A clandestine undertaking on behalf of Israel, the Jets and the Jews.

 
Likud vs. The Stepford Wives

The media has hyperactively been yelling and screaming about Likud's purported shift to the far right in the wake of Monday's primary. In fact, this is all much ado about very little

I'd strongly prefer that Moshe Feiglin and his small but noisy group end their efforts to infiltrate Likud. It's a shame that Feiglin managed to push the talented Yechiel Leiter to 39th place, thereby probably keeping Leiter out of the Knesset. But the exaggeration about Feiglin's influence is fear-mongering - nothing more. The man is in 20th place on the Likud slate. He'll be elected to the Knesset and will make extreme speeches there, but will have no influence whatsoever on government policy.

But, we are warned, most of the Likud candidates opposed "disengagement" from Gaza. Well, that's pretty obvious, isn't it, given that those in Likud who supported ending Israel's presence in Gaza all moved over to Kadima. Of course, those remaining in Likud are, for the most part, loyal to Likud's policies, in contrast to Ariel Sharon's many Stepford Wives: the ex-Likud opportunists who all coincidentally radically shifted their ideology at the very same time as Sharon did.

And anyway, why would Israelis punish Likud for having candidates who opposed "disengagement," now that Hamas has taken over Gaza, smuggled massive amounts of weapons, and even the dreadful Kadima-Labor government is telling us that Israel will soon have to re-engage in Gaza, and on a massive scale?

In the end, Israel's 2009 election is not about a two-state "solution", or a shelf agreement, or the Saudi Plan. It's a choice between continuing to be willfully delusional for short-term expediency, or soberly dealing with the difficult challenges facing Israel.
posted on 12/10/2008