Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Message of Israeli election: Turn to the right; the left wing falls off


Lieberman's rise useful -Nathan Diament

[T]here is fundamental message that [Avigdor] Lieberman's prominence [in] the election, coming shortly after the military action in Gaza, can be said to send to policymakers in Washington and other capitals. To borrow from a classic movie: Israelis are mad as hell and they're not going to take it any more.

More soberly said, the surge of votes for the Center-Right parties and the collapse of Labor and the Left can and should be portrayed as the electoral embodiment of a message to policymakers, in Israel and abroad, that the old formulae for addressing the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be mindlessly pressed yet again.
[Jerusalem Post]
{Note: In Israel "right" and "left" do not connote ones commitment to government social intervention. In fact, some of the most "right wing" folks in Israel support strong welfare-state interventions. Instead, those labels reflect the extent to which an Israeli is willing to cede land for peace, an increasingly irrelevant notion.}

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