Liberman's secret plan to storm the Likud Party
After the launch of Avigdor Liberman’s new 2014 persona, all we have left to do is find out what road the foreign minister will take to realize his dream of becoming the prime minister of Israel, to where he emigrated in 1978 from the Soviet Union at age 20. Liberman faces a simple dilemma: Either he returns to his independent Yisrael Beitenu Party to scrape up some 20 seats out of the 120-seat parliament — which is not an impossible feat — or he will dismantle his own party and join the Likud Party to seize control of the ruling party from within, thus earning a ready-made political platform.
Liberman joined the Likud ranks as soon as he arrived in Israel, serving as the party’s director-general when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took control of it in 1993. He still holds onto many important power bases in that party, among its constituents as well as in the party’s caucus. That said, Liberman faces fierce opposition inside the Likud from all those who consider his return as jeopardizing their own standing and future. Minister of the Interior Gideon Sa’ar, Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon, Minister for Regional Development Silvan Shalom and maybe even Minister for Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz are hoping to succeed Netanyahu some day. There are also the various radical elements, chief among them Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, Coalition Chairman Yariv Levin and others who construe Liberman’s moderate political views and his surprising pragmatism to be a threat to them. The latter, combined with the settlers, who make up many of the Likud constituents, will see Liberman as a foreign element that should be prevented from making a “hostile takeover” of the party.
Before the 2013 elections and following a decision that rocked the political establishment, Netanyahu and Liberman called a news conference, announcing that the Likud and Yisrael Beitenu parties would run in a joint slate called “Likud Beitenu." Back then, Liberman predicted that the joint slate would garner as many as 45 seats (prior to the election they had 42 seats together; 27 for Likud and 15 for Liberman.) The foreign minister’s prophecy proved wrong. The joint party suffered a resounding defeat, raking in only 31 seats (thus posting a loss of 11 seats compared to what they had before.) Yet, that was the most successful abortive move in the history of Israel’s politics, since it awarded Netanyahu another term as prime minister. Had Netanyahu not joined forces with Liberman, he very well could have lost the elections. The rest is history.
For the past month and nearly under the radar, Liberman has been campaigning among his activists on the ground ahead of the decision he would be expected to make in early March. Two weeks ago, he visited the town of Katzrin in the Golan Heights, where all his activists in the north got together. At his request, he was presented with a carefully crafted and highly detailed plan as well as a list of 100 key activists. Each one of them pledged to sign up 400 Israelis to the Likud Party. The objective of this plan is to join the Likud and sign up on Liberman’s behalf an overwhelming number of 40,000 new members. This is a tall order that will tilt the balance of power within the Likud, making Liberman the strongest man in the party overnight.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/02/liberman-likud-premiership-netanyahu-katz-settlers.html#ixzz2tboWgnDi
= new reply since forum marked as read
snip* As the nation's mood seems to slide ever rightwards, polls still show majority support for the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. And the mass social movement of 2011, a united cry against the nation's crippling neoliberal economics, brought 500,000 of the nation's 8 million on to the streets – the largest protests in Israel's history. How is it possible, in this context, for the left to be so powerless in politics?
The straight answer is that the Israeli left has never really been leftwing. Labour has long been the elite, establishment party, dominated by Jews of European origin who monopolised power and discriminated against Jewish communities from Muslim and Arab countries (labelled "Mizrahi" or "Eastern"
. Such discrimination – the lopsided allocation of resources, such as land or education; the cultural negation – was so bad that ethnicity is now too often synonymous with class.
In the late 1970s, the rightwing Likud exploited this to win a landslide victory. Its leader at the time, Menachem Begin, toured city slums and peripheral towns proclaiming his party would never dishonour or deprive the majority Mizrahi population like Labour did. The wealth gap widened under Likud's naked capitalism, but mistrust of a condescending, Eurocentric left wing still holds sway – especially as ethnic discrimination remains an unacknowledged divide.
In a new documentary about the left, which recently aired on Israeli TV, the Iraqi-born Israeli author Sami Michael explains this crucial, myopic contradiction within the pro-peace left: "They see [Mizrahis] as a danger, because we bring Arab culture, enemy culture which the Israeli left hates," he says. "It's nice for them to be photographed with Arabs, to say that they have Arab friends, that they want peace. But peace with whom? First of all make peace with your own people!"
But the Israeli left can't make peace with the Palestinians, either – not even with the Palestinians who make up 20% of Israel's population, but are second-class citizens because of systemic discrimination. No Israeli government has included Arab political parties. Even in 1999, after gaining 94% of the Palestinian vote in Israel, Labour snubbed this sector and built a coalition without even a token Arab party. When peace talks with Palestinians at Camp David failed, the then Labour prime minister, Ehud Barak, proclaimed that Israel had "no partner for peace" – a cowardly own goal that kicked away a political foundation-stone.
"This is what made the right wing stronger," says Asma Aghbaria-Zahalka, leader of Daam, the Jewish-Arab workers' party. Although unlikely to gain a Knesset seat, she has gained many column inches for her fresh, charismatic socialism. "The Israeli left has no future without the Arabs, and the right will stay in power for ever," she says.
Therein lies another problem with the Israeli left: it doesn't really do equality. As Sami Michael (who is also president of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel) points out in the TV documentary, this should be the starting point of any leftwing party. While the right dominates identity politics with its ultra-patriotic Jewish nationalism, the supposed left can't provide a more inclusive, democratic alternative.
As Anat Saragusti, director of the social change communications centre Agenda explains: "My Israeli nationality is much larger and broader than my Jewish nationality. I have more in common with Arab citizens of Israel than with Jews in Guatemala or New York." A truly leftwing party would rise above the choking patriotism test of Jewish ethnocentrism and find a better alternative.
This failure to support an inclusive Israeli identity in part explains the factionalism that typifies Israeli left politics – without binding progressive ideals, every party has its pet issues to peddle. Ahead of this election, the Israeli centre-left sub-split into a baffling number of atomised parties – now including Labour, Kadima, Hatnuah, Meretz, Yesh Atid – which then polluted media coverage with childish squabbles about who wants to join whose gang. Small wonder that centre-left Israelis can't be bothered to vote.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/21/left-israel-own-worst-enemy
on Jerusalem sabbat hunter ...much like yourself .
see: http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Shelah-defies-Yesh-Atid-platform-Jerusalem-will-be-Palestinian-capital-323680
“The solution in Jerusalem will be very complex. It will be one of words and of actions,” Shelah added. “We cannot just build a wall and say ‘this is ours and this is yours.’” Shelah, a former television and print journalist, never hid his opinions, which put him at the far left in the spectrum of opinions within Yesh Atid.
Last week, he wrote on Facebook “the occupation must end not because of the world’s demands, but for the good of our worthy existence here and due to the rising price we have to pay for it every day.”
"" Additionally, while I do not know if they need to include arab-israeli parties in the coalition, they should at least include more in their member lists, so that the get seats in the knesset and minsters in the cabinet (ie labor getting 94% of the Israeli-Arab vote shows that they should have at least some arab-Israelis on their member lists, high enough so they can realistically have seats in Knesset) ""
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/culture/2012/12/the-power-of-attaraction.html#