Hawkish Candidates Top Israel's Likud Party Election List

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"With Israeli elections just two months away, the party that is slated to win is moving further to the right. The trend is expected to have serious implications for the Middle East peace process.

Israel's right-wing Likud party has chosen top hawks to lead its list of parliamentary candidates for the February 10 elections. Polls show that the Likud has the best chance to form the next Israeli government. The party is headed by opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Today we have chosen a new leadership for Israel," Netanyahu told supporters. He said it is the best list of candidates any party could offer the country.

The Likud list could have a negative impact on Middle East peace talks because it includes outspoken supporters of Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and opponents of a Palestinian state."

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Vote shifts Israel's Likud Party sharply right

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-likud10-2008dec10,0,3305630.story

In a blow to party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, members elect a slate of hard-liners for upcoming national elections. The move is a boost for Tzipi Livni's Kadima party.

<snip>

"Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu suffered a blow to his efforts to present a moderate face for his Likud Party after members elected a hard-line slate of candidates at the expense of more moderate names that the former prime minister had championed.

The primary results, which were announced this morning, set up an even starker than expected choice for Israeli voters in national elections scheduled for Feb. 10.

Most polls show Likud leading the centrist Kadima party, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. But today's results could bolster Kadima's claims that a Likud victory would doom any hope for negotiating peace with the Palestinians.

"This really opens the door for Kadima," said Gideon Rahat, a political science professor at Hebrew University. "They would have charged that Likud was too right-wing no matter what, but this just makes it easier."

Monday's internal vote granted prominent spots to party members who support settlements in the occupied West Bank and opposed Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Iconic former Likud leader Ariel Sharon broke from the party and formed Kadima in late 2005 after a series of battles with Likud's right wing over his Gaza withdrawal plan.

Netanyahu had sought to present a more centrist image and lure back moderate voters who had jumped to Kadima. Instead, he now presides over a party electoral list filled with hard-liners, some of them his sworn political enemies. These include Moshe Feiglin, a settler who essentially led a successful rebel maneuver by the party's right wing.

"He really is a danger for Likud," Rahat said. "This can hurt them for sure."


Feiglin's manifesto: Israel should quit UN, cut off water to Palestinians

<snip>

"An extreme right-wing text by Likud member Moshe Feiglin disappeared on Tuesday from the Web site of his Jewish Leadership movement. In the piece written five years ago, Feiglin says Israel should cut off water and electricity service to the Palestinian territories, withdraw from the United Nations and boycott the Olympics.

The text, written by the man who captured 20th place on Likud's Knesset list yesterday, is called "the day after" and details the radical policies he would pursue if he became prime minister. The manifesto was removed hours after the party's primary results were announced. Haaretz, however, obtained a copy.

In the piece, Feiglin wrote that his first action after becoming prime minister would be to summon his government to give thanks in prayer on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, an extremely sensitive site holy to both Jews and Muslims.

Over the next 100 days he would announce Israel's withdrawal from the United Nations, the closing of its embassies "in Germany and other anti-Semitic countries" and the rescheduling of the school year along the lines of the Hebrew calendar. This would be the first step toward having "the Jewish state's pulse beat according to the Jewish clock instead of the Christian one."

Feiglin wrote that he would then address the Palestinian issue by ordering "the complete cessation" of funds, goods, water, electricity and communication to the Palestinian Authority. Any attack on an Israeli target would incur "the conquest of the area whose residents instigated the violence, their deportation and destruction of the area's infrastructure."

At the same time, the defense budget would be cut by 30 percent by retiring all non-lethal anti-protest ammunition such as rubber-tipped bullets and tear gas. Instead, security forces would use live bullets against Palestinian protesters.

"The ammunition aimed at preventing enemy casualties, which goes against the army's essence, will be destroyed in mandatory ceremonies held at every base," Feiglin wrote.

In the paper, he vociferously rejects the Palestinians' right to a state and argues that they do not exist as a distinct nationality separate from the Arabs.

"There is no Palestinian people, nor has there ever been, and there never will be a Palestinian state," Feiglin wrote. "We shall offer them human rights without civil rights, so long as they prove their loyalty to their Jewish state host and accept Jewish sovereignty over their land. In such a situation they will be given legal-resident status and they can carry on their private affairs without anyone infringing on their human rights."

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[Fed_Up_Grammy]

1. Tick,tick,tick ! Very frightening man.

[LeftishBrit]

2. And a big ugh to Feiglin

I can but hope that he does the same thing for the Likud's electability that Sarah Palin did for the Republicans' electability.

[Alamuti Lotus]

4. Are you saying that his pro-Hitler stances..

are a bad selling point in Israel?

How miserable it is when Netanyahu is (somewhat successfully!) marketed as the poor beleaguered moderate..

[henank]

5. Are you saying that

Feiglin is pro-Hitler? Or that Netanyahu is? Either way that is a disgusting piece of bullshit you've just written.

[Violet_Crumble]

7. Feiglin, his cronies are fascists by any definition

Each list of candidates is tinted with its own characteristic hue. Sometimes, one drop is enough to paint a whole list. Likud's list offers quite a few rotten drops, and with each drop the cup overflows.

The list's color is as brown now as that brown house in Hebron. Likud's official spokespeople did try to console and be consoled yesterday, when they said that the devil isn't all that bad now that it's been pushed down to number 20 on the list. But full revulsion is better than partial consolation in this case.

Moshe Feiglin has been described as a radical rightist but that's not his main problem - which has now become the Likud's problem and our problem. In certain respects, he's less legitimate than Meir Kahane and far less so than Rehavam Ze'evi, the man who Benny Begin once defined as "a moral infection." Those were the days in old Jerusalem.

Sometimes, one wonders how what began as an ignominy deteriorates into abysmal lows. This paper published an interview with Feiglin from 1995, conducted by Ada Oshpiz. "When he reads about Hitler, it is with astonishment," the reporter wrote.

In describing Adolf Hitler, Feiglin is quoted to have told her, "Hitler was an unparalleled military genius. Nazism promoted Germany from a low to a fantastic physical and ideological status. The ragged, trashy youth body turned into a neat and orderly part of society and Germany received an exemplary regime, a proper justice system and public order. Hitler savored good music. He would paint. This was no bunch of thugs. They merely used thugs and homosexuals."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1045101.html

[Alamuti Lotus]

9. Yes, I am saying exactly that

The disgusting piece of bullshit comes straight from Feiglin himself! Burn about 7 calories on a Google search and you can find any number of statements from Feiglin, expressing great admiration of and encouraging nearly all of the fascist ideals of the reich. ('nearly all', with one possibly obvious exception)

[LeftishBrit]

11. Feiglin apparently did speak favourably about some aspects of Hitler's career

He described him to a journalist as an effective military leader; as establishing an excellent system of public order in Germany; etc. Of course, this DOESN'T mean that Feiglin agrees with Hitler's policies in general and certainly not with the Holocaust in particular. However, it does support the view that Feiglin has a dangerously authoritarian streak.

[azurnoir]

3. Even Netanyahu shows some sense

In the run-up to Likud's primary election held earlier this week, party chief Benjamin Netanyahu warned that any candidate who sought Feiglin's support would not be given a ministerial portfolio. He also initiated a number of measures aimed at increasing voter turnout, which he hoped would diminish Feiglin's influence in the election.

Maybe I'm wrong here but Feiglin's "capturing" twentieth place sounds more like walking up and tapping it on the shoulder

[Scurrilous]

6. Despite Netanyahu's fears, latest poll shows Likud gaining strength

<snip>

"Despite Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu's concern about the right-wing character of the party's Knesset candidates selected early on Tuesday, a Haaretz-Dialog poll shows Likud to be gaining strength among voters.

The poll, conducted on Tuesday under the supervision of Tel Aviv University statistics professor Camil Fuchs, found that if the general election were held today, Likud would win 36 seats, Kadima would place second with 27 seats, and Labor would trail behind with 12.

Further analysis indicates Likud winning two seats from right-wing parties (one from Shas and one from Yisrael Beiteinu) and Labor winning one from Meretz-Yahad and one from Kadima. Meretz-Yahad fell to six seats from seven in the previous poll.

Previous polls ordered by Netanyahu showed that the list's inclusion of Moshe Feiglin, the leader of a right-wing faction within Likud, was liable to cost the party four or five seats. But the Haaretz-Dialog poll does not back that up.

Instead, it appears that what has come to be known as the Feiglin effect has yet to make its way into the voters' consciousness, though that could change over the coming days. The poll found that the composition of the Likud list has not made a major difference in the way voters say they plan to vote, although 27 percent of respondents said they thought Feiglin's selection would cause the party to lose seats, compared with the 20 percent who said it would gain Likud more voters.

Tuesday's poll is consistent with previous polls giving right-wing parties a total of 64 seats, compared with 56 for the center-left parties."

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[Vegasaurus]

8. 100 years of terrorism and war has had this result

Occupation may have turned some Arabs into terrorists (although a lot of terrorists are middle class and educated, and were never occupied ever).

Ongoing terrorism has pushed many Jews into more right-wing hawkish fanatics.

I don't know why anyone is surprised about this happening in Israel.

It is actually quite predictable, because land for peace, and any other peaceable measures have been abject failures.

The same people who try to explain why Muslims have become fanatic fundamentalists should certainly be able to understand why this has also happened to Jewish Israelis.

[Scurrilous]

10. Feiglin dropped to 36th spot on roster

Proverbial thorn in Likud Chairman Netanyahu's side shoved from coveted 20th slot on party's list for upcoming elections to unfeasible placement after Likud internal court accepts appeal of Netanyahu associate Ophir Ekonis. Feiglin aid vows battle far from over

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3637281,00.html

<snip>

"Moshe Feiglin, head of the Jewish Leadership Movement who recently landed the 20th slot on the Likud roster, was demoted to slot number 36 by the party's Elections Committee on Thursday.

The petition against Feiglin was submitted by Ophir Ekonis, number 28 on the roster and a close associate of Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the petition Akunis claimed that since the women in the party were elected to higher positions than the slots secured for them, those slots should go to the members elected by the districts, such as Akunis, who was elected by the Tel Aviv district.

He claimed these members should be allotted the higher slots at the expense of the nationally elected members, such as Feiglin.

Feiglin has the right to appeal the committee's decision in the Likud court and, if needed, a national court. He has already remarked that he would fight the verdict.

"It's clear to me that there will have to be a legal battle," he said. "I am confident we will win this battle because the constitution is not up for interpretation. The Likud will lose this battle."