Yossi Verter complains in Haaretz The settlers are the real government of Israel. [And here we keep complaining that the Left is running the show.]
[..] As the left continues to crumble and be increasingly irrelevant, the parliamentary right is becoming ever more militant against the Arab public, “the professors,” the Supreme Court, creative artists, so-called intellectuals, donors from abroad and so on.
In the past Israel’s right wing was characterized by grace and decorum, as decreed by Revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and by grace and courage, as per the Betar anthem.
These days, Benjamin Netanyahu is not ashamed to take the floor and declare that if not for his support of the problematic law, it would not have come to a vote. If so, why didn’t the government sponsor it? Why was it dragged in by Elkin? And why didn’t Netanyahu bother going to the Knesset Monday night to vote?
The answer is that there is no government in Israel and no head of government. The tail is wagging the dog. Junior MKs dictate the national agenda to the government. One time it’s Elkin, another time it’s David Rotem from Yisrael Beiteinu, with the admission committees law ? or maybe Fania Kirshenbaum, from the same party, with her suggestion to establish parliamentary committees of inquiry against left-wing organizations. Or it might be Alex Miller, also from Yisrael Beiteinu, with the “Nakba Law” or with his “Cinema Law,” which says that only those who declare loyalty to the state as a Jewish and democratic country will get government funding for making films.
Behind the scenes the settlers are at work: They are the real government in Israel.
MKs from Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu compete with one another in persecuting the left, which for years has been dealt one electoral blow after another. New members of Likud are increasingly extreme. Likud activists know whom to appeal to in order to get votes in the next primaries: Both Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are in competition for support of the right.
Less than two days after Elkin pushed through the Boycott Law, Lieberman announced that next week, his Yisrael Beiteinu faction will submit Kirshenbaum’s proposal involving parliamentary committees of inquiry. A few hours after that announcement, Bibi declared that the Boycott Law was his baby. [Wasn’t Bibi against the Kirshenbaum law?]
Betwixt and between, Lieberman vanquished the government on the question of raising the retirement age for women to 67, and said his faction would support the bill proposed by MK Dalia Itzik ?(Kadima?) to leave it at 62. Netanyahu balked and declared that Likud MKs could vote as they wished. Thus Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz was the only one to vote against Itzik’s bill, versus 67 supporters.
Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin tried to block the Boycott Law. Just before the vote, he was under heavy pressure from cabinet secretary Zvi Hauser to remove the bill from the agenda to avoid embarrassment to the government while the Quartet was meeting in Washington. Rivlin said he would comply if the government were to announce, even as a formality, that it would examine possible revisions to the bill. Hauser could not promise any such announcement from the Prime Minister’s Bureau. Rivlin nevertheless asked Elkin to reconsider. Elkin declined. “If we postpone it for a week, the pressure will only grow,” he explained. Rivlin threw in the towel. “Do you know the old song, ‘We don’t want to sleep / We want to go crazy’? Well, go crazy. I, for one, will not vote for this bill.”
At midday Wednesday, at the height of the storm over the Boycott Law, MKs Levin and Elkin stated that they intend to submit a bill giving the Knesset veto power over appointments of Supreme Court justices, by means of hearings for candidates in the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. Shortly after the two made their announcement in the press, the cell phones of the 2,500 or so members of the Likud central committee vibrated with the following text message: “Toward a revolution in the Supreme Court ? the transparency law for appointment of justices, sponsored by MK Yariv Levin. The whole Likud is mobilizing!”
Someone invested quite a lot of money in this project. But it was too much to swallow, even for Likudniks. The first to issue a tough rejection of the idea was Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar. He set the tone. Following him, the bureaus of Rivlin and of ministers Begin and Meridor released similar statements.
A few hours later, Netanyahu took the podium in the Knesset to present his government’s achievements and to defend the Boycott Law. “We respect the Supreme Court, we will protect the Supreme Court,” he said. An hour later, the premier’s office issued a more detailed communique, stating that Netanyahu opposes “unequivocally a bill that will grant the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee the authority to disqualify candidates for judgeships and intervene in the appointment of judges.” [What’s wrong with Bibi?]
Next week, the Knesset will go back to squabbling over the bill to investigate left-wing groups. More brilliant ideas await us in the week after that, and then the Knesset will disperse for a long summer recess, and quiet shall descend upon Israel ? at least for 80 days.
The Left is afraid – afraid in such an extent that they mistake their fears for reality. The ones who rule Israel are the left-wing oligarchy, i.e. a tiny anti-democratic law-distorting minority. But they not only distort the law and nullify de facto the democratic process, they also distort the truth by projecting their own ego to the settlers in special and traditional Jews in general. But as our Sages of blessed memory used to say in Pirkei Avot: “There is no utterance which has not its place”. The place of the utterance “the settlers are the real government in Israel” is the near future! The Left fears rightly! In a short time the Left will loose completely power and a democratic Tora-State will replace them.