(Continued from p.3)
Reagan and the Tories of Thatcher skyrocketing to stellar victory and to social revolution. The Likud is very much a party of anti-intellectuals. It is a party opposed to analysis and thought, a party based on screaming one-liners. Despite some flirtation with intellectuals on the right before the 1996 elections, such as those comprising the Shalem Center, once in office Netanyahu showed no interest in ideas or those who develop them. Most of the handful of competent people or politicians of depth abandoned the Likud long before the 1999 elections. The appointment of Yitzhak Mordechai as Defense Minister was in itself testament to the emptiness in Likud ranks of people of quality. In 1996, Mordechai had wanted to run on the Labor list, but Labor had a surplus of generals and Netanyahu thought he could use at least one, so he bestowed upon Mordechai the Defense Ministry. This insane act came back to bite Netanyahu, with Mordechai taking out the Likud Left to set up the Center Party, and then dropping out at the last minute to support Ehud Barak.The Labor Party of 1999 is far worse than that of 1992, when Labor still ran on a platform of Zionism, non-recognition of the PLO, and determination to fight terrorism with force. Labor was not trustworthy back then, but convinced the public that its lunatic Left would be held in check by Yitzhak Rabin, a general thought to be tough and hawkish. In fact, it became clear after the election that the lunatic Left of the party controlled Labor and controlled Rabin, who joined it with enthusiasm.
Now, seven years later, the public has chosen to make exactly the same silly gamble. The Labor Party is more extreme than it was before 1996, indistinguishable from Meretz and moving in the direction of the Arab anti-Zionists. Barak is a Rabin in the worst sense of the term. Like Rabin, his entire career has been in the military (Rabin actually had a diplomatic post and brief stint as Prime Minister before 1992). Like Rabin, Barak does not believe in anything, has no agenda besides holding power, and so will be easy roadkill for the ideological far Left within Labor, the Beilins and Ramons and Pereses who will lead him by the puppet-strings, as they did Rabin.
When Labor takes power, it implements a socialist Ancien Regime of near absolutism. It is all but impossible to dislodge it, due to the near-totalitarian set of controls it exercises. Labor has hegemony over the media, agriculture, the trade unions, the health system, the pension system, an alliance based on patronage with most of big industry and commerce, a near-monopoly over the chattering classes, including the universities, and a shallow and questionable belief in democracy. Its minions dominate the army elite, the police, and the courts. In their years in office, Netanyahu and the Likud did not contest Labor's control over a single one of these areas of power, and in fact continued to acquiesce to taxpayer financing of Labor's power bases.
The Likud continued to funnel public funds into the Histadrut and the socialist kibbutzim, which are partisan institutions serving the Labor Party. The Likud voted for the bailouts of kibbutz debts, passed mainly before the Likud took office but with Likud support. Netanyahu was reluctant to endorse any change in the media, despite his attempt to drum up support by grumbling about its bias. He never got around to fully legalizing the Arutz 7 radio station, whose closure will no doubt be among Barak's first acts in office. Ezer Weizmann was reelected under the Likud government, with Likud suport. In the days before the election he led the behind-the scene manipulations to get Barak elected by inducing the last minute drop-outs from the Prime Ministerial race of Yitzhak Mordechai and the Arab Azmi Bishara (who would have siphoned Arab votes from Barak). Barak obviously cut a deal with Bishara for which Israel will shortly be picking up the tab, probably in the form of putting convicted Arab murderers back on the street.
It took the debacle of the Yom Kippur War to dislodge Labor from its absolutist perch in 1977. It took Shimon Peres' cosmic stupidity and exploding buses in Jerusalem to do so the second time. And it may take a blood bath of Jewish martyrs killed by Arabs and produced by Oslo to do so again. Labor automatically gets the votes of Arabs because they believe Israel is more likely to disappear under Labor. Likud needs a large majority of the Jewish vote just to squeak through to victory, and this time Barak even took a small majority of the Jewish vote.
When Adam was created in the Garden, it is said that God ordered him "Teemshol," to govern. This early command given to humans was also the first order of the day to be abandoned by the Likud government of 1996. The Likud was committed to not governing, to promoting the Labor Party, to financing the partisan institutions of the Labor Party, to satisfying itself with putting a bunch of Likud non-entities into pork barrel jobs and then keeping the Labor ship it had inherited on its Labor-Oslo course. The first act of the Likud after losing was to come begging to Barak to be accepted into a Labor-led "national unity goverment," this to allow Likud leaders to preserve some patronage jobs for its unemployable rank and file.
Netanyahu has resigned as Likud party chief,
(Continued on p.5)
Outpost - 4 - June 1999