Israel Voting for Change, Netanyahu Losing Support

11 Comments

1. 

   Oui on January 6, 2013 at 6:01 am

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   Soldiers spell out critique of Netanyahu as a ‘loser’ for not using ground forces in Gaza [מפסיד ביבים]

   In Facebook pic that goes viral, 16 men arrange their bodies to show frustration at not going into battle.

    « click for story
   Soldiers use their bodies to spell 'Bibi [is a] loser' (Photo: Facebook)

   JERUSALEM (Times of Israel) – The IDF Spokesman’s Office said it was looking into a photograph circulating widely on Facebook in which 16 IDF soldiers arranged their uniformed bodies on the sand, to spell out the Hebrew words “Bibi loser” — in a deft physical critique of Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s failure to send ground troops into Gaza during the just-ended Operation Pillar of Defense.

   Netanyahu warned throughout the operation that a wider military assault on Hamas might be about to unfold. The IDF called up tens of thousands of reservists and deployed large troop contingents close to the Gaza border, and some troops were reportedly ordered more than once to gear up for an incursion, only to be ordered to stand down at the last moment.

   Only 1 in 5 think Israel ‘won’ the eight-day battle against Hamas

   • Picture of Israeli Soldiers Calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “Loser” Goes Viral

   Cross-posted from my new diary – Netanyahu Will Pay Heavy Price at the Polls

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     Salunga on January 6, 2013 at 1:11 pm

     

     In Facebook pic that goes viral, 16 men arrange their bodies to show frustration at not going into battle.Soldiers use their bodies to spell ‘Bibi [is a] loser’

     Sorry you crazed religious wackos no chance to kill Palestinian children in Gods name today.

2. 

   Oui on January 6, 2013 at 10:07 am

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   Will Obama focus on Israel-Palestinian issues?

   (Jewish Journal) – Since the U.S. presidential election, there have been a number of significant developments in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. But they have not sparked any major blow-ups in U.S.-Israel relations. A top Israeli official privately told one American Jewish interlocutor who spoke with JTA that Obama’s backing of Israel during its conflict last month with Hamas in the Gaza Strip was “A-plus.”

   The United States then stood with Israel and just seven other countries in opposing the Palestinians’ successful bid to enhance their status to non-member state at the United Nations. The Obama administration did, however, criticize Israel’s announcement after the U.N. vote of plans for new construction in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.

   New developments also have the potential to shake up U.S.-Israel relations. Among the potential game-changers are an empowered Hamas, a lurch to the right in Israel’s government and the prospect of top foreign policy and defense spots in a second-term Obama Cabinet going to figures who have been critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

   The two reported frontrunners have had their differences with Israel. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the most likely nominated as Clinton’s replacement, is a congressional critic of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

   … former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican who says he is a supporter of Israel, has often found himself at odds with pro-Israel groups. As a senator, he refused to sign on to congressional letters backed by AIPAC, calling such statements “stupid”.

   Obama set to nominate Israel lobby critic for top Pentagon post

   (Al-Akhbar) – Hagel, the former senator from Nebraska, is a contrarian Republican moderate and decorated Vietnam combat veteran who is likely to support a more rapid withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Hagel broke with his party over the Iraq war, and is against imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran.

   Hagel also opposes the US’s isolation of Hezbollah and Hamas, both blacklisted as terrorists in that country. Even before his nomination, Hagel’s consideration for the top Pentagon job raised concerns among some of his former Senate colleagues, who questioned his pronouncements on Iraq, Israel and the Middle East.

   Chuck Hagel and liberals: what are the priorities?

   (The Guardian) – Numerous reports from Friday indicate that President Obama, possibly as early as Monday, will name Chuck Hagel as his nominee to replace Leon Panetta as Defense Secretary. Many of the most right-wing GOP Senators have already categorically vowed that they will oppose the nomination of this decorated combat veteran and two-term GOP Senator from Nebraska, claiming he’s hostile to Israel, “soft” on Iran and anti-military. Hagel’s confirmation thus likely hinges on the willingness of Democrats to support it.

   But before Hagel was nominated, numerous Democratic partisans and various liberals already expressed reservations or even outright opposition. Some of those, such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Eliot Engel, are driven (as usual) by the same mentality driving neocons: they’re worried that Hagel is a dissident when it comes to the bipartisan DC orthodoxy mandating lockstep, unquestioning support for the militarism and aggression of the Israeli government.

   No surprise: Chuck Schumer refuses to stand up for Hagel

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     Salunga on January 6, 2013 at 12:58 pm

        If Israel does not want Hagel as our defense secretary I would be amazed if he is confirmed. Our congress people are such Israeli lapdogs its sickening.

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       Oui on January 6, 2013 at 3:51 pm

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       Using liberal issues to oppose Chuck Hagel.

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     Oui on January 6, 2013 at 3:00 pm

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     Hagel to Join Obama on Iraq Trip

     (Washington Wire) July 11, 2008 – The buzz this week that Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is planning to join Sen. Barack Obama on an up-coming visit to Iraq is correct, two sources with knowledge of the trip confirmed plan.

     While it is standard practice for such trips–known as CODELS, or congressional delegations–to be bipartisan, in this highly charged election year it is likely to raise eyebrows that the retiring Nebraskan senator–a prominent Iraq War critic–is the Republican expected to join the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee on what is sure to be a closely watched visit to the region.

     A vocal critic of both the Iraq War and the Bush administration, Hagel mulled a run for the White House last year, but opted out of the race. He announced he was retiring from the U.S. Senate in Sept. 2007.

     Hagel chides McCain, Obama on Iraq

     (MSNBC) July 25, 2008 – Hagel, too, opposed the troop increase strategy, though he acknowledged it brought about positive changes. “When you flood the zone with superior American military firepower, and you put 30,000 of the world’s best troops in a country, there’s going to be a result there,” Hagel said.

     Whether the surge worked, though, can’t be measured, Hagel said, arguing the small gains came at a high price. He said President Bush’s decision last year to dispatch an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq has cost more than 1,000 American lives and billions of dollars.

     Republican maverick Hagel forged bond with Obama over Iraq

     • Carnacki’s diary in 2005 – Only genuine pre-war American and British whiskeys sold here
3. 

   Oui on January 6, 2013 at 3:42 pm

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   Chuck Hagel Anti-Israel Charge Is ‘Extremely Stupid,’ Nebraska Rabbi Says

   WASHINGTON (Huff Post) Dec. 21, 2012 — An Israeli-born, Omaha-based rabbi who has known Chuck Hagel for many years said charges that the former Nebraska senator, and potential nominee for secretary of defense, is somehow anti-Israel or anti-Semitic are “extremely stupid.”

   “I thought we were done with this,” said Aryeh Azriel, the rabbi at Temple Israel in Omaha, Neb., where Hagel has been a longtime regular presence, in an interview Friday with The Huffington Post. “I though we were done already with the [childishness] of being Jewish where everyone who says something critical about Israel needs to be labeled an anti-Semite. I find this extremely stupid, and definitely not helpful.”

   Azriel, who also penned a letter published Friday in the Omaha World-Herald defending Hagel’s pro-Israel bona fides, told The Huffington Post he has known the former senator for many years, and has been “completely astonished by the attacks on his character, on his identity and his ability.”

   Hagel’s pro-Israel credentials have been called into question over the past week after he emerged as a leading contender for secretary of defense. Pointing to a sparse selection of votes in which Hagel had not supported the most stringent sanction against Iran, and one instance in which he made pejorative reference to the “Jewish lobby,” critics have suggested that Hagel harbored secret anti-Israel or even anti-Jewish sentiment.  

   Does Israel Lobby have veto power over Obama nominations?

   (Mondoweiss) – R. Clarke Cooper of the Log Cabin Republicans, which took out a full-page ad in The New York Times opposing Hagel, has resigned. The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald had raised questions about where the Log Cabin Republican group, a pro-gay conservative organization, got the money for the ad. Greenwald questioned whether advocates for Israel or neoconservatives had paid for the New York Times ad.

   And in other Hagel news, Jewish Voice for Peace has endorsed the potential pick. From an e-mail they sent out to supporters.

   • MuzzleWatch – Chuck Hagel And Israel: The Wrong Question
   • JPost – Hagel’s Jewish problem
   • The Nonexistent ‘Jewish Lobby’ Declares War on Chuck Hagel
4. 

   seabe on January 6, 2013 at 4:14 pm

   Looks like Israel is trying their Pink Washing Campaigns over here instead.

5. 

   Oui on January 6, 2013 at 4:21 pm

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   Where’s the platform Bibi?

   (The Forward) – With less than three weeks until elections in Israel, the nation’s leading party still has no platform. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hybrid political faction formed from the recent merger between the ruling Likud party and right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu, has yet to publish its platform, in which it lays out its stands on major issues.

   The combined party also has a specific reason to avoid making any policy statement this year. The Likud party has taken a turn to the right in recent years, and with the addition of ex-foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu to the joint list, the new party has moved from center-right closer to the far right wing of Israeli politics.

   Nowhere is this more so than when dealing with the Israeli – Palestinian conflict–an issue to which the international community, including the United States — Israel’s prime supporter — is extremely sensitive.

    « PM reiterates DMZ for Palestine

   Netanyahu stated in his 2009 Bar Ilan speech that he supports a two-state solution for the conflict. It was a statement hailed by Washington at the time as a crucial step in forging a working relationship with the then-newly elected Likud government. Not much has happened since to promote such a solution.

   But that Bar Ilan statement remains formally as the official policy of Netanyahu and the government he heads. Now, members of his own party are calling for the deletion of any reference to the two-state solution from the platform. Doing so could help Netanyahu win over voters from the right that are slipping toward support of Habayit Hayehudi, a pro-settler Orthodox party that is gaining rapidly in polls. But that could complicate relations with the U.S. and Europe, and expose Netanyahu to criticism from centrist political figures such as Tzipi Livni.

   What Netanyahu and Liberman really mean when they speak of a two-state solution

   • Shas MK: Haredi values incompatible with Likud-Beytenu
6. 

   Oui on January 7, 2013 at 10:58 am

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   New poll – still 31% undecided, parties on the left gaining support

   Info Knesset election 2009
   
Party seats    2009 2013*
Kadima           28    3
Likud/Beytenu    42   34
Likud - Ahi      27    -
Yisrael Beytenu  15    -
Labor            13   21
Jewish Home       3   15
Shas             11   10  

   * Poll per Jan. 6, 2013

   All Israeli parties should sign a pledge never to evict Jews, Bayit Yehudi head Naftali Bennett said at the Ono Academic College in Kiryat Ono. Bennett drew fire from across the political spectrum last month for suggesting that, as an IDF reservist, his conscience would not allow him to evacuate settlements. Following a wave of criticism from the Likud and Center-Left parties, Bennett clarified that he opposes refusing military orders.

   New coalitions are being discussed ahead of ekections

7. 

   Oui on January 8, 2013 at 8:14 am

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   Recent poll shows 40% of Israeli citizens contemplating emigrating due to poor living standard and the government focusing solely on national security. In the previous I listed, 31% of voters still undecided mainly in the center and left block. My analysis of recent Eurpean elections, this group of discontented voters could break to opposition parties. We have already seen the Likud voters transfering to the new Israel Home party of Bennett. Netanyahu has a voter problem of not being trustworthy toward settlement policy and for/against the two-state oprion for peace with the Palestinians.

   New Poll: Bennett Tied With Labor for Second Largest Faction

   (Ynet News) – The poll showed the joint Likud/Yisrael Beiteinu list receiving 32 seats in the Knesset. When the likely temporary union was announced several months ago, the joint list had been polling at over 40 seats, but since then the list has lost popularity at the expense of other parties, especially, it appears Bayit Yehudi. The number of seats the joint list can expect to receive in the elections is significantly lower than the number both parties now have separately; the Likud currently has 28 Knesset seats, and Yisrael Beiteinu has 15.

   If the joint list only achieves 32 seats, that would mean a net loss of 11 seats between the two parties in the next Knesset – and at least some of them, analysts believe, would have migrated to Bayit Yehudi, led by Naftali Bennett. The latest poll shows Bennett’s party achieving 16 seats. Meanwhile, Labor, which has also been slipping in the polls, would find itself with 16 seats as well.

   CENTER-LEFT BLOCKING COALITION

   Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid would score ten seats, as would Shas. Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua would receive nine seats. If Livni succeeds in recruiting Lapid and Labor leader Shelly Yechimovich into her “blocking coalition” to make it harder for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to form a new government, the three parties would be able to produce 35 mandates – more than the Likud/Yisrael Beiteinu, and technically enough to convince President Shimon Peres to give one of them the first opportunity to form a government, if all three parties can agree on one of their number for the job of Prime Minister.