Great list
By David M. Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM
[..]
Here is a quick review of 10 important policy modifications that can come about only if a conservative-nationalist coalition forms the next Israeli government.
1. Housing: The Israel Lands Authority must sell off all unplanned urban lands slated for eventual development. The government must radically streamline regulation in zoning, planning and building. This is the only way to truly bring down the high price of housing. Labor under Shelly Yachimovich fought such reforms tooth and nail, because the free market and privatization principles run up against her party’s socialist leanings.
2. Banking: Regulatory hurdles preventing Internet banking must be eliminated. The Labor-affiliated big banking elite (Bank Hapoalim and others) is adamantly opposed to this.
3. Food: All statutory powers must be stripped away from the “moatzot yetzur,” the state-protected “production councils” in the food industry, to bring about true competition and bring down food prices. These behemoth, archaic cartels were established by the kibbutz movement, which still holds significant sway in the Labor party.
4. Legal advisers: Ministers must be allowed to choose their own legal advisers. The role of the attorney general and ministry legal advisers must be redefined so that their advice is advice, not a ruling that binds the hands of elected officials. Moreover, the role of the attorney general and the Justice Ministry should be required to represent the government and its agencies in court according to the interests of their clients, as is the case in the U.S. and other democracies. Labor (and especially its new Zionist Union ally, former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni) opposes these essential reforms.
5. Prosecution: The roles of attorney general and state prosecution should be split into separate positions, so that the attorney general cannot use the threat of prosecution as leverage against elected officials. Past Labor governments rejected this, even though many prominent legal experts are in favor of the change.
6. Courts: The way judges are appointed needs to be changed so that sitting judges do not appoint their own successors. Only Israel has such a convoluted and inherently corrupting method of appointing judges. Livni blocked any judicial reforms in previous governments.
7. Religious identity: Moves to legally recognize non-Orthodox (“alternative”) forms of Jewish marriage and divorce must be blocked, in order to maintain the essential legal and halachic unity of Jewish identity in Israel, and to avoid the Jewish identity disorder that has befallen the Diaspora. I’m in favor of significant reforms of the “rabbinocacy” (the Chief Rabbinate’s bureaucracy), and supportive of the conversion reforms passed in the last Knesset session. But stripping the rabbinate of its official monopoly in conversion-marriage-divorce would be ruinous. Unfortunately, Labor leaders want to dismantle the official rabbinate.
8. National identity: It is time to rebuild a correct, delicate balance between Israel’s democratic character and its Jewish character. Unfortunately, no such balance exists in practice, because Israel’s Jewish character, unlike its democratic character, is not anchored in any Basic Law. Consequently the courts have ruled in an unbalanced way on of a variety of statutes and government policies involving Israel’s Jewish character. The Likud’s proposed “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People” is intended to address this asymmetry and to encourage a more sophisticated legal discourse regarding the tension between universal and national/Jewish considerations. Labor and Livni are opposed.
9. Jerusalem: The new government must act with alacrity to strengthen Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem via a wide range of actions: investment in development of the eastern (mostly Arab) part of the city; a concomitant security crackdown on troublemakers in eastern Jerusalem; massive building of homes on the periphery of Jerusalem (including Givat Hamatos, Har Homa and the E1 corridor toward Maaleh Adumim); and a reinvigorated Jewish presence on the Temple Mount including Jewish prayer rights. Labor will be shy, at best, about assertion of these fundamental rights and national goals.
10. Defense: The military budget must be significantly increased to meet the challenges of Iran and the Islamic winter, and prepare for sustained ground warfare in Lebanon and Gaza, along with the expected massive missile attacks on the Israeli home front. Labor’s wild election season promises to hand out cash and subsidies to just about every weak sector in Israeli society would prevent a Labor-associated government from truly boosting the defense budget. And would Labor back a strike on Iran?
In short, Netanyahu should live up to his electoral promise to form a conservative-nationalist government that will truly govern with a clear direction, leaving Labor to play an important role on behalf of Israeli democracy in the opposition.
yamit82 Said:
Well Sugar, I think his actions spoke louder them his word.
honeybee Said:
Read it where does it say that Honey???
@ Bear Klein:
I have written to you before, repeatedly, that I have no interest whatsoever in democracy, and I do not really care about the schemes in pursuit of power and money in which the religious leaders of Israel operate. I am one of the few Jews whom you ever will know who is not interested in this or that civil liberty for the Jewish state. All that I want from this is as follows:
1) Unity to the most feasible extent in organizing the Jewish state as a power-seeking base for the Jewish nation.
2) Expansion in all directions of the borders of the future Jewish state.
3) Expansion of the Jewish population in geometric terms, with doublings about every 40 years.
4) Excellent relations of the Jewish state to be developed and maintained on a long-term basis with at least one of the three world super-powers, which presently include only the USA, Russia, and China.
Power is all that matters, for Jews or anyone else. Because without power, any nation is merely a slave to other nations.
Based on all of the above, I presume that if one particular set of black hats becomes too obnoxious in their local exercise of power, then they will be scrapped in favor of another set of black hats.
And no, I really do not give a damn what they preach. My real interest in them is that they should do little or nothing that threatens the unity of the Jewish nation.
And no, I have no illusions of the potential usefulness of a kaleidoscope of competing ideas for administering a modern state and maintaining a modern economy.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Judaism is not suppose to be an organized religion. Organized religion is man made. Torah is directly from Hashem which basically gives instruction to Jews as to how to conduct our lives. There are differing opinions as to how to apply Torah in todays life.