lørdag 22. juli 2023

Netanyahu åpner opp om "Jabotinsky and I"

.
Etter en lang innledning går artikkelforfatter over til å beskrive en tale Netanyahu nylig har holdt.
Dette avsnittet i artikkelen er kalt "Jabotinsky and I"
Her hyller Netanyahu Jabotinsky og sin far, - de er hans ledestjerner.
Mao: For å forstå Netanyahu må man forså hva Jabotinsky sto for.

"With Eyes Wide Open, Netanyahu Marches Israel Toward the Abyss"

 Utdeag: (HELE artikkelen nederst under Kilde)
"Jabotinsky and I

On Tuesday afternoon a memorial ceremony for Ze’ev Jabotinsky was held on Mount Herzl. Netanyahu, who gave the main speech, dedicated his opening comments to “a trait of leadership … that made Jabotinsky one of the giants of Zionism: His ability to identify opportunities and dangers at any given time. … He had a prophetic ability to predict the future and foresee developments that would affect the fate of our people.”

After exhausting the superlatives for the father, the son found time to shower some on himself. He noted the principles that Jabotinsky, the leader of the Beitar youth movement and the right-wing Irgun militia, believed in, such as “the Iron Wall,” the notion of a militarily strong Jewish community surrounded by enemies.

Netanyahu said he imbibed such principles “from Jabotinsky and my father,” adding: “Even a hundred years after the principle of the iron wall was set in the writings of Jabotinsky, we continue to implement it successfully.”

Konklusjon:

Netanyahus ledestjerne er Jabotinsky., og forsterket av BiBis far.
Det definerer forholdet til palestinerne og Israels nabostater: Knallhard makt - "Iron Wall".

EDIT:
27. juli 2023
Advarsel fra Tamir Pardo, Mossadsjef 2011-2016:
"Ex-Mossad chief: Netanyahu allies worse than KKK, overhaul is his ‘master plan’
Tamir Pardo claims PM is in control, it’s an ‘urban legend’ he’s under thumb of extremist partner..."

Er det noen som kjenner Netahanyau, så er det Mossad-sjefer.
Han henger udiskutabelt bjella på Netanyahu.

Skudeneshavn  22. juli 2023 / 27. juli 2023

Jan Marton Jensen 

På Twitter:
4. november 2023
https://twitter.com/janmarton/status/1720761731796910540

 

Ny info:
27. juli 2023
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-mossad-chief-netanyahu-allies-worse-than-kkk-overhaul-is-his-master-plan/

Kilde:

https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Jabotinsky

 
21. juli 2023
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-07-21/ty-article/.premium/with-eyes-wide-open-netanyahu-marches-israel-toward-the-abyss/00000189-748f-de6d-a1ef-f5efad990000?lts=1690048141139

 

HELE artikkelen i Haaretz 21. juli 2023

Analysis |

With Eyes Wide Open, Netanyahu Marches Israel Toward the Abyss

Events in Israel over the past six months are entirely Bibi's responsibility, handiwork and shame: a defense, social, economic, diplomatic and moral catastrophe. Gantz's main opposition party won't come to his rescue

 

 

Verter 20/7

Credit: Amos Biderman

In 2016, an American journalist asked Benjamin Netanyahu how he’d like to be remembered. “As the protector of Israel,’ came the reply.

Let’s set aside Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the growing strength of Hamas and the weakening of the Palestinian Authority, the increasing power of Hezbollah and its transformation from a terror organization into an army with tens of thousands of precision-guided missiles. During Netanyahu’s 12 uninterrupted years as prime minister, none of these threats was “eliminated.” That was an unrealistic expectation.

His boasting notwithstanding, not everything depends on him. Like every leader, like every human being, he has failures as well as accomplishments.

On the other hand, what has been happening in Israel in the past six months and what is yet to come is entirely his responsibility, his handiwork and his shame: a defense, social, economic, diplomatic and moral catastrophe. Israel has never radiated weakness and vulnerability as it does today: The military reserves are falling apart, the United States is turning its back, foreign leaders are staying away, the economy is sustaining daily blows and the societal rift is growing deeper and wider. “The army is still ready for battle,” the military spokesman announced drily this week. These words must be read and reread. The eyes see but the brain refuses to believe this even on the 10th reading. “Still?”

The title to which Netanyahu aspired has been denied to him. He doesn’t have the time it would take him to repair the immense  strategic damage he has wrought on the state and its critical systems. He will go down in history as Israel’s official liquidator; as the man who received a functioning state on an upward trend on December 29, 2022 and turned it, almost instantly, into a bleeding, riven entity. This is not a “vibrant” and “resilient” democracy, as he and President Isaac Herzog told U.S. President Joe Biden and Congress. This is a democracy under attack, whose elected government has declared war on it, seemingly determined to grind it into the dust. This is a democracy hanging by a thread, which if not for the impressive protest movement would have become a thing of the past, a dim memory, by now. The leaders of the protest, people who before January were mostly anonymous, are already deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize.

A demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv this week.
A demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv this week.Credit: Itai Ron

Early this week, the Prime Minister’s Office issued instructions to select cabinet members and coalition lawmakers for handling the media in light of the protracted collapse on all fronts and from every direction, as follows: 1. Blame the rift between Washington and Jerusalem on opposition leaders and reserve-duty generals.
  The subtext, or subliminal message if you will: Biden is an old, clueless sucker who gets his information from fake news. 2. Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, is to blame for Netanyahu’s non-invitation to the White House. 3. The expanding and dangerous phenomenon of reservists not reporting for duty is the fault of the principled soldiers and officers, our finest sons and daughters, who never before, under any government, hesitated to leave their homes, work and families when called to action. 4. The barbed messages emanating from the Oval Office are the fault of The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who is “hostile” to Netanyahu. 5. All the other ills that are besetting us are the fault of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, the “most dangerous person in the country today,” in the words of the troublemaker in the Justice Ministry, David Amsalem, who has received dangerous backing through the thundering silence of Netanyahu and Justice Minister Yariv Levin. 

 Everyone else is to blame, as always, except the person at the head of the pyramid. He is only responsible for successes. In tandem, Netanyahu is waging a systematic propaganda campaign, wise from his perspective, against “insubordination.” The issue bothering him most is one that lies within his comfort zone. In this battlefield he has the advantage, in contrast to the battle over the reasonableness standard, where he is at a disadvantage. This won’t give him points in public opinion, but it will at least bolster his “base,” which loathes “elites” and pampered residents of tony Tel Aviv neighborhoods.

Demonstrations against the judicial overhaul in Jerusalem on Thursday.
Demonstrations against the judicial overhaul in Jerusalem on Thursday.Credit: Sraya Diamant

Only he and his toxic envoys, such as Amsalem, Shlomo Karhi and Galit Distal Atbaryan, could transform a critical struggle over the face of Israel’s democracy into a sterile yet sickeningly effective identity-politics debate. The head of a government replete with draft dodgers, with representatives of entire sectors that preach institutional draft dodging, while extorting and receiving immense budgets for institutions that encourage evading conscription, with criminals who were found unworthy of serving and women opportunistically posing as religious, is repeatedly inciting against and attacking with venom the people he labels “refuseniks.”

When the process started, people were divided over repealing the reasonableness clause. Over time, despite the issue’s complexity and the feebleness of the media in explaining it, more people have realized the scope of the horror, thereby increasing the number of protesters. Netanyahu lost the narrative battle when he tried to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. He is now losing it again. He didn’t think masses of people would protest a supposedly technical matter, giving Levin and Simcha Rothman the green light to proceed, assuming he was on firm ground. He is willing to pay a huge price, frightened of his base which is inflamed by the extremists he fostered. He is walking toward the abyss, with eyes wide open.

Updating the story

U.S. President Donald Trump described his administration’s policy toward Iran as “maximum pressure.” That description also fits the Biden administration’s policy toward Netanyahu.

Not toward Israel – which is still a strategic ally enjoying all the privileges of close ties with America – but toward the man heading it, who is so loathed as to be virtually a pariah. Any “warmth” or “friendliness” there may have been in Netanyahu’s phone call with Biden reflected the president’s attitude toward a democratic Israel, not toward the prime minister leading it down a suicidal path alien to their “shared values.”

President Isaac Herzog addressing the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.
President Isaac Herzog addressing the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP

Biden was well-briefed and understood how critical this week and the start of next week are. That explains the barrage of diplomatic cruise missiles launched at Netanyahu from Washington – the White House spokeswoman’s stubborn refusal to confirm that the two men would meet there, the briefings to Friedman and the advice from “senior administration officials” to believe the Times columnist (and not Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s most political national security adviser ever).

In the run-up to President Herzog’s visit, Netanyahu vented his rage on anything that moved. His diplomatic tantrum finally ended in the longed-for call from Biden, followed by the conflicting stories. 

The moment the call ended, Netanyahu’s people said it was warm, friendly and didn’t include a word about the judicial overhaul. Officials in Washington erupted and took care to describe a tense call with massive emphasis on Biden’s warning against the legislation and its ramifications.

Who should we believe? The White House or the Prime Minister’s Office? Come on, really. Netanyahu’s lying manipulation of the call, which humiliated the president, didn’t exactly help repair the relationship.

The cold shoulder from Washington and the fog surrounding the meeting are driving Netanyahu and his wife Sara crazy. They desperately need a nice trip to a respectable destination, with all its perks. Not just a hop over to Cyprus, like the one planned for next week. That’s why we were told this week about the government’s decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and, more important, that Netanyahu will “soon” visit Rabat.

A bit of perspective: Israel never had a problem granting Morocco recognition, and the previous government also discussed doing so. But the Bennett-Lapid government had conditions – upgrading Morocco’s representation in Israel from a liaison office to an embassy, inaugurated by Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, and signing a series of trade agreements. 

Israeli lawmakers voting on the bill to overturn the reasonableness clause in the Knesset on Wednesday.
Israeli lawmakers voting on the bill to overturn the reasonableness clause in the Knesset on Wednesday.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

But Rabat took its time, the government changed, and now Netanyahu is granting the king’s wish for a red carpet. That’s how desperate the Netanyahus are for a state visit overseas.

The visit itself has no real value. The Israeli Liaison Office in Rabat was inaugurated by then-Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and five ministers in the current government have already made pointless visits to Morocco, a friendly destination for guests. Unlike the occupants of the White House, 10 Downing Street or the Elysée Palace, King Mohammed VI isn’t worried about Israel’s democratic future.

Instead of staying in his burning country and doing what one would expect of a sane leader, Netanyahu is looking for trips and honor. That’s how a five-hour visit to Cyprus (including meetings) became a two-day holiday, no less. Sara’s presence explains it. With her, there are no quickies. She demands the whole package – tours, shopping, meals at glamorous restaurants and generally laundry service as well.

No one to talk to

On Monday, the Knesset will vote on whether to cancel the Supreme Court's authority to declare a government decision unreasonable. This means a shattering of the corruption ceiling, which already kept rising every time Netanyahu formed a government. If the governing coalition follows through, the new law will provide cover for the wantonness of the current coalition.

Until the vote, Netanyahu still has the option to seduce the opposition with empty promises about “broad agreements” and a “discussion” later on.

On Wednesday he was preempted by Benny Gantz, who learned the art of trickery from the best. In a prime-time announcement, the chairman of the opposition National Unity Party offered the prime minister immediate talks on the reasonableness issue. (Talks that wouldn't create “an opening for corruption,” he noted, probably to the sound of laughter from the government benches.)

 

Benny Gantz on Wednesday offering the government talks on the reasonableness standard.
Benny Gantz on Wednesday offering the government talks on the reasonableness standard.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

His second condition was a commitment that any future legislation on the “reforms” would be done by broad agreement. However you look at it, it’s a nonstarter.

In the hours before the announcement, Gantz and his party's Gideon Sa’ar, Gadi Eisenkot and Chili Tropper met in a side room to decide what to do. Some believed that Netanyahu, in his distress as the reservists threaten to forgo reserve duty and the Americans ramp up their proverbial carpet bombing, would say yes.

Either way it’s a win-win, they said. If he says yes, we stopped the downslide. If not, everybody will see who the obstructionist is.

“In the end, despite all our sympathy and support, the protests have their limitations.” Tropper told me. “You can’t offer the public more and more protest. And it’s not that we’re naive. Even if Bibi would say yes, this wouldn’t guarantee us that in the next session he wouldn’t restart the madness and continue with the unilateral legislation. Still, we felt we had to do something that might stop the accident that's about to happen.”

Tropper is relentless in his pursuit of compromise. In recent weeks he has been in constant contact with three legal experts: Raz Nizri (a former deputy attorney general,) Yedidia Stern and Yuval Elbashan. They've been in frantic contact with Netanyahu’s people: Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs and the minister for whatever need be, Ron Dermer. The jurists, none of whom is a great liberal, tried to reach an agreement on the reasonableness standard.

Theoretically, Netanyahu had an interest in it, to assuage the reservists and the Americans. The three updated Tropper. Bottom line: Fuchs and Dermer, on behalf of the prime minister, said no, even to the relatively generous offers presented to them.

Chili Tropper speaking in the Knesset on Monday. "Today the big extremists are in Likud."
Chili Tropper speaking in the Knesset on Monday. "Today the big extremists are in Likud."Credit: Sraya Diamant

Tropper hears the voices and reads the op-eds urging Gantz and his party to offer themselves as spare parts to replace the two extremist parties in the government, Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism and Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit.

“Not an option,” he rightly says. “They used to think we’d replace Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and all the problems would be solved. But today the big extremists are in Likud – Levin, Distal Atbaryan, Amsalem, Karhi, [Tally] Gotliv. Last time [in the 2020-21 national unity government] we had 17 lawmakers and we couldn’t deal with that bunch. Now we’re 12.”

Jabotinsky and I

On Tuesday afternoon a memorial ceremony for Ze’ev Jabotinsky was held on Mount Herzl. Netanyahu, who gave the main speech, dedicated his opening comments to “a trait of leadership … that made Jabotinsky one of the giants of Zionism: His ability to identify opportunities and dangers at any given time. … He had a prophetic ability to predict the future and foresee developments that would affect the fate of our people.”

The audience had no trouble divining the identity of the leader to whom the speaker ascribes similar traits. Then he got to the crux of the matter.

“My father, Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, flew to London on the eve of the Holocaust and convinced Jabotinsky to move his center of operations from England to the United States. Both of them, Jabotinsky and my father, saw the difficult condition of the Zionist movement. They both crafted a firm and informed Zionist line to extract our people from their straits.”

Netanyahu described his father’s work after Jabotinsky’s death in great detail. Shortly after arriving in the United States, Netanyahu Sr. “continued in his efforts to persuade the American administration to support the establishment of a Jewish state … that would serve American interests. It was a revolutionary idea!”

Anyone unversed in the history of the right-wing Revisionist movement may err in thinking that Jabotinsky and Netanyahu Sr. were a pair of titans, which they weren’t. Benzion was the leader’s aide for a few months; later on he did diplomatic work in the United States, but it was unrelated to Jabotinsky.

Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday speaking at the memorial service for Ze'ev Jabotinsky on Mount Herzl.

Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday speaking at the memorial service for Ze'ev Jabotinsky on Mount Herzl.Credit: Sraya Diamant

The son’s choice to dedicate more than a few words to his father at another man’s memorial is part of his habit of always placing himself, his father or his wife at the center of the event. Any event, relevant or not. Everything revolves around them, everything started with them, everything will end with them.

Without Bibi there would be no country, without his brother there would be no Entebbe, without his father there would be no Zionism. “Whose memorial is this anyway?” one of the attendees asked himself.

After exhausting the superlatives for the father, the son found time to shower some on himself. He noted the principles that Jabotinsky, the leader of the Beitar youth movement and the right-wing Irgun militia, believed in, such as “the Iron Wall,” the notion of a militarily strong Jewish community surrounded by enemies.

Netanyahu said he imbibed such principles “from Jabotinsky and my father,” adding: “Even a hundred years after the principle of the iron wall was set in the writings of Jabotinsky, we continue to implement it successfully.”

For a moment it was unclear why the audience had gathered on Mount Herzl. Whose praises had they come to sing? The commemorated? The commemorator? His father?

“We, his disciples,” Netanyahu called himself and Likud's lawmakers. It’s a miracle that the tombstone didn’t shatter. Disciples, maybe, but not of the movement’s founder Jabotinsky or of his successor, Menachem Begin. Maybe of Meir Kahane, Joseph McCarthy, Vladimir Putin or Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Without blushing at all, Netanyahu waxed wistfully about the deceased's spirit of “national unity.” Jabotinsky “would never have accepted the incitement to objection to serve in Israel’s military. … That’s the end of the military, undermining the foundations of our common existence; it could destroy the house. … Jabotinsky would have harshly castigated those who incite to rebellion to destroy all that we’ve built here together,” said the inciter in chief and despoiler of national unity.

Here, for some reason, he forgot to mention his father and his brother Iddo, who signed a petition calling for objection ahead of the 2005 Gaza pullout. Not fair. If you’re going to bring family into it, go all the way.

Speaking of national unity, what about Mr. Itzik Zarka, the darling of the Likud brass from the chairman on down? It's a week since we were graced with his deep thoughts on the Holocaust, and Netanyahu’s promise to offload the prodigal son has yet to be fulfilled.

Maybe it’s due to Zarka's threats about the evidence he has on his phone, or simply because parting is such sweet sorrow. After all, they're all of the same flesh and blood; Zarka is just a particularly extreme mutation of Amsalem.

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