Written by: Aaron Katsman | April 1, 2009
In an upset that could spawn internal fighting within the United Torah Judaism(UTJ), MK Moshe Gafni scored a win over favorite Yaakov Litzman to head the powerful committee.
According to Globes: “MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) will be the next chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, the party’s five MKs decided today. He beat party chairman and former Finance Committee chairman MK Yakov Litzman for the post. Litzman has been expected to get it back. The upset occurred during the internal party voting, when MK Meir Porush, a member of the Agudat Israel faction of the party, backed Gafni, a member of the Degel Hatorah faction of the party. When the voting was over, Litzman stormed out of the room.”
Once again Porush finds himself in the middle of a political firestorm. His intrusion into the local election in the ultra-orthodox city of Beitar Illit, irked so many, that he ended up losing in his bind to become mayor of Jerusalem.
Written by: Aaron Katsman | February 15, 2009
For those of you who still don’t think that new US Prez. Barack Obama is going to be pressuring Israel to make all kinds of concessions, you had better wake up. According to an article in Globes, Obama plans on getting directly involved in trying to shape the new Israeli government. According to Globes: “US President Barack Obama reportedly may urge Israeli political leaders to form a national unity government, according to British newspaper “The Daily Telegraph.”
To be fair, the article says that PM wannabe Benjamin Netanyahu may enlist Obama to lean on another PM wannabe Tzipi Livni, to have her join a national unity government that Netanyahu would head. I hope that this is not true but if it is, it doesn’t speak much of Netanyahu. Are we already seeing the ‘old Netanyahu’ surface? He may be the best finance minister in Israel, and he make the best Foreign minister as well, but the jury is out on his ability as a PM. It almost seems at this point that his only drive is to become PM. After all, he ran a pretty bad election campaign, basically trying to run out the clock and not make any slip-ups in order to win the election. His strategy came at the expense of his own Likud party who managed to win only 27 seats, when the potential existed for somewhere in the mid-30’s.
Now he is gonna to enlist/succumb to US pressure in order to become PM? What are the ramifications of this? Are there any Israeli politicians left that won’t do anything for power? Pretty sick. And what about Obama? Shouldn’t he leave the make up of the next Israeli government to Israeli’s? Doesn’t he have enough domestic issues to deal with?
Written by: Aaron Katsman | February 2, 2009
There is a slightly puzzling op-ed in Ynet today, written by Ariana Melamad. She takes comments made by PM rivals Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu as chauvinist and she runs with that and says, “Eight days before the elections, the ugly chauvinism of Israeli politics rears its head with incredible chutzpa and hurls primitive insults at 50% of the voters – the female voters – and at the first and only woman who dared compete for the premiership around here. Golda Meir, to those who have forgot about it, was appointed to the post after Levi Eshkol passed away, and only later went to elections.”
Well I think she misses the point. First of all, both Barak and Netanyahu are speaking to her qualifications of both being Israeli prime minister, and how to manage a war. The fact is that she constantly appears to be overwhelmed by her current position and the thought of her as a PM, has many people looking elsewhere to cast their vote. Barak’s point was that he, as a soldier, general and as Israel’s most decorated soldier, can understand all sides of what it means to send soldiers into combat, and that since she never wore those hats, she can’t possibly understand the gravity of the decision.
Neither one of those comments is because she is a women. it’s because they feel she isn’t up for the job. it almost seems that Melamad thinks we should vote for her solely because she is a women. the question of qualification doesn’t matter for her.
Isn’t that chauvinism of another kind? Why can’t we just vote for someone because he/she is the best candidate for the job?
Maybe the writer can actually give the Israeli public credit. Maybe her free fall in the polls is because few think she will make a good PM? Maybe just maybe that could be the case.
Written by: Aaron Katsman | January 30, 2009
Though she denies it, it appears that PM wannabe Tzipi Livni has already agreed to divide Jerusalem if she wins the election to be held in a week and a half.
The Jpost reports: “According to the report, Olmert told US envoy George Mitchell that he and Livni agreed to divide Jerusalem, maintain only settlement blocs in the West Bank and uproot 60,000 Jews from their homes. The revelations of the concessions less than two weeks before the February 10 election reportedly upset Livni, who told confidants that she believed Olmert, her predecessor as Kadima leader, was purposely harming her.”
Livni is no novice to uprooting Jews from their homes. She was one of the architects of the disastrous Expulsion from Gush Katif, which ultimately led to the recently paused war with Hamas.
Though she denies this report, she does so because she needs to deny it politically. I can’t imagine that anyone believes that she DIDN’T already make some kind of deal with Mitchell.
The good news. It looks like she is going to get thumped in the election and her disastrous proposal won’t see the light of day.
