On Saturday, Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon (Likud) said Barak’s “private political agenda” threatened the “dissolution of the government.”

Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz (Likud), who was a guest in Beit El’s endangered Ulpana neighborhood on Friday, accused Barak of using the defense ministry as political tool against Jewish residents of the Samaria, Binyamin and Judea regions.

Ministers have reportedly informed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) that if the Ulpana neighborhood of Beit El is destroyed, his coalition will follow.”
now realisticlly, what seems like a bigger issue in terms of realpolitik? and can you imagine what a hullaballu it would have been if the announcement of dissolving the government had been accompanied by the annexation of area c? i think there are some very fundamental issues/demands of the fanatics/settlers behind the wheel here. and i don’t think it’s just a matter of whether they serve in the military. if the settlements were to threaten the relationship of the government and the courts? that would be arockin the ‘democracy’.

That means you, or someone that you are friends with has to take up the Quilotian/or breakthrough effort.

Fanatic positions will not suffice. They have to have a pragmatic strategic path, not just a stated ethical requirement.

The dismissal of the liberal/center left is an expected result of this phase of history of the two-state.

That is that a prerequisite to successful and plausible negotiations, Palestine must be unified (Fatah and Hamas and street – less so). Then there is a single negotiating entity. (Not all that different than the 20 year jockeying between the Congress – Gandhi, and Indian nationalist – Bose, parties in the 30′s and 40′s. Eventually, Congress achieved dominance and the nationalist parties acquiesced.)

But, when the left appears to support the unification of Hamas and Fatah, they inevitably have to proceed through the gauntlet of being accused of disloyalty.

Its only an impractical strategy if abandoned. If determined, it will succeed.

That is one of the great tragedies of the renunciation of the two-state approach by some progressives, that in adopting a single state strategy, they abandon the unity of Palestinian communities, in the name of solidarity.

They mistake tactic for strategy, and imagine that they are moving forward, when the winds blow all back to nothing (leaving room for the right’s determined strategic intention.)

Anyone see the video of the discussion between Daniel Gordis and Peter Beinart (on the tablet website)?

Gordis invoked fear and rejection of the Palestinians (“they are unwilling to negotiate”) as the only juice in the glass.

The question was of tribalism, to which both Gordis and Beinart agreed was the range of conversation.

Gordis described the significance of tribalism in the terms of what we have to defend against ONLY (one definition of tribalism that is of the nature of military scope of leadership.)

Beinart’s thesis, though he didn’t articulate it distinctly, is that what we are comprehensively (secure, free AND ethically coherent AND kind) is the measure of leadership of a tribe.

Is the good neighbor (the mensch) the one that only defends against possible attacks, or is the good neighbor the one that is simultaneously secure, unintrusive, communicative, cooperative?

That is the argument.

That and the question of whether one’s responsibility is to react, or to actively create good relationships with those that are willing.

And then, to coherently describe that there are those that are genuinely willing among Palestinians to live as good neighbors to good neighbors. (This is where the farther left in supporting isolation – BDS – ironically destroys all that is really possible.)

The language of warning (only, sadly), is the same message of Israel to both Iran and to Palestinians.

How does one change consciousness? By kindness, by path, by coherency, by suggesting what it means to be a mensch that is different than the defensive.

We have disgracefully deteriorated because of our eager belief that dark corners of jewish tribalism are our true identity, whatever the liberals say. This dark tribalist stuff was pushed by Begin, Sharon and Netanyahu as a true essence of our identity (Golda and Olmert spoke in the same spirit too), in place of humanist idea of liberal zionist statehood. So we find ourselves in a train fast moving to abyss. People do not wish to protest attacking Iran not only of shame to be called cowards, but out of deep identity malaise.

Benyamin Netanyahu succeeded in making us his entangled followers because he inherited the identity of hating the world (inhabited by amalek)and we dutifully took this for impersonation of “true jewish identity”, to be preserved by all means, also at the cost of collective disaster (with a foreign passport and close to airport personally).

We have to get out of this trap. We have to change accent in our identity. It is vital.
KOL HAKAVOD TO YOU, dear Larry.
Zecharia

“Netanyahu was spotted at MIT in 1973 and the grooming began there when he was in his early twenties. After graduating, he received a high-paying job at Boston Consulting. His boss was Ira Magaziner (CFR). But he quit the job in 1979, returned to Israel, starting selling furniture at the Rim company, then organized an anti-terror convention. Inexplicably, the CFR sent a team of their biggest guns including George Bush Sr, Richard Perle and George Shultz to this unknown 27-year-old’s get-together. Once the convention was over, Netanyahu returned to work selling home furniture for three years until 1982, when Washington Ambassador Moshe Arens invited him to be his deputy. He claimed the choice was indirectly made by those who came to his convention and “were impressed with his performance.” That means Bush and Shultz pressed Arens to bring Bibi to Washington. From there, they pushed his career higher. In 1985, Shultz chaired another anti-terror convention in Washington supposedly organized by Netanyahu. By the time Bibi was UN Ambassador, Schultz visited him every time he was in New York, and that was often.”