A Climax to the Saga of

artappraiser — Sun, 02 Jun 2019 06:53:51 +0000

In reply to Israel will hold unprecedented second election as Netanyahu fails to form coalition

A Climax to the Saga of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman

By Bernard Avishai @ NewYorker.com, June 1, 2019

The Angel of Death, the story goes, was sent to collect Avigdor Lieberman. Answering the door, Lieberman saw the spectre before him, pulled him in by the collar, pummeled him, spat on him, and threw him out. When Death returned to Heaven, he went straight to God. “Lieberman?” God asked, sizing up the bruises. “You didn’t tell him who sent you, did you?”

I heard the joke some years ago, from a veteran journalist who was hardly a fan of Lieberman, the former Israeli defense minister and the head of the secular-right Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel Our Home”) Party. But Lieberman—who, just at the Wednesday-night deadline, refused to join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, prompting a second national election in four months, set for September 17th—would no doubt find the story flattering. This is the persona that Lieberman has always projected: Sly, feared, and indomitable. A man who, as his campaign posters put it, “lo dofeq heshbon,” or, roughly (and cleaned-up some), doesn’t give a damn for his enemies—be they Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, Hamas, or ultra-Orthodox communities. The leader without illusions, or “ashlayot.”

This past month, as talks to form a new governing coalition proceeded, it was the ultra-Orthodox who seemed most beneath his contempt. Their two parties, the Mizrahi Shas and the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism (U.T.J.), won sixteen seats in April, and their announced price for joining Netanyahu’s coalition was the rescission of a draft law—formulated by his last government, when Lieberman was the minister of defense—that required military service for a steadily increasing number of students in ultra-Orthodox schools [....]

Netanyahu needs a miracle

artappraiser — Sat, 01 Jun 2019 01:56:08 +0000

In reply to Israel will hold unprecedented second election as Netanyahu fails to form coalition

Netanyahu needs a miracle https://t.co/e1uDOBrgvR
— Al-Monitor (@AlMonitor) June 1, 2019

Author is Ben Caspit, a columnist for Al-Monitor's Israel Pulse, and also a senior columnist and political analyst for Israeli newspapers and has a daily radio show and regular TV shows on politics and Israel

With the most ridiculous

artappraiser — Wed, 29 May 2019 22:30:28 +0000

In reply to Israel will hold unprecedented second election as Netanyahu fails to form coalition

With the most ridiculous timing imaginable, Jared Kushner & Jason Greenblatt just landed in a stormy Israel, phantom peace plan in hand. https://t.co/mm4hI1Yehd
— Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) May 29, 2019

dagblog - Comments for "Israel will hold unprecedented second election as Netanyahu fails to form coalition"

A Climax to the Saga of

Netanyahu needs a miracle

With the most ridiculous