Israel Matzav: Feiglin's fault
Some more confirmation that Prime Minister Netanyahu made his move out of fear of Moshe Feiglin.
The embarrassment he suffered in Sunday's hectic Likud conference pushed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to rethink early elections, political sources have told Arutz Sheva. Netanyahu failed to convince the assembly to conduct an open vote on the personal makeup of key positions that would have enabled him to control the conference. Feiglin supporters were prominent among conference members who vocally demanded a secret ballot, until Netanyahu gave in.
The sources said that Netanyahu's unpleasant experience caused him to fear a strengthening of Moshe Feiglin's National Leadership camp in Likud, and its ramifications for the Likud, if the party enters primary season ahead of a new election.
Netanyahu did not expect to experience a defeat inside his Likud bastion immediately upon rising from the Shiva mourning period over his father, the sources added. The initiative for unity came from both Netanyahu and Mofaz, they revealed, with former Prime Minister's Bureau chief Natan Eshel and Mofaz adviser Lior Horev running things behind the scenes.
Here's hoping Netanyahu allows a fair election in the Likud... someday...
FP: Confirmation of my claim that the move was made at least in part because of the shift of the Likud to the right. Such a shift is much more justified by the conflict and international circumstances than Netanyahu’s instinct, just like Sharon’s and Olmert’s, to veer to the left via Kadima. As an unidentified Israeli social scientist observed:
Kadima as a party has not proved itself either centrist or pragmatic. It came into existence to pursue a leftist and utterly failed policy of unilateral withdrawal, and then moved to embrace the Labor-left policy of “peace in our time” through the imagined acceptance by the PLO of a generous Israeli peace offer.
Netanyahu, like Sharon and Olmert before him, suffers now from the same delusion.
Analysis: Ulpana outpost 1st test for new coalition
Mofaz bringing Kadima into the coalition removes any threat that the government will fall over Ulpana evacuation.
See?
Further validation of my perspective on Netanyahu’s move, as well as on most of Israeli politics comes from
Daniel Greenfield: Bibi the Survivor
Netanyahu owes most of his success to a dysfunctional political climate. in which there is no one left to replace him. The old generation of leaders is gone and even a notoriously fickle Israeli electorate would not trust most of his rivals to make them dinner, let alone run a country. Displaced by Sharon, he learned the game of coalitions from him and has ably exploited the rivalries and petty careerism of the Knesset lineup to stay in office. With Barak by his side and Peres shaking hands with foreign dignitaries, the transformation is almost complete.
Netanyahu's electability allows him to exploit the less electable, flipping through ministers and coalition partners like a game of cards. A deeply divided and thoroughly corrupt Knesset has no shortage of partners willing to dance with him for a ministry and the perks of power. With no one positioned to take down Netanyahu, his is the only game in town and everyone knows it.
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But Livni's appeals to Obama suggesting that she would make all the deals that Netanyahu would not, did not help. Instead she was shouldered aside by Shaul Mofaz who has brought Kadima, with its sizable Knesset presence, into the coalition with Netanyahu. There is little doubt that Mofaz, like anyone who jumped ship for the trumped up Kadima Party, would sell out the country and his own mother at a signal from Obama.
This brand of insanity makes Israeli politics a high-wire act where there is no stability and no future, and Bibi has learned to walk the tightrope.
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Israeli politics, like everyone's politics, is mainly about dividing the government pie among all the interest groups who want a piece; it is about politicians advocating programs that won't pass in order to score points with a constituency; and it is about interest groups denouncing each other for taking too much of the pie and using it the wrong way. And, most of all, it's about people who have few skills and many contacts, who have managed to get themselves into the Knesset and will make any deal and do any dirty deed to stay there.
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That's a question which unfortunately cannot be answered. Admiring Netanyahu's political maneuvers is a dangerous game. His predecessor in the Likud Party, who played it better than he did, was a war hero and tough-talker from the right who proved to be one of the worst disasters after the other war hero and tough-talker from the left. Sharon and Rabin rammed through disastrous policies at the expense of the country. It would not be unprecedented for Netanyahu to do the same thing.
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In a conflict they take the path of least resistance. In Israel the path of least resistance means bowing to international pressure, making more concessions, handing over Jerusalem and ignoring Iran. If Netanyahu does this, then he will likely seal Israel's fate and will become one of the last prime ministers of the State of Israel.
Netanyahu's political maneuverings show that he is a political survivor, the great unknown is whether his principles have also survived. And whether Israel will survive him.
Just compare my posts to the comments highlighted above.
Yishai: IDF does not want haredim in its ranks
Interior minister says he is not worried that the newly-formed national unity coalition will significantly increase number of haredim being drafted into IDF; states thousands of haredi youth waiting for call-up.
FP: I already predicted that will be the reality: I doubt that the Haredim are military material.
Palestinian president 'ready to engage with Israel'
Abbas demands complete settlement freeze, threatens to take Palestinian case to UN if no progress is made in talks.
FP: He knows a chance for concessions when he sees it.
Bill Katz: LET US JUST SURRENDER, DEAR
Workers at some downtown Chicago office towers are being urged by building owners and others to "dress down" during the upcoming NATO summit meeting in Chicago later this month, so as not to draw the wrath of expected protesters. They're also being urged to avoid clothes or bags with corporate logos. One bank is even closing three of its downtown branches during the meeting. This kind of reminds me of incidents that occurred during the Hitler era in Berlin, wherein bystanders were roughed up if they refused to give the Nazi salute when storm troopers marched by. Even non-Germans were encouraged to go along with the salute for their own safety. I won't use the old scare line, "This is how it begins," but this is how it begins.
FP: Very regrettable, but these are the consequences of the corporate welfare state.
JoshuaPundit: Pentagon Now Buying Helicopters From Russia - For The Afghan Air Force!
Every time you think the Obama Administration has hit bottom when it comes to ridiculous nonsense, they surprise you by sinking to a new low. Get your mind around this...the Pentagon is using your tax dollars to buy helicopters from Russia - for the Afghan air force.
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The Syrian angle aside - and that alone is a pretty large one in view of all the pious rhetoric and inaction from the Obama Administration - a few other questions come to mind. Why are we paying the Russians to build helicopters with U.S. tax dollars when we have American companies here that can do it, combined with an 'official' unemployment rate of over 8% nationally? Is building helicopters yet another one of those jobs Americans won't do? And if we are outsourcing this, why not to one of our allies, instead of to a nation that is in many ways hostile to us and our foreign policy aims?
And while we're on the subject, why do we need to subsidize the building of an Afghan air force anyway? Just like the shiny new armies we have built at U.S. expense for the 'Palestinians' and for the Iraqis, exactly what good is America going to get out of spending over a billion dollars to buy helicopters from Russia to give to the Afghans?
Dumb and dumber.
FP: Hence, decline.
Bruce Cumings: Why Obama Is Looking West
The Obama pivot acknowledges three essential facts, and quietly asserts a venerable but largely overlooked American codicil. First, the North Pacific is today, and will be for the long term, the center of the world economy; second, Europe’s long ascendancy in the modern world is ending; third, the long American involvement in the Middle East has come to naught. The U.S. has intervened almost everywhere in the Middle East (Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya) but has failed to solve just about every problem or crisis, going back to 1953 when it conspired with the British to overthrow a democratically elected regime in Tehran (and you can draw a direct line from that to the Ayatollah’s 1979 revolution to our present enmity with Iran). Meanwhile, Washington has relied on one feudal sultanate or monarchy after another to extract petroleum from under the desert and spew it into the sky, pushing our environment to intolerable limits.
Obama’s quiet assertion, this “Pacific pivot” exploiting the hundreds of military bases we operate in the region (more or less hidden in plain sight), goes back to Acheson’s political economy and Kennan’s realpolitik. Namely, if you want a productivist coalition to succeed, you have to provide a public good called security, which has the dual advantage of scaring off potential enemies and ensuring that allied countries stay inside their defense harnesses. That way, you avoid Japanese and German militarists and Korean civil wars. China’s distinction is that it is the one great economy in the world that is still outside the harness — and so you build new bases and reinforce old ones all along its perimeter, make friends with pariah states like Burma, and who knows, maybe you even cotton up to Kim Jong-un.
FP: I agree with the first paragraph, particularly my highlights. But the rest is questionable.
1st, US involvement in the ME has come to naught??? In fact, Pax Americana in the ME has been the pillar of Western economic life since the 40’s and by the very means that are now being used in the East.
2nd, it is not that US has failed to solve all problems to date. Rather, it’s that the West is itself in crisis now and, therefore, no longer able to solve problems this has released.
3rd, until now the US was able to maintain security around the world, including the ME and the East. In decline, however, it is now striving to reconfigure itself to do in the Pacific what it can no longer do in the ME.
4th, given the emergence of a bitter enemy in the ME—Islamism—and its infiltration in a declining West via immigration (including the US), will it be able to focus successfully on the East while retreating from the ME?
Debbie Schlussel: Your Day in “Religion of Peace” Racism: Muslims Attack Blacks @ US High School
Whenever the usual morons call me “raaaaacist!” for pointing out the extremism and utter intolerance inherent in Islam, I always laugh. Because Islam ain’t a race. It’s a deadly ideology. And, in fact, Islam is the most racist (and bigoted–against Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, and all other non-Muslims) religion there is. As I’ve noted over the decades–on this site and elsewhere–Muslims hate Blacks, including Muslims who are Black and regularly refer to them as “abed” (singular) and “abeed” (plural), which is Arabic for “slave,” but is used as the N-word by Arabs and Muslims. And, as I’ve noted, Muslims have repeatedly picked fights against and even murdered Blacks, all over the Detroit area, such as Kelvin Porter, whose 12-year-old daughter watched two Arab Muslim gas station clerks beat him to death with a tire iron (while calling him the N-word), after he asked them to stop leering at her. As I’ve also noted on this site, Arab Muslim students throughout Dearbornistan and Hamtramckstan regularly engage in violent attacks against Blacks. And so it goes with Dearborn’s Edsel Ford High School, where Blacks were attacked by Arab Muslims because an Arab Muslim girl was apparently engaged in a relationship with a Black student. Remember, this was the same school in which Arab Muslim students made sweatshirts praising and honoring the 9/11 attacks on America, and the underwear bombing attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
As you watch the video report (which the dhimmi Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV won’t enable for posting here), note that the “reporter” is pro-Muslim Egyptian woman Sandra Ali (who, herself, is not a Muslim). In an affirmative action move, other reporters were fired so she could be hired by Local 4, as the station’s news outlet is called, because she is an Arab. Sandra Ali is regularly honored by and emcees dinners and ceremonies for the openly pro-Hezbollah/HAMAS ADC (American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee) headed by her friend, PFLP Islamic terrorist, alleged HAMAS fundraiser, FBI award revokee, and marriage and immigration fraud perpetrator Imad Hamad. In other words, don’t expect to EVER see an objective news report by her. Note that she does NOT interview a single Black person for the report, but mostly Arab Muslims, which is interesting since the report is about violence by Arab Muslims against Black students.
FP: Soon coming to an area near you.
RECOMMENDED READS
Ludwig Lewisohn: Jews in Trouble
Ross Andersen: Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?
Tom Holland: Islam's Origins: Where Mystery Meets History
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