I’m appalled and shocked that Kadima is leading the exit polls. If people didn’t want to vote for Likud, if people were afraid to vote for a right-leaning party, if people had a personal dislike for Benjamin Netanyahu, I could respect their choice to vote for someone else, even if I disagreed– but have the decency to vote for a party with principles! Have the decency to vote for Meretz, a real left-wing party that’s never had a corruption scandal! Vote for Labor, who at least has some genuine if utterly misguided socialist views! Hell, vote Hadash, the mostly-Arab Communist Party of Israel, who at least stands for SOMEthing! Vote for right wing parties who also never are corrupt and are honest about their views about settlements and Arabs!
But Kadima, whose sole reason for existence is the comatose vegetable Sharon; whose only ‘issue’ was the withdrawal from Gaza– the most ridiculous failure of Israeli policy in the last 20 years (and that’s SAYING something!); the ‘party’ which proudly has NO ideology and stands for NOTHING at all; the party that claims as ‘victory’ the half-assed recent re-invasion of Gaza, which should never have been necessary, if not for Kadima’s withdrawal of all military and civilian presence, if not for Kadima’s tolerance of the growth of the Hamas regime there, if not for Kadima’s waiting for eight THOUSAND rockets to fall on Israel before it took action… Kadima! the party of Olmert, whose approval ratings make Bush look like Brange f’ing Lina– for six months ZERO percent of Israelis thought he was doing a good job… one and half million Israelis took to the streets demanding his resignation, which is more than voted for him in the first place!! Imagine 55 million Americans taking to the streets demanding Bush’s resignation!
How about some accountability for God’s sake! Kadima is responsible for the utter failures of the Lebanon war, responsible for the Gaza war which killed 1400 Gazans but didn’t even defang Hamas, responsible for failing to make Israel’s case to the world… Kadima is responsible for Olmert’s corruption scandals. Kadima is responsible for the horrible theft machine that the Israeli government has become. Kadima deserves to be– to be charitable– retired.
I hope Kadima voters can look at themselves in the mirror. I don’t know what’s wrong with them. I feel like Americans felt in 2004, after Bush got re-elected in spite of his manifest idiocy. But more is at stake here. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing again and again after you know it doesn’t work. Kadima is a failure. Its policies are failures.
I hope to God that Livni fails to form a gov’t and that Netanyahu winds up prime minister. His term as finance minister created Israel’s current prosperity and his appointment of Stanley Fischer helped create Israel’s current bank solvency and fiscal stability. He’s shown that he can capably speak in English to the world about Iran, about Israel’s need for self defense, about the difference between terror and morality. Unlike Livni’s tortured Neanderthal Englisch, which sounds like Ah-nold circa 1984.
It’s raining heavily today, for the first time in months of drought, so I take that as a good omen– that the evil king is fallen, that better times are coming. But if we wind up with Livni, with Kad-f^&*g ima again, I’ll seriously consider forming my own party, or starting a revolution, or leaving. Gee, maybe they’ll offer all the west bank to Hamas too! and the Golan to Syria and Hezbollah! In exchange for NOthing! It’s done so well in Gaza, that idea! Maybe they’ll sell off all gov’t contracts to the mafia directly! Maybe they’ll make Olmert Prime Minister for life or until Sharon, zombie-like, returns to power!
It may be hard for outsiders to understand why electing a ‘centrist’ party could be such a travesty. Picture Rudy Blagogevich returning to power AFTER being convicted… picture an election a week after 9-11 where a party wins proposing ceding Afghanistan to Al-Qaeda, saying “we’re tired of fighting. we’re tired of winning”. I don’t have terms strong enough to describe to you how evil Kadima is. Pure opportunists who simply want to stay in power. One of the blessings and curses of living in Israel is that things MATTER, elections MATTER, positions matter… and to take no stand amounts to taking a stand. To take no stand on corruption, to take no action as rockets continue to be shot from Gaza (even today!)– this is a stand FOR weakness. FOR corruption. FOR terror. In a country smaller than Vermont, with tens of thousands of armed monsters within walking distance and a massive economic crisis looming. Like American Bush voters, Israelis may be secretly wishing for apocalypse. And they may get it.
February 10, 2009 at 10:47 pm |
Bush was a poor communicator but a basically good man. I voted for him as governor of Texas when I lived down there, and for president twice, though I disagreed with many of his social policies. I’m much more of a Christian libertarian.
I was rooting for Netanyahu, as were most Christians. He seems like the real deal — a man who will stand up for Israel no matter what it costs him.
February 11, 2009 at 12:02 am |
There’s a very popular herding instinct in Israel, where alot of the smarterati will intentionally try to vote, not for who is closest to their ideologies and priorities, but for who is likely to do will, and still relatively close to at least one of their central interests. It seems like a big lie to me, the idea that this is a good idea, but from what i’ve heard, that’s who’s voting for Kadima: people who just don’t want Likud in power, people who really want to disengage from the whole West Bank, no matter what, and are willing to put aside whatever else they thionk and value to make the Big Push to make this possible. Funny, huh? you’d think the great hope of a parlimentary democracy would be to avoid that kind of outsmarting of the process, no?
But apparently, the diversity of represented parties is viewed as something of an problem by alot of Israelis, because of the inability to “get things done” that happens when many different groups and priorities are demanded to cooperate on a project. This was part of the goal of separating the prime-ministerial election from the knesset election some years back, and the fact that it backfired, giving people more of a will to vote for small parties, no longer fearing The Wrong Party in power, was treated as a profound failure, not to be repeated.
Start a political party, I dare you. We’ll call it “Smart American!” guaranteed at least a seat, if only because American Olim haven’t nessesarily caught on to this voting-for-parties-you-don’t like thing yet… or have they?
February 11, 2009 at 5:36 pm |
There are problems with having too few political parties, as well With only two viable parties in America, we are one away from a one-party monopoly. Sometimes I think that’s already the case. For example, this time I voted for McCain, but I seriously doubt that I would be any happier with him than I am with Obama and the Slightly More Socialist Party — aka, Democrats.
Still, the AP is making it sound like Netanyahu may still be allowed to form a government. It depends on Perez, as to who gets the first shot, right?
February 12, 2009 at 5:23 pm |
when the right is in power, however, the arabs fear us more, there’s more quiet, and we’re pressured to make more concessions and give up land… when the left is in power, the arabs think we’re weak and attack, and we fight back and kill and/or conquer a bunch…
Thus, the problem with Kadima was exactly their half-assed hybridity. They’re right-leaning enough that they seem to be ready to give away land, AND weak enough that they encourage war against Israel; THEN, when they actually go to war, they’re not scared enough to really finish the job (which the true left actually IS, because they’re scared of being perceived as weak!) SO the theory is that if it actually had been a Labor/Meretz gov’t, they’d have finished off Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in 2008/9.
Israel without true leadership is like a boat without a rudder; lean one way, you’ll GO the other way.
August 18, 2009 at 4:02 am |
jews can’t be idiots.