluded that it was a “resounding failure” that accomplished “nothing.”
Then there’s Isis. Dagan says, “Netanyahu doesn’t understand what Islamic State is all about.”
And there’s Jordan, which the interview discusses as an important protector of eastern border and the West bank. Dagan observes,
“Jordan’s King Abdullah is the one defending our eastern border. He’s preventing the smuggling of arms and terror into the West Bank. Without him, the West Bank would become Hamastan. That’s why we need to work in close coordination with him.”
Tellingly, Dagan adds,
“I won’t tell you what I believe King Abdullah thinks of him… Today, due to the war on Islamic State, he is getting the full backing of the Americans. He needs Israel less so than he did in the past. And what does Netanyahu do? He allows people with all kinds of wacky ideas to visit the Temple Mount, the sanctity of which is entrusted to the Jordanian king.”
The interview covers a lot more Netanyahu-as-idiot territory. Imagine if the former head of NSA or the CIA came out saying a standing US president was such a “resounding failure,” incompetent or idiotic in so many ways. There are elections coming up in Israel. American Jews who care about Israel should be speaking out against Netanyahu and his Likud party. Even Christian Zionists who care about Israel should be doing all they can to make sure that Likud loses power and loses the elections. Israel doesn’t need its own version of Dick Cheney, especially one who is considered in such negative light by defense and intelligence leaders.
On the USA’s left, American Jews, who vote 80% Democratic, should, with this latest evidence, be repudiating right wing extremist Bibi and his Likud party. On the USA’s right, Christian Zionists might consider opposing Netanyahu because of his idiocy and incompetence.
And let’s not forget that Israel’s first lady, Sara Netanyahu, who has garnered notoriety for a phone call that’s been transcribed, which puts her in an embarrassing position, with the Guaradian observing, “It seems unlikely, however, that her comments will do much to help dispel the image some have of her as grandiose, somewhat paranoid and lacking in judgment.”
So there you have it, Israel’s power idiot couple.
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer– first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978– Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story– each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people’s consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com— which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up– The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.Rob Kall Wikipedia Page |