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POLITICAL PSYCHO-BABBLE FROM THE ISRAELIS
"Who would have believed that a country run
in partnership with the Labor Party would be
denounced by the world, that its products
would boycotted, its generals accused of crimes
against humanity and its citizens advised not
to speak Hebrew when traveling abroad?"
MID-EAST REALITIES - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington, DC - 1 November 2002:
For some time now as we have said before the Israeli establishment has been
playing political psycho-babble games with all of us, and with themselves as well.
The actual reality is that the Labor Party, going back to its origins in the days of
David Ben-Gurion, has increasingly provided the foundation from which Likud could do
more and more openly so many dirty deeds. Labor has consistently done public
hand-wringing while in actuality setting the stage, and at crucial times acting on it.
Shimon Peres is the world's master at playing this cynical and hypocritical game.
Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, themselves former Generals a la Ariel Sharon, preceeded
Peres.
Sharon is now preparing to try harder than ever to position Israel for the war
ahead and for using the historic opportunity of an America on the warpath under
Israeli influence more than ever in history (and that's saying something!) to
'transfer' the Palestinians and remake the entire map and geo-politics of the Middle
East. He may well get his way. He has clearly worked exceedingly hard for decades,
with unyielding determination, to bring about just such a moment in historic time.
But even if Sharon does not manage this latest and greatest coup, certainly don't
for a moment count on Israel's Labor party, a political/ideological movement which
long ago sold out its publicly-professed principles and is in reality fully
complicitous in all that has happened to date as well as what is to come...whether in
or out of the next Israeli government.
GOOD RIDDANCE
By Yoel Marcus
[Ha'aretz - 1 November 2002]: A millionaire commando all set to rescue the nation.
Ne'eman and Caspi as UN mediators patching things up between Sharon and Fuad. "It's
not nice," they said from morning to night. "Now is not the time. The situation is
critical. Think about the consequences." "Not now. It's the wrong time," said the
president, in the role of national cuckoo clock.
The Labor ministers had faces so yellow, you'd think they just came out of the theater
in Moscow. They really didn't want to go. "Fuad chose the wrong issue and the worst
possible timing to quit the government," said Peres, who fought like a lion to prevent
the walk-out. "If a chemical warhead hits us, who's going to decide what Israel should
do? Uzi Landau and Effi Eitam?"
Scaring the public has always been an effective tool in the hands of politicians. All
of a sudden, they remember the country is about to be hit by an earthquake (if not
tomorrow, then maybe 50 years from now). This week, Sharon remembered that Iraq has
planes full of biological and/or chemical agents that could be dropped on Israel - his
way of saying: Now is not the time.
Maybe Fuad's excuse for quitting isn't convincing, and maybe his timing is pretty bad,
but it really doesn't matter. Labor should have been outside the government ages ago.
It contributed nothing and prevented nothing. Sharon made it a laughingstock.
In name, Israel had a unity government, but in practice, it was the government of one
man, who ran it like a right-wing administration, period. The Labor leaders were major
partners in the government in appearance only. They knew what was going on, sometimes
beforehand and sometimes afterward, to quote Begin's famous remark about his relations
with Sharon. The kitchenette was closed for business. There were times when Peres was
neutralized by prior arrangement with Fuad, and times when Fuad was neutralized by
Sharon, who gave orders to the army over his head.
Like it or not, Labor became a partner to Sharon's bullying of the Palestinians, to
the deterioration of law and order in the territories, to the preferential treatment
of the settlements, to the building and expansion of outposts. Fuad himself played a
double game, talking about political horizons and dismantling outposts, but doing
nothing on either score. Who would have believed that a country run in partnership
with the Labor Party would be denounced by the world, that its products would
boycotted, its generals accused of crimes against humanity and its citizens advised
not to speak Hebrew when traveling abroad?
In principle, unity governments are convened only in times of national emergency.
Since the founding of the state, this type of government has been needed only twice:
In 1967, in the days leading up to and including the Six-Day War, and in 1985, for the
purpose of halting inflation and ending the Lebanon War. Many truly important things
have been done by non-unity governments. The Sinai Campaign, which ended with the
conquest of Sinai and the Gaza Strip, was fought under the auspices of the Mapai
administration. Peace with Egypt in return for withdrawal from Sinai was an
achievement of the Begin administration. During the Madrid Conference and the Gulf
War, the Shamir administration operated entirely on its own. The Hebron accord was
reached by the Netanyahu administration, and unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon was
carried out by the Barak administration. The unity governments have been a recipe for
paralysis, crippling leadership on both sides.
The Labor Party went into partnership with Sharon without a clear agenda of its own.
In practice, the cynical objective was to shore each other up: Sharon, in his bid to
block Bibi, and Fuad, to insure that he heads the Labor list for the next Knesset as a
reigning defense minister. But instead of the Labor Party steering toward peace,
Sharon took the lead with aggressive policies and a gradual return to the territories.
Labor became irrelevant and a supplier of alibis for Sharon's actions.
Fuad's pretext for quitting the government may be forced, but things had reached the
point where leaving was imperative: Labor was on the verge of disappearing as a
political entity. It needs time-out to rehabilitate its leadership and recreate itself
as a genuine alternative to a prime minister and a party that are leading this country
toward economic, social and military hell.
True, these are not easy times, but if one looks optimistically ahead, now is the time
to heave a sigh of relief and say: Good riddance.
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