Israel's Fading Leftists

Earlier this week, I reported that a group of 'intellectuals' planned to sign a call for a 'Palestinian state' in the same hall in Tel Aviv in which Israel's 1948 Declaration of Independence was signed. While I made plain in that post that I disagreed with them, I did not give you any indication of how many other Israelis did.

The 'signing' took place on Thursday, and the JPost reports that 'dozens' of Israelis came out to protest. We have no indication of whether the protesters exceeded the signers and their supporters, but it is possible that they did. Even in Tel Aviv, which is the last remaining bastion of the Left. But in an editorial today, the Post ties that event in Tel Aviv to the Left's deeply declining popularity in Israel.

At this writing that editorial is not yet online (I read it in the paper edition). I will try to post a link to it once it is online. But here are some key facts you need to know:

1. A survey taken in March shows that if elections were held today, the Right wing parties (including the ultra-Orthodox parties) would receive 71 seats in the Knesset, compared with 39 for the Left. In the current Knesset, it's 65-45. The other 10 seats are held by Arab parties. That means that more than two thirds of Israeli Jews identify themselves as Right.

2. If elections were held today, Defense Minister Ehud Barak's breakoff party from Labor, which is called the Independence party, would not win a single seat in the Knesset. Technically, that doesn't mean that he couldn't be Defense Minister. Practically, it makes it very unlikely. Given that Barak is blocking construction in Judea and Samaria, this could actually give the Right an incentive to bring the government down if Netanyahu says something they don't like in Washington.

3. Most Israelis disagree with Barack Obama's claim that this is the time for new 'peace initiatives.' The same March survey (taken by the Smith agency for Globes, which means it's about as neutral as you're going to get in this country) says that 70% of Israelis don't want any new 'peace initiatives' as opposed to 28% who do. That pretty much agrees with the Right-Left identification in paragraph 1.

4. The Post continues to believe that most Israelis would make significant concessions for 'peace,' but they don't see 'peace' happening. The reason that most Israelis are willing to make concessions is in order to keep Israel 'Jewish and Democratic,' although at least their willingness to make concessions doesn't extend to national suicide. In practical terms, that willingness to make concessions is meaningless, because (a) peace isn't happening and (b) Israelis have been sold straw rather than gold on the demographic issue. Most Israelis are still living in the Left's conception of demographics, which is based on the lies and half truths issued by the 'Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.' If Israelis knew the truth (which I view as my duty to get out), they would tell the 'Palestinians' to put their 'state' where the sun don't shine.

Labels: demographics, Ehud Barak, Israel's suicidal Left, Israeli Knesset, Tel Aviv

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:51 AM

The Bush Knesset Speech

Seth Coulter Welles, HuffPost

According to 29-year CIA veteran and former NSC official Bruce Riedel, Wednesday's announcement of joint peace negotiations between Israel and Syria revealed President Bush's diminished standing in Middle East affairs.

"Think of the irony," Riedel said. "George Bush goes to Jerusalem last week. He gives an impassioned speech about never dealing with nasty regimes [that sponsor terror]. He basically says 'don't make agreements that appease [them].' And less than a week later, the Israeli government announces it is engaged in peace negotiations with the Assad dictatorship in Syria. We're talking about a rather distasteful regime that likely had a hand in the murder of [former Lebanese Prime Minister] Rafik Hariri. I guess [Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert didn't think the speech was meant for him."

Riedel, who served as a special assistant to the president until 2002 and is now with the Brookings Institution, said the lack of weight accorded to Bush's appeasement speech "shows more and more that the Middle East is not listening to him anymore, as does the deal announced in Doha for Lebanon today." In that Doha agreement, the Iranian-supported Hezbollah secured effective veto power within Lebanon's next cabinet -- an arrangement that is sure to frustrate any future efforts to disarm the political party that the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.

Turkey's mediation of Israel-Syria talks has been "an open secret" in the region for the last month, according to Riedel. "A lot of very serious Israeli thinkers have felt for some time that the Syria agreement could be a strategic way to break out of the logjam that Israel is in," he said. "There's no holy Jerusalem to contend with, no refugees. It's a simple land for peace swap, and everyone knows what the price is: 100 percent return of the Golan Heights, in return for which they would get a full agreement with Syria. ... If this works, it would demonstrate that negotiating with Assad's Syria can produce serious and important results for a democracy like Israel."

But not all observers are that optimistic. Independent analyst and Israeli political adviser Dahlia Scheindlin cites a recent report by the War and Peace Index that suggests Israelis are more willing to consider a compromise over certain areas in Jerusalem than they are likely to approve of any deal with Syria that involves relinquishing the Golan.

According to that study, only 19 percent of Israelis support the idea of giving up the Golan, while 40 percent are willing to consider giving up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. "It's sort of counter-intuitive and surprising," Scheindlin said, "you wouldn't think it would be quite so emotional. But the Golan has been annexed for so long, it now feels like part of Israel. The people who live there are considered regular Israelis, not settlers. Also, they've been through this many times before. Talks start and end faster than you can say 'jackrabbit.' So there's a lot of cynicism. While this story is leading the news today, it could easily be gone tomorrow."