OY, SUCH RESULTS

The Israeli voters have spoken and, as always, the results are confusing. LINK. Kadima the party led by centrist Foreign Minister Tzipi (it's pronounced zippy, which amuses me no end) Livni looks poised to run first but with a mere 28 seats. The horrible former PM and ardent wingnut Bibi Netanyahu's Likud party is second with 27 seats. Bibi, of course, makes Ariel Sharon look like a weak kneed lefty on all the key issues. An even worse result is the 15 seats won by extreme right winger Avigdor Lieberman's almost overtly racist Israel Beiteinu party.

Overall, the right seems likely to form the next government as the decline of the once dominant Labor Party continues: they won only 13 seats. It's not a good result for those of us who support the state of Israel but have despaired of their recent governments. Netanyahu thinks that more settlements are a good thing and that peace making is for sissies. Oy, such a schmuck. I wonder if they've consulted with the KdV sub-krewe of Mishigas who may have the perfect finance minister for the next Israeli government:

Now that I think of it, Dick is probably too much like Bibi for it to work...

The Israeli example is one reason I don't mind our own two party system as much as some Americans do. Our parties have built-in coalitions that don't require epic negotiations to form a government; at least the Democrats still do since the party in the Senate runs the gamut from Russ Feingold to Ben Nelson. The Republicans are looking more and more like a purist right wing party, which is why they're in such electoral trouble. Of course, the MSM media is convinced that there are closet Aikens, Javitses and Heinzes in the GOP caucus who are ready to deal but they're dead wrong about that as we just saw

A Netanyahu premiership guarantees constant friction with the rest of the world, which now includes the US since the rubberstamp Bush administration is gone, gone, gone. I've long thought that the assasination of Yitzhak Rabin was one of the worst things that happened in the late 20th Century. Rabin's combination of soldierly, political and diplomatic skills were unparalled at the time and will never be equalled. For a brief moment in the 1990's, it looked as if Israel would become a normal country but Rabin's murder at the hands of an religious extremist ended those hopes.

I grew up in a heavily Jewish community in Northern California so I've long considered myself to be an honorary Jew, which is probably why I'm so fond of the nickname Shecky. I miss the days when people like Ben-Gurion, Dayan, Meir, Eban and Rabin were the faces of a dynamic and progressive Israel. Wily old Shimon Peres is still in the game as President but he's the last gasp of the heroic generation that were a source of pride to friends of Israel. You know things are bad when Menachem Begin starts to look good. With the likes of Netanyahu in charge, all we can do is hope for the best while expecting the worst. The only good news is that the neo-cons who supported giving the Israeli right a blank check are discredited and out of power in Washington thereby sparing us the spectacle of Bibi and Walnuts ordering air strikes on Teheran. 

tags: politics  israel  us  middle  east  kdv  

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