Home » Netanyahu’s coalition government…

Comments

Netanyahu’s coalition government… — 15 Comments

  1. The bit about fires is interesting. Hamas has definitely been trying to start fires in Israel. ISIS has claimed some connection to the California wildfires. I don’t believe them.

  2. I saw that article too and it appears that Netanyahu is too mild and pacific. Bg time irony alert !

    The paragraphs I saw were about Kicking the Palestinians out of Judea and Samaria. That would certainly set the cat amongst the pigeons at the UN.

    I was not much interested in Israel until the Entebbe rescue. That took big balls.

    After that, I was a Zionist. I read Paul Johnson’s “A History of the Jews” and my wife has a whole library on Jews and Israel. We have talked about going to see it but we are too old and she does not do well on long flights. We went to Brussels in 2015 and I think that will be it for us.

    If they decide to wipe Gaza clean, it’s OK with me. Not even the Egyptians want them. I remember Mort Sahl jokes about Gaza in the 1950s.

  3. Whether Netanyahu weathers this latest crisis is of much less importance than Israeli society’s deep divisions which prevent consensus from forming and the constraints the world places upon Israel actually ending the threat.

  4. Well, yes, Netanyahu seems to have managed to keep his governing coalition (such as it is) and live another day (politically speaking).

    Or week. Or month. Or even year….

    (To be sure, elections are the very last thing that Israel needs at the moment…though I suppose that that can be said whenever a government falls before end of term.)

    And so (for now, at least—-and excepting those who have been fervently praying, religiously or secularly, for Netanyahu’s exit) mazel tov, mazel tov, mazel tov all around…:
    https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=ar90S_1542590986

  5. Your closing quote is from the extreme Left newspaper Haaretz which is basically the NY Times of Israel. The wishful tone should tell you all you need to know about this “news source”.

  6. As a result, massive fires ravaged forests and crop-lands throughout the south, spurring loud protests and demands for the government to “do something.”

    Again, the Negev is arid and suitable for animal husbandry. The cultivated woodlands near the Gaza border can be seen here:

    http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/Maps/Maps/Forest.jpg

    I doubt there’s enough of it for ‘massive’ fires. The land use map here

    https://mapcruzin.com/free-maps-thematic/israel_land.jpg

    shows irrigated farming proximate to the Gaza border. I tend to doubt a lettuce patch fed with drip irrigation pipes is all that flammable.

  7. “I doubt…”

    Oh, not to worry.

    There’s lots to burn (over ten thousand acres so far, which is not too shabby, I guess, depending on one’s POV): there’s lots of trees, bushes, underbrush, wild grasses and stubble —all of it very nice and dry after months with no rain (that’s how it is in this semi-arid zone)—and there’s agricultural fields (not just lettuce): corn, afalfa, fodder, what-have-you, much of it nice and dry and tailor made for burning.

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/252833
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-fire-kites-destroy-much-of-nature-reserve-along-gaza-border/
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-struggles-to-handle-latest-threat-from-gaza-fire-starting-kites/

    There’s also several nature preserves. And animals, too, that get caught up in it.

    And there’s the kibbutzim and moshavim that abut Gaza and also the towns further afield (the “art” of incendiary balloons—condoms have been “discovered” by Israel’s creative neighbors to be perfect for the purpose—has been greatly improved by “the neighbors”: some have even reached the middle of the country and the occasional one has reached Jerusalem)

    Yep, lots to burn, though less than there was last year (gotta stay positive).

  8. Forty years ago, Nadav Safran classified Israel’s political parties thus:

    1. Labor bloc
    2. Right bloc
    3. Religious bloc
    4. Center bloc
    5. Far left bloc

    Since that time, a far right bloc has come and gone, a Russian bloc has come and gone, and the center bloc has reconstituted itself into an omnibus party of squish-heads.

    The various strands of labor zionism had been the mode in the country at least since the foundation of the Mandate in 1920 and the Labor Party had constitued the core of the Yishuv executive from the time of its formation in 1930 and the core of every ministry formed between 1948 and 1977. Prior to 1977, the Labor Party and it’s federated affiliates and allies generally collared around 45% of the vote in Israeli elections. From 1977 to 2000, they generally collared around 30% of the vote. In the years since 2000, their level of support has generally bounced around 14.5% of the vote. In the last 18 years, the religious bloc has been performing better, polling around 17.5% of the vote. The center parties to which Safran was referring are at this time in the pedigree of the Green left in Israel. A reconstituted center began to emerge 15 years ago but has yet to find it’s home in a political party that wasn’t personalistic and evanescent. So far, it appears to draw about 21% of the electorate give or take. The far left bloc (a collection of Arab partisans and Commies) is now good for about 9% of the vote. Netanyahu’s right bloc has been polling around 23% of the vote in the last 20 years. (The squish-heads generally poll about 4%).

    Netanyahu as an individual may depart public life. It does not appear that the other dispensations in Israeli politics are yet in a position to displace Likud.

  9. There’s lots to burn (over ten thousand acres so far, which is not too shabby,

    If that’s accurate, the sum of them has been < 1/10th the size of the Camp Fire in northern California. There's massive and then there's 'massive'.


  10. MikeK
    Bibi lost his elder brother during that action.

    Oh, I know. One thing Israel has, out of necessity of course, is universal military experience, which we once had. Women are required to serve but I understand the business of women in combat has been toned down.

    The military experience was one thing that kept our politics sane after 1917 until Lyndon Johnson wrecked our military in Vietnam and gave us the Sixties and the pathology that followed.

    We will be living with the consequences of Johnson for 100 years.

  11. The military experience was one thing that kept our politics sane after 1917 until Lyndon Johnson wrecked our military in Vietnam and gave us the Sixties and the pathology that followed.

    Johnson did a lousy job, but it’s rather de trop to attribute the whole tapestry of social and cultural breakdown to his desk. Political institutions are not that influential and the president is always encountering counter-force

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>