“I am Yahweh. I do not change. I am why Jacob’s descendants are not destroyed.” (Malachi 3: 6)
_____________
#####
The Jerusalem Post—Get Ready for the ugliest elections in Israel’s history:
Whether elections are announced this week, next month or in the summer, we can be certain of one development: This will be the ugliest election in Israel’s history.
Israel has known dirty and ugly elections. In 2015, for example, the Likud party ran commercials claiming that if Labor won, ISIS would take over Israel. “It’s either us or them,” the Likud’s slogan went at the time, referring to the Right and Left. If the Left wins, Likud claimed, terror will reign.
Then there was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s high-noon election day appeal, in which he claimed that left-wing organizations were busing Arabs in “droves” to the polls, endangering the right-wing government. While he later apologized for the remark, the end justified the means.
Netanyahu had to get reelected, and was willing to do whatever it (legally) took, even if it meant engaging in racially divisive rhetoric.
Now, with the corruption investigations against Netanyahu gaining steam and an indictment (or two) looming on the horizon, if an election is called in the coming weeks, we can expect even worse – not just from Netanyahu, but also from the opposition.
It will be a campaign of mudslinging and scorched-earth tactics. The opposition – and even some of the parties on the Right – will claim that Netanyahu is corrupt, is a hedonist, and is destroying the country. He, in return, will warn of the destruction of Israel if Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid or Labor’s Avi Gabbay comes out on top.
Likud will attack the media, the police, the attorney-general and the courts. Everything will be fair game, nothing will be off limits.
The Left will not be that different. It will slam Netanyahu, his wife and son. It’ll accuse him of being against peace, against Arabs and against basic freedoms.
Politicians from across the spectrum will try to divide and conquer. They will separate the religious from the secular, and the settlers from the Tel Avivians. In short, this election has the potential to become extremely ugly, to the point that it could cause long-term damage to Israeli society.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Israelis can stand up and refuse to accept such a reality. Instead of telling us what they won’t do, we should demand that the parties tell us what they will do.
[…]
To continue reading, click here.
SnyderTalk Comment:
Israelis fear that elections will be called because Prime Minister Netanyahu is under political pressure. He’s accused of many things.
Israeli people hate elections. Who can blame them? They are ugly and politically motivated. Everybody knows it.
Below are a couple of articles that help to explain what’s going on in Israeli politics:
Foreign observers may have a hard time squaring Benjamin Netanyahu’s international stature as a statesman with his suddenly vulnerable position at home.
Abroad, both those that hate the Israeli prime minister and those that admire him view him as a successful leader. His diplomatic skills have transformed Israel from an international pariah, at the mercy of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the international left, to a rising star on the international scene.
Economically, Netanyahu is credited worldwide with shepherding Israel from a sclerotic socialist backwater in the early 1990s into a first world economy and a global leader in innovation and technological advancement.
In the context of these extraordinary achievements, and as Israel faces mounting security challenges from Iran in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza — challenges amplified last Saturday with the violent clashes between Iran and the Syrian military and Israel — the police’s sudden announcement that they recommend indicting Netanyahu for bribery seems incongruous.
But as Tip O’Neill, the late, long-serving Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, famously said, “all politics is local.”
This truth was borne out in spades on Tuesday night in Israel, when the Israeli police announced that they are recommending that Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit indict Netanyahu on two counts of bribery and two counts of breach of trust in two separate investigations.
The reason these events are happening is because Netanyahu is hated by Israel’s entrenched elites, who benefited most from the way things used to be. And they would like very much to unseat him and replace him with someone who would change the direction of Israel’s foreign, defense and economic policies.
First of all, Netanyahu has not been indicted. Israel’s police, after a lengthy investigation, is recommending to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit that he should indict the prime minister. Yet it’s up to Mandelblit to either indict or drop the charges. This could take months.
Second, what are charges? There are two cases, Case 1000 and Case 2000. Case 1000 contends Netanyahu received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts from two close friends in exchange for advocating legislation that would benefit those friends. Case 2000 asserts Netanyahu made a deal with a major Israeli publisher for favorable coverage that would weaken a rival publication.
Third, some believe the charges are part of the campaign against Netanyahu for decades.
Politics v. Truth
Separating fact from fiction in politics isn’t easy. The charges being leveled against Prime Minister Netanyahu remind me of the charges being leveled against President Trump, and they are being leveled by people on the same side of the political spectrum.
Don’t rush to judgment. It may be all political. The truth and political propaganda are not the same thing.
#####
_____________
#####
#####
_____________
#####
“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
