Last week ,the who’s who of international circles met in Washington at the Saban Forum. We have posted two take-downs of Hillary’s speech; one by Moshe Dann and the other by Jerry Soble. Hanegbi had the most interesting thing to say. T. Belman
[..]
Despite the determined rhetoric of the secretary of state, the majority of the forum’s participants were skeptical about the prospects of the negotiations, even if they are resumed in the near future in some form or another. In their opinion, there is only one common denominator between the Israelis, Palestinians and the Americans today: A lack of will to pay the price of a brave peace process.
Netanyahu, the way he sees it, has managed to safely avoid the danger of an additional moratorium, and is no rush to shake up his government again. To be sure, his coalition has to deal with mid-term troubles that will accompany it as long as the various coalition parties feel the political need to demonstrate fealty to their constituents.
But there is no real threat to the coalition’s stability on the horizon. Those who hoped, as I did, that the prime minister would adopt a more moderate agenda than that around which the rightwing coalition coalesced two years ago – aided by Kadima’s readiness to provide a parliamentary safety net – have been disappointed. Netanyahu’s strategic choice indicates that even if negotiations are held in the near future on the truly fundamental issues (security, borders, refugees, Jerusalem), there will be no real breakthrough.
The picture is no more promising in the Palestinian camp. The last thing Mahmoud Abbas wants are American compromise proposals. It’s likely these would be closer to the Palestinian stance than that of Israel, but agreeing to them would place him in the position he has so skillfully avoided ever since he succeeded Yasser Arafat: required to tell his people that they must abandon their illusion of the right of return of refugees to the state of Israel.
No less troubling is the reality staring at us from Washington. During the Saban Forum, I spoke with local friends who are experts in gauging the mood shifts in the Democratic administration, the Republican Congress and American public opinion.
Their assessments were identical: President Obama has despaired of his failed diplomatic adventure in our region. His main priority now will be getting re-elected for a second term. The lesson the Democratic Party has learned from its recent beating in the congressional elections is to focus all its efforts on the domestic arena – on the faltering economy, the deepening recession and the dismaying unemployment numbers.
Therefore, even if the US government does not go as far as to adopt the repeated calls of the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman to leave the quarreling children of the Holy Land alone, those presidential energies and attention directed at our region will be focused solely on managing the conflict rather than solving it.
This is the view from Washington. Not only is the weather in the American capital freezing (minus seven degrees), but so too is the diplomatic process between us and our Middle East neighbors.
The writer is a former Kadima minister.
American Eagle: I tried to respond on another article, but here it goes. Agreed. A tap dancing, poker playing Bibi is definitely better than Livni or Olmert. I just wish that he would roar out the truth every once in a while.
HANEGBI AND THE REST OF THE ‘KADIMITES’ ARE A BUNCH OF OPPORTUNIST NOTHINGS. THEY STAND FOR NOTHING , THEY HAVE NO PHILOSOPHY EXCEPT SURRENDER. THIS ARTIFICIAL ENTITY CREATED BY THE PATRONS OF SHARON PRIOR TO THE TRAGEDY OF THE ‘DISENGAGEMENT’ SHOULD IMPLODE SOON. IT HAS SURVIVED ONLY BECAUSE THE STINKING TRASH OF LIARS, AND CORRUPT ‘SLIMATICIANS’ REFUSES TO GO DOWN THE SEWER. I AGREE THAT THE FUTURE LEADERSHIP OF THE COUNTRY BELONGS TO THE NATIONAL RELIGIOUS POPULATION. HOWEVER BEFORE THAT TRULY TAKES PLACE, THE PRESENT SYSTEM HAS TO BE OVERTURNED AND WE NEED A FRESH START. THE QUESTION IS HOW MUCH WILL THE 18 FAMILIES AND THEIR CRONIES FIGHT BEFORE THEY GIVE UP THE REINS OF POWER.
Moral turpitude is not precisely an attribute I recognize as positive on anyone but even less on someone that portends to be credible as a political leader. Granted that in politics as we know that to be, being a liar is quite common coin. Then Mr. Hanegbi fits quite well in his “kadima” aggregate on both counts.
Otherwise whomever wrote the article or edited it for him did a good job.
The content is another kettle of fish.
We, the people, must once for all internalize the truth and will hardly come to us from a convicted liar.
The truth is that there has never been a “peace process” but a salame process. The truth is that our “leadersh..” much rather attack Jews than the said leadersh.. “partners”.
And right now we are at the end of the slicing. At this time we simply must rigidly set aside Hangebi, Baraks, Peresites, Livni, Beinish and her walkyrias, etc, and if he does not shape up, Mr. Netanyahu as well.
We either re take what is ours, all of it, or the islamics won.
Articles or not.
The rest is
You admire rulers who ruthlessly oppress and slaughter millions? BTW those included Jews. This revelation has made me lose respect for you. Stalin was a monster, not a hero. I prefer to live in a free nation.
I agree! that’s why Israel’s next crop of leaders have got to be from the national-religious camp. Secular nationalism is almost dead in Israel. Most secular Jews are left-wingers, lovers of Kadima, Meretz, Labour and the Arabs.
Is there hope of turning Haredim away from Haredi parties like UTJ and Shas to the national religious parties?
Chances are you’re right, Yamit. But all of us out there living our lives in a cold, cruel world of reality can only work with the tools that we, or at least our wives, gave birth to. My wife and I feel an intensity of attachment to the Jewish nation, to no small degree because we spent 18 years of our two lives there, in an Israel that was just beginning to expand. So Israel became more significant to us than it ever could have been if we had just come there as American tourists (“If it’s Tuesday, this must be Israel”).
But in modern America, apples do indeed roll far from the trees on which they grew. It’s just part of the American culture, with which you live in peace with, get tormented by it, or pick up stakes and migrate to Israel, or somewhere else where intergenerational alienation is not so much part of the national culture.
However, I just wasn’t raised to be religious, and this is one of the few things in life you can’t fake. You either believer it, or you don’t, or you are just kidding yourself. All those shabatot with the Lubavitchers, when all the rest of the folks were swaying back and forth on their chairs lost in the raptures of the Chumash, I found myself lost in serious thought over details such as those of the Mishkan, which I thought was one of the grandest ideas in all Judaism. And one something seems to me as grand as all that, prayer itself becomes all but meaningless.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
TZACHI HANEGBI Fell far from his mothers (Geula Cohen) ideological tree:
Most of the progeny of the Israeli ultra nationalist leaders like Hanegbi, Olmert,Meridor,Begin, Shamir, Livni and BB have shamed their parents in that they all from their late forties have moved far to the left of their parents, All are non observant Jews. One of the few exceptions is Eldad who is Every bit his fathers son in word and deed.
secular nationalism is not generational transmittable I have come to the conclusion that only a nationalist religiously observant Jew can successfully transmit their beliefs to the next generation successfully.
Most of you wanted and still want Israel to be democracy. Which means the leftists have their chance at organizing a Petainist government that will surrender the rights of the Jewish nation to settle and keep the whole of Aretz-Yisrael, and most of you don’t know how to deal with that.
Me? I truly don’t give a damn about democracy, either in Israel or America. And one of the heroes of my childhood was no less than Josef Stalin. I’m a Jewish nationalist, and I never have been a communist. But I always admire the brave, tough, ruthless and steadfast as national leaders. And I have no use whatsoever for whimpering, inept, indecisive losers. If G-d — or whatever force put us here — was responsible for the way the world really works, then he/she/it decided the the correct place for such losers is to inhabit the dustbins of history.
It seems to me that the voters of Israel just won’t get very far in building a sustainable Jewish nation unless they decide between one or two specific alternatives. Alternative one is a democratic society. Alternative two is a Jewish society. Pick and choose.
For me, the way I would deal with the leftists is to bust up their parties, exactly the way the Knesset treated the late Rav Meir Kahane and his Kach Party.
As for the question of peace with the Arabs, I all but laugh my ass off whenever anybody preaches to me about that.
Finally, if you want to keep Yehuda, Shomron, Golan and the whole of Jerusalem, then ignore the Europeans and even my own American government — at least until we can get rid of this Barack Hussein Obama from the White House over here. And if you want that to happen — which is precisely what you should want — then the only way you can help us do that is to stand tough against him, his pet American Arab George Mitchell, a fast-fading Hillary Clinton, and even dumb Joe Biden.
Any questions?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Kadima now constitutes the Israeli left:
Kadima was born of disillusioned Likudniks, who supposedly wanted to form a new centrist party. But Ariel Sharon became brain dead as soon as he formed Kadima, and there was an immediate transformation to the left under Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. Kadima now fully embodies the Israeli left, and has virtually incorporated the traditional leftist parties, Labor and Meretz.
This transformation from Zionist to post-Zionist is disappointing, and a bit frightening. Take Shaul Mofaz, the second in command of Kadima. He was born in Iran and was part of the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Iran.
Yet, like all of Kadima, he loves muslims and hates his “fellow” Jews. Kadima is obsessed with a voluntary surrender of Jewish Israel which will inevitably result in its destruction.
In the most incredible Orwellian terms possible, Kadima calls this voluntary suicide “the peace of the brave”. Because of their post-zionist guilt over the initial formation of Jewish Israel (at the expense of the “innocent” muslims), Kadima wants to ethnically cleanse 300,000 real Jews living over the 1949 armistice line (using force if necessary), to hand over the Temple Mount and the Western Wall to the muslims, and to allow the west bank to arm itself with missiles overlooking Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport. (As far as I can tell, many of them would also like to outlaw Judaism altogether.)
Kadima believes that, in return, for this “peace of the brave”, the muslims (including Hamas) will be so grateful that they will willingly refrain from attacking Jewish Israel any further, and that the goyim will be so impressed that they will gladly help prevent the muslims from disturbing the peace.
So how do you deal with people like this? As long as they remain harmless, tolerate them, but when they become an existential threat, deal with them in whatever manner it takes so that Jewish Israel survives.
All one needs to know about Hanegbi is revealed in this line:
Channeling Yasser Arafat.