18 Mar 15
Originally posted by EladarEladar seems to think Obama is busing Arabs into Israel from another country to vote. Otherwise his post makes no sense (which is not that unusual I admit). I am not clear how he imagines they get the right to vote but that's Eladar. It seems to have escaped him that 20% of the population in Israel are Arabs and their families were almost certainly living there long before virtually all their Jewish neighbours. Netanyahu and his pals have discussed forcing them to leave the country and presumably become stateless refugees, like all the other Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed from Israel in the past.
If they really are taking Arabs to vote by the bus load, then the side getting Obama support has learned other things from Obama.
If you want to destroy a country, bring in people who hate it and get them to vote for you!
18 Mar 15
Originally posted by no1marauderSurvival as a nation is extreme? I think a lot of Americans, including quite a few Democrats in Congress were impressed with Netanyahu's speech to Congress.
It seems the Israeli people have, once again, rewarded extremism.
Why American taxpayers keep paying for this is a mystery to me.
18 Mar 15
Originally posted by sh76I am curious, why are you "seriously tired of Netanyahu", as an American Jew he hardly has any serious direct effect on your life. I understand the interest in the election result, but don't quite get the emotional dislike of any foreign politician.
Not over yet. If Kahlon balks, Netanyahu can't form a government.
Doesn't look good though, I agree.
Originally posted by normbenignMy emotional response is based on the fact that I want peace. Aside from the fact that I have relatives in Israel, I also identify with my co-religionists and want peace for them and for all people.
I am curious, why are you "seriously tired of Netanyahu", as an American Jew he hardly has any serious direct effect on your life. I understand the interest in the election result, but don't quite get the emotional dislike of any foreign politician.
Moreover, geopolitics affects people more than you might realize. A backlash against Jews in general can affect me as it is affecting European Jews and American Jews on college campuses right now. Peace in Israel would decrease (though not end, of course) anti-Semitism.
I have other fears about things that can happen in the absence of peace, but I don't want to discuss them now.
If, as I believe, Netanyahu is a barrier to peace, then I have very strong interests in seeing him go.
18 Mar 15
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Originally posted by normbenignThis is weird even for norm. He advocates that sh76 should not get emotional about the election of a foreign politician, yet in his previous post norm states rhetorically that the survival of the Israeli state hangs on this election result "Survival as a nation is extreme?" That is about as emotive an argument as one can make and it is of course partisan and extreme. Norm fails to grasp that there is an Israeli Left, even a Zionist Left, to whom the bellicose and racist path followed by Netanyahu is unacceptable and dangerous. When even sh76 finds himself on the "Left" relative to Likud that tells you how far to the Right Netanyahu has travelled. Seems you can never get too far to the Right for norm's taste however.
I am curious, why are you "seriously tired of Netanyahu", as an American Jew he hardly has any serious direct effect on your life. I understand the interest in the election result, but don't quite get the emotional dislike of any foreign politician.
Labelling those who disagree with you as "emotional" while pronouncing extremist opinions in the dull tones of calm Reason is a rhetorical trick.
Originally posted by normbenignKazet is not drawing a distinction between a parliamentary and presidential system (both can favour the development of an adversarial two-party system), but between a first-past-the-post system and one based on proportional representation. The latter ensures that a vote cast for a minor party is not a wasted vote.
I realize that you favor parliamentary government, but instead of haranguing about the faults of the American system, which most admit to, try to show how the parliamentary system offers something better. Both tend to blend or look to coalitions, and compromises, the present election in Israel illuminating this perfectly. I get that voters are more likel ...[text shortened]... heir liking, but in the end does it really tend to be more satisfying, or end in better results?
Here in the UK we have an election coming up in six weeks and there are five parties in contention across the country (the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and UKIP - United Kingdom Independence Party). There are also nationalist parties confined to Wales and Scotland, and a raft of different parties in Northern Ireland, but confining our attention to the countrywide vote in Great Britain, all of these five parties have over 5% support in the polls.
Yet because of our first-past-the-post political system, anomalies arise: for instance, casting a vote for the Greens rather Labour in a marginal constituency might let the Conservatives win. This is clearly perverse since most Greens voters would have Labour or the Lib Dems as their second choice but few would be likely to vote Tory. It's rather like the way in which a Nader vote in 2000 turned out to be a proxy vote for Bush, although the average Nader voter would have been much happier with Gore.
In a proportional representation system, by contrast, a vote for the Greens realistically would be a vote for a coalition slightly to the left of the policies that would be pursued by Labour if it governed alone. The problem remains, of course, that the composition of coalitions is decided by the parties rather than by voters: thus a vote for the centrist Lib Dems could end up supporting either a right-wing or left-wing coalition.
This actually happened in 2010 where, unusually, our FPTP system gave us a hung parliament and consequently a coalition had to be formed. I voted Lib Dem on the assumption that they'd likely support a Labour-led coalition and was surprised when they formed a coalition with the Tories. In a proportional representation system, this kind of thing is likely to happen in each election, and it means that voting for a centrist party is inevitably a wild card.
Nevertheless, the systems have tangibly different effects on voting decisions and thus on the outcome of a vote. Under our current system, I'll vote Labour in May. Under proportional representation, I'd vote Green.
18 Mar 15
Originally posted by sh76Yea, what is needed is for the Jews to give up Israel altogether and go back to Europe.
My emotional response is based on the fact that I want peace. Aside from the fact that I have relatives in Israel, I also identify with my co-religionists and want peace for them and for all people.
Moreover, geopolitics affects people more than you might realize. A backlash against Jews in general can affect me as it is affecting European Jews and American ...[text shortened]... I believe, Netanyahu is a barrier to peace, then I have very strong interests in seeing him go.
That should bring you peace again, right? 😛
18 Mar 15
Originally posted by normbenignThe term "extremist" is used to diminish any particular perceived political foe. For example, I'm labeled an extremist by people like him, simply for wanting to balance budgets and reduce the size and scope of government.
Survival as a nation is extreme? I think a lot of Americans, including quite a few Democrats in Congress were impressed with Netanyahu's speech to Congress.
Yea, I'm the crazy one who opposes a government that has a $18 trillion plus debt that is out of control.
18 Mar 15
Now it's over. Netanyahu won as many as 30 seats and can easily form a coalition without Herzog.
😞
I'm pretty despondent right now over the possibility of peace. The Israeli people spoke and they are not willing to sacrifice for peace right now. How sad.
It's time for the US to force both sides to the table. I'm worried that Obama doesn't have the guts or the credibility to do so, though. Maybe the next President will.
18 Mar 15
Originally posted by sh76Where have you been for the last 6+ years? The US can't force anyone to do anything. How are things going after the "Obama Plan" was instituted to, as was said in '08, Obama will bring PEACE to the middle east simply by attacking belligerents with his irresistible charm and speech making? Was Iraq in stable hands when he ran? Does Iran love the west since the great one chatted up the ayatollah? Not to mention the Arab Spring that was supposed to bring peace, tranquility and democracy to Egypt, Lybia, Syria, etc.. by supporting the removal of those evil dictators, and was followed by Jihad taking over. Blindness - Surely the dictators weren't democratic but it was more than short-sightedness when US supported their overthrow. A much worse element took over and when the Brotherhood gained power the killing began. One asks: Who created the void that ISIS filled?
It's time for the US to force both sides to the table. I'm worried that Obama doesn't have the guts or the credibility to do so, though. Maybe the next President will.
And you're worried. About time, join the others.
18 Mar 15
Tom Friedman really hit the nail on the head in today's Times.
Let’s start with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party pretty well trounced the Labor Party leader, Isaac Herzog, in the race to form Israel’s next government. Netanyahu clearly made an impressive 11th-hour surge since the pre-election polls of last week. It is hard to know what is more depressing: that Netanyahu went for the gutter in the last few days in order to salvage his campaign — renouncing his own commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians and race-baiting Israeli Jews to get out and vote because, he said, too many Israeli Arabs were going to the polls — or the fact that this seemed to work.
To be sure, Netanyahu could reverse himself tomorrow. As the Yediot Ahronot columnist Nahum Barnea wrote: Netanyahu’s promises are like something “written on ice on a very hot day.” But the fact is a good half of Israel identifies with the paranoid, everyone-is-against-us, and religious-nationalist tropes Netanyahu deployed in this campaign. That, along with the fact that some 350,000 settlers are now living in the West Bank, makes it hard to see how a viable two-state solution is possible anymore no matter who would have won.
It would be wrong, though, to put all of this on Netanyahu. The insane, worthless Gaza war that Hamas initiated last summer that brought rockets to the edge of Israel’s main international airport and the Palestinians’ spurning of two-state offers of previous Israeli prime ministers (Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert) built Netanyahu’s base as much as he did.
On Iran, there’s an assumption among critics of President Obama’s approach to negotiating limits on Iran’s nuclear program that if Obama were ready to impose more sanctions then the Iranians would fold. It’s not only the history of the last 20 years that mocks that notion. It is a more simple fact: In the brutal Middle East, the only thing that gets anyone’s attention is the threat of regime-toppling force. Obama has no such leverage on Iran.
It was used up in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars that have left our military and country so exhausted that former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big U.S. land army into the Middle East “should have his head examined.” Had those wars succeeded, the public today might feel differently. But they didn’t. Geopolitics is all about leverage, and we are negotiating with Iran without the leverage of a credible threat of force. The ayatollahs know it. Under those circumstances, I am sure the Obama team will try to get the best deal it can. But a really good deal isn’t on the menu.
Have I ruined your morning yet? No? Give me a couple more paragraphs.
O.K., so we learn to live with Iran on the edge of a bomb, but shouldn’t we at least bomb the Islamic State to smithereens and help destroy this head-chopping menace? Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS? Or let me ask that differently: Why are we, for the third time since 9/11, fighting a war on behalf of Iran?
In 2002, we destroyed Iran’s main Sunni foe in Afghanistan (the Taliban regime). In 2003, we destroyed Iran’s main Sunni foe in the Arab world (Saddam Hussein). But because we failed to erect a self-sustaining pluralistic order, which could have been a durable counterbalance to Iran, we created a vacuum in both Iraq and the wider Sunni Arab world. That is why Tehran’s proxies now indirectly dominate four Arab capitals: Beirut, Damascus, Sana and Baghdad.
ISIS, with all its awfulness, emerged as the homegrown Sunni Arab response to this crushing defeat of Sunni Arabism — mixing old pro-Saddam Baathists with medieval Sunni religious fanatics with a collection of ideologues, misfits and adventure-seekers from around the Sunni Muslim world. Obviously, I abhor ISIS and don’t want to see it spread or take over Iraq. I simply raise this question rhetorically because no one else is: Why is it in our interest to destroy the last Sunni bulwark to a total Iranian takeover of Iraq? Because the Shiite militias now leading the fight against ISIS will rule better? Really?
If it seems as though we have only bad choices in the Middle East today and nothing seems to work, there is a reason: Because past is prologue, and the past has carved so much scar tissue into that landscape that it’s hard to see anything healthy or beautiful growing out of it anytime soon. Sorry to be so grim.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/go-ahead-ruin-my-day.html?ref=opinion&_r=1
