ISRAELI POLITICS: ALL THE TRASH IS JUMPING INTO THE SAME BIN

Originally published by Reuven A. Kossover at Blog Critics www.blogcritics.com
and at Jewish Indianapolis www.jewishindy,com on December 2, 2005
Ruvy in Jerusalem

LIBERATED YERUSHALIYIM, D.C. (David's Capital), Liberated Israelite Tribal Territories of Yehudah and Binyamin, Kingdom of David and Shlomo, United Israelite Kingdom of Yehudah and Yosef, Yom Chamishi, 14 Kislev, 5766, Root & Branch Information Services [mailto:rb@rb.org.il] [www.rb.org.il]:


On September 21, 2005, Debkafile reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had decided to leave the Likud Party and possibly retire, and had informed President Bush of his intentions. Shlomo Wollins of Israel Reporter said that he believed this story to be unsubstantiated.

At the time, there was a fight within the Likud as to when the party primaries would be. Party "rebels" wanted to move up the date and try to unhorse Sharon. Sharon wanted to delay the primaries as long he could. Sharon, generously applying pressure to party hacks afraid of losing their seats, succeeded in keeping the party primaries held off until May, 2006.

In the meantime, the Labor Party held a vote to elect its new leader. One by one, Shimon Peres -- a man of not inconsiderable influence as he once was prime minister and minister of foreign affairs -- succeeded in getting his opponents to drop out of the race. By the time the actual vote took place, only two opponents remained: A party hack named Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who had been security minister for a time, and Amir Peretz, head of Israel's much-weakened labor federation, Histadrut.

Then came a surprise.

Around the time of the primaries, the Labor hacks waved the bloody shirt of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. News started to leak that the man convicted of the crime, Yigal Amir, actually had shot blanks at Rabin and that the murder had been the work of the General Security Service (Sherutei Bitachon Klali -- Shabak) agents -- who were in the pay of Peres, a Rabin rival. The news was just enough to defeat Peres in the election, and Peretz, a fellow familiar for his continual strikes to protect Histadrut control over pension funds, was now leader of the Labor Party.

The newspapers all rumbled, "Earthquake in Israel! Peres ousted as Labor leader", as Peretz moved forward to pull Labor out of the governing coalition, thus forcing early elections -- and very possibly an early primary in the Likud.

Sharon had been dropping broad hints that he might leave the party from even before the election within Labor, and now he kept the rumors alive. A few days ago, a poll came out indicating that were elections held that day, Labor and an unnamed political party headed by Sharon would pull even with 28 seats each, with the Likud falling to 20 seats. Shinui -- a political party of militant secularists whose leader, Yosef Lapid, is remarkably like an Israeli Archie Bunker -- would drop to six or seven. Several polls that came later reported similar numbers.

To form a governing coalition in Israel, you need a majority of the 120 seats in the Knesset. If you were to add the seats of Sharon's new party (now named Kadima), Labor and Shinui together in this poll, you get 61 -- a majority.

As we say in Yiddish, nu? Do you really need to ask?

Sharon bolted his own party and informed us Israelis, who allegedly were waiting with bated breath, of his intentions. The phrase "earthquake in Israel" made its appearance again in the English language on-line edition of the left-wing paper, Yediot Ahronot.

The last time we had elections here in 2003, Amram Mitzna, the mayor from Haifa who headed the Labor Party, pounded his fist saying, "Gaza First", meaning that we should pull out of Gaza first. Sharon ridiculed him, sweeping Likud to its highest number of seats in the Knesset ever, 38, and shrinking Labor to 19 seats. Sharon then proceeded to do exactly as Mitzna recommended.

New elections are scheduled for March 28, 2006. The silly season has returned to the Holy Land -- again. But we're seeing a new phenomenon this time around that we've never really seen before...

Sharon is the bought-out U.S. flunky. Peres is the bought-out European Union flunky. So I expect to see huge amounts of western money being poured into Kadima's coffers. It is easier to pour money into one pail than several and attempt to make one political party the holder of power than it would be to coordinate efforts through several political parties as has been done in the past. What I'm saying is that this strange phenomenon of the "successful center party" is the result of manipulation of foreign powers determined to control events here...



Read the rest at at Blog Critics www.blogcritics.com
and at Jewish Indianapolis http://www.jewishindy.com on December 2, 2005
Ruvy in Jerusalem