Soccer Dad

Gideon's babble

Why would someone who's self described as "left of Meretz" support Netanyahu for Prime Minister of Israel? Here's what the Economist's former Israel correspondent, Gideon Lichfield writes:

So if we're talking about economic policy, he has a more ambitious and intelligent one than his rivals. And a Likud government will be more stable than either a Kadima or Labour one, and more able to make reforms happen. For Israel, this is better.

Of course, it's hard to take his support for Netanyahu seriously, because immediately he becomes cynical.

For the Palestinians, of course, Likud is a different story.

Bibi says he doesn't want to reach even a vague final-status agreement with Abbas now, as Olmert has been trying to for the past year. He talks instead about something called "economic peace". This translates as: we'll try to boost the West Bank economy enough so that they stop wanting to bomb us, and then, once they're nice and quiet, we'll think about talking about negotiating about working towards possible moves that might, in the fullness of time, when the moment is ripe, and without prejudice to Israel's right to bomb the hell out of anyone it thinks is a threat, lead, eventually and in the long run, to Palestinian independence. Oh, and let's not even mention Gaza.

You can guess what I think of that.

Israel has been a lot better at identifying threats than Lichfield admits. But there's another point that he misses. Netanyahu did promote "economic peace." Towards the end of his term in office, the government released data on the Palestinian economic situation and it was the best it had been since 1992. Furthermore, terror fatalities that had risen since the signing of Oslo and Israel's handing over security obligations to the Palestinians were at their lowest level in years. So under Netanyahu, Palestinians had more prosperity and Israel had more security. Yet because Netanyahu insisted that Arafat abide the agreements he signed, he was undercut by the Clinton administration and pilloried in the press. By 1999, Israelis felt secure enough to elect the more accommodating Ehud Barak as their Prime Minister and by the end of 2000 they were shown how uncommitted to peace the Palestinians were.

Lichfield later makes this odd observation:

(I don't, by the way, set much store by the argument, typical of certain hopeful leftists, that Israel's biggest peace concessions have been made by Likud leaders. Netanyahu handed over most of Hebron to Palestinian control when he was prime minister in 1988, but under duress, not because, like Ariel Sharon with Gaza or Menachem Begin with the Sinai, he suddenly woke up and decided that it was the right thing to do.)

I'm not sure what he's talking about. Netanyahu did hand over most of Chevron, but that was in 1997. He also signed onto the Wye accords - clearly under duress - in 1998. Netanyahu wasn't even on the political radar in 1988. And it's odd that he considers the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza "the right thing to do" given that Hamas has used the opportunity handed it by ramping up its war against Israel. So apparently Lichfield approves of Hamas's war against the civilians in Sderot and Ashkelon.

He continues.

The other main thing to give one pause is that Bibi, to whom we owe the immortal fear-mongering line "It is 1938, and Iran is Nazi Germany", is the man most likely to send Israeli fighters to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities and possibly start another war to bring the entire Middle East down in even more flames than are engulfing it already. But I think if Israel had any window for bombing Iran, it ends when Barack Obama is sworn in. Without at least tacit support from the United States, he can't do it.

I don't understand why it's fear mongering for Netanyahu to express that a madman who has declared that he wishes to wipe the Jewish state off the map and is poised to build nuclear weapons is inclined toward a Holocaust like slaughter of Jews. Isn't Ahmadinejad - the one making the direct threats - the fear mongerer?

Finally the cynicism reaches its climax.

So I say Bibi for prime minister. And by as many seats as possible. The Israeli left needs a total defeat if it's to rise as a serious political force again.

He doesn't really want Netanyahu. He wants Netanyahu to fail.

I just outlined this reasoning to one of my Meretz-voting Israeli friends. He said, "Wow. You're thinking like an Israeli."

Given Lichfield's views, he shouldn't take that as a compliment.

Crossposted on Yourish.