יוצאים לדרך - Let’s go
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke last night with President Shimon Peres and updated him on the decision to form a broad national unity government. The Prime Minister said, “Unity restores stability. A broad national unity government is good for security, good for the economy and good for the people of Israel
Knesset - Israeli Government, where today at 2:00 am Israeli time, the new National Unity government with Kadima and Likud was formed.
ϟ No elections: Kadima to join government
Late-night political drama: Early elections averted as Likud, Kadima agree on unity government. Shaul Mofaz appointed deputy PM, to take part in key security meetings. Coalition to promote haredi draft.
No elections, Kadima joins government: In a dramatic move, the Likud and Kadima parties agreed on a unity government early Tuesday, averting the prospect of early elections.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz finalized the surprising unity agreement hours before the Knesset was expected to approve its own dissolution and set September 4th as the date of the next elections.
PM Netanyahu announced that Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz will be appointed deputy PM and minister without portfolio, while also being included in Israel’s security cabinet. Mofaz told Kadima members the party will likely get more portfolios later on, apparently in 2013. As part of the deal, Kadima will also chair the Knesset’s Finance Committee.
Senior government officials said they had no early knowledge of the plan to form a unity government. Key coalition figures Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) and Eli Yishai (Shas) endorsed the deal, Netanyahu said.
We must stop beating ourselves up and blaming ourselves,The reason there is no peace is that the Palestinians refuse to recognize the State of Israel as the Jewish people’s nation state.
This is not a conflict about 1967, this is a conflict about 1948, about the State of Israel’s very existence. You must have noticed that yesterday’s events did not take place on June 5, the day the Six Day War erupted, they took place on May 15, the day the State of Israel was established.
—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu(Source: ynetnews.com)
ϟ We need Begin, not Ben-Gurion
By EVELYN GORDON
Both left and right need to relearn Begin’s lesson: Any Jewish state is better than none.
The Altalena seems to be on many commentators’ minds these days, mine included, but most of those who cite this incident misidentify its hero. The man Israel needs today isn’t the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, he’s former prime minister Menachem Begin.
The Altalena was an arms ship belonging to the Irgun, Begin’s pre-state underground. The ship reached Israel in June 1948, a month after statehood was declared, and Ben-Gurion ordered the arms transferred to the provisional government unconditionally (Begin had agreed to the transfer in principle, but wanted input into where the arms were sent). When Begin refused, Ben-Gurion – in a move subsequently credited with establishing the principle of the government’s monopoly over armed force – ordered the ship shelled. Survivors reported being shot at, even after they fled the burning ship and were helpless in the water. Sixteen were killed, and Irgunists begged Begin to authorize revenge attacks.
Begin refused to retaliate. However viciously Ben-Gurion’s government had acted, or might act in the future if this slaughter elicited no response, nothing, as he later wrote in his memoir, The Revolt, could be as bad as a “fratricidal war” that would “destroy the Jewish state before it was properly born.” For any Jewish state was better than none at all.
This is a message both left and right in Israel desperately need to relearn. But, for lack of space, I’ll defer the left until next week and focus on the right…As I wrote last week, their disdain for democracy and the law is understandable, but their disdain for the state itself is another matter – because, by every parameter they themselves claim to value, our imperfect Jewish state is infinitely better than no state at all.
Jewish settlement? Yes, the 2005 disengagement uprooted some 9,000 settlers; outpost evictions have uprooted additional dozens, maybe even hundreds, and more may well follow. But, under the Jewish state’s protection, the number of Jews inhabiting the Land of Israel has risen from 650,000 in 1948 to 5.9 million today, including hundreds of thousands in the Biblical heartland of Jerusalem and the West Bank…
Access to holy places? Thanks to the Jewish state, Jews can pray freely at the Western Wall, Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs and other sites from which successive foreign governments barred them for 2,000 years. That Jewish worship remains forbidden at some sites, like the Temple Mount, is indeed shameful. But, without the Jewish state, the list would be far longer.
Saving Jewish lives? Yes, the state is sometimes delinquent in protecting its citizens; its ongoing tolerance of rocket fire from Gaza, for instance, is disgraceful. But the approximately 14,500 Israelis killed in all wars and terror attacks combined since 1948 pales beside, say, the six million Jews murdered from 1939-45…
Observance of Jewish precepts? True, Israel isn’t a halachic state. But it’s the only state in the world where government offices serve, and major supermarket chains sell, only kosher food; where the army is forbidden to make soldiers do nonessential work on Shabbat; where the government subsidizes yeshiva studies; where Shabbat and many Jewish holidays are mandatory days off…
Yet all these achievements are endangered by extreme right-wing extremism…the worst danger of all is civil war. Certainly, that isn’t the extremists’ goal. But, if they keep attacking soldiers, some soldier will eventually feel threatened enough to open fire…
...Jewish history is one long lesson in the catastrophes that occur when Jews raise their hand against other Jews. Begin understood that, and taught it to his followers. We desperately need someone who can do the same today.
(Source: jpost.com)
