36 replies to this topic

[pnwguy]

AnBr, on 13 January 2020 - 05:08 PM, said:

If only our left-wing would realize this.

I fear the Bernie-bots will sabotage any moderate nominee that might get selected. They would give Warren a pass but not do much to work for her election. And if Bernie gets the nod, I think the predictions that Dumpster has a 40 state blowout will be accurate.

[LFC]

Netanyahu gave up on his request for parliamentary immunity so the corruption case against him will go forward. He seems to be putting all his eggs in the Trump basket, hoping that Trump's newly announced Middle East peace plan will buoy him out of his political problems and therefore out of his personal ones. Good luck with that. Trump has a track record of dumping "losers" like you, Bibi.

Quote

Hours after Israel’s prime minister withdrew his request for parliamentary immunity from criminal prosecution early Tuesday, the State of Israel vs. Benjamin Netanyahu was filed at Jerusalem’s District Court, where it was assigned docket number 67104-01-20.

With that act, Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit triggered an irreversible course leading to the trial of Netanyahu, who is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, and the first to be indicted while in office. He stands accused of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery.

If convicted, Netanyahu could face about 10 years in jail.

The date for the first hearing in his case has yet to be announced, but is expected to be set for days or weeks after Israel’s election day on March 2.

Depending on the result of the vote, Israelis will decide whether Netanyahu, who failed to form a coalition government that would guarantee him immunity after elections held in April and September 2019, will stand before the three-judge panel as an indicted prime minister, caretaker prime minister, or former prime minister.

A previously untested law permits a sitting head of government to be indicted while remaining in office. Netanyahu was able to delay the formal court with his request for immunity from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Had that ploy been successful, court proceedings could not have begun until after the end of his term.

But Netanyahu, who is just a caretaker prime minister at the moment, and whose bloc of parties does not enjoy a Knesset majority, withdrew his request rather than face the humiliating prospect of a defeat. In the 2019 campaigns, he had promised he would never stop asking for parliamentary immunity. But in the predawn hours of Tuesday, he did.

At that moment, in fact, Netanyahu was in Washington, D.C., preparing to join President Donald Trump for the highly anticipated presentation of Trump’s plan for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. His evident political calculation is that what Trump has called “the deal of the century,” even as a nonstarter, will bring potent political benefits to his campaign.

[golden_valley]

LFC, on 28 January 2020 - 04:24 PM, said:

Netanyahu gave up on his request for parliamentary immunity so the corruption case against him will go forward. He seems to be putting all his eggs in the Trump basket, hoping that Trump's newly announced Middle East peace plan will buoy him out of his political problems and therefore out of his personal ones. Good luck with that. Trump has a track record of dumping "losers" like you, Bibi.

He could easily join hands with the poor beleaguered man who is pursued by political enemies

[LFC]

Things are still looking shaky for Israel's incredibly corrupt PM and infamous Trump-buddy. In fact with his baseless accusations and attempts to use the power of the state to attack his political rivals he looks a lot like Trump without the stupid hair and orange face dye.

Quote

An elated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu roared “this is the biggest victory of my life!”—but that was Monday.

By Thursday, his voice hoarse, a tired Netanyahu growled, “We won’t let them steal the election!” In the words of Netanyahu’s centrist rival and Israel’s probable next prime minister, Benny Gantz, “Someone here celebrated too early.”

Then came a remarkable cascade of bad news for Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, and its first to be indicted while in office.

Avigdor Lieberman, his onetime defense minister and now a fearsome nemesis, announced his support for a law proposed by Gantz, a former army chief of staff, which would bar an indicted legislator from being appointed to form the government.

Such a law would eliminate any route to immediate political survival for Netanyahu, whose trial in three separate cases of bribery, fraud and breach of trust is scheduled to open in Jerusalem District Court on March 17.

In an almost unseen instance of Israeli multi-partisanship that Israeli media call “the anti-Bibi coalition,” this law enjoys the support of 62 members of the 120-member Knesset, from the majority-Arab Joint List through the left-wing Labor Party, and now, unto Lieberman, a hardline secular right-winger.

Further, Lieberman, who holds seven potentially king-making Knesset seats, announced that he would recommend Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin choose Gantz to form the next government.

It is the third election in under a year in which Netanyahu—and Gantz—have failed to secure an operating majority of the Knesset, but for Netanyahu the stakes are higher.

Alon Pinkas, Israel’s former consul general in New York and adviser to former prime minister Ehud Barak, noted in an interview with The Daily Beast, that, “For the third time in one year, Netanyahu pushed for an election with one goal in mind: getting a 61-seat majority to grant him an immunity from prosecution over three severe indictments he is facing. For the third time he failed.”

Netanyahu “could not form a government in April 2019, September 2019 and he cannot and will not form a government following the March 2020 election,” said Pinkas. “Cut the electorate however you want, in all three instances a [slim] majority sent a resounding ‘no’ to his anti-democratic, anti-legal, it’s-all-about-me message.”

And Netanyahu was about to receive another blow.

Late Thursday, Moshe Yaalon, another former army chief of staff and the most hardline rightist in the Gantz centrist coalition, agreed to support a minority government led by Gantz, with the support of the Joint List, the Arab-majority party that leapt from 13 Knesset seats to 15 even as Netanyahu intensified his attack on Arab citizens, who form 21 percent of Israel’s population.

“Gantz is joining forces with terror supporters!” Netanyahu declared in a meeting of his coalition members. “Gantz's move undermines the foundations of Israeli democracy and subverts the will of the voter. We’ll stand strong against it.”

Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh, 45, a Haifa attorney and one of the election's biggest winners, replied that, “Netanyahu wouldn't recognize what democracy is.”

“Pack your things, Bibi,” Odeh tweeted. “You're going home."

As the situation unfolded Thursday night, Netanyahu asked his attorney general to “immediately” open a criminal investigation into alleged Lieberman electoral shenanigans a decade ago. Lieberman responded with a press release: seven laughing/crying emojis and not a single word.

By dawn on Friday, an increasingly cornered Netanyahu was accusing Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel, who chairs Israel’s electoral commission, the body responsible for counting the votes, of criminal malfeasance. Netanyahu promised to petition the supreme court to investigate Hendel’s political affiliations.

The rest gives a good background on what happened including Netanyahu's pandering to the hard religious right, a demographic that is shrinking and leaving him vulnerable.

[Traveler]

I thought they bred like rabbits and avoid serving.

[George Rowell]

Since Yitzhak Rabin's untimely death it has been a succession of thugs. Get rid of one, breath a sigh of relief but then another one pops up, just like a fair shooting gallery.

[AnBr]

It's called whack-a-mole.

[LFC]

Gantz gets his chance to form a government. Hopefully disgust with Netanyahu will allow him to get it done. It's not going to be easy.

Quote

Israel’s ex-military chief Benny Gantz was due to be nominated Monday to try to form a government but talks continued with his bitter rival, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on an emergency alliance to combat coronavirus.

Gantz, who heads the centrist Blue and White party, won recommendations on Sunday from a thin majority of lawmakers to form a coalition government after almost a year of political paralysis in Israel.

But his path there is difficult given the deep divisions within the factions that backed him, which include the mainly Arab Joint List and the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu.

Netanyahu — Israel’s longest-serving premier and the first ever to be indicted in office, on graft charges — has insisted that voters on March 2 elections gave him a mandate to continue as prime minister.

The vote, Israel’s third inconclusive election in less than a year, saw Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud secure the most seats.

But, along with its religious party allies, Likud fell three seats short of a majority of 61 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.

President Reuven Rivlin was due to meet Gantz, 60, later on Monday to officially grant him a maximum of 42 days to try to form a government, a task which proved impossible for any candidate following the two elections last year.

Gantz has an “hollow mandate,” political columnist Sima Kadmon wrote in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, referring to the potentially crippling divisions within the anti-Netanyahu camp.

[pnwguy]

Prime Minister For Life?

The model for Dumpster. Jared will be taking careful notes.

[LFC]

pnwguy, on 18 March 2020 - 09:12 PM, said:

Prime Minister For Life?

The model for Dumpster. Jared will be taking careful notes.

What a f***ing piece of shit. Not that he's worse than our world class turd.

[LFC]

Netanyahu goes Trumpian in his whining about people being pissed off about his incompetence and corruption. He's even attacking peaceful protestors, just like Trump.

Quote

A perfect storm of grievances has enveloped Israel just as a second coronavirus lockdown appears inevitable and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems close to losing control of his government.

Protests were held in more than 200 cities and highway junctions all across Israel on Saturday night, and on Sunday, Netanyahu said money from the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was funding the mounting demonstrations.

Hard-liner Netanyahu heads a rickety coalition formed only in May with former rival Benny Gantz, a centrist former army chief, following a year and a half in which Israelis went to the polls three times, never giving either leader enough support to form a workable government without the other.

On Sunday morning, Netanyahu’s only comment about the rallies, which drew thousands in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, was to repeat a conspiracy theory that the Wexner Foundation, an American philanthropy, is funneling Epstein money to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, which he is using to “organize the protests.”

Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the peaceful protesters, arresting 28.

[LFC]

Netanyahu was in the courtroom where his hearing played out. He threw a little hissy fit and walked out. Pathetic. I guess he thinks he can bluster and bully his way out of it. Who knows, maybe he can.

Quote

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told judges in a Jerusalem court on Monday that he is innocent of corruption charges before abruptly standing, saying "thank you very much" and leaving with his motorcade.

Netanyahu quit the courtroom some 20 minutes after the start of Monday morning’s hearing, which continued on without him. The sessions kick-started the second phase of a precedent-setting legal procedure, which, for the first time, involves the indictment of an Israeli prime minister while still in office and campaigning for elections in the coming weeks — the fourth in two years.

Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the Jerusalem District Courtroom where the trial is taking place is a “humiliating” departure for Netanyahu’s usual setting “in front of the flag of Israel, and in a position of power.”

[golden_valley]

LFC, on 08 February 2021 - 05:23 PM, said:

Netanyahu was in the courtroom where his hearing played out. He threw a little hissy fit and walked out. Pathetic. I guess he thinks he can bluster and bully his way out of it. Who knows, maybe he can.

I think he can. He's gotten away with it so far. Trump is the same and will be able to get by with it too. I despair.

[LFC]

Israel held yet another election and once again remains a clusterf***. Here's Josh Marshall's (paywalled) take:

Quote

Both the politics and the existence of Israel have long been matters of great fascination and importance to me. But my interest, engagement, commitment has ebbed as the country’s politics have become not only more right wing but more consistently absurd over the last decade. The animating question of Israeli politics is no longer the Arab-Israeli conflict, questions of political economy or religion but overwhelmingly the question of one man: Benjamin Netanyahu. He entirely dominates what is called the ‘national camp’ and two or perhaps three of the country’s other parties are right wing parties which are founded around their principal’s personal disputes with Netanyahu. Every few months there’s another election. When Netanyahu wins he becomes Prime Minister. When Netanyahu loses he also becomes Prime Minister. Why pay attention?

Yesterday Israel held its fourth election in two years. Polls suggested Netanyahu would finally be able to create a government of the right which requires at least 61 seats in the country’s parliament, the Knesset. Indeed, I assumed he would do so quite apart from the polls simply because of his management of the Coronavirus, or rather the vaccine. Israel has had its ups and downs with COVID like most countries. But Netanyahu cut a deal with Pfizer to get to the front of the vaccine line in exchange for giving the company detailed access to statistics from the rollout and impact of the vaccine. For a relatively small number of doses Pfizer could get the whole country as a clinical trial.

Say what you will the proof of the pudding is in the eating: Israel is light years ahead of every country in the world in terms of vaccinating its population – due to the aforementioned deal with Pfizer, the country’s compact size and relatively small population and a fairly centralized health care system. Given that the country has been so closed divided in the three previous elections and he needed only a handful more seats to build a government, I would have figured that undeniable success would have gotten him there.

But it didn’t.

The latest results, albeit still not complete, show Netanyahu just short of the 61 seats necessary to form a government. That assumes that another right wing party founded by one of his erstwhile proteges would join his government even though that party leader hasn’t committed to doing so. It looks like the anti-Netanyahu camp is also just short of the numbers it would need. There’s the additional problem that the anti-Netanyahu camp is a mix of groups that have nothing to do with each other and includes parties arguably to Netanyahu’s right. As I said, Israeli politics, always ridiculous, is now increasingly absurd.

But this brings us to the one new and interesting thing about this result. The wildcard in all of this is a right-wing Islamist party called the United Arab List and its leader Mansour Abbas.

Israel has always had Arab political parties in the Knesset and it has long had Arab parliamentarians from the country’s mainstream Zionist parties, especially from the Druze community which has a different relationship to the state than the rest of the country’s Arab population. Arabs make up just over 20% of the population. But the Arab parties are pretty much by definition non- or anti-Zionist parties. And there has long been a taboo around including them in sitting governments, though they have sustained governments from the outside, like Rabin’s peace-making government in the early 1990s.

What is distinct about Abbas is that he went into the election with a much more transactional view of working with the other parties. He has said he would be open to supporting either camp and would make a decision based on what they would offer in terms of support for the Arab sector, with the focus being on bread and butter things like public resources, more effective policing, etc. In other words, not things anything to do with the occupied territories or the big ideological issues which separate Jewish Israelis from the predominantly Muslim Arab population.

It doesn’t hurt that as with most Islamist parties, he’s pretty right wing, particularly on things like LGBT rights, which means has common cause with the big chunk of the rightist camp which is made up of religious/ultra-orthodox parties.

Israel has two ultra-orthodox political parties, one catering to ultra-orthodox with European ancestry and the other with ancestors from the Muslim Middle East. They too have long taken a highly transactional approach to politics, getting all manner of exemptions and public financial support for their communities. They actually have quite a lot in common with the Islamist parties.

Because of the centrality of the Arab Israelis minority status in a Jewish, Zionist Israel the Arab parties are generally, sorta kinda classed with the Israeli left. But while the main Arab parties have tended to be nationalist/secularist or even socialist/communist, certainly many Arab Israeli voters are right wing or traditionalist once you get past that one overwhelming issue. In several recent elections (there have been a lot of recent elections) all the Arab parties had run together in what was called the Joint List and in the 2020 election they’d garnered 15 seats. Abbas’ party pulled out of that amalgamation to run on its own. And they managed to pass the electoral threshold and will likely have 5 seats in the next Knesset. That means that Abass is now the kingmaker. His party’s support could give either the Netanyahu rightist bloc or the anti-Netanyahu bloc enough seats to form a government.

Whether anything can actually come of this remains to be seen. But it is something new.

[LFC]

This take from TDB leans more towards Netanyahu losing power without a power sharing agreement. The pre-count declaration of victory sounds eerily like Trump. So does the vast corruption.

Quote

Benjamin Netanyahu declared a huge right-wing victory after Israel’s exit polls were released on Tuesday night only to discover—as the votes were counted through the early hours of Wednesday morning—that the parties in his bloc had fallen just short.

It was a gut punch to Netanyahu who thought he had achieved an historic and decisive victory with 61 seats narrowly surpassing the 60-seat threshold to form a rare, stable right-wing coalition.

“You gave a huge victory to the right and the Likud under my leadership,” he crowed. “It is evident that a clear majority of Israeli citizens are right-wing, and they want a strong and stable right-wing government to preserve Israel’s economy, Israel’s security and the land Israel.”

With around 90 percent of regular ballots counted, his dreams of an unadulterated right-wing government were crumbling. Neither of the main blocs were on course to win a majority, setting the stage for another protracted round of coalition negotiations or, even worse, a fifth election in two years to be held in the coming months.

Even before another election can be held, Netanyahu could be forced out of office within weeks.

The full results, including half a million mail-in ballots, are expected to be announced by Thursday, but Netanyahu already appeared to have virtually no path to forming a new government.

While Netanyahu’s opposition is fractured, the results—if borne out by the final count—will dramatically affect Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and the first to be indicted on criminal charges. For the past year, Netanyahu has held onto power through a fragile power-sharing agreement which survived the opening of his trial on fraud, corruption and breach of trust opened last May. But without that agreement, Israel’s ragtag collection of opposition parties are expected to immediately vote in a new Speaker, and bring to the table a law that would prevent an indicted prime minister from staying in office.

As a result, Netanyahu finds himself a hair’s breadth away from losing power even though his party, with an estimated 30 or 31 seats, is the largest faction in the 120-seat Knesset.

[Sinan]

I sure hope so.

[LFC]

Bibi may be toast (paywalled). Josh Marshall claims that Netanyahu is the primary impediment to functional politics in Israel.

Quote

The final results of the fourth successive Israeli election are now in and the verdict is clear: Netanyahu lost. Or to put the matter more precisely, the results make it almost impossible for him to form a government. His bloc, which includes his Likud party and a group of far-right and religious parties, gained 52 seats. You need a minimum of 61 to form a government. Another natural ideological ally, the Yamina party led by an erstwhile Netanyahu lieutenant named Naftali Bennett, has resisted sitting in yet another Netanyahu government. But at the end of the day they probably would. But even that’s only 59 seats, two short of the bare minimum to form a government.

The other batch of seats up for grabs is the right-wing Islamist party led by Mansour Abbas. At least two of the parties who could make up a Netanyahu government have categorically ruled out joining a government with Abbas’s party. Given the record of the last twenty years it’s hard to ever count Netanyahu out. But he seems to be out.

Not that there’s any logical opposition government. The remaining 61 or 68 seats that Netanyahu can’t are entirely ideologically incoherent. They range from centrist to leftist Zionist parties which could more or less easily put something together but also include hard right Zionist parties, a left-wing Arab party, right wing Islamist party and that’s before you get to the various parties which are basically just dissident factions of Likud which formed new parties because they hate Netanyahu.

It’s all such a mess there’s a serious discussion of forming a short term government which would simply pass a law barring anyone currently under indictment, as Netanyahu is, from serving as Prime Minister. In other words, a government whose sole act would be to remove Netanyahu from the political scene before yet another election.

This all brings the matter into some focus. Netanyahu has gone from being Israel’s indispensable man (in the eyes of his supporters, who are legion) to the man whose presence makes it impossible for the state to govern itself. You can’t simply take Netanyahu out of the picture and assume that most or perhaps any of the parties would remain in their current configuration or levels of support. But if you could, it would be fairly simple to put together a robust and stable government of right wing parties. You just take the right wing parties in the Netanyahu camp and add the right wing parties in the opposition camp and they make up at least 70 seats.

Like I said, it wouldn’t actually work that way. Removing Netanyahu from the scene is like pulling the string out of the necklace. Everything falls apart. And the new far-right nationalist party, which Netanyahu lured into existence to sustain his rule, is probably one that at least some of the center right parties wouldn’t join. But it’s Netanyahu himself that currently makes Israel ungovernable. We hear again and again that Israel is bitterly divided down the middle and can’t be governed. That’s certainly the verdict of the last four elections. But the constellation of different parties at the moment are all basically situated around him. It seems highly unlikely that a post-Netanyahu Israel would elect a government of the left. But there are various right wing or centrist governments one can imagine, with fairly broad coalitions, as long as Netanyahu isn’t in the picture. He’s like the stuck cargo ship which has to be removed before functioning politics in the country can resume.