According to the various polls published today in a number of papers (Haaretz has a preview of its poll here), Netanyahu will be our next prime minister. Actually, this has been the picture for a while now, but the numbers are growing more solid.
I'll talk about that some other time. What I'd like to point out here is that Labor, according to the latest polls, is losing support even faster than those Somali folks are hijacking ships. As Haaretz correctly notes, this may be the last elections in which the party runs. Lest you think this is something to shrug off, I remind you that Labor is the party that created the State of Israel, and dominated its politics from the inception of elections in Mandatory Palestine, in the 1920s, uninterrupted until 1977, and remained a major force until 2001. On a political level, one can say "No Labor Party (or Mapai, or Maarach, or whatever other name it went by), no State of Israel". Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Levy Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yizchak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and, yes, Ehud Barak - these are merely the Mapai figures who reached the top; Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon, Pinchas Sapir, Abba Eban and many other famous figures were also Laborites.
The English Liberal Party disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, but I can't think of any other examples of such a thing happening.
Equally interesting, Labor is dying so that Kadima may live. This, frankly, is wierd. Kadima was invented by Arik Sharon (along with Haim Ramon, Tzipi Livni and some others) in 2005 as the new political center. When Sharon disappeared many expected Kadima likewise to disappear, and that it didn't was a sign of the thirst for the center. Still, there has always been the assumption that Kadima is a provisional party, a one-timer, one that could simply evaporate. In the present campaign, if we're honest with ourselves, Kadima is edging leftwards, and is more center-left than purely center. This leaves no room for labor - but it contradicts what everyone thought would happen, or said they thought, or thought they said, or whatever.
I'm not explaining, merely observing.
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2 comments:
FROM CAROL HERMAN
Ben-Gurion had a party like Stalin had a party. Both THUGS. Who wanted power in their hands. And, everyone bowing to them, because they had the powers.
That's what happens when you look at Karl Marx, and you fail to see his resentment at being born outside the aristocratic circle in England.
So what, you say?
So, what Marx did was design a system where any THUG could rise to power. And, he used PR techniques to convince workers "they were uniting." This unity doesn't work when there are no jobs to go around. It's a rather suicidal policy. Not that Stalin cared.
And, Ben-Gurion, not to feel threatened, pulled into #2 position a man who was mentally disabled: Eshkol. And, no. I am not kidding!
So far only the Americans ever devised a means of government that gave the people a chance to participate in government. By dividing powers into 3 branches. And, then writing down in stone, when elections happen. Here? We've proven that even during wars, Americans go to the polls, annually. And, fit into this jig-saw are the various components of government; also divided between, Local, State, and Federal affairs.
Sad Israel is now full of mafia thugs. How do five to seven mafia families even fit into Tel Aviv, for instance? There's enough illegal stuff to keep them all enriched? And, the police. You think they've got "plants" inside these families? Or do you think the police are just happy when they fill out paperwork. And, have a little graft left over on the side?
As to Ben-Gurion, in his mind, Israelis didn't even need money. Just good will. And, they'd all "share." The kibbutzim movement would take care of everything. But it didn't.
One off-shoot became the Moshavs.
It's only in the religious section that nothing new grew at all. Just the ultra-orthodox, "home in Jerusalem, finally," on the backs and blood of soldiers; being handed the city. Where everything STOPPED.
NO GROWTH clues you in a little.
No growth in terms of where Jerusalem has ended up. (Where in Mia Sharim they count tourists, as those who come in by bus; and get surrounded by the little-est of children. Who beg for bukis.)
OY.
If you go back and read Mark Twain, you'd know he actually made a trip to the Holy Land. But what he wrote about this is not funny. He said it was SLUM-LAND. People were living as if it didn't take any brains to run communities. And, sewage could just roll in the streets.
Every European city got hit in WW2. And, yet? Where the West regained its strength was in rebuilding cities.
When Jews were in Europe, many were familiar with city-scapes. And, many starving families made it their business to change "outcomes" by going to AMerica.
Going to Israel was something that Hertzl said would work, too.
Yet all the Jews who arrived in Palestine found HOSTILE ARABS.
(Today, after Dubya went into Irak, lots of Americans are discovering just how arabs live. Tribally. And, still with the raw sewage. And, the graft.) That's why we can't win over there.
In Israel, meanwhile, where religion was "discounted" ... you got cities like Tel Aviv. And, Haifa. As a matter of fact, in Haifa, you had real progress. And, inter-mixing. This is not so in Jerusalem. WHere now hate abounds. And, where the saud's have been pressuring their form of Whabbism on what once was a much quieter population.
Yes, Labor is failing.
But so, too, is your justice system. Since the police and the courts have been used to arm-twist politicians. You now think you can "smell" good from evil. But that's just BS.
Katsav raped no woman! ANd, yes. There are women who go to work, opening their blouses to at least expose their breasts; hoping they don't have to work as hard as anyone else in that office. But they "advance." Katsav advanced a few of these.
And, Katsav got punished; because the first man to realize Labor's days was numbered, was Shimon Peres.
Shimon Peres knows how to land on a cushion. Politics to him is just a way of growing rich. ANd, powerful. Even if you don't like him enough to elect him to office.
So he grabbed Katsav's chair.
Up ahead?
Well, leave it to judaism to prove, once again, that if you give the orthodox the room, they become extremists. Capable of fighting against their neighbor's interests. As well as here, the state's interests, too.
Here's what a mean. Extremists caused havoc 2000 years ago. And, they took on Rome. There were men, then, who swore that God was going to give them prizes. And, they turned the 2nd Temple into a fortress.
If you read, or were familiar with Josephus (Flavius), you'd know what happened when the Romans applied military might to these crazies.
And, if you read the article, yesterday, in the Jerusalem Post, you'd know Herod's estate was also turned into a fortress. And, it also got destroyed.
The extremists haven't really left a record. We've got this record because of what happened "next." Where for 2000 years, in Europe, some Jewish voices rose; and found leadership. I can list a few: Spinoza. Freud. Einstein. Disraeli. But there are more.
It is only NOW, with Jews back in Israel, that there's been a drop off. And, Judaism is running silent. No one is coming forward who can lead.
True. Arik Sharon was poised to lead. But hated by the "insiders." How anyone convinced him his "ticker" needed to be cured of a birth defect, I do not know. But something seriously eroded in the respect Jewish doctors got in AMerica. WHen getting into Harvard was tough. And, because of quotas all that got in was the best of the best. The academics speaks for itself.
While the one thing you know is that Arik Sharon is brain dead, by mismanaged medical care. And, his ticker still works!
In the end, it's what you buy that either allows you to share happiness. Or to suffer grief.
Whatever "deal" Ben Gurion made, back in the early 1950's ... where he handed the "prize" to the ultra-orthodox ... there's supposedly a story of two camels, approaching a bridge. One had behind him a cart full of money. Which was the promises of cash the ultra-orthodox possessed. Because they knew how to schnorrer the Jewish world.
Today, it's finally hit a wall.
Today, the "ghetto" of Jerusalem is a sad spectacle. Repeating, yes, how Jews survived in Europe. By becoming meek. And, where men "studied" instead of found some work. Women, on the other hand, grew strong.
And, in that particular area the world has also joined in. And, religions, across the board, have taken a back seat.
But Jerusalem can't be built out of this mess! Too many men willing to study Torah all day; and not work. While the Palestinians are paid to drive the bulldozers.
Add to this that the arabs HATE.
So Ben-Gurion's invention of government is in terrible need of fixing. While the politicians stiff finger you! They don't have to leave! THEY ARE THE THUGS.
And, then you imported about 3-million more when the Jews of Russia flooded in. Talk of people not ready for democracy; and you lay both your hands on the gigantic size of this problem.
Obama, meanwhile, is showing unusual strength! How many people guessed he'd rescue Hillary from the senate. And, prepare her to become his veep in 2012? Readying her for her own run in 2016?
Sure. People credit Obama as being a man of change. But he's beginning to show he understands the power of the executive. And, he's also a visionary.
Will the saud's still make a play for Jerusalem? Will they get territory? This was gonna be Dubya's "gift."
ANd, if Hillary takes the job of Secretary of State, I can assure you she won't be putting on Condi Rice's shoes.
The reasons that change comes down the pike, is that new generations see new tools to cure old problems.
While the extremists?
Well, they breed. And, it's kept a secret that some of the kids who don't get along, are just tossed out onto the streets.
No accounting how there's such a lack of shame over the lunacy that passes as "given to all Israelis."
another party has been dissolved this
week: the Mafdal.
I remember my friend Ahron of blessed
memory saying when I asked about his voting behaviour: "My hand does not know how to make a cross at any other line."
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