6 Responses

1. Dr. Martin Sherman served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli Defense establishment. He was a ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir’s government and lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies

   Dr. Martin Sherman

   ..Thus, while Bayit Yehudi issued a very upbeat announcement declaring complete consensus and coordination with Yesh Atid, I would be highly skeptical as to whether such consensus/coordination extends to the cardinal issue at the center of the respective DNAs of the parties: The issue of Palestinian statehood.

   Moreover, even on issues on which such consensus/coordination is said to prevail, I foresee future divergence.

   For Lapid’s core constituency, the demand for haredi conscription is a great drum to beat – so long as it remains unfulfilled. For I have a very strong suspicion – corroborated by recent pronouncements by several prominent left-wing figures – that if it were to begin to emerge as a tangible prospect, the biggest opponents to it would be many of those who demand it most vociferously today.

   After all, the last thing Lapid’s “core” wants to see is battalions of bearded ultra-Orthodox enlistees with M-16s slung menacingly over their shoulders.

   Vicious vilification

   Bennett’s embrace of Lapid is even more inappropriate and inexplicable in light of the latter’s continued and repeated vilification of a major segment of Bayit Yehudi’s sources of support: The residents of communities in Judea and Samaria, a.k.a. – pejoratively – as “settlers.”

   Lapid consistently used his widely read Friday column in Yediot Aharonot to besmirch, berate and belittle them. The introductory above excerpts are but a small sampling of his frequent endeavors to denigrate, demonize and delegitimize the Jews living across the 1967 Green Line, in the most malevolent – and at times, manifestly mendacious – manner.

   Thus, for example, in a masterpiece of malice titled “This land isn’t Israel” (August 19, 2008), he begins by declaring that, three years after its perpetration, Israelis should be proud of the disengagement because – wait for it – “it turned out that the state is still able to implement something once it decides to do it.”

   No kidding – check it out on Google. He then proceeds to “excommunicate” the “settlers/ settlements” – the main blocs of which he now perversely purports to embrace – from Israeli society, writing “They define the place they live in as ‘not Israel.’ This is a lawless land, lacking respect, where people who are different than us live and conduct themselves in line with codes we don’t understand.

   It is a land that has rejected all the basic values that hold us together.”

   He concludes in a tone of vindictive vitriol: “These people create a situation whereby, when the day comes, and the agreements are signed on the lawn in Washington, it will be easier to give up this land, which isn’t really ours; this land where not only the laws and landscape are different, but also the people.”

   Naftali, get a grip!

   In another diatribe of disingenuous drivel, “Stop blaming disengagement” (January 20, 2009), Lapid launches into an absurd apologia for the unilateral abandonment of Gaza.

   Subjecting his hapless readers to a partisan potpourri of the preposterous, the puerile and the pathetic, he sallies forth on a toxic tirade, endeavoring somehow to reinstate the lost honor of the disengagement, whose implementation he supported with such fervor.

   You have to read to believe!

   Flying in the face of facts, he vigorously denies that the disengagement had brought about any perceptible increase in the levels of shelling of Israel or in tunneling/smuggling activity under the Philadelphi Corridor between Sinai and Gaza. For while both shelling and smuggling did exist before the 2005 unilateral withdrawal, the difference in the severity of the realities confronting Israel in the pre- and post-disengagement eras are so stark, that to suggest there is any equivalence between them is as ludicrous as to claim that a mild cold and terminal pneumonia are similar because they can both be diagnosed viral infections.

   With infuriating disregard for empirical events, he speculates: “So there is a possibility – and it is even a realistic one – that had it not been for the disengagement, our situation today would have been much worse.”

   Then, with breathtaking effrontery, he goes onto assail the critics of the disengagement: “[They] don’t care, because they are not interested in the truth, but rather, in the opportunity to exploit the pain and sorrow over today’s victims in order to avert the next evacuation. And to that end, it is ok to lie, and to smear, and to come up with false arguments.”

   Clearly, if he were to replace the word “avert” with the word “induce,” he would have – with perfect accuracy – described himself.

   So Naftali, this is your faithful comrade-inpolitical- arms? One with whom you have elected to form an unbreakable pact? Get a grip!

2. Bennet could have demanded the Defense Ministry, unlimited support for the settlements, and ruling out any negotiations with the PA, and Netanyahu would have gladly given it to him. But no, all he wants is to draft the Chareidim (and kick Shas out of the Housing, Education, and Religious Ministries). He is a rasha gammur for joining forces with the one politician who stands hatred of the Chareidim above all else (and selling out on everything his constituency wants in the process).

3. #3, take it easy with declaring people reshoim gemurim for not going along with the Chareidi agenda.

4. #3, the “rasha gamur”, “not frum”, “anti-frum” arguments are the only recourse left to babies who fear losing their entitlements.

5. to #4 do u really claim he is not a rasha for trying to help destroy the yeshiva structure and sending charisma to an army that has no Torah values(insisting on and punishing soldiers for being against listening to ladies singing. etc)

6. What evertyone seems to be missing is that Netanyahu deliberately, for purely personal reasons, ignored Bennett when first trying to form his coalition. Thereofore, in order to prevent himself from becoming irrelevant, Bennett formed his alliance with Lapid – which outflanked Netanyahu by preventing him from forming a government without both Bayit Yehudi and Yesh Atid.

   Everyone is screaming abount Bennett’s “betrayal” of the Chareidim, but what does Bennett owe them? They are not his constituency, and after the insults they flung his way during the election, it is the hight of Chutzpa to turn around and accuse him of “betrayal”. Perhaps the Likud’s “betrayal” of its so-called “natural partners” in Bayit Yehudi deserves more attention, no? If anything, Bennett deserves credit for keeping his agreement with Yesh Atid despite all the pressure he’s under to break it. Imagine that – a politician, and an Israeli politician no less – who actually honors his word.

   an Israeli Yid