A Special Place in Hell-Israel News - Haaretz Israeli News source.
by Bradley Burston
Is anyone on the mainstream Jewish right – anyone at all – willing to speak in defense of Avigdor Lieberman, the bully in the china shop of Israel's relationship with its Arab minority?
In particular, is anyone on the mainstream right prepared to step up and support his fascism bandwagon's snorting, noxious draft horse – the loyalty oath initiative?
Not the Zionist Organization of America. Normally a hair-trigger media machine, the hard-right ZOA has been uncharacteristically silent on Lieberman's showcase bill.
Not the Israel Project. The high-profile organization's stated purpose is to get "facts about Israel and the Middle East to press, public officials and the public." But when asked by the Haaretz U.S. correspondent Natasha Mozgovoya at a news conference how the Israel Project reacted to the cabinet passage of the oath, the reply of the organization's president and founder Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi was conspicuous in its brevity:
"We didn't put out a press release."
The nominally neutral but increasingly right-leaning Anti-Defamation League chided Israel's government - and by extension, both Lieberman and the man who crucially caved to him on the issue, Benjamin Netanyahu - over the patently discriminatory wording of the proposal.
The American Jewish Committee, dependably a right-center loyalist of Israeli government decisions, departed from custom to voice "concern" over the loyalty oath vote in a statement with a palpable sting:
…applying different standards, based on ethnicity, to applicants seeking the country's citizenship may detract from the noble cause that the amendment purports to promote. AJC hopes that the Israeli Cabinet will carefully review all the ramifications of this amendment before it advances further.
Clearly, something has changed on the mainstream Jewish right. It goes beyond frustration over trying to defend the indefensible. It goes beyond defending a right-wing government, come what may.
It is the dawning realization that for years, Lieberman has been misjudged and underrated by the mainstream right, which saw him as little more than a shrewd but contained manipulator of populist sentiment, catering to marginal immigrants.
The mainstream right has come to reassess Lieberman. It has come to acknowledge the toxicity of his divisiveness, to fear his growing clout, and to recoil from a nightmarish suspicion:
In his systematic, stepwise march toward rolling back democracy and the rights of Israel's Arab citizens, Lieberman has become Meir Kahane.
Branding the oath "damaging and above all, dangerous," Yehuda Ben Meir, a former lawmaker of the rightist National Religious Party, wrote this week that Lieberman's ultimate goal is to force legislators to take the loyalty pledge "in order to prevent Arab Knesset members, most or all of whom will refuse to swear such an oath, from serving in the legislature."
Israel's image as a democratic country is of vital importance to it," concluded the U.S.-born Ben Meir. "An amendment to the Basic Law on the Knesset that keeps the Arabs out will be very harmful to this image and will do unimaginable damage to the state. It is to be hoped the prime minister will come to his senses before it is too late.
See the complete editorial at http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/lieberman-is-kahane-and-even-the-right-senses-it-1.320219
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/05/AR2010110507092.html?hpid=topnews
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Is anyone on the mainstream Jewish right – anyone at all – willing to speak in defense of Avigdor Lieberman, the bully in the china shop of Israel's relationship with its Arab minority?
In particular, is anyone on the mainstream right prepared to step up and support his fascism bandwagon's snorting, noxious draft horse – the loyalty oath initiative?
Not the Zionist Organization of America. Normally a hair-trigger media machine, the hard-right ZOA has been uncharacteristically silent on Lieberman's showcase bill.
Not the Israel Project. The high-profile organization's stated purpose is to get "facts about Israel and the Middle East to press, public officials and the public." But when asked by the Haaretz U.S. correspondent Natasha Mozgovoya at a news conference how the Israel Project reacted to the cabinet passage of the oath, the reply of the organization's president and founder Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi was conspicuous in its brevity:
"We didn't put out a press release."
The nominally neutral but increasingly right-leaning Anti-Defamation League chided Israel's government - and by extension, both Lieberman and the man who crucially caved to him on the issue, Benjamin Netanyahu - over the patently discriminatory wording of the proposal.
The American Jewish Committee, dependably a right-center loyalist of Israeli government decisions, departed from custom to voice "concern" over the loyalty oath vote in a statement with a palpable sting:
…applying different standards, based on ethnicity, to applicants seeking the country's citizenship may detract from the noble cause that the amendment purports to promote. AJC hopes that the Israeli Cabinet will carefully review all the ramifications of this amendment before it advances further.
Clearly, something has changed on the mainstream Jewish right. It goes beyond frustration over trying to defend the indefensible. It goes beyond defending a right-wing government, come what may.
It is the dawning realization that for years, Lieberman has been misjudged and underrated by the mainstream right, which saw him as little more than a shrewd but contained manipulator of populist sentiment, catering to marginal immigrants.
The mainstream right has come to reassess Lieberman. It has come to acknowledge the toxicity of his divisiveness, to fear his growing clout, and to recoil from a nightmarish suspicion:
In his systematic, stepwise march toward rolling back democracy and the rights of Israel's Arab citizens, Lieberman has become Meir Kahane.
Branding the oath "damaging and above all, dangerous," Yehuda Ben Meir, a former lawmaker of the rightist National Religious Party, wrote this week that Lieberman's ultimate goal is to force legislators to take the loyalty pledge "in order to prevent Arab Knesset members, most or all of whom will refuse to swear such an oath, from serving in the legislature."
Israel's image as a democratic country is of vital importance to it," concluded the U.S.-born Ben Meir. "An amendment to the Basic Law on the Knesset that keeps the Arabs out will be very harmful to this image and will do unimaginable damage to the state. It is to be hoped the prime minister will come to his senses before it is too late.
See the complete editorial at http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/lieberman-is-kahane-and-even-the-right-senses-it-1.320219
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/05/AR2010110507092.html?hpid=topnews
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
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