From bad to worse: One year of Netanyahu’s government

[Israeli]

Published on 24 March 2014
Written by Michel (Mikado) Warschawski, Alternative Information Center (AIC)

With its many anti-democratic and anti-Arab laws, its drive towards a war with Iran and its terrible siege on the Gaza Strip, the previous Netanyahu government was the worst Israel has ever had. For many, it seemed that the state of Israel at this time reached its peak in terms of reactionary politics and racist legislations. Moreover, from a socio-economical point of view, it was a government of the rich, openly against the poor and the lower middle class. The political center of the Israeli public understood this and decided to vote against him, and in the last elections Benjamin Netanyahu lost one third of his voters. After this, one would have expected that he would become head of the opposition.

But, as has happened several times in the past, there was a joker in the Israeli game. I define the joker as a new actor, one without a political past, without a defined political program and without a party that expresses a defined sector of the society. The joker has one supposed quality: he is new in the game. The joker is a one-time player; his political emptiness and opportunism become quickly apparent in real political life, and his chances of being able to convince the population that he will make a difference a second time are minimal. In other words, the joker has few chances to be re-elected.

'Being new' attracts non-politicized voters who are unsatisfied with what they call 'old politics', and Tel Aviv is full of such voters, middle class, secular and relatively young. Yair Lapid is the typical joker, a handsome TV star with no defined program and no values to be identified with - except his contempt for the poor, for the hundreds of thousands who are not living in Tel Aviv but in the suburbs and underdeveloped townships and who “cost too much” for the state. His supporters are the upper middle class voters of Tel Aviv, Savion and Herzaliya.

Unlike most of the Israeli media, who used to call Lapid “center-left”, I considered him from the very beginning “center-right”, and predicted that he would prefer to join a Likud government rather than a government led by the Labor Party. And this he did.
Yair Lapid won 19 seats (out of 120) and became the second largest party in the Knesset, and the most influential party in the government.

.............

[Israeli]

1. more....

After one year, one can easily summarize the government’s achievements. One might say that it is the most reactionary government in the history of the state of Israel - more reactionary even than the previous Netanyahu government which voted an impressive series of anti-Arab, racist laws. More reactionary because, in one year, it has already succeeded in adopting a budget that is a declaration of war against the poor layers of society, and has adopted a constitutional law (the Governing Law) that reduces some important constitutional liberties of the citizens and legislative power for the benefit of the executive.

Next to Lapid is Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon, an ultra-rightist former general with a limited intelligence who is obsessed by the need to use military might to assess “western hegemony”. But unlike Lapid, Ya’alon may be the good news of the first year of the third Netanyahu’s government. Twice in one year, Ya’alon has rudely attacked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the Obama administration. The first time he did so, he was obliged to apologize. The fact that he did it again may open the door to a major crisis in the government’s coalition as they try to avoid a crisis between Tel Aviv and Washington.

To summarize, despite the comfortable majority the Netanyahu government seems to have accumulated in one year - not only on the domestic front but also on the strategic front - the seeds of future crisis which could shorten its substantially and viability may already have been sown.

Source: http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/politics/opinions/7911-from-bad-to-worse-one-year-of-netanyahu-s-government

[Jefferson23]

3. Do you agree with the OP's suggestion that Ya'alon actions may lead to a crisis in the coalition?

[Israeli]

4. It wont lead to a crisis in the coalition.....

....a crisis in the coalition has to come from within .

but it should open some eyes ...

ref :
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/us-israel-security-plan-kerry-yaalon-security-apparatus.html#

[King_David]

5. Yaalon's a twit and should be fired. nt

[Jefferson23]

6. Thanks, I read that and I see that Kerry is on his way to Jordan now to meet with Abbas.

This part referenced here gave me pause, Ya'alon is expecting silence? That seems
rather precarious to me.

According to those arguments, Ya’alon does not allow the Americans to meet with and possibly convince Israeli security agents who want to learn more about the US security plan. In American English, as in Hebrew, the American ambition is to “lobby” on behalf of their plan in Israel, but they are finding it very hard to do. Ya'alon views this as interference in Israel's internal affairs, and the Americans are furious.

Why, they ask, can Israel maintain an intimidating lobby in Washington like AIPAC — which receives absolute freedom of action to lobby on behalf of all of Israel’s important issues everywhere, from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House — while we who invest so much energy, time and resources to try to upgrade Israel’s security cannot reach the Israeli public or its decision-makers and professionals? Where is the reciprocity here, the Americans ask. It seems to me that they pose a very good question, indeed.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/us-israel-security-plan-kerry-yaalon-security-apparatus.html##ixzz2x6D5kNZB

[bemildred]

2. Yes, I wish I knew what to tell you.

As with our government here, I wish they'd stop digging the hole deeper, while pretending there is no hole, and anyway they have to dig the hole, it's what they do, hole digging, it's who they are.

Edit: and the political games played there sound very much like what we are subjected to here, we get one false progressive politician after another, and the same deceit about social and economic policy, the same refusal to admit error or allow reform.