The Ape has been let loose at The Conversation.
A human rights activist at a university? Talk about going roaring retro. There hasn't been one of those since the seventies. The last time Che Gorilla was at a university come to think of it.
Israeli elections:
the return of the centre
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bruising victory in Israel’s election was costly.
The hawkish atmosphere over electing members of the 19th Knesset saw the highest voter turnout since 1999 and some surprise. The wind did blow to the right of politics, which is not to say that it did not deliver its host of surprises. Israel’s political representatives have ratcheted up the rhetoric.
Before voting, Netanyahu sensed danger from such contenders as Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, a grouping keen to abolish military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox civilians along with a host of generous subsidies.
Atid eventually came in with 19 seats, second to Netanyahu’s Likud at 31 (down from 11 seats from the previous election).
“The Likud government is in danger, go vote for us for the sake of the country’s future,” Netanyahu proclaimed on the eve of the election.
Prior to the election, Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu coalition was obsessed by a battle of the right wings. Habayit Hayehudi(Jewish Home), lead by Naftali Bennett, former head of the Judea and Samaria Settlement Council, was seeking to position himself as a possible “powerbroker”. As the new glamorous reactionary, he did not do quite as well as he had hoped. His influence is, however, unmistakable.
Given the nature of Israeli politics, coalitions are a frequent thing. Netanyahu will be in search of allies. They are not likely to stem from Bennett’s side, given that the software tycoon is more than happy to go the distance with reactionary politics. His position, in part, makes Netanyahu look like an enlightened progressive. For one, Bennett has decided that Israel should give up the ghost on reaching any consensus with the Palestinians. His party, as noted in The Economist, is “a brash reincarnation of the venerable but moribund National Religious Party.” Jewish settlements in the West Bank are promoted with fire brand conviction, and annexation has not been ruled out as a possibility.
yawn read on
The Ape was moved to say this in response to another commenter.
If you are basing your opinion on the rot that pours from Robert Fisk in Lebanon then there is absolutely no chance of any correlation between it and historical accuracy or even the truth. Fisk has never been right about anything. His analysis is instinctively and violently anti-Israel and anti-American and so therefore the laws of probability would suggest he would get something right over twenty five years or more. Not Fisk. Whether it is the Israeli elections or civil society, the rise of Hezbollah, Iraq, the Arab Spring, Palestinian intransigence, Islamism, you name it, Fisk is always wrong. Its uncanny.
The Israeli election result came as a surprise only to those who get their news from the Western Israel-hostile media or who take the opinions of Israel bashing Western academics seriously. From Chomsky to Lynch none of them are worth feeding. It's about time we stopped feeding them. None of them could earn an honest living outside the universities but at least the dole or a disability allowance would be cheaper.
The roadblock to peace is not Israel. Only if you set aside history and the facts could you conclude that. A "Palestinian" state was first proposed by Israel in 1949 and has been continuously on offer since. It is quite dishonest to ignore the detailed and specific proposals including the quite extraordinary offer by Olmert in 2008.
The roadblock is Palestinian, indeed Islamic, intransigence. Since the Islamic Revolution and the rise of Islamism the problem is worse now than it has ever been before. This has been accompanied by a global blood curdling rising tide of genocidal antisemitism that threatens Jews everywhere but especially in Europe including the UK.. It is quite simply vile to ignore this or to blame Israel and the Jews for it (as Fisk does)
So is the refusal of Western academics, politicians and commentators to acknowledge or even to talk about this. It is considered rude in "polite" trendy circles to even raise the subject.
