Israeli Election

[CapelDodger]

I look to you two for intelligent and often classy posting. This was neither.
IMHO, as always.

Always within the bounds of bad taste. There's a brute within me, and it's roused by such as

Arik Sharon's wife, Lily, passed away in 2000.

"Marital problems" was a joke, I knew nothing of his wife's death (had the subject been Begin I would have done, since widowhood had a profound effect on him). If webfusion wants to bring it up to discomfort me, well, "have some of this for bad taste" is my response. Sorry it offended you, but I didn't bring up the dead wife.

For truly offensive check out Skeptic's response. This guy has spent so much time role-playing his imaginary anti-semite he's got to be a danger to his community by now.

 

[CapelDodger]

For the Diary element of the thread:

Poll: 35% say chances of voting Likud diminished
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/660246.html

I was struck by :

Earlier Tuesday Netanyahu vowed to "clear out the negative and criminal elements" which have penetrated Likud.

Criminal elements? Do I detect an election tactic? Arik and his family have some dubious associations and mud has been flung in the recent past, none of it sticking in a legal sense. Netenyahu's alleged improprieties are well in the past. So if "criminal elements" have penetrated Likud under Arik's stewardship, Bibi may have - or claim to have, and invent - knowledge of Arik's connections with them.

Anyhoo, that's the first Israeli election done with - Netenyahu gets to lead Likud.

 

[webfusion]

CD == "Netenyahu gets to lead Likud."

Lead it where? Netanyahu will probably end up with less seats than SHAS!

 

[CapelDodger]

Nothing has 'happened'. Yet.

Sharon left Likud and formed Kadima, Peres linked-up with him, the smaller parties have been in great turmoil and realignment, and this amounts to nothing? I see your point. Democracy in Israel is all "sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Kadima policy is to be "centrist". That appears to be their manifesto. Since it's the Sharon Party and Israel apparently revolves around Sharon, they can't go wrong with that.

I might even go so far to say that there will be no early elections held at all, since the Knesset is allowed to postpone the elections by an 80-MK majority vote "if special circumstances occur which prevent holding elections on their planned date."

Postponement of the election would be something else happening. An event. Manipulation of the system by politicians desperate to keep drawing their salaries because they're naff-all use at anything else. That is, if one were take an uncharitable view, which is a very commonly taken view of politicians.

There comes a point when throwing the whole democratic charade out and appointing a military man with proven credentials to cut through the crap and act for the national interest seems wins the argument. Especially if said military man commands the loyalty of the military. At the moment, that's Sharon. After Sharon and Peres there are no more Heroes of '48 left, but there must be some folk waiting in the wings.

Olmert has no credibility without Sharon. People like him don't inherit the mantle, they accumulate the crap that slides off it while their patron still breathes. Come the death-rattle, out come the knives.

 

[CapelDodger]

I'm somewhat puzzled by your attitude here. What is it about "Israeli democracy" that needs to be defended? Is there something different, worse, better, more/less interesting than Greek, Spanish or American democracy?

US democracy is a matter of great interest, as is Venezuelan, Bolivian, Canadian, Brazilian, well, you get my drift. US democracy tends to attract more attention because the US does make an issue out of its democractic nature. It's presented as a Selling Point. Israeli democracy is also presented as a Selling Point. Surely nobody would argue that Israel's democratic nature isn't frequently contrasted with other regional societies as a plus-point.

Greek democracy is a matter of interest, it was re-born well within living memory and its soundness is debatable. Spanish democracy is, again, newly re-born, after an even longer hiatus. I think it's much sounder than the Greek, but explaining why would require a major digression. Suffice to say that my post-Franco Spanish acquaintances take it entirely for granted. The implications of Spanish democracy (within Europe) on present-day Central American politics are tentative, plausibly Eurocentric and even more digressive.

So. Israeli Election. A thread I started. A thread concerning the Middle East. Is this evidence of an obsession of mine, I wonder?

Israel is an experiment, unique and hard to replicate. Everything about its internal experience provides data which can be found in such clarity nowhere else. When one considers nationalism, all nations have emerged from their own particular local stew except Israel, which is a nation conceived and created from a distance. Israel didn't emerge from Palestine's Jews, it was designed and imposed by outsiders on a blank slate. The local Jews had no say in it, any more than any other Palestinian. That eliminates great swathes of variables and lays nationalism bare - or at least less-concealed by details.

Israeli democracy is another blank-slate system. Israel was not conceived as a democracy, but even Ben-Gurion recognised that Israel would have to appear democratic "since that's the spirit of the modern world". (By which he meant the West in the 1930's.) There was to be no Constitution - the US blank-slate system was designed to avoid the Big Man syndrome, and is a marvelous experiment itself - but a representative body so representative and disparate that a Big Man and his disciplined party would dominate. (Apologies to the shade of Golda Meir.) Given time the system has come to accommodate the Big Man, and the party follows.

If you think Israeli democracy needs defending against any of that, please go ahead.

 

[webfusion]

slight derail -- excuse me

In post #75, CapelDodger referred to the Lebanese (and Hexbollocks) making a fairly big deal about the Shebaa Farms salient. In that posting of his, CD said:
"How strategic can it really be? Syria says it's part of Lebanon - they're not claiming it. "


I replied in my own fashion (post #81) that CD was incorrect about the status of the area.

CD went on to tell us how the area in question was illustrative of Israeli expansionism, and perpetuated the conflict with Hexbollocks, for no good reason.

CapelDodger even went so far as to question:
"What if Israel just pulled out of the Sheba'a Farms? Why haven't they tried it? It's a miniscule territory, and what would they lose?"

Today's news:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/659932.html
Syria is considering a proposal to give Lebanon sovereignty over the Shaba'a Farms, on the slopes of Mount Hermon, by signing a new border deal with Lebanon, according to information that has reached Israel from several sources in the last few days.

• If the Shaba Farms are considered Lebanese territory, Israel will be asked to withdraw from the region. Failure to do so will provide Hezbollah with justification to act in South Lebanon and call the Israeli occupation ongoing.

What a load of double-speak! The Hexbollocks needs no justification for anything they do -- they just hate Israel, and act against Israel for sport. They are no different than AlQaeda in mentality. Even if the Sheba'a Farms were returned, these terrorists would then turn their attention to the fact the Israelis occupy AlQuds!
ZN said it best -- the world is insane.

 

[webfusion]

"Israel didn't emerge from Palestine's Jews."

It certainly did. The very idea of a Jewish nation rebuilt in the traditional lands of historical Judaism was at the heart of the Zionist ideology. As far as everyone I know is concerned, it is a Jewish homeland, and the concept of returning to "Israel" is at the central focus of Judaism, and has been from time immemorial.

Correct me if you have other information.

 

[CapelDodger]

"Israel didn't emerge from Palestine's Jews."

It certainly did. The very idea of a Jewish nation rebuilt in the traditional lands of historical Judaism was at the heart of the Zionist ideology. As far as everyone I know is concerned, it is a Jewish homeland, and the concept of returning to "Israel" is at the central focus of Judaism, and has been from time immemorial.

Correct me if you have other information.

Zionism was launched from Europe. The Zionist Congress that led to the creation of Israel was organised by Hertzl, an Austrian (born in Hungary, felt German). The Jews of Palestine, when they and other Palestinians heard about this, joined local Muslims and Christians in petitioning the Ottoman Emperor to complain about it to the Austrians. Herzl approached the Sultan with offers of money (which Herzl didn't have command of, but honesty has never been a zionist virtue, the nation trumps all morality) but he was having none of it. As an Emperor, he didn't favour nationalism. Herzl moved on to Russia, where he ratted out Jewish Socialists in the hope of getting Russian support. The Russians used him, of course, but they weren't about to tear up the Ottoman Empire for the sake of a Jewish Homeland. They were slowly tearing up the Ottoman Empire with an eye-and-a-half to the Western European powers that were doing the same, with an eye-and-a-half on each other. The Jewish Homeland was finally declared by the Brits before they even captured Palestine, long after Herzl was dead and before they'd heard of Ben-Gurion.

After the Great War the Sykes-Picot accord and subsequent negotiations entirely by-passed Weizmann (the zionist Big Man of the time) and cut what is now Southern Lebanon from the putative Homeland. The Brits then created Jordan, which was another chunk of the Land of Israel lost. But hey, they still had Gaza.

In this the Jews of Palestine took no part, and were ridiculed by the Modern Jews of Zionism as "Jewish Arabs".

 

[webfusion]

Israel extends beyond Zionism.

"But hey, they still had Gaza."

Not sure what this refers to, can you clarify CD? In your narrative, the British & French divvied up the spoils of WW1 and the "Land of Israel" lost some 'chunks' but they still had Gaza? How do you figure Gaza into the "Land of Israel" during the time period you are reviewing? (1920's)

Until some years after WWII, there was no Israel, and certainly no "Land of Israel" since the common usage of the day was "Palestine" not "Israel" ---

Israel is not something that just came as a new idea into this world in the 1800's but rather it is the Rock of the Faith of Zion, in prayer and Torah, for millennia. You are confusing the issue, by making reference to Herzl as the 'founder of Israel' --- according to tradition, Israel is the birthright of the Jews from time immemorial.

You may think it is a modern invention, but you would be wrong.

 

[Skeptic]

By the way, speaking of Gaza: it should be noted that Gaza is only "Arab Land" where no jews are allowed because the Arabs, in the 1930s, rioted and expelled all the jews who lived in the area for centuries. Same with Hebron. King David came from there, and there was jewish presence there continously for 3000+ years, as it was one of the holy cities... until in the 1920s the Arabs rioted, killed most of the jews who lived there and expelled the rest.

That, for the likes of CD, is enough to make it into Arab land--but of course, if the jews do anything remotely similar, regardless of the provocation, that does not make the land jewish, even if the expulsion was a reaction to a genocidal war of annihilation, unlike the Arab expulsion of the jews which was simply motivated by their existence. That is a "nakba" to be rectified by the "right of return" (i.e., the destruction of israel by demographic means.)

 

[Cleon]

"Israel didn't emerge from Palestine's Jews."

It certainly did. The very idea of a Jewish nation rebuilt in the traditional lands of historical Judaism was at the heart of the Zionist ideology.

Well, yeah, but Zionist ideology didn't come from Palestine's Jews. It came from Europe's Jews. Zionism was created in Europe, developed in Europe, and launched from Europe.

CD's statement is quite correct. Israel did not emerge from Palestine's Jews.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Well, yeah, but Zionist ideology didn't come from Palestine's Jews. It came from Europe's Jews. Zionism was created in Europe, developed in Europe, and launched from Europe.

CD's statement is quite correct. Israel did not emerge from Palestine's Jews.

And America, where you live Cleon, was invented by European colonialists. The indigenous peoples of America were massacred by European colonialists so that you, Cleon, could sit and post on message boards to damn European Jews for zionism. Kooky huh?