Hot Air in Israel
“Olmert must go!” “Down with the government!” “To the Streets!” “New elections Now!” Israel is being deluged in hot air.
So what if Olmert resigned? So what if the government were toppled? So what if the people went to the streets? And so what if new elections were held now? Just more hot air!
Why? Because Israel’s existing parliamentary system would remain intact. Since this system compels citizens to vote for fixed party lists rather than individual representatives, the same job-seekers—fools, cowards and traitors—will return to the Knesset.
Ignoring Arab MKs such as Azmi Bishara and Talab al-Sana, who have openly incited Israeli Arabs to kill Jews, let’s begin with the more prominent MKs who supported or voted for Labor’s policy of unilateral disengagement either in the Cabinet or in the Knesset, and who in all probability will return to one of those dens of iniquity.
Don’t be surprised if Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres (the guru of Oslo), Amir Peretz, Benjamin Netanyahu, Silvan Shalom, Shaul Mofaz, Tzipi Livni, Limor Livnat, Gideon Ezra, Meir Sheetrit, Yuval Steinitz, Michael Eitan, Yisrael Katz, Ophir Pines-Paz, Isaac Herzog, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Dalia Itzik, Colette Avital, Ephraim Sneh, Yuli Tamir, Matan Vilnai, and Ran Cohen are in the next Knesset.
The same may be said of Avi Dichter (who joined Kadima) and Yossi Beilin (who, despite his responsibility for Oslo, has returned to the Israeli haven of failed politicians). Wait! This is not all.
The Knesset has several incumbents who, though they opposed unilateral disengagement, nonetheless propped up the Sharon government by signing its March 2003 coalition agreement, which bound the signatories to the Oslo Agreement. Suffice to mention Avigdor Lieberman, Benny Elon, Arieh Eldad, Zvi Hendel, Yuri Shtern, Effie Eitam, Yitzhak Levy, and Zevulun Orlev.
Finally, let’s not forget Moshe Gafni, Yakov Litzman, Meir Porush, and Avraham Ravitz of United Torah Judaism, a party which, by joining the 2004 Sharon-Peres coalition government, doomed the Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria.
Although one or another of the above MKs may be singled out for merit, all contributed, directly or indirectly, to “unilateral disengagement” and its consequences: the ascendancy of Hamas and the Lebanese War. Nevertheless, hardly any of these MKs need worry about his job because none has to face a rival candidate in a constituency election—a rival who could inform the voters of the incumbent’s abysmal failings, as can be done in every authentic democracy.
So what does this clamor about Olmert and new elections amount to? Little more than hot air. The SYSTEM will remain the same. The government will consist of a multiplicity of rival party leaders, each lusting for a larger share of the national treasury to feather his personal or partisan nest.
The prime minister, whose party may have received less then 25% of the national vote—Kadima received only 22% in the March 2005 election—will use his appointment power to manipulate his party colleagues in the Knesset, as Sharon did to obtain passage of the Evacuation Law.
The Knesset will pretty much remain a cipher, incapable of exercising the function administrative oversight, in the absence of which corruption and inefficiency will remain the order of the day.
And of course the Supreme Court will remain a self-perpetuating oligarchy whose political agenda, rooted in cultural egalitarianism, is transforming the supposed-to-be Jewish state into “a state of its citizens.”
