Israeli Politics Thread

[Az]

yep. and a famous publicist has joined labor.

man oh man what an election.

[lord of the mark]

"Until World War II, most European Jews viewed themselves as integrated or integrating into Europe, and the Zionists as a fringe. "

This is incorrect. In Poland, which had by far the largest Jewish population in Europe between the wars, (3 million) the various Zionist groups were central to Jewish life, and were NOT fringe. And the largest and most important anti-Zionist groups were Bundist Socialists, who advocated Jewish cultural autonomy based on Yiddish and OPPOSED integration, and Ultra-Orthodox jews and their movements, which also opposed integration. The situation was similar in the baltic states, If the author is speaking of Western Europe (except for Germany post-1933) or of Hungary he would be correct. The situation in Romania and Czechoslovakia was more complex.

There are other simplifications too - not all sephardim lived in development towns, by any means. There was substantial upward mobility by the late '70s, and many of the upwardly mobile young sephardim supported Likud as well.

There are many good sources in English on Israeli history if youre interested. I would recommend the works of Howard Sachar.

[lord of the mark]

meanwhile, back among those "funny" American Jews:

Seattle synagogue 'Kadima' welcomes PM's adoption of name
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER AND GIL HOFFMAN


The Seattle Reconstructionist congregation Kadima "welcomes members from all backgrounds, including multicultural, gay, and lesbian households," according to its Web site, and now it's welcoming Ariel Sharon's adoption of its name.

"[We] wish Prime Minister Sharon the very best with his new party name," Kadima Executive Director Susan Davis told The Jerusalem Post via email. "It is a huge responsibility to use a name as progressive as Kadima," which means "forward" in Hebrew.

"It requires constant vigilance and care in making decisions and carrying out actions that accurately reflect the meaning of the word," she wrote.

The organization was founded in 1978 "as a progressive Jewish political, cultural and social organization" which "integrates celebration, study and social action," according to the information it has posted on its site, www.kadima.org. It has commissioned the "first-ever" Sefer Torah to be scribed by a woman, runs a Jewish-Arab Middle East Peace Camp, and in September became an affiliate of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation.

The endorsement of the US-based Kadima comes on the heels of two local expressions of displeasure at Sharon's choice of moniker.

The leadership of the Israeli town of Kadima - located in the Sharon region - was outraged that the prime minister usurped the name for his party.

And in Beersheba, Kadima is a local left-wing party whose top candidate is deputy mayor. The party has appealed to the Justice Ministry's party registrar to force Sharon to change the name.

[lord of the mark]

"In 1999, at odds with an increasingly centrist Labor, Peretz formed his own political party, which won 2 seats, and increased to 3 seats in the 2003 election. In 2004, he merged his party with Labor, and this November, he challenged Shimon Peres for leadership of the party and won. So now we have this Moroccan, a hero to the Sephardi working class"

granted its not 1999, but am i the only one who sees the contradiction here - hes a hero to the Sephardi working class, whose own party never broke 3 seats?

[lord of the mark]

"here's an election coming in March. Recent polls show that if the election were held today, the Likud, without Sharon, would win only 15 seats. That's... about what the old right wing party, Herut, used to get."

quibble - in the old days Herut WAS the right. Today there are several other far right parties.

[Edan]

Likud down to 10 Knesset seats in new Dahaf Institute survey, while Shas gains 11 seats; Sharon wins with 34 seats, Labor up to 27

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3177094,00.html

[Az]

I saw a fascinating blog post on the Peretz matter recently:

the blog is mostly right. I think it's grouping and branding of the immigrants from all arab countries is completely false, though, and leads to wrong results in some of his conclusions.

for example, there was no real demand or urge of sephardi jews to distance themselves from arabs as the enemy. While many of the prinicples and cultural attributes of jews from arab countries were alien to the just-born Israeli society, this was much more due to socio-economic structure of society of origin of the new immigrants - the latter were on average much more religious, traditional, and 'old school jewish', whilst the ones that ruled the land were, in fact, radicals of their generation.

Also, his association of the voting patterns of likud voters with country of origin reeks of chauvenism - likud voters held strong rightwing positions throughout the entire era they voted for likud, who never actually "fielded" a 'sephardi' as party leader, btw. they did believe in the likud flag, and thus they followed it.

the matter is that this is the first election for a very long time where the core issue of the election is socio-economic, and for the first time for quite a while, you have this candidate with not only a strong stated agenda, but with the credentials to back it up.


of course, the right wing has always tried to smear him as the leader of organized labor ( even I fell for this in the past ), but there are growing numbers of people who don't fall for this bull.

[Eli]

This is really turning into economy centered elections, for the first time in Israeli history.

Did you see the SocialistMillioner ads, Az? "Luck" my ass.

[Az]

If you think that you're smarter and know more about this stuff than the guy who actually owns these millions, I guess something is wrong with the system, which proves his point.

[Eli]

Originally posted by Az
If you think that you're smarter and know more about this stuff than the guy who actually owns these millions, I guess something is wrong with the system, which proves his point.

I do not question his ability to make money(although I admit I have no idea how exactly he made it). There he obviously can speak from authority. But he's no authority in politics, especially when he attributtes the success of wealthy people to luck.

[Az]

I guess you know better than the wealthy man how wealthy men make money. If you're interested, though: he's a chemical engineer by profession, IIRC. he's a member of labor since the early 80s, and he invested in an online gambling site. He's now worth a cool couple of hundreds of millions of dollars after the IPO and the subsequent share rises.

[Eli]

Originally posted by Az
I guess you know better than the wealthy man how wealthy men make money.

Before we start arguing, let's clarify our positions. Do you agree with the assumption in that advert that luck is the major factor in the success(in terms of wealth) of people?

[Az]

A) That's not what the ad said.
B) I do believe that it is a very major component. The biggest? I don't know.

[Eli]

Originally posted by Az
A) That's not what the ad said.
B) I do believe that it is a very major component. The biggest? I don't know.

I never said it was the main message in the add.
The ad said "We, the lucky ones, shouldnt forget the others, yadda, yadda...".

I dont know what you call "success". In my view an Israeli from whom the state takes 40% or more of his income in taxes can be called succesfull.
When we get into the multimillionares and billionares range, I agree that luck is a non-negligeble factor, but when you're talking about the people who manage to earn more than, say, 150% of the average wage luck is not a factor.

That's my problem with this add. When you take a succesfull restaurant owner or an engineer who make, say, 20kNIS a month and the guy who packs groceries and makes 3kNIS a month and say that the difference between them is luck, it becomes easy to justify taking even more of the richer man's money.

Now, I dont harbor any hopes for the sudden dissapearance of taxes or something, but at least dont make them look just. Fine, take 50% of someone's income, but at least have the dignity to feel bad about it.

[Az]

Yes, but when he said "we" he isn't the 20kNIS engineer, is he?

I dont know what you call "success". In my view an Israeli from whom the state takes 40% or more of his income in taxes can be called succesfull.

If you think that every POS engineer that gets this 20k cash is successful, or is considered the bad guy, you're deeply misguided. Taxes aren't about punishment, or reward, or any other fetishist **** anyhow. It's about resources that we need to get stuff done -noone should feel bad about it, because it's not personal. I hope I pay 50% tax some day, too

It's a very simple fact of life. A person who gets 20k-25k NIS per month won't have a life changing experience if he gets an extra grand. However, two people who get 4k each, will experience a dramatic rise in their fortunes if they get 500 NIS each per month. And they won't buy some imported stuff like the engineer - Lower income brackets spend more on things that aren't imported - and in this way you support the local economy, as well.