Feiglin Teaches Bibi the Facts of Life

By Maya Bengal
Israel Radio's "Reshet Bet"
12 Iyar/ 26 April '10

The man is teaching Bibi the facts of life. He is playing the democratic game. He wants elections for the party institutions in their proper time. It is Bibi who does not want them and who is exerting tremendous efforts to postpone them. He is afraid to reveal what he knows: The radical right wing of the Likud will get even stronger.

They called them "parasites," "leeches," and "provocations" but the time has come to admit the truth: Moshe Feiglin and the "Feiglinites" are the Likud. They are not a foreign influence. Twelve years have passed since Feiglin joined the Likud and since then, he has become more and more powerful. MK's woo him, the Likud Central Committee members stream to him, everyone wants to bask in his shade.

The attempts by Binyamin Netanyahu to expel him from the movement, to weaken him, to scare others with his name – have resoundingly failed. Ladies and gentlemen, Feiglin is a Likudnik. "Manhigut Yehudit" is alive and kicking in the Likud. This man has succeeded in garnering 23% support in the primaries for leadership of the movement in 2006. 23%! With such an impressive result it is clear that the man is in the Likud to stay.

So Feiglin is not robbing the Likud, he is conquering it. The positions that Feiglin represents – like "Jerusalem for eternity" and "not one inch" are no longer extreme. They are in the consensus. Here's the proof – Gilad Ardan, Silvan Shalom and Bogey Ya'alon also think that the Palestinians are not partners and that there is nothing to talk about and they will certainly strongly oppose the evacuation of settlements.

This man is teaching Bibi the facts of life. He is playing the democratic game. He wants elections for the party institutions in their proper time. It is Bibi who does not want them and who is exerting tremendous efforts to postpone them. He is afraid to reveal what he knows: The radical right wing of the Likud will get even stronger. Just imagine if the prime minister of Israel would want to continue his Knesset term for four more years and would propose legislation to cancel the general elections. What would we do then? We would climb the barricades and not rest until we would force elections – because democracy, even if it is not convenient for the head of the movement, cannot be surrendered. Or, as Churchill said: It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

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Another Triumph of Smart Power

John Noonan
The Weekly Standard
26 March '10

Over at the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl dives into an unnecessarily tense meeting between Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and President Obama.

Obama has added more poison to a U.S.-Israeli relationship that already was at its lowest point in two decades. Tuesday night the White House refused to allow non-official photographers record the president’s meeting with Netanyahu; no statement was issued afterward. Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length. That is something the rest of the world will be quick to notice and respond to. Just like the Palestinians, European governments cannot be more friendly to an Israeli leader than the United States. Would Britain have expelled a senior Israeli diplomat Tuesday because of a flap over forged passports if there were no daylight between Obama and Netanyahu? Maybe not.

President Obama's stewardship of the special U.S.-Israel relationship has been nothing short of shameful. But, beyond that, his behavior towards Netanyahu doesn't make a lick of sense. There's no quantifiable end game here. Obama is either so caught up in his own personality cult that he honestly believes he can drive a wedge between the Israeli electorate and Netanyahu's fragile government (unlikely), or he's just that infantile -- throwing a temper tantrum over an ill-timed settlement announcement.

(Read full post)
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