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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Yair Lapid</title>
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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>
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		<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>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<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>Trying to Scare Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/trying-to-scare-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=trying-to-scare-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/trying-to-scare-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2014 05:30:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oslo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yair Lapid]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217737</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the voices clamoring for Israel to give up more of its rights are putting the country at risk. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/F140129GM19-635x357.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217738" alt="F140129GM19-635x357" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/F140129GM19-635x357-450x327.jpg" width="270" height="196" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-One-Trying-to-scare-Israel-339941">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Finance Minister Yair Lapid delivered a scary speech on Wednesday. At the Institute of National Security Studies conference, Lapid warned that if we don’t accept US Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework for negotiations, the Europeans are going to take away our money.</p>
<p>Lapid claimed that Israel’s economic future is dependent on surrendering Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the PLO. If we don’t, he said, the EU will abrogate its economic association agreement with us. And such a move on Europe’s part will cause serious harm to our economy.</p>
<p>According to Lapid, “If negotiations with the Palestinians stall or blow up and we enter the reality of a European boycott, even a very partial one, the Israeli economy will retreat, the cost of living will rise, budgets for education, health, welfare and security will be cut [and] many international markets will be closed to us.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, if we give up Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Lapid promises that we will all get rich.</p>
<p>It took less than 10 minutes for Lapid’s remarks to be exposed as utter nonsense.</p>
<p>The EU delegation to Israel flatly denied that the EU is considering abrogating the association agreement.</p>
<p>“There has been absolutely no consideration in the EU of the abrogation of the association agreement. It is not in the cards,” a statement by the delegation said.</p>
<p>As for the economic benefits Lapid promised Israel would reap from giving in to the PLO, here too, his claims do not withstand scrutiny.</p>
<p>First of all, Israel’s economy will be dramatically weakened, not strengthened, by a deal with the PLO.</p>
<p>As Economy Minister Naftali Bennett explained last week, the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem would cause unprecedented damage to the economy. Like the de facto Palestinian state in Gaza, such a state would serve as a launching ground for missile attacks against Israel. And from Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians would have the capacity to destroy Israel’s economy with just a few, relatively primitive projectiles.</p>
<p>As Bennett out it, “Imagine if just one missile per day fell on [Israel’s technology hub in] Herzliya Pituah, what that would do to Israel’s economy.</p>
<p>If even one plane which was supposed to land at Ben-Gurion Airport crashes [due to terrorism] per year, it would crush the Israeli economy.”</p>
<p>Beyond what the Palestinians would do, there is no reason to believe – and every reason to doubt – that Europe would reward Israel in any way for giving its capital and heartland to the PLO.</p>
<p>In remarks last week meant to counter Bennett’s statement, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni inadvertently explained the true situation Israel faces from Europe.</p>
<p>In Livni’s words, “Europe is boycotting [Israeli] products. And, true, it is starting with the settlements, but their problem is with Israel, which is perceived as a colonialist state, so it won’t only stop with the settlements but will [reach] Israel as a whole.”</p>
<p>As we learned from our experience with the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Israel’s actions play no role in Europe’s perception of the Jewish state.</p>
<p>Europe will not cease to perceive Israel as “a colonialist state” even if we remove ourselves, lock, stock and barrel to the 1949 armistice lines.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the Gaza withdrawal, Livni promised that once Israel quit Gaza, its diplomatic position would improve dramatically. By ending the so-called occupation of Gaza, she argued, Israel would prove its good will, and the Europeans would stop attacking us and take our side against the Palestinians at the UN and other arenas.</p>
<p>In the event, not only did this not occur, but the EU refused to acknowledge that the so-called occupation of Gaza even ended. To this day, Europe castigates Israel for its mythical “occupation” of Gaza.</p>
<p>As Livni accidentally explained, as far as Europe is concerned, Israel’s size is not the issue. Israel is the issue. True, Israel surrendered Gaza to Palestinian terrorists and removed every Israeli civilian and soldier from the territory. But since Israel is still stronger than the terror state in Gaza, Israel is still the “occupier.”</p>
<p>By the same token, even if Israel were to quit Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem completely, as long as Israel remains more powerful than the Palestinians in the areas, Europe will castigate Israel as the “occupier.”</p>
<p>And since the Palestinians and their allies will destroy Israel if it is ever less powerful than they are, Europe will stop condemning Israel as “a colonialist state” only if Israel ceases to exist.</p>
<p>At any rate, since the EU is not considering abrogating the economic association agreement, and since Israel will be economically worse off if it quits Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, why is the finance minister trying to scare us? First, he’s doing it because everyone else is doing it.</p>
<p>Peace Now has joined the boycott, sanctions and divestment campaign.</p>
<p>Livni threatens Israelis so often with economic ruin that Foreign Ministry officials are complaining that she’s giving foreigners ideas.</p>
<p>In Washington, the Obama administration has added the threat of Israeli economic devastation to its list of plagues that will befall the Jewish state if we don’t give up our national heartland to the PLO.</p>
<p>In his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry said, “Israel’s economic juggernaut is a wonder to behold…. But a deteriorating security environment and the growing isolation that could come with it could put that prosperity at risk.”</p>
<p>In other words, “Nice economy you got there Israel. It’d be a real shame if anything happened to it.”</p>
<p>The second reason that Lapid is threatening us – along with Livni, Kerry and so many others – is that he has nothing else to say in support of the fake peace process.</p>
<p>Kerry’s framework for Middle East peace offers neither anything new nor anything positive for the Israeli public to support. Were Israel to follow him down his garden path, we would receive neither peace, nor demographic security, nor national security nor national prosperity.</p>
<p>We will not receive peace because there is no Palestinian leadership interested in making peace, and there is no significant Palestinian constituency that supports peace. As Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said at the INSS Wednesday, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas is “the world’s number one anti-Semitic leader.”</p>
<p>Steinitz elaborated, “There is an anti-Semitic subtext prevalent throughout the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum and the children programs.</p>
<p>The subtext is very clear – the State of Israel and the Jews should be destroyed.</p>
<p>“Abbas does not actively finance terror, but he who denied the Holocaust now denies the existence of a Jewish nation and its right to a state.”</p>
<p>In this context, no negotiations will lead to peace. In Steinitz’s words, “There is no peace process.</p>
<p>If an agreement is signed with the Palestinian Authority, it will be a diplomatic agreement, not a peace agreement.”</p>
<p>And the vast majority of Israelis know this. And Livni, Lapid, Kerry and their ilk know we know this. So all they can do is threaten us.</p>
<p>The first place they went, after the promise of peace was blown up at cafes and bus stops countrywide, was demographics.</p>
<p>For 17 years, the Left has been relying on a falsified 1997 Palestinian census that exaggerated the Palestinian population by 50 percent, as a means of scaring Israelis into going along with its phony peace process.</p>
<p>Still today, Kerry, Livni, Lapid and their fellow travelers seek to intimidate us by constantly telling us that continued Israeli control over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem will bring about Israel’s demographic demise.</p>
<p>But the lie at the heart of their argument is no longer possible to ignore.</p>
<p>As demographic expert Yoram Ettinger wrote last week in Yisrael Hayom, Jewish Israeli fertility rates are higher than Palestinian fertility rates in Judea and Samaria. In 2013, the Palestinian fertility rate was 2.91 children per woman and the Israeli Jewish fertility rate was 3.04 children per woman.</p>
<p>Today Jews make up 62-66 percent of the population in Judea, Samaria and sovereign Israel.</p>
<p>With a two to one majority, a higher birthrate, and positive immigration rates, far from being a strategic threat to Israel’s national viability, demographics are one of Israel’s strategic assets.</p>
<p>The only threat to Israel’s demographic stability is the two-state formula. A Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem would permit the unlimited immigration of millions of foreign Arabs into its territory. Rather than securing Israel’s Jewish majority, a Palestinian state would place millions of hostile Arabs on the outskirts of a rump Israel’s major cities.</p>
<p>With their threat of demographic ruin losing its traction with the public, purveyors of the twostate plan now raise the threat of economic strangulation and ruin at every opportunity.</p>
<p>They understand that given the public’s refusal to be drawn into their fantasies about “peace dividends,” the only path before them is a mix of intimidation and political subversion. They hope that together these two tactics can force Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to submit to Kerry’s dictates for Israeli territorial surrenders.</p>
<p>Regarding political subversion, last week Eli Lake at the Daily Beast reported that the Obama administration is appealing to retired Israeli security brass to lobby the public against the government, in support of Kerry’s plan for Israel to surrender the Jordan Valley to the PLO.</p>
<p>According to senior defense sources, administration lobbying is not limited to retired generals.</p>
<p>The US is also recruiting currently serving IDF commanders to work on behalf of Kerry’s plan.</p>
<p>The idea is to rally a large enough cadre of security brass in favor of surrendering the Jordan Valley to undermine the authority of Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who has rejected Kerry’s plan.</p>
<p>Beyond frightening the general public, the economic threats are geared toward subverting the economic leadership of the country. Until now, Israel’s business leaders have been supporting Netanyahu’s economic leadership.</p>
<p>The campaign’s largest success to date came last week when a large delegation of Israeli business leaders joined the Kerry bandwagon and called for the partition of Jerusalem and surrender of Judea and Samaria in order to avoid economic penalties.</p>
<p>Clearly we are getting to crunch time.</p>
<p>Kerry is waiting for Netanyahu to agree to his framework. Until he does, Kerry, his allies and agents will escalate their threats and subversion.</p>
<p>So far, Netanyahu, Bennett and Ya’alon have competently exposed the lies behind the threats.</p>
<p>And they must continue on this course.</p>
<p>As we learned from Oslo and Gaza, nothing good comes from surrendering our rights and our land. And with Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem hanging in the balance, the stakes have never been higher.</p>
<p><em>Caroline Glick’s new book,</em> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Israeli-Solution-One-State-Middle/dp/0385348061/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1391152962&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Israeli+Solution" target="_blank">The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East</a><em>, is due out on March 4.</em></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>Israel on Verge of Revealing New Government</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/israel-on-verge-of-revealing-new-government/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-on-verge-of-revealing-new-government</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:24:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bennett]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[right]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yair Lapid]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=179929</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With looming challenges ahead, time is running out. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/israel-on-verge-of-revealing-new-government/attachment/2479561271/" rel="attachment wp-att-179934"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-179934" title="2479561271" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/2479561271-450x273.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="164" /></a>President Obama is supposed to be in Israel in about two weeks. Israel doesn’t have a government.</p>
<p>The Israeli elections were on January 22. Contrary to widespread expectations, the right didn’t score a big win; instead the electorate returned complex, angular results. The religious right gained, the secular right lost a lot, and a brand-new party that could be loosely described as secular-centrist, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, made a big splash by coming in second with 19 seats (out of a total of 120 in the Knesset).</p>
<p>Binyamin Netanyahu, for whom the election results were sufficient for a third tenure as prime minister, has been trying ever since to negotiate his way to a coalition. It’s been brutal.</p>
<p>The basic struggle pits, on the one side, Netanyahu, striving for as broad a coalition as possible including the two haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) parties. And on the other, an alliance that has formed between secular-centrist Lapid and Naftali Bennett, head of the nationalist-religious Habayit Hayehudi party that also did well in the elections. Bennett wants to weaken the haredi camp; Lapid insists on excluding it from the coalition entirely.</p>
<p>Just now, the Israeli media is reporting that the very tight (at present) Lapid-Bennett alliance has prevailed, with Netanyahu agreeing to their terms—meaning that a coalition without the haredim is on the way, possibly by the end of this week.</p>
<p>What’s at stake here? Netanyahu’s preference for a wide coalition is easily understandable. Wide coalitions are more stable, with no one party wielding extortionate power (by threatening to bolt the coalition and thereby dissolve it). Netanyahu also sees Israel facing critical security (particularly Iran), diplomatic (particularly getting along with Obama), and economic (particularly budget-cutting) challenges for which a wide coalition can give him the most ballast.</p>
<p>Netanyahu also wants to preserve his secular-right Likud Party’s alliance with the haredi parties, which goes back four decades; excluding these parties could lead them to punish Likud in the next elections.</p>
<p>Lapid and Bennett, however—particularly the former—insist that Israel cannot keep allowing most haredi men to refuse army service, and to live cloistered lives as yeshiva students on the public dole. They say having the haredi parties in the coalition will inevitably lead to compromises on these issues that will ensure the situation stays the same.</p>
<p>A large majority of Israelis, right, left, and center, agree that the present situation with the haredim is untenable. The Lapid-Bennett alliance, however, has been criticized as cynical and opportunistic; some say these two novice politicians, intoxicated with their electoral success, are essentially confronting Netanyahu with a power play and securing plum ministerial positions for themselves.</p>
<p>In particular, whereas Bennett—whom foreign media have portrayed as a “hip settler”—is, while not actually a settler, supposed to be sympathetic to their outlook, Lapid—while projecting himself as a centrist during the election campaign—actually has a backlog of viciously anti-settler statements (usefully collated <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=304111">here</a> by Israeli commentator Martin Sherman) typical of the far left.</p>
<p>They do indeed, then, form an odd couple; and there is ample reason to fear that a coalition of Netanyahu’s, Lapid’s, Bennett’s, and a couple of smaller parties would be creaky and possibly cacophonous.</p>
<p>On the economic front, with Netanyahu, Lapid, and Bennett all sharing a free-market philosophy, the prospects of such a coalition tackling Israel’s economic challenges effectively are bright. The diplomatic front is a good deal more complicated.</p>
<p>Claims and speculations about Obama’s upcoming visit vary widely—from a <a href="http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/03/03/obama-plans-to-extract-timetable-for-israeli-pullout-from-west-bank/">report</a> Monday on <em>World Tribune</em> that he intends to demand a West Bank withdrawal to Secretary of State John Kerry’s <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/26/us-palestinians-israel-kerry-idUSBRE91P0DM20130226">assurances</a> that he only seeks to “listen.” Potentially, Lapid’s more dovish party could provide an ideal pressure point for a U.S. administration seeking to harry and ultimately undo Netanyahu.</p>
<p>One hopes, then, that the key figures of whatever coalition finally forms will put politics aside and face Israel’s challenges responsibly. Foremost among those challenges is Iran; as Netanyahu <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches+by+Israeli+leaders/2012/PM_Netanyahu_addresses_Jewish_Agency_Governors_18-Feb-2013.htm">put it</a> in a speech two weeks ago:</p>
<blockquote><p>Iran’s development of nuclear weapons will make the Middle East a nuclear tinderbox. It will change the world…. Sanctions alone will not stop the nuclear program of Iran….</p></blockquote>
<p>Although Obama, too, claims he’s determined to stop Iranian nukes, his choice of defense secretary casts a thick shadow over his credibility. The situation calls for maximal Israeli unity and seriousness.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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