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A little late for that. Both failed their constituencies, especially Labor.
"There should be no mistake about the election results, while no significance should be attributed to Livni's personal accomplishment; it is meaningless. Israel chose to go right; it chose conservatism and fascism, and it did so in an unequivocal and blatant manner. . . .
Given Kadima's Knesset list and the fact it is merely a derivative of Likud, with most of Kadima's members not really undergoing an ideological metamorphosis, the Right's victory in Israel is not only unequivocal in mathematical terms. It is a crushing win. Let's not cover up this fact or its implications.
Labor must not dare consider the corrupting idea that guided it in the past 30 years - in the name of "national responsibility" of course - to join, as a fifth wheel, yet another rightist government and continue to push our political history into the realms of chaos and apocalypse. We are there anyways thanks to you.
. . . .
Labor is the party that pulverized the fundamental political order of coalition and opposition and enabled the Right to recycle and rehabilitate itself after each failure.
Had Labor realized back in 1984 that being in the opposition is not about going to a barren land, but rather, it's a mission and there is no democracy in its absence, perhaps we would have been in a different era by now.
However, labor always preferred the comforts of power, and by doing so consistently built up the strength of the Right, while eliminating itself. Meanwhile, no suitable ideological-political response to the rightist rule was created."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3671144,00.html
I reas a really fascinating in-depth analysis of the Israeli election results and recent political trends on dailykos:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/13/153335/529/485/697179
"
Beware: A Long Diary
This diary is long even by my standards. If you have an unshakeable preconceived notion about Israelis being fascists or Arabs being at fault, then we don’t need each other anyway and you are free to go off on a 200-comment flame war elsewhere. To all the rest, even though the dynamics (as usual) are simple and universal, the details are a bit convoluted. Moreover, people with some of the facts and a lot of prejudice have been promoting analyses which take even more detail to debunk. I am trying to make the IP101 texts focused, but given that the price of text in kilobytes is so cheap, I’d rather aim for clear, comprehensive and interesting writing, than for soundbites and punchlines. So thanks in advance for bearing with me.
Right Wing Nation?
The bare electoral facts are dismal. Israel’s outright rejectionist bloc – that is, all parties that oppose Palestinian independence in any meaningful form – has won 65 seats out of 120. On this point, Israeli election pollsters (notoriously "a bit off") have been correct. Among these 65 MK’s you will find a range of charming ideas – from kicking Palestinians out of the country, to stripping Israeli Arabs of their citizenship, to intense studies of how to build the Third Jewish Temple (on the ruins of the mosque sitting there, I presume) - to just believing Arabs are not quite as human as us (a belief currently held among many shades of Israel’s Orthodox spectrum)..."
And in related news...
Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them
Lieberman has been outed as a former follower of Meir Kahane:
Kahane won
There is one key difference between Lieberman's party and what Kahane represented. I think that the so-called "Kach" party wanted to expel all Arabs from all the occupied territories and have Israel occupy essentially everything between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River and they were opposed to any Palestinian state of any kind. Lieberman - racist as he is - actually wants a two state solution and in fact he wants the Palestinian state to be even bigger than many people in the "mainstream" have ever favoured. He wants to forcibly crave out areas of pre-1967 Israel that have Arab majority populations and join them to Gaza and the West Bank so that Israel has new boundaries that are almost devoid of Arabs.
Its interesting that back in the 70s and 80s supporting the creation of a Palestinian state in any form was considered a fringe leftwing sentiment in Israel. Now you have people on the far right favouring it. Remember that Sharon left Likud and formed Kadima because he wanted to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza etc...while the old-line Likudniks were against that and wanted the occupation of Gaza to continue.
There was bigger news than the election coming out of Israel last week.
Israeli model Bar Refaeli lands Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover
Was the timing of this announcement a coincidence, or did ZOG plan it to distract everyone from the election results?
Haaretz seems to be leaning to the ZOG theory...
Bar Refaeli in Gaza
Not a surprise. The question is whether Livni and Kadima can resist the pressure, internal and external, to join the right-wing coaltion without a rotating PMship. I'm hoping she, and they, don't, giving the majority of Israelis what they apparently want, a Masada coaltion.
"But Lieberman conditioned his support for Netanyahu on the Likud leader forging a broad coalition, including his rival, Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni.
"[There are] three possibilities from our point of view: A broad government, which is what we want. A narrow government, that will be a government of paralysis, but we don't rule out sitting in it. And the third option is going to elections, which will achieve nothing," the far-rightist told Peres."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1065464.html
Apparently, leonardo DiCaprio is considering converting to Judaism to marry her. Man, they will produce some beautiful, Jewish kids.Did you ACTUALLY just post that?
OINK, to the tenth power!
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
"Two states (one for the Israelis and one of the Palestinians) is not an empty slogan," Livni said as she left the meeting. "Unity is not just sitting in a government together. It also means sharing a way."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3678490,00.html
Um, yeah, could we keep the blatant, disgusting sexism out of this thread? And off our web site? Thanks, that would be fabulous.
Jebus H. Fucking Crispies.
Why would he have to convert to Judaism to marry her?
Moreover, SCC you expose your surface and trivial nature by saying "Man, they will produce some beautiful, Jewish kids." Say nothing of your sexist shit that others have taken exception to.
Lighten up, remind! It was a joke!! We Jews are known for poking fun at ourselves. It's all in good fun.
As to why he would have to convert, I would suppose because that's what she said has to happen. There was some headline I read about it but have no idea at this point where it was.
Apparently DiCaprio couldn't handle the pressure, and bolted.
Oh, the humanity!
The conspiracy deepens
So, is a thread on the last horrible Israeli election going to drag on until the NEXT horrible Israeli election?
Several actions by the current government are intended to deny the opposition its essential freedom of action
One of the basic principles of a democratic regime is that it allows all citizens to participate in it equally. The basic assumption is that the faction currently in power will be removed someday, and that the opponents of the government are allowed the same rights in spreading their ideas. Another basic assumption is that a change of government is a healthy thing; a regime that makes its replacement difficult is already on the way to dictatorship or at the very least an authoritarian regime. In a democratic regime, or at any rate in a society imbued with a democratic ethos, the government does not change the rules mid-game, particularly not in its favor.
This is how we should view the series of bills persecuting the left that have been proposed by the Netanyahu coalition in the last two years. Let’s deal with one of the latest, one that Haaretz notes (Hebrew) will be debated tomorrow by the ministerial legislative committee, which under this government is the fast track for “private” bills (i.e., those not proposed by the government or a party but by MKs without the support of either)....