So why do left-wing parties in Israel claim that they are in the center? - by Alex Traiman

Despite Blue and White branding hype, the newly aligned parties do not form the center of the Israeli political spectrum. The center of Israeli politics is Likud.

Alex Traiman..
JNS.org..
25 February '19..

Political newcomer and former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz announced the technical merger of his newly formed Israel Resilience party last week, together with the Yesh Atid Party founded in 2013 by then-political newcomer and television personality Yair Lapid. Scenario polls had indicated that combining the parties would give them a chance to garner more electoral votes than Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party.

The parties and most of the Israeli media have labeled the merger as a “centrist alliance” aimed at defeating the prime minister. The purpose of this label is to make Gantz and Lapid appear like the responsible middle of Israeli politics, distinct from the smaller and presently less relevant Labor and Meretz parties, and the ruling Likud, which has sat together in the past government with religious and pro-settlement parties to its right.

Yet despite the spin, the newly aligned parties do not form the center of the Israeli political spectrum. For the last 10 years, the center of Israeli politics has belonged to the ruling Likud Party and its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the decade since Netanyahu has served as prime minister, he has formed governments together with every single party in the entire political spectrum (that survived more than one election cycle) with the exception of the far-left Meretz and Arab parties.

As such, Likud has ruled at the center of governments with nearly every party to both its left and right.

(Continue to Full Column)

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Why do people still back Netanyahu? The question the left refuses to face

...a stellar record? No. But neither is it a bad one. And I’d take it any day over the disastrous grand initiatives of Rabin, Barak and Sharon. This, then, is the question leftists must answer if they hope to woo Likud voters: Why should we believe that the diplomatic initiatives and/or unilateral withdrawals you advocate today won’t make our lives significantly worse, just as those earlier ones did? I’ve yet to hear anyone provide a convincing answer. And that’s why Misgav and his fellows would really rather not know why many Israelis still support Netanyahu. Because dismissing Likud voters as idiots is much easier than having to honestly confront that question.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
24 February '15..





Why do people still back Netanyahu? Because in statecraft, as in medicine, the first rule is ‘do no harm’

The outcome of next month’s election is currently anyone’s guess. But if Benjamin Netanyahu ends up becoming prime minister again, it will have a lot to do with the attitude exemplified by Haaretz columnist Uri Misgav.

In an op-ed earlier this month, Misgav wrote that he could understand voting for any other party, but “I find it very difficult to explain what is going through the minds of those who are planning to vote for Likud headed by Netanyahu … Despite serious efforts, I am unable to understand them, or even to imagine their ideological and emotional world … In the name of God: Who are you, Likud voters, and why?”

A week later, another left-wing Haaretz columnist, Kobi Niv, published a blistering retort. Too many “members of the broader Ashkenazi liberal Zionist camp” simply dismiss Likud voters as idiots, and that’s no way to persuade them to switch their allegiance, Niv wrote. Nor are any of the common variations on this theme: that people vote Likud “because they came from countries without a tradition of democracy … because their parents didn’t found the state, because they don’t know right from wrong,” etc.

But the problem goes much deeper than the patronizing attitude Niv correctly skewered. Because after all, Misgav is a journalist, and obtaining information is the essence of a journalist’s job. Thus if he truly wanted to know the answer to his question, one would expect him to make some effort to find it – for instance, by tracking down a few Likud voters and asking them. Yet his column offers no indication that he did so.

And that’s no accident; it’s the heart of the problem: Many Israeli leftists don’t want to know why people vote for Netanyahu, because confronting the reasons would force them to honestly confront the problems created by their own policy prescriptions. People who still believe in territorial withdrawals with religious fervor don’t want to admit that the results of previous pullouts could pose legitimate questions about their wisdom. Yet that’s precisely what most Likud voters would tell them if they asked.

None of the Likud voters I know – myself included – are big Netanyahu fans; we’d happily vote for a better candidate if we saw one. We all think he’s done some things he shouldn’t have done and failed to do some things he should have done.

But he also hasn’t perpetrated any major disasters on the scale that almost all his recent predecessors have. And in statecraft, as in medicine, the first rule is, “Do no harm.”

Au Contraire, No “Legacy” Is Asset for Netanyahu

...Netanyahu may never do anything that will earn him the applause of his liberal American critics that would be labeled a “legacy” even if it did nothing to achieve a lasting peace. That long-sought goal must await not another bold Israeli but a sea change in Palestinian political culture that will allow their leaders to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. But what Israeli voters value is his ability to stand up to his country’s friends as well as its foes and to avoid more such bold disasters. If he has a legacy it will have to rest on the fact that he presided over a period of unprecedented economic strength and an avoidance of the kind of mistakes that men who hunger for the applause of an amorphous posterity can’t seem to resist.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
02 December '14..

By firing two of his coalition partners from his Cabinet today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set in motion a chain of events that will likely result in new elections next March. Since polls show that both Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni would be badly weakened by a new vote and Netanyahu strengthened, the move seems likely to result in a more stable coalition. But though even his critics must give him credit for outsmarting Lapid and Livni, the end of this government is likely to engender a new round of Netanyahu-bashing in both the Israeli and the foreign press. The prime minister is good at politics, they will argue, but the decision to press forward with what most Israelis rightly consider unnecessary elections shows that he has accomplished nothing but political survival and lacks a legacy, such as a peace treaty with the Palestinians, to justify his long stay at the top. But while the critics will be right when they say Israel didn’t need another election, they’re wrong about Netanyahu’s legacy. As he heads toward his fourth term as prime minister, Netanyahu is showing that what his country needs is a competent leader not someone in search of a dubious place in history.


As the Times of Israel reported, in speaking to his nation today, Netanyahu justified his decision to oust Lapid and Livni from office by saying:

“I believe that you, the citizens of Israel, deserve a new, better, more stable government, a broad-based government that can govern,” he said.

And in order to give Israelis that “unified and strong” government, Netanyahu said, “one needs a strong ruling party.”

That means more votes for Likud in order to assure the prime minister of a stronger base within the next coalition. With the parties of the left still marginalized by the aftermath of the Oslo disasters, Netanyahu is effectively competing only against his rivals/allies on, as he put it, on the “right” and the “center right.” Those parties will, if the polls are correct, have between them nearly a majority of the Knesset even before they seek coalition partners from either the religious parties or what remains of the centrists that were just ousted by Netanyahu.

As even those least enamored of Netanyahu must concede he has no credible rivals for the post of prime minister, either among his partners or the opposition. But what Netanyahu’s domestic and foreign critics don’t understand about his dominance of Israeli politics is that it is precisely his eschewing of a vainglorious try for a historic legacy that has earned him the confidence of his people.

This is in marked contrast to every other prime minister since Yitzhak Shamir left office in 1992. Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, and Ehud Olmert all took stabs at unraveling the Gordian knot of Middle East peace with peace initiatives. But every one of these efforts, whether it was the Oslo Accords of Rabin and Peres, Barak’s Camp David offer of 2000, Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal, or the third offer of statehood to the Palestinians put forward at Annapolis, Maryland by Olmert, all failed spectacularly. Even worse, each of these efforts weakened Israel’s position for future negotiations while leading to more bloodshed and violence, rather than less.

Netanyahu’s Potential Coalition Nightmare

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
24 December '12..




PARTIES AND POLLS: Barring unforeseen circumstances, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Beiteinu bloc will capture the most seats in the January 22, 2013 Knesset elections and be given the chance to form the new Israeli government.

But as things stand now in the polls, Netanyahu will lead a party with not much more than a quarter of the Knesset seats, and be forced to craft a complicated coalition with strong, confident and independent-minded partners on both the political left and right. Each of these factions will have sufficient seats to hold Netanyahu hostage and create crisis for his government at any stage.

Consequently, some observers think that Netanyahu will prefer a broad coalition with many, many partners – so that he won’t be dependent on the support of any one faction. But imagine having to manage a coalition that includes disparate ultra-orthodox, national-religious, labor-socialist, and liberal-left factions!

In other words, winning the election may the easy part for Netanyahu. The tough part will be forming and managing his new coalition government (and dealing with the challenges that the world will throw at him).

Netanyahu would prefer a coalition in which his base is stronger and in which no partner has the power, alone, to collapse the coalition. That is what much of the remaining 30-day campaign will be about: How does Netanyahu create some daylight between Likud and its two closest allies/rivals; without that, they may continue to siphon off Likud’s voters.

The Israel Political Scene Shifting and Why

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
20 December '12..

If liberal American Jews weren’t already dismayed about the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is a shoe-in to be re-elected in next month’s election, the latest political news out of Israel may give them conniption fits. The results of new polls show that Netanyahu’s Likud and its coalition partners are set to exceed the strong governing majority they had in the current Knesset. But the really interesting numbers are those that show that the main party to the right of the Likud—the Habeyit Hayehudi or Jewish Home Party–is on track to be the third largest in the next parliament with only Likud and Labor (set to finish a distant second) ahead of it.

This will give residents and supporters of the settlement movement an even louder voice in the next Knesset than their already healthy contingent in the current one. This will be interpreted by some on the left as a sign of Israel’s depravity or indifference to peace. But the reason for it is clear. Whereas in Israel’s past it could be asserted that the Likud represented Israel’s right-wing constituency, it has, to the shock and dismay of many in the left-wing Israeli media, become the center. That is not because more Israelis are supporters of increasing settlement throughout the West Bank. They are not. Rather it is due to the fact that the Israeli center as well as even many on what we used to call the Israeli left have given up on the Palestinians. They know that neither Fatah in the West Bank nor Hamas in Gaza will ever recognize Israel’s legitimacy no matter where its borders are drawn. So they have abandoned those parties that hold onto the illusion of peace in favor of those with a more realistic vision while those on the right are now embracing parties like Habeyit Hayehudi in order to hold Netanyahu’s feet to the fire and prevent him from making concessions that will neither entice the Palestinians to the negotiating table nor increase its popularity abroad.

A 'two-state solution'? There is no 'two-state solution'.

Prof. Ron Breiman..
Israel Hayom..
28 November '12..

Three senior ministers are missing from the Likud's new Knesset list, and the media has already declared: The Likud has moved to the Right, it's become more extreme. For the Israeli media, there is only one end of the political spectrum. The extreme Left is never mentioned, and no one has attributed any extremism to Labor's Knesset candidates, let alone those from Meretz.

A deeper look, however, reveals that on the Likud's list, 18 of the top 20 candidates served in the outgoing Knesset, while the two new names come from the Left (Tzachi Hanegbi) and from the Right (Moshe Feiglin). It's the proper balance, more a process of generational change than "extremism."

With that, the Likud, as a Center-Right party with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu squarely in the middle of the political spectrum, represents public trends: Sobering up from the blurry "visions for peace" and from the idea of a "two-state solution." The public isn't becoming more extreme, it is merely sobering up to reality.

It's not surprising that the media, which always criticizes the government from the leftist flank, and which enlisted itself to the cause of "peace" and to the evictions from Gush Katif (Gaza) and northern Judea and Samaria, isn't happy that voters have understood what it refuses to understand: "The two-state solution" isn't a solution. It has already exploded in our faces — with the "Oslo War" (the Second Intifada). Moreover, regarding the matter of public discourse it is right to allow room for other opinions, ones that don't blindly follow false prophets.

The process of sobering up, prevalent among the general public and whose views have been partly represented by the advancement of new candidates on the Likud's list, is extremely slow. If this process was quicker we would see it represented in polls showing large increases for parties to the right of the Likud. In the meantime, this is happening slowly. Even Netanyahu himself needs it. He needs the pressure from his Right flank to help him withstand the heavy pressure from the Left, domestically and from abroad.

But the "investigative" media continues undeterred: It's "the two-state solution" or bust, without having accounted for the risks involved in such a plan before it was unveiled to the world, or without learning the lessons from what has already happened because of it.

Avigdor Lieberman in His Own Words – Hardly the radical right winger

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
25 October '12..

Many from the Left reacted to the announcement this evening that FM Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu will run together with the Likud in the coming elections by claiming that this represented a sharp shift to the "radical right".

But when one considers Lieberman's actual positions, the opposite is the case.

Let’s walk through some of his key position statements and related material in recent years.

#1. 28 October 2007 "Principles of Permanent Agreement"

1. The entry into final arrangement negotiations requires first and foremost the achievement of security for the State and Israel and a significant improvement in the economic conditions of the Palestinians. Any attempt to impose a diplomatic arrangement before a substantial end to terror, and in particular the firing of Qassams, and the reality that there are more than 60% unemployed on the Palestinians side - is doomed to fail.

2. The solution of the conflict must be based on the agreement to exchange land and populations and the creation of a reality of two nationally homogeneous states, such that the situation will not develop that that there will one and a half Palestinian states and half a state for the Jews…

Sending Dan Meridor to the Visitor's Gallery

In June, 1967, coming into Hebron, Israel did not conquer and occupy a foreign city. We came home. Just as living in Israel isn’t mentioned in the Rambam’s list of Mitzvot, because of its supreme magnitude, so too, Hebron’s importance cannot be minimized because of political fears and accountings. Hebron is the roots of Judaism, it is the source of monotheism, and is an integral element in our people’s essence.

David Wilder..
Hebron.com..
19 October '12..

There is a long-running discussion among Torah scholars as to a most significant topic. Is it a positive commandment to settle Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel? On the face of it, two of the greatest Torah scholars ever to walk the earth, seem to disagree. The Rambam, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, in his seminal work, the “Yad HaChazakah,” where he discusses the 613 Biblical Torah commandments, does not include settling the land as a positive precept. The Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, who lived shortly after the Rambam, writes, seemingly disagreeing with his illustrious predecessor, that settling the Land of Israel is definitely a Mitzvah, a positive, Divine commandment.

However, there are many distinguished Torah scholars who rule that, in reality, there isn’t any disagreement between the two giants. The Rambam, when enumerating the Mitzvot, does not include in his list, the most basic fundamentals, upon which Judaism is based. For example, he does not write that Teshuva – repentance, is a commandment. Rather, he instructs, ‘when you do teshuva – when you repent… this is what you must do.’

Teshuva is pillar upon which Torah, and Torah observance is founded. There is no Judaism, as we know it, without Teshuva. Yet it does not appear in the Rambam’s list, not in spite of its importance, rather as a result of its major significance.

So too, with the Mitzvah of living and settling Eretz Yisrael. The Jewish people were created in order to live in this land. Without Israel, Judaism as we know it, does not exist.

This example can illustrate my feelings today, upon hearing Minister Dan Meridor’s statement on the early morning news. Meridor was asked his opinion about reports that the government was going to approve the Levy Commission Report. This report, written by three highly respected judges and attorneys, headed by former Supreme Court Edmund Levy, rejects international claims that the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria is ‘occupation of a foreign land.’ Its adoption and implementation by the Israeli government will remove many of the politically bureaucratic hardships placed upon Jews living in Judea and Samaria, particularly in the areas of building construction and land purchase.

Meridor said, “Ramallah and Hebron are not part of the State of Israel and I don’t think that Prime Minister Netanyahu has any intentions to change this.”

I find it very difficult to stomach a Likud minister, serving in a right-wing government, state that Hebron is not part of Israel.

Eydar - Time to take a stand

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
04 June '12..

The settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria is the heart of the Likud movement. To sabotage the settlement enterprise is to strike at the conservative camp's ability to govern and steer the Zionist ship back on course. Decades of language and collective consciousness control have turned the settlement enterprise in Israel into an "obstacle" and a "crime" and Zionism into an empty metaphor.

You can't just shave five buildings off a community, remove them as though they were a diseased tumor and relocate them. Behind these five buildings lies an entire settlement enterprise whose enemies — some of them our own Jewish brothers — pray for its destruction. These enemies of the settlement enterprise realize that the majority of the population supports the settlers, even if the media uniformly doesn't. That is why they employ dozens of human rights organizations (a code name for organizations that strip Jews of their right to live in their country) and wield the swords of the High Court of Justice and the State Prosecutor's Office.

Abrams - The Reconstitution of Likud

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
08 May '12..

On August 7, 2005, Israel’s Minister of Finance resigned his post in protest against Prime Minister Sharon’s plan to remove settlements and military bases from Gaza. That man was Benjamin Netanyahu. The Likud Party was split in two by the Sharon “Disengagement” plan, and Sharon quit Likud and formed the Kadima Party in November of that year. With him to Kadima came former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, while Netanyahu stayed in Likud and became its leader once again.

Today Mofaz and Netanyahu, and more broadly Kadima and Likud, find themselves reunited in a coalition government. This reflects in part the weakness of Kadima: Mofaz recently won a primary against Tzipi Livni for party leadership, and polls showed that Kadima would slip very badly if an election were held, as had been planned, in the coming months. (The date had nearly been set for September 4.) For Mofaz that would be a disastrous start to his period of leadership, and for many Kadima members of the Knesset it would mean the end of their political careers. So Mofaz took Kadima into partnership with Likud, even though he did not receive either of the two major security portfolios: Minister of Defense or Foreign Minister. What did he receive?

IMRA - Likud Primary Vote Was Not A Policy Referendum

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
Weekly Commentary..
02 February '12..



Let there be no mistake about it.

The Likud Primary voted held this week was not a policy referendum for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

And by “policy referendum” I am referring specifically to his “two state solution” Bar Ilan address and related policy remarks since then.

Years ago, during the Sharon administration, at Mr. Netanyahu’s initiative, the Likud party Central Committee passed a resolution opposing the creation of a Palestinian state.

This was the last time the issue was raised in a Likud forum for consideration.

When Binyamin Netanyahu ran for election heading the Likud, the official Likud party website prominently featured a very straightforward box spelling out what a vote for the Likud represented in contrast to a vote for Kadima.

And it stated that a vote for Likud is a vote “against a Palestinian state”.

No wiggle room there.

Allon - 'Gradually apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria'

Gideon Allon..
Israel Hayom..
13 January '12..



(Quite an interview. Y.)

The name MK Zeev Elkin started making headlines only over the past several months. What began with a caricature continued on to radio and television programs. Until a year ago, he was unknown by the general public, although he has served in the Knesset for the past seven years.

The media’s interest in Elkin, which began only when he introduced the controversial boycott law, increased when he began, together with his fellow faction member, MK Yariv Levin, to advance a bill that obligates candidates for the Supreme Court to undergo a hearing in the Constitution and Law Committee. It accompanied criticism from Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch and continued in a disagreement over the candidacy of Justice Noam Solberg.

When Netanyahu made him head of the coalition, many people in the Knesset raised an eyebrow. Some thought that the task was too big for someone who was a fairly plain member of Kadima’s faction until he began rebelling against Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni.

But Elkin is considered to have proven himself the best at his job. For three years, the opposition has not managed to get a single bill passed in the Knesset that the coalition opposed.

Wednesdays are his fighting days. Elkin usually arrives at the cafeteria to get the ministers out of their seats, even as they are chewing their schnitzel, and bring them to the plenum for votes.

Elkin says of himself, “I’m an odd character. I wear a skullcap, but I support civil unions and the Tzohar bill. I’m in favor of a new status quo on the Sabbath and I oppose the exclusion of women.”

In the past, he was considered an excellent chess player. “Chess enriched my life a great deal. Politics is like chess, but sometimes somebody knocks the board over and ruins all the pieces. I still play as a hobby.”

He was born in Kharkov, Ukraine to a non-observant Jewish family, became interested in Judaism, learned Hebrew on his own and increased his religious observance. Fairly quickly he became the secretary-general of B'nei Akiva in the Soviet Union. At the age of 17, he enrolled in university, where he studied mathematics and physics. In 1990, at the age of 19, he immigrated to Israel with his daughter, who is now a soldier.

In Israel he studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion and at the Hebrew University. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the views of Rabbi Saadia Gaon. He lives in Kfar Eldad in the Etzion bloc.

Q. This week, it was said that you passed information to far-right activists who were tracking IDF troops.

“I didn’t leak classified information. The information that I passed was not to extremist settlers but to leaders of the communities in Judea and Samaria, and it was done with government permission. The report caused me a lot of damage among the public. One newspaper gave it prominence because he has a score to settle with me because of bills I promote that have to do with the courts. They published distorted information. Some of the media repeated it without speaking to me at all. Channel 2 got a comment from me – and didn’t broadcast it.

“The incident has made an enthusiastic supporter of the bill that would increase fines for libel because [the newspaper] Haaretz and, after it, the other media broke all the rules that would become law under the bill, including the obligation to get a response.”

Q. In 2006, you said, “The government’s main job should be determining Israel’s borders, and Olmert is the right man for it. On the other hand, I don’t believe that Netanyahu is capable of doing it even if he should be elected prime minister.”

“After Olmert was elected, he veered to the left. The gap between Kadima’s platform and what Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas is like the distance between east and west. Livni veered leftward even more sharply. My goal was to make sure that as much as possible of Judea and Samaria’s territory would remain in our hands.”

Q. Do you currently oppose the prime minister’s initiative regarding the two-state solution?

“Absolutely. I don’t see it as a solution. I have a disagreement with Netanyahu over that. I want to keep Judea and Samaria for ideological reasons. But somebody who is coming from a security perspective will also see that the two-state idea doesn’t work.”

Q. If that’s true, then what is the solution? Shall we be at war forever?

“If we go with the two-state solution, we certainly will stay at war, just like what’s been happening since the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and Gush Katif [in Gaza]. In the meantime, we’ve seen that painful concessions lead to war. Imagine where we’d be if we had withdrawn from the Golan Heights and what’s happening to Assad now had happened then. We would have no Golan Heights and no peace.”

Q. What solution do you propose?

“As long as the region doesn’t accept our existence, our security situation will be complicated. For 20 years, we tried making concessions, and where did that get us? The bigger the concession, the greater the pressure to make more concessions. The security situation in Israel before the Oslo Accords was 1,000 times better than it is today.”

Q. Are you also opposed to the evacuation of illegal outposts?

“What illegal outposts? The state sent people to settle those places and invested money there. It didn’t tell them that it was problematic. Now they’re going to evacuate them? If so, why not demolish the Holyland project in Jerusalem, too? Would anyone ever imagine tearing down the buildings? When the state makes a mistake, its job is to find a solution.”

Moshe Feiglin's Vision: This Week's Jerusalem Campaign Rally

Manhigut Yehudit..
10 Tevet, 5772..
(Jan. 5)..





English Transcript of the Speech:

Thank you, each and every one of you. Thank you for choosing to be part of the faith-based revolution. Thank you very much.

We are all servants of G-d. Not for honor and not for fame – there is nothing but Him.

The Minister of Education told me that schools in North Tel Aviv are requesting to visit the Cave of Machpelah. Would you have believed that two or three years ago?

Israel thirsts for meaning. Israel thirsts for the Judaism of liberty. Slowly but surely, a new consciousness is being created here; Jewish consciousness. A wondrous energy of life and hope is awakening the Nation of Israel as it begins to fulfill its destiny. It could be that this year we will be in a new stage of Jewish history; the stage in which most of the Jewish People are in their Land. We may reach that point for the first time since the First Temple. The only question that remains is when will this wonderful Jewish revolution dovetail with Jewish leadership; leadership that is aware of and committed to Jewish destiny; leadership that will assemble all these desires and give them direction and significance. That is our task – all of us. Nobody will do it instead of us.

Moshe Feiglin's Speech (Only Hebrew)


That is why I have decided to announce my candidacy for chairmanship of the Likud and leadership of the State of Israel.

The Likud under my leadership will, with G-d's help, consolidate Israel around its Jewish identity and values.

The Likud under my leadership will, with G-d's help, restore the State of Israel to the Nation of Israel. Our state must be a Jewish state in its essence, not only in slogans. It must be a Jewish state in its society. It must be a Jewish state in its security. It must be a Jewish state in its economy and it must be a Jewish state in its justice system. Society, security, economy and justice.

(Video) Moshe Feiglin 2012: Likud primaries a battle of ideas, not personalities

Love of the Land..
04 January '11..

A full house last night at the Ramada Renaissance, to launch Manhigut Yehudit's Campaign Rally for Moshe Feiglin to be the party chairman of the Likud. While many would see this as an impossible task on such short notice, this is an important opportunity to once again present an alternative vision, of what the Jewish State, Israel, can be, of what we can accomplish, and at this time the role the Likud as governing party can play. A strong turnout January 31 will also assure those MKs who have been there at the critical moments recently, that they are not alone, and enjoy the backing of Likud's voters to stand strong.

TV Interview - Moshe Feiglin 2012: Likud primaries a battle of ideas, not personalities


Uploaded by merfitudinal on Dec 17, 2011


As Carl (israel matzav) had said yesterday: I urge all those who are able to do so to donate to Moshe Feiglin's campaign. And I urge all those who are eligible to come out and vote for him on January 31.

Feiglin 2012! To donate go to http://www.mflikud.com

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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Feiglin - The Tyranny of the Minority

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
1 Kislev, 5772
Nov. 27,' 11


Translated from Ma'ariv's NRG website

"This is not the good-old Likud that we know," sighed the party's veteran "princes."  "Where is Begin's liberalism?" cried the journalists. "Where is the Jabotinsky splendor?"  "We must guard against the tyranny of the majority."  "Democracy is in danger!"  "A murky wave threatens Israel's democracy!"  "A dark Feiglinite dictatorship."

If you listen to the cries of despair over the latest legislative proposals emanating from Israel's media, (editor's note: Proposed are an increase in the fine for slander and required hearings for judicial candidates for the Supreme Court) you may mistakenly think that Israel has suffered a military putsch. Perhaps Pinochet has returned from the dead and taken over the Knesset? But in truth, the new legislation is not a threat to democracy, but rather, a brave attempt to save it.

Yitzchak Rabin's leftist government rammed the Oslo Accords through the Knesset with a miniscule majority; they simply promised ex-MK Alex Goldfarb a new Mitsubishi and the deal was done. The Oslo Accords destroyed thousands of lives and threw the State of Israel into a suicidal process from which it has yet to extricate itself. Nobody in the media talked then about the tyranny of the majority. On the contrary; instead of fulfilling their intended role as the watchdog of democracy, the media turned themselves into democracy's attack dogs.

How to Communicate Concern to the Government of Israel Over the Latest Round of Negotiations

Arlene Kushner
Center for Near East Policy Research
06 September '10

"Taking No Chances"

The ambivalence about where Netanyahu is headed is quite pervasive. His signals are not clear. As someone knowledgeable I spoke to said, "He's dancing between the raindrops." That is, there is no clearly defined, straight-ahead policy. There is, rather, an attempt to keep from getting "wet," which leads to a zig towards the left and a zag towards the right.

Analysts' columns are replete with the suggestion that there is a "new Netanyahu." This new one, if he exists, would not, at least from my perspective, be an improvement on the old one.

Carolyn Glick spoke about this in her column last Friday. She cited him as having said in Washington:

"I have been making the case for Israel all my life. But I did not come here to win an argument. I came here to forge a peace...."

Uh oh. Glick suggests that if he means what he is saying, we should be very worried.

But then, in his defense, she noted that he also said, "We left Lebanon, we got terror. We left Gaza, we got terror...a defensible peace requires security arrangements that withstand the test of time."

~~~~~~~~~~

Will the real Binyamin Netanyahu please stand up. Is there a "real" one?

And it's not only we "common folk" who are in the dark, Silvan Shalom (Likud), who is a deputy prime minister, as well as minister of regional cooperation, complained a couple of days ago that the prime minister is not properly informing his cabinet of what has been said in meetings with Obama and Abbas.

Not a comforting thought. Leads one to suspect that Netanyahu is playing it close to his chest because he assumes his cabinet wouldn't like what he has to say.

(Read full report)

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From Yamit to the Building Freeze: What Can Be Done?

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
15 Elul, 5770
25 August '10


What can the faith-based public suggest as an alternative to the terrible situation currently facing Israel?

First, we must admit that until today we have never managed to halt Israel's process of collapse – not in Yesha and not outside it. Decades of demonstrations, countless PR campaigns and outreach projects, intelligent articles and even good satire that has begun to appear here and there – have not succeeded and apparently will not succeed in stopping the collapse.

Manhigut Yehudit in the Likud has also not succeeded in turning its political power inside the Likud into a tool that will prevent the collapse. We succeeded in forcing a Likud referendum on the Expulsion and we succeeded in adding a number of excellent MKs to the Likud list. We enjoyed many tactical successes. But we did not manage to prevent the strategic disintegration.

From the very start, Manhigut Yehudit has always reiterated that we did not enter the Likud to prevent retreats. Rather, we entered the Likud to establish an alternative for leadership for our country. Nevertheless, this week many journalists asked us if we would fight against the new political program that is gathering steam. Obviously, we will use our political power to the best of our ability. But judging by the results of the past, success or failure does not depend on us or on any other political factor.

Gush Emunim did not build the settlements. The Nation of Israel did. Gush Emunim leaders Hanan Porat, Beni Katzover and Daniella Weiss simply knew how to tug at the nation's romantic Zionist heartstrings. When the Nation of Israel willed it – the settlements were built. And when it no longer willed it, they were built no more. The faith-based public did not provide an alternative to the lost connection to our Land. It simply protested. Since the days of Yamit, we are still stopping the retreat from Sinai.

The struggles that we have led until now have not solved the problem. On the contrary; they have perpetuated it. After two thousand years of exile, the Nation of Israel returned to its Land and for some reason, decided to leave G-d outside. There are many explanations as to why the Return to Zion took place in this way. But today's reality is that the Jewish sovereignty that was renewed in the Land of Israel is playing on the "normalcy" arena according to the rules and values of the Western world.

Since the Six Day War of miracles, our demonstrations and claims against all the governments in Israel have been based on our acceptance of the axiom that this arena and these rules of the game are the best and most efficient possible. That is our greatest mistake. All the players that the national camp has put on the playing field were excellent leaders. Begin, Shamir, Sharon and Netanyahu – each in his own time – brought their own unique talents to the arena: Integrity and ideals, stubbornness, bravery and political acumen. Whoever thinks that he could lead the nation better on the existing arena and with the present rules is simply fooling himself.

(Read full article)

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Inventing Netanyahu's Past

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
22 May '10

(While we do not necessarily arrive at the same conclusions many times, Yaacov is very good at getting the factual material correct. Y.)

The storm caused by the Peter Beinart article in the New York Review of Books blows on, generating lots of excitement in corners of the blogosphere that get excited by such things. I responded once, and decided not to engage any further. Beinart and most of his respondents are arguing vehemently about an Israel which doesn't exist, or at most exists in the feverish minds of a tiny number of Israelis so far to the left that they can't even be seen from where normal people live.

I'm re-engaging here to point out how fabrications about Israel become incontestable truths. Jeffrey Goldberg and Beinart are already into their third round of discussing the issues, and at one point Beinart throws in a false comment which is so deep in the general narrative that Goldberg doesn't call him on it, and may well not even have noticed it.

...after all, Israeli governments haven't respected all past agreements--Netanyahu said explicitly that he rejected Oslo when he was elected in 1996...
Black and white, simple and clear. Netanyahu said explicitly that he rejected Oslo when he was elected in 1996. No ifs or buts, no weasel words. Netanyahu rejected Oslo.

I recognize that 1996 was a very long time ago. Hillary lived in the White House; Elvis was recently dead (19 years); and Digital Equipment Corporation was a household name. Twitter hadn't been invented, nor Facebook, the iPhone, the blogosphere nor even Google. It was a truly benighted era. On the other hand, the Internet and even the World Wide Web already existed, as did the PC; people drove cars, not horses and buggies, and most homes in the developed lands had plumbing.Why, some of us old codgers even have (faint) memories of those far-off days in 1996.

Enough to know that Beinart's assertion is factually challenged. As a matter of fact, it's the opposite of the truth, not vaguely off mark.

Here's a short version of the story of those days.

In September 1993 Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo agreement. Rabin's popularity skyrocketed, and the agreement basked in the warm glow of 70% support in the polls, which is very high in Israeli terms. Almost immediately, however, Palestinians terrorism began to climb, contradicting what many of us had said would happen. Over the next two years, until the Fall of 1995, Israel made a string of further concessions to the Palestinians, terrorism got worse, Rabin resorted to ever harsher words to describe his opposition, and the opposition felt ever more secure they would win the next elections, scheduled for November 1996.

(Read full post)

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Is Manhigut Yehudit leaving the Likud?

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
26 Iyar, 5770
10 May '10

Translated from the article on Ma'ariv's NRG website

The media buzz surrounding Manhigut Yehudit's future in the Likud caught me by surprise. We had planned to keep the brainstorming process after last Thursday's Likud vote an internal affair - with only Manhigut Yehudit activists engaging in the debate. True, we knew that deliberations taking place among tens or hundreds of people would not be secret for long, but we did not estimate the great surge of public interest that the question of our future in the Likud would awaken. It seems that the stake that Manhigut Yehudit has planted in Israel's politics and collective consciousness is deeper than what we had assessed. When we move that stake just a bit, we create waves both inside and outside Israeli politics - surprising those in the eye of the storm.

Some people erroneously believe that our deliberations over Manhigut Yehudit's future in the Likud are the result of political failure, or because we failed in our attempt to prevent the Likud Central Committee from adopting Netanyahu's proposal, or because the Prime Minister has waged an all-out war against me. That is simply not true. If all that I was looking for was a place in the Knesset, I could have achieved my goal directly and with relative ease. It is not pleasant to be engaged in an ongoing political battle against forces larger and stronger than me; it is not pleasant when the chairman of my political home schemes with the High Court "judges" to remove me from the Knesset slot to which I was elected last year or to prevent elections altogether, as he has done now. I am way outside my comfort zone - but that is apparently the proof that we are on the right track.

As a result of last Thursday's vote, the Likud has redefined itself. It can no longer be considered the ruling party of the National Camp. Instead, it has become the ruling party of one man - in the service of the Left. The political alliance that has been formed between the chairman of the Likud (who also happens to be the Prime Minister of Israel) and the justice system allowed him to retroactively change the rules of the game to his advantage and to effectively sever the Likud from its members. From that point and on, nothing stands in the way of the Prime Minister as he charges ahead with his plans to partition Jerusalem.

Not one member of the small, rightist Knesset parties was anywhere near the arena on which the battle for Jerusalem took place last Thursday. Manhigut Yehudit, the movement that "always fails" made the prime minister sweat and deny the claims that the real story behind the Likud vote was Netanyahu's plans to divide Jerusalem.

(Read full article)

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Likud Central Committee vote today wasn’t about the future of Jerusalem

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
29 April '10

Let’s be clear about this: The Likud Central Committee vote today wasn’t about the future of Jerusalem. And while the vote indeed demonstrated the ability of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to get things done in the Likud, his success was very much because the issue on the agenda (postponing internal elections) had nothing to do with national policy.

Related: A Short Analysis of the Likud Central Committee Voting - Manhigut

Binyamin Netanyahu did not get carte blanche from the Likud Central Committee. If anything, Netanyahu’s victory on the vote was achieved thanks to the clarifications and assurances on national policy matters that he apparently gave to various key Likud personalities to garner their support.

Is Binyamin Netanyahu planning to divide Jerusalem – or even just to extend the housing construction freeze beyond the ten month period? (see the countdown at:
www.dannydanon.com/he/index.php/the-news/166-hourglass )

His answer to both is an adamant “no”.

Netanyahu’s positions on these issues reflect his own convictions. That doesn’t negate, however, the importance of the real politic justifications for his stands – this especially when American acceptance of a real politic justification isn’t predicated on having to agree with Mr. Netanyahu’s policy arguments.

Is that his final word?

I would like to think so.

And it is our duty to do everything in our power to help make sure that this is indeed the case.

The Likud MKs and ministers know that if as a result of unforeseen circumstances, Knesset elections were advanced, that the roster of Likud members qualified to vote in the Likud Party primaries would punish those who supported policies in defiance of their constituents. And they also know that various party enrollment campaigns are more than likely to balance each other out.

Nonetheless, there is no room for apathy.

This is not a question of personalities.

It is not a reflection on Binyamin Netanyahu.

Because the absolute last thing any Israeli leader needs, when facing world pressure, is carte blanche from his constituents.

Also related: Israel’s Right Discovers Political Sanity

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