Opuscula King Bibi Deposed By own arrogance

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, FORMER ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER, caused his party (Likud) to lose control of the government.

Offered a chance to “fool the people” by surrendering the party leadership for a year — after which he would be reinstated and return to power — he refused.

In the end, it cost him his crown.

 

Jonathan S. Tobin editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate wrote what this scrivener considers a well-thought out review of Netanyahu and what led to his downfall. See https://tinyurl.com/449rfrwb

 

ACCORDING TO ISRAEL’S CHANNEL 12 tv station, Finance Minister Israel Katz recently suggested to Prime Minister Netanyahu that the Likud Central Committee hold a vote for the ruling party’s chairman and that whoever wins will serve as premier for a year instead of Netanyahu to allow for the formation of a right-wing government.

Katz also reportedly told Netanyahu that he and his family can continue living in the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem during that year. (https://tinyurl.com/nm6yvrn5)

Netanyahu rejected the idea.

The “Katz plan” would have allowed Netanyahu’s political foes on the right to accept a Likud-led coalition to form a government excluding left-leaning, leftists, and Israel-hating (e.g., Ra’am) parties from control of the Knesset.

Israel’s Labor Party, according to HaAretz editorial writers (https://tinyurl.com/x4jdsm8k), once was Israel’s largest party and ruled 1948 until Menachem Begin's Likud first came to power in 1977. The newspaper describes Labor as the party that"supports the policy of social pluralism and equality, and since the 1990's, a free market “with a soul' economic policy." In the political arena, despite most of its leaders having a military background, Labor has traditionally led a pragmatic, more compromising approach to solving Israel's geo-political issues with neighboring Arab countries and the Palestinians."

Interestingly, until Begin and Likud came to power, there were zero peace agreements with neighboring states; so much for solving Israel's geo-political issues with neighboring Arab countries and the Palestinians."

Katz and Sa’ar

HaAretz (https://tinyurl.com/8eyx9c) writes that Transportation Minister Katz is currently the only truly senior Likud minister besides the prime minister. With all the top cabinet jobs doled out to coalition partners, Katz has been forced to make do with the same position for eight years. As a sop to his seniority, Netanyahu added to his portfolio in 2015 membership in the security cabinet and also made him intelligence affairs minister.

It should be noted that the once independent HaAretz (c 1975) now is solidly in the leftist camp, and its opinions should be viewed accordingly. All Israeli national circulation newspapers have a political bias.

The HaAretz piece continues.

Gideon Sa’ar, 50, the suave Tel Aviv lawyer who moonlights as a DJ, is married to Channel 1’s senior anchor Geula Even and has recently ended his time-out from frontline politics.

Sa’ar’s advantage over Katz is his younger and more sophisticated image. Katz, however, has a crucial edge – he’s currently a Knesset member.

Like Katz, Sa’ar is, o was, a Likudnik.

Alone on the throne

One reason Netanyahu has opposition from his own party is his apparent fear of being replaced.

Interestingly, at one point Netanyahu proposed term limits for prime minister; and then he was given the plumb and the idea of term limits quickly went away.

HaAretz again: In the quarter century since taking over Likud, Netanyahu has dominated the movement, transforming it from a grassroots ideological outfit into his personal platform. This was true even of the six years between 1999 and 2005 when Ariel Sharon nominally led the party, with Netanyahu in the wings waiting to return. Bibi has never nurtured any deputies, and he has quickly cut any potential successors down to size.

The Times of Israel (https://tinyurl.com/45ekn8wf) opines that Netanyahu’s bloc, comprising Likud and the two ultra-Orthodox parties, meanwhile, would win just 44. Even with Yamina, such a coalition would still fall seven seats short of a majority. Leaders of other Zionist parties have not expressed a willingness to sit in a Netanyahu-led coalition.

Too many politicians have too many real or perceived grievances against Netanyahu and are unwilling to support any government in which he is prime minister even if it means a collation with leftists and other Israel haters (e.g., Ra’am).

 

One point must be made perfectly clear: not all Muslims align with Ra’am, not all Muslims are anti-Israel or pro-PLO/Hamas. There are Muslims in the major political parties where they serve their constituents admirably.

 

Few of the recent articles on Netanyahu focus on either his legal woes or his wife’s infamous behavior.

For most who want Netanyahu gone, it simply is time for a change.

He was offered an chance to “hide” for a year (ibid.) — and even keep many of the PM’s perks — a move that would prove to thinking Israelis that no politician can be trusted.

 

 

 

 

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

Web sites (URLs) beginning https://tinyurl.com/ are generated by the free Tiny URL utility and reduce lengthy URLs to manageable size.

 

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Opuscula Did US continence Reds in congress During “Cold War”?

WHEN THE US AND FORMER USSR were threatening each other — this dates back to the 1920s — no Communists were to be found in the U.S. congress.

Indeed, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R – Wisconsin) is known for his infamous witch hunt of Communists, particularly those in Hollywood.

Today, these people known as “progressives” and Socialists are entrenched in congress (viz: Bernie Sanders, Rashi­da Tlaib, Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman) along with far left lawmakers.

HOWEVER, ISRAEL is expected to allow sworn enemies of the country to sit it its Knesset (congress/parliament).

This means members of the Muslim (Arab) political parties, specifically Ra’am, not Muslim and Druze members of the pro-Israel parties.

 

According to an opinion piece by Dan Schueftan heded: Arabs are not the problem, radicalism is (https://tinyurl.com/wwje4emc),

“In the past, these leaders voted against the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty and the Abraham Accords.” On both national and municipal levels, they present Israel as an illegitimate colonial project whose very existence is a sin. The "heroes" they look up to are PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the Hamas terrorist organization.

“Time has shown that integrating Arab parties into the government did not mitigate their hate. When Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was supported by the Arab parties, Arab MK Ahmad Tibi openly pleaded Arafat's case even after it became known that he perpetrated several terrorist attacks against Israelis.

Arab MK Hashem Mahameed who served on Rabin’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, “called Arabs that support Israelis "traitors" and vowed that they would be eliminated. For him, Hezbollah was a ‘national liberation movement,’ and its terrorists ‘freedom fighters.’ He said that in all the years of Israel's existence, there was not a single military operation, not even Operation Entebbe, that was legitimate self-defense.”

Schueftan’s “bottom line” is that “integrating these parties into the government will only bring about more provocations, creating more obstacles for Arab Israelis to integrate into Israeli society.”

Ayman Odeh, head of Israel’s Arab-majority Joint List political body, has called for a Palestinian uprising and praised Arab youth for their active role in recent clashes with Israeli forces and Jewish residents in Jerusalem. (https://tinyurl.com/3twkyfta)

“This wonderful and honorable victory belongs to the youth of Jerusalem. These clashes are sometimes calm and sometimes erupt, and it will be so until the intifada comes and brings an end to the occupation and hoists the Palestinian flag over the Al-Aqsa Mosque, over the churches, and over the liberated gates of Jerusalem. We extend our greetings to the free people of Jerusalem.”

Losing support?

WHILE THE POLITICIANS are calling for provocations against Israel, the PEOPLE seemingly are more and more disenchanted with the rhetoric.

If Israel would provide better services to Muslim communities — specifically improved infrastructure and better police presence, items the Israeli Muslims are rightly demanding — the nation might put an end to much of the internal strife.

Muslims, like Jews, Druze, and others have all the rights and privileges, albeit the Muslims have fewer obligations. (They are not obliged to serve in the Israeli military or even do national service in their own communities.)

The Muslims of Jerusalem complain that their neighborhood’s infrastructure and services are not on a par with other neighborhoods. Blame can be laid, at least in part, on Muslim Members of Knesset (MKs) who would rather berate the state than work to improve fellow Muslims’ conditions.

There is a higher murder rate in the Muslim neighborhoods than in Israel in general.

Unfortunately, the neighborhoods’ residents must share some of the blame with the understaffed Israeli police. As in the U.S., it is considered traitorous to help the police catch one of your own. Until that changes, no one should expect positive change.

Some Muslim MKs forget they were elected to improve the situation of all Muslims in Israel.

Some openly support the PLO/PFLP, Hamas, and other Iran-supported anti-Israel movements and call for the destruction of the country. Were it not for the freedoms and financial success they enjoy in a state they hate, they could (should) move to PLO/PFLP or Hamas areas.

(Notice that they do not — like Hollywood progressives — rush to leave the country they hate.)

The Muslim voter migration away from the anti-Israel parties — that in reality do not work for the people — is hardly a “ground swell,” but by many accounts is growing.

Unfortunately, Israeli MKs (so far) are not required to live with their constituents, although there is a (weak) movement to change that. Change comes slowly to long-embedded habits.

 

 

 

 

 

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

Web sites (URLs) beginning https://tinyurl.com/ are generated by the free Tiny URL utility and reduce lengthy URLs to manageable size.

 

 

 

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