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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; coalition government</title>
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		<title>Netanyahu Springs his Trap</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/netanyahu-springs-his-trap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=netanyahu-springs-his-trap</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2014 05:05:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[break-up]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition government]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Lapid]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246951</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the coalition government in Israel fell apart -- and who will benefit in the next election. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/isr_benjamin_netanyahu_reut_112811_584.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246953" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/isr_benjamin_netanyahu_reut_112811_584-450x340.jpg" alt="Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a Likud party meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem" width="327" height="247" /></a>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may demonstrate foolishness regarding a great many things in public life, but no one ever accused him of demonstrating foolishness with regard to his own electoral prospects.  His enemies are suddenly foaming at the mouth.  In response to the remarkable jump in Likud popularity in the polls, they claim, Bibi has decided to pull a fast one and has decided to take the undemocratic decision of holding elections.  That Netanyahu&#8217;s rivals claim it is undemocratic when elections are held is only the tip of their problems.  What really has them worried is that the Israeli electorate is about to sic itself against most of the non-Likud parties.</p>
<p>To a large extent, the real factor behind the dismemberment of the government coalition and the calling of new elections is the military operation against Gaza from this past summer.  The events surrounding those battles shook up the Israeli electorate and reshuffled the political deck.</p>
<p>The Gaza war made the Likud very popular.  The Jewish public almost unanimously supported the operation against the Hamas barbarians. Israelis do not think that too many Gazans were killed but rather that too few were.  The main complaint from Israeli Jews was that the Likud did not go far enough and ended the military incursions there too soon.</p>
<p>But the Gaza war also decimated the political base for the Likud&#8217;s opposition.  In Gaza, Israel had carried out to the letter every &#8220;idea&#8221; of the Israeli Labor Party and its allies.  It had evicted the entire Jewish population of Gaza, removed every single Israeli soldier and military asset, turned the area over to the &#8220;Palestinians,&#8221; ending every single vestige of &#8220;occupation.&#8221;  The result was the raining down of thousands of rockets upon the Israeli civilian population fired from Gaza, some hitting Tel Aviv and some landing near the airport, plus the terror tunnels built to carry out large-scale massacres of Jews.  The Hitlerjugend on Western campuses may be marching around chanting that Jews are subhumans whose lives not worthy of being defended and protected, but no one is going to get very far in Israeli politics mouthing such a platform.  The huge bulk of Israelis see the Labor Party and the &#8220;center-Left&#8221; as directly responsible for turning Gaza into one huge rocket launching pad and putting almost the entire Israeli civilian population at risk, all in the name of &#8220;the need to end occupation.&#8221;  Israelis now understand that Arab terrorism is not caused by Israeli occupation but by the ending of Israeli occupation.</p>
<p>That means that everyone knows that at the very first electoral opportunity, the Israeli voter will exact his revenge against those who turned Gaza into Hamastan.  That means the Labor Party and Tzipi Livni&#8217;s &#8220;Tnuah&#8221; party, what is left of the once large Kadima bloc.</p>
<p>So the Labor Party, which in its first decades exercised a monopoly hegemony over Israeli government, is likely to fall in any new election far below the 15 parliamentary seats it managed to hang on to in the last elections (out of 120).</p>
<p>Livni&#8217;s party is what is left from the larger Kadima party that implemented the Gaza capitulation and the conversion of Gaza into ISIS-South.  It managed to get 6 seats in the last election and was invited by Netanyahu to join his coalition.  There Livni herself pursued a leftist agenda within the government coalition.  As Minister of Justice, she appointed far leftist judicial activist court judges.  She also rallied in defense of the Islamofascist terrorist Haneen Zoabi, a Knesset Member from one of the Arab fascist parties, defending her from attempts to indict her for treason and terrorism.  There are serious doubts as to whether Livni&#8217;s party will pass the minimum threshold and even make it into the next Knesset after the election.  The ultra-leftist MERETZ party, with 6 seats at the moment, is also likely to get pummeled in a new election.  Israel bashing is just not a great vote grabber in Israel these days.</p>
<p>They are not the only likely losers from a new election.  The wunderkind of the last election was TV personality Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party.  A bit of a Seinfeldian party, one about nothing, Lapid rode to power by painting himself as the voice of irate middle class Israelis upset at housing prices and determined to end exemptions from military service for religious yeshiva students.  After rising from nothing to 19 seats, Lapid was invited into the coalition and made Minister of Finance, a politically thankless position even for someone who had once taken freshman economics, which Lapid had not.  Determined to do &#8220;something&#8221; as Finance Minister, Lapid introduced a moronic proposal for reducing housing prices by increasing the demand for housing (granting new home buyers exemptions from Value-Added Taxes).   Then in recent months he introduced proposals for rent controls, price controls in some other markets, and boosts in the minimum wage.   Years ago I proposed requiring prospective Ministers of Finance to be able to get a B minus on an exam in Economics 101 and Lapid illustrates what happens when there is no such requirement.</p>
<p>Having delivered nothing, Lapid&#8217;s party will probably lose at least half its electoral strength.  There is a popular Israeli pop song about &#8220;My heart is Racing a New Guy is Coming to the Neighborhood.&#8221;   Well that new guy is Moshe Kahlon.  He is a well-liked good-looking ex-Likud politician with a very bright public image, considered honest and intelligent and clean.  He was the father of the reform and shakeup of the cell phone industry in Israel which resulted in sharp drops in prices for consumers.  He is setting up his own new party, so far unnamed, and it will run as the party of the middle class.  In other words, he will be out-<i>Lapiding </i>Yair Lapid.  His entry onto the stage dooms Lapid to an even sharper decline.</p>
<p>Yisrael Beiteinu, the party of sharp-tongued Russian immigrant strongman and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, is also due to take a drumming.  In the last election, it did not run as a separate party, but rather as part of a merger with the Likud.  So its own electoral popularity was not really put to the test, as it will be this winter.  In the past it managed to draw support from Israeli &#8220;hawks,&#8221; above and beyond its power base among Russian Jewish immigrants to Israel, and was helped by being the party most hated by the Far Left.  But in the last election its ability to attract &#8220;hawks&#8221; was already being undercut by the emergence of Naftali Bennett&#8217;s &#8220;Jewish Home&#8221; party.  And Lieberman has been involved in other shenanigans that are likely to undercut his popularity, such as his leading an anti-democratic campaign to shut down a daily newspaper because its editorial line is pro-Netanyahu.</p>
<p>Naftali Bennett&#8217;s &#8220;Jewish Home&#8221; party was one of the great winners in the last election, winning 12 seats.  He would have likely done even better had not the Likud focused most of its attack ads and energies in the last weeks before the last election on attacking Bennett.   While Bennett and Netanyahu do not like one another at the personal level, and while the party has lost some of its glamour in some missteps and foolish policy positions, particular by Uri Ariel, Minister of Construction, Bennett&#8217;s party is still the only reliably &#8220;hawkish&#8221; party left in the arena and is likely to benefit from the shifts in public sentiment.</p>
<p>The rest of the Knesset is unlikely to change much in the new election.  The religious parties and the Arab fascist parties will probably keep their strength at current levels.  The rump &#8220;Kadima&#8221; party of Shaul Mofaz will go the way of the dodo bird after the election.</p>
<p>The main net effect of the snap elections is likely to be a strengthening of the Israeli &#8220;Right&#8221; based around the Likud and a stronger Likud governmental coalition emerging.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Lapid’s Political Crack-Up</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/lapids-political-crack-up/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=lapids-political-crack-up</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/lapids-political-crack-up/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:30:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Yair Lapid]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246744</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the Israeli Left is incapable of moving to the center. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1863275564.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246745" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1863275564-448x350.jpg" alt="1863275564" width="337" height="263" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Lapids-political-crack-up-383704">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Three days after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and leader of the Yesh Atid party and now former finance minister Yair Lapid failed to resolve their differences and so thrust Israel into an electoral season less than two years after the last election, the Left’s narrative is already clear. Netanyahu has forced unnecessary, costly elections on the country.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">He did so because his reactionary nature, overweening ego and thin skin made it impossible for him to handle a true reformer like Lapid, who was trying to push the country forward.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The actual situation is quite different. These elections are necessary. The up to NIS 1.2 billion that taxpayers will have to pay to finance the vote scheduled for March 17 is money well spent. And if the current polls are even close to what the election results will be three months from now, then the public understands that they are necessary and intends to elect a government that will serve it better than the one that just dissolved.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To be sure, Netanyahu is the one who decided to call elections. But the person responsible for making it impossible for the existing government to function is Lapid. Over the past few months Lapid has had the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In 2013, Lapid ran as a centrist. The television celebrity’s new party, Yesh Atid, presented itself as the voice of the hard-working middle class whose members love this country and are tired of electing governments that trample their economic interests and take them for granted in favor of special interests, especially the haredim.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, Lapid ran as his father’s son.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The late Yosef “Tommy” Lapid’s Shinui party also claimed to be the voice of the middle class and the ideological Center, fighting the special interests, especially the haredim.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But as economic commentator Rotem Sella explained Thursday on the NRG website, aside from boycotting the haredim, Lapid Jr. did not follow in his father’s footsteps after taking office.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Whereas Shinui was a liberal free market party that supported then-finance minister Netanyahu’s reforms that transformed Israel’s sclerotic, socialist economy into a rapidly growing free market, Lapid and his ministers from Yesh Atid exchanged their capitalist platform for socialist policies immediately upon taking office. In so doing they put Israel on a path to recession and social upheaval.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Sella noted, among other things, shortly after taking office Lapid capitulated to the thuggish Histadrut labor federation and agreed not to touch the inflated salaries of state employees – paid for by the middle class taxpayers who voted for him.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">His health minister, Yael German, took steps to wipe out private medical services through draconian taxation and paralyzing regulation of private medical services. Her actions didn’t rescue the bankrupt public health system. They merely served to deny citizens the right to pay for better healthcare and to deny doctors the opportunity to make a living even remotely commensurate with the value of their skills.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In recent months, Lapid’s signature policies were his decision to expand the deficit in order to increase welfare spending and his draft bill to cancel VAT for select first-time home purchasers.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The former policy has already damaged Israel’s international credit rating. The latter policy has been criticized across the board by economists as a populist move that will raise housing prices and waste NIS 3b. in taxpayer money – that is, well more than the cost of the elections.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Lapid’s refusal to reconsider his policies despite their self-evident foolishness was a key cause of the government’s fall. And his insistence that only mean-spirited reactionaries oppose his plans is evidence that he lacks the capacity to understand how people perceive his behavior.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">That brings us to his ideological transformation in office from a self-proclaimed centrist security hawk to a member in good standing of the radical Left.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The votes for at least half of the 19 mandates Lapid won in the last election were given to him by the center-right. Yesh Atid contended for these votes against the rightist Bayit Yehudi party led by Economy Minister Naftali Bennett.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu threw many of the ballots Lapid’s way when he opened a vicious attack against Bennett in the final weeks of the campaign.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Out of respect for his voters, Lapid gave his first policy address at Ariel University in Samaria. During the coalition talks he and Bennett formed an alliance to force Netanyahu to take both of their parties into the government.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Without Bennett it is entirely possible that Lapid would have spent the last two years as head of the opposition.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Yet, within a few months of taking office, Lapid began a gradual slide to the Left. In recent months the slide became a steep and rapid descent as his broadsides against Netanyahu and the Right became ever more frequent and extreme.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Lapid’s most radical position has been his unhinged opposition in recent weeks to the draft basic law defining Israel as the Jewish nation-state.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">For those with short memories, the draft law began as an initiative of the Livni-led Kadima party, co-sponsored by nearly 80% of its Knesset faction. Yet, much to the consternation of his Zionist voters, Lapid caused untold damage to Israel by proclaiming that the anodyne draft legislation, most of the provisions of which are already anchored in standing law, and which he supported until just recently, is “anti-democratic.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">If that wasn’t enough, during his press conference on Wednesday night, Lapid unleashed a wild attack on Netanyahu. Lapid proclaimed that during Operation Protective Edge last summer, Netanyahu’s cabinet “lost its faith in his ability to manage” the war. This allegation says more about Lapid than it does about Netanyahu.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">After all, if he believed that Netanyahu was incompetent to lead the nation in war, how did he dare to stay silent? Why did he repeatedly vote in favor of Netanyahu’s decisions? Lapid accused Netanyahu of destroying Israel’s relations with the US. He claimed that he receives frequent calls from US senators demanding explanations for Netanyahu’s “patronizing, and contemptuous” behavior toward the US.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The problem with Lapid’s allegations is that the public doesn’t believe them. During and in the immediate aftermath of the war, Netanyahu’s popularity was sky high.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As for relations with the US, this week Bar- Ilan University’s BESA Center released the results of its biennial survey of Israeli opinion of relations with the US. According to the survey, Israelis blame US President Barack Obama, not Netanyahu, for the crisis in relations with the White House.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Whereas 73 percent of Israelis believe the US is a loyal ally of Israel, only 37% believe that Obama’s position toward the country is positive. Sixty-one percent believe he is either negatively inclined toward Israel or neutral.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">According to Haaretz, the White House recognizes that the Israeli public blames it for the crisis in relations. On Thursday, the paper reported that the administration was planning to escalate its anti-Israel policies, but now will put them on hold. Administration officials reportedly fear that US pressure on Israel during the elections campaign will increase public support for Netanyahu.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">During his press conference, Lapid insisted that Netanyahu will not serve again as premier.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But according to polls, Netanyahu has no rivals for the job. It is not merely that nearly three times as many people think that Netanyahu is the best person to serve as prime minister when compared to his closest contender, Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog. It’s also that the polls show right-wing parties picking up seats, while Lapid’s party is likely to lose more than half it seats in the Knesset.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Far from Lapid’s insistent claim that Netanyahu is “cut off” from the public, it is Lapid who sees nothing but his own reflection.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">According to a report Wednesday published by the NRG website, members of Yesh Atid’s Knesset faction are furious with Lapid. They believe that his move to the Left is destroying the party.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And they are correct.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The 10 mandates from free market supporters on the center-right that Lapid won two years ago will go to actual center-right and rightist parties. Likud, the centrist party just formed by former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon, Bayit Yehudi and Yisrael Beytenu will all pick up votes from disaffected Yesh Atid voters.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">All that remains of Yesh Atid’s great promise are nine Knesset seats which Lapid took two years ago from Labor, Kadima and Meretz.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Today the leftist parties are polling 33 Knesset seat total, and it is hard to see how that number can rise.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This brings us to the reason these elections are so necessary. Lapid’s con job on the voters two years ago meant that the public didn’t receive the center-right government it wanted. Lapid taught the public that there are no center-left parties, only leftist parties that pretend to be centrist for electoral purposes.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">These elections are necessary because the public hasn’t changed in two years. It still wants a center-right government that supports free market economics. And now, according to the polls, the public understands what it needs to do to get the government it wants. It needs to boot out the Left.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And so we arrive at the polling data. Whereas the undisguised Left is where it has been for the past 10 years, at roughly 20% of the electorate, the center-right is polling 50%.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">With the haredi parties, Netanyahu can form a coalition government with no leftist parties that rests on the support of nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Knesset.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Until now such a coalition was deemed politically unattractive by the political consultant class, because the public believed that only the Left could call itself the Center. Now, thanks to Lapid, the public sees the truth. The Left in power means lies, bad policies, and political chaos. The Left out of power means truth, good policies and political stability.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Back in the halcyon days of 2013, when Yesh Atid was the toast of the town, Lapid told us that the “old politics” are dead, and that “new politics,” had won the day. These “new politics” would propel the country to new heights of good government and economic growth.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Lapid of course was lying. But his slogan might work for the Likud in the coming election cycle.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">By finally exposing the Left as incapable of ever moving toward the Center, Lapid has taught us what we need to do to get the government we want. And the polls indicate that the public has learned the lesson. The price tag for a truly center-right government with liberal economic policies is up to NIS 1.2b. That’s a liquidation sale price.</span></p>
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		<title>Right on the Rise in Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/right-on-the-rise-in-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=right-on-the-rise-in-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/right-on-the-rise-in-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:15:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition government]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246722</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why has it happened, and what will it mean?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2969579901.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246723" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2969579901-430x350.jpg" alt="2969579901" width="366" height="298" /></a>Israel’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/israeli_legislative_election,_2013#Date"><span style="color: #0433ff;">19</span><span style="color: #0433ff;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: #0433ff;"> governing coalition</span></a> collapsed this week after less than two years in office. It included two right-of-center parties totaling 43 seats (the Knesset has 120) and two ostensibly “centrist” (actually leftist) parties totaling 25.</p>
<p>In recent weeks the respective leaders of the two leftist parties, Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni, had been staging a palace revolt. They lashed out at the government and its leader, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in ways only befitting a vituperative opposition. Lapid, the finance minister, refused to implement government policy and insisted on his own misguided, destructive plans.</p>
<p>It left the exasperated Netanyahu with no choice but to fire these two and, in effect, dissolve the government. New elections have been set for March 17.</p>
<p>Meanwhile three polls (summarized at the end of <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-and-a-newly-right-wing-israel/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">this analysis</span></a> by <i>Times of Israel</i> editor David Horovitz) have indicated that, since the previous elections in January 2013, a lot has changed in Israel.</p>
<p>It was those elections’ right-leaning but equivocal results that gave rise to the dubious, rickety coalition that fell this week. But now all three polls tell the same story: the right will do much better in the new elections and be able to form a coalition without the “center” (or left), possibly with the ballast of ultra-Orthodox parties that are also right-leaning politically.</p>
<p>What changed?</p>
<p>Back in January 2013 things looked relatively quiet to Israelis. Successful terror attacks were down to very low levels. The November 2012 Gaza war had lasted only eight days with very few Israeli casualties. Iran was still under tough sanctions, creating hopes—illusions—that the West was serious about stopping its march to the bomb.</p>
<p>What a difference—at least, in perceptions—two years make.</p>
<p>While Israel won the 2014 Gaza war decisively, it had most of the country scurrying to bomb shelters for seven weeks and cost Israel 64 soldiers’ and seven civilians’ lives. In its aftermath, a wave of Palestinian terror attacks that started in September has killed 12.</p>
<p>And while the overall regional situation hardly looked calming in January 2013, it looks quite alarming now with the rise of ISIS and raging terror and war, while the West pursues an obviously, no longer deniably feckless policy toward Iran where talks keep getting extended for their own sake even as Iran <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/iaea-head-iran-dodging-questions-on-nuclear-weapons-components/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">treats an international inspections agency with obvious contempt</span></a>.</p>
<p>But those aren’t the only sorts of aggressions and threats Israel has been subject to.</p>
<p>Israelis are well aware that the Obama administration has stooped low enough to <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/the-crisis-in-us-israel-relations-is-officially-here/382031/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">call the Israeli prime minister scurrilous names</span></a> that are reserved solely for the leader of the Jewish state—amid subtle threats, and rumors, that the U.S. will refrain from vetoing a Palestinian-instigated UN Security Council resolution demanding Israeli withdrawal to indefensible borders.</p>
<p>And then there’s Europe, increasingly a cheerleading troupe for Palestinian terror as the French, Spanish, British, Irish, and Swedish parliaments have in recent months voted to “recognize” a nonexistent Palestinian state even as Israelis are subjected to Palestinian car-ramming, stabbing, and shooting attacks including an <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/new-york-times-morally-confused-by-synagogue-massacre/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">outright massacre in a synagogue</span></a>.</p>
<p>Israelis, in other words, see a more dangerous environment and so—if the polls are right—will opt for a more hawkish leadership. Seemingly nothing could be more simple and humanly understandable. Except that in Israel’s case understanding can be hard to come by.</p>
<p>In the above-linked article, the <i>Times of Israel</i>’s David Horovitz says that a more hawkish Israel in 2015 would find itself in a frontal clash with much of the world:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>BDS [boycott, divestment, and sanctions] campaigning against Israel would intensify. Unilateral recognition of a Palestine not at peace with Israel would gather yet more momentum. International empathy for Israel if, or more likely when, it next comes under attack by Hamas from Gaza or Hezbollah from southern Lebanon would be in still shorter supply.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Horovitz could be right, although, with a very sympathetic Congress taking office in January, it may not be as bad as all that. And Israelis may see such consequences as a price to be lived with for defending themselves. <i><br />
</i></p>
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		<title>Israeli Mega-Coalition Collapses</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/israeli-mega-coalition-collapses/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israeli-mega-coalition-collapses</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Jul 2012 04:26:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[collapse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kadima]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Likud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=137818</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Was the center-left Kadima Party looking for an excuse to exit? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/web_israel.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-137847" title="web_israel" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/web_israel.gif" alt="" width="375" height="247" /></a>Not long ago I <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/netanyahu%E2%80%99s-new-mega-coalition/">lauded</a> the advent of Israel’s new mega-coalition government. That development surprised everyone, being announced on May 8 just as the country seemed headed for new elections.</p>
<p>Instead the largest opposition party, left-of-center Kadima—which according to all surveys would have declined steeply in the elections—joined the coalition led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-of-center Likud Party. The coalition thereby expanded to 94 Knesset members out of a total of 120.</p>
<p>Along with enhancing national unity at a time of growing Middle Eastern instability and threats, I saw, as did many, a rare chance to legislate two key, much-needed changes. One would involve equalizing the draft in Israel so that its haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) and Arab communities would have to do either military or civilian service instead of being largely exempt. The other would involve changing the country’s parliamentary system to enable stable coalitions and an end to the blackmail power of small parties.</p>
<p>In what turned out to be its short life, the mega-coalition government never even got around to addressing the second issue. It had, though, been wrangling intensively over the first one—drafting haredim and Arabs, particularly the former. This week, though, Kadima claimed it had unbridgeable differences with Likud over the draft issue. On Tuesday Kadima voted 25-3 to leave the government, bringing it back down to a much slimmer 66 MKs.</p>
<p>As is natural in Israeli and other politics, recriminations are flying.</p>
<p>The ostensible unbridgeable gap involved Kadima’s desire to go rougher and Likud’s desire to go easier on the haredim. Kadima’s point man, MK Yohanan Plesner, insisted that all of them be drafted by age 23, with harsh penalties including jail for those who dodged enlistment. Likud’s point man, Strategic Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, favored giving them options of waiting till age 26 and also pushed lighter penalties for shirkers.</p>
<p>Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz, a former chief of staff whom Netanyahu had also made a deputy prime minister for the mega-coalition’s brief duration, claimed Likud was merely putting its longstanding political alliance with haredi parties over the national interest. As Mofaz wrote in his resignation letter:</p>
<blockquote><p>I had hoped that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would go beyond petty politics and make a historic decision together with us. But unfortunately…the prime minister decided to stay put rather than go forward and chose the interests of the minority over that of the majority.</p></blockquote>
<p>As Netanyahu wrote to Mofaz in reply:</p>
<blockquote><p>I am sorry you decided to give up on a chance to make a historic change. After 64 years [of statehood], we were on the cusp of introducing real change in the division of the burden. I presented you with a proposal that would have led to the conscription of the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs from the age of 18. I explained to you that the only way to implement this was through a gradual process that would not tear apart Israeli society, particularly in this period, when the state of Israel is facing many momentous challenges. I will continue to work toward the responsible solution that Israeli society expects.</p></blockquote>
<p>Likud point man Yaalon, for his part, said Kadima had sought to “declare war on a whole sector of the population” and noted that the “gradual change” Netanyahu had called for has already been underway for years, with a small but steady growth in haredi enlistment after decades of leading a cloistered life as state-subsidized yeshiva students.</p>
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