All entries for Saturday 26 January 2008
January 26, 2008
Ehud Barak's Dangerous Electioneering
Writing about web page http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1201070796183&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Israel believes Iran has a clandestine uranium enrichment operation beyond the one in Natanz and suspects that it is already working on warheads for ground-to-ground missiles, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview to the Washington Post published Saturday.
Ehud Barak is using increasingly militant language towards Iran, Palestine, indeed anyone remotely feared in Israel. If he is not talking absolute crap, we can at least safely dial down the threat-factor of anything he says. Very soon, he’ll be running for election as Prime Minister, well in the knowledge that one of the reasons he lost in 2001 was because he was perceived as too soft on the Palestinians – the rhetoric was that he made huge concessions at Camp David and all that came from that was the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Whilst this is demonstrably untrue , he knows that he must shake off this image. He seems to be doing this by getting more and more agressive, knowing that a battle with the former Prime Minister Netanyahu (his opponent in the elections) will be fought on the right.
The problem for the moment is that Barak is inflaming tensions and rivalries. He is advocating violent solutions when the opposite is appropriate, purely because it polls well. The mechanics of electoral politics are in danger of inflaming current tensions
Update
Just came across a fascinating, if shocking quote from Barak regarding the Palestinians.
They (the Palestinians, and especially Arafat) are the products of a culture in which to tell a lie … creates no dissonance. They don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category.
From Benny Morris, Camp David and After, cited in Naseer H.Aruri, Dishonest Broker: The US Role in Israel and Palestine, p.173
Obviously very clever – whatever the Palestinians say in defence of themselves, Barak can just dismiss it as lies.
Christopher Rossdale
26 Jan 2008 12:32
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Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu Ehud Barak Israel Israel And Palestine Party Politics
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