How Much Does Netanyahu’s Big Win Really Matter?

National Review ^ | 03/18/2015 | Mario Loyola

[SeekAndFind]

Israelis are waking up to the news that not only were the prognostications of a Netanyahu defeat wrong, but that the exit polls showing his party, Likud, and the opposition Zionist Union neck-and-neck at 27 seats each (in the 120-seat Knesset) were wrong too. With 95 percent of the votes officially tallied, Likud has won 29 seats in the Knesset, with Zionist Union gaining only 24. Likud thus emerges strengthened.

It is a sweeping, unambiguous victory for Netanyahu, who is now certain to be the next prime minister. The question is what sort of coalition he will put together. As Elliott Abrams notes, Netanyahu can either form a national-unity government of Labor and Likud, or seek another coalition of center-right and religious parties. But his last right-wing coalition fall apart in December because of friction with the leader of the Yesh Atid party (Yair Lapid) and that party dropped from 19 to 11 seats in the new Knesset, so Yesh Atid is almost certainly out. That makes the other centrist party, Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu, one to watch, but that right-wing-coalition possibility, of Likud, Kulanu, and the religious parties, will be quite beholden to the religious parties. That could generate a lot of opposition against the coalition within Israel a time that Israel faces historic challenges — challenges perhaps best met with a unity government.

With the Islamist tide rising, and Iran everywhere in the ascendant and on the verge of being allowed to keep its nuclear weapons program, the years ahead will be dangerous ones for Israel. In these circumstances, Israeli foreign policy has become largely de-politicized. Nearly 90 percent of Israelis — basically the entire Jewish population of Israel​ — supported the fearsome pummeling Netanyahu gave Hamas last summer. A recent poll shows that more than 70 percent of Israelis oppose Obama’s looming surrender to Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. And while Israelis may aspire to a future of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, that vision while have to wait for another era. The results of the Clinton era “peace process” (namely the Al-Aqsa intifada of 2000–2003) and of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal (namely the rise of Hamas) have demonstrated plain as day that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank now would be suicide.

In that sense, the Israeli elections are important chiefly inside Israel, for domestic Israeli issues. Almost no national-security issue is likely to be much affected by the outcome of these elections. To be sure, as Eli Lake and Josh Rogin point out, a Labor victory would have put Obama in a delicate position. Unlike the 1990s, Labor’s position on national-security issues is almost indistinguishable from the Israeli right wing, but Obama can’t afford to treat Labor the way he has treated Netanyahu. Beyond that, the shape of the next government could affect Israel’s foreign relations: A national-unity government will have stronger footing for a robust foreign policy, whereas a fragile coalition will be more crimped.

But the geopolitical situation surrounding Israel at the moment makes personalities and elections almost irrelevant, because the range of options available to any Israeli government is so severely constrained. Israel has settled into a long-term strategy of reactive perimeter defense. Its leaders are in the same situation as its young soldiers, watching nervously from the ramparts as Israel’s enemies grow stronger, biding their time. Israel can’t do anything to change any aspect of the geopolitical forces bearing down on it — not the situation in Syria, not the ascendancy of Iran and Hezbollah, not the rise of the Islamic State, not even the situation with the Palestinians.

If their memoirs are to be believed, Clinton-administration officials would get depressed when conservatives won elections in Israel, and there are probably a lot of long faces among Obama-administration officials right now. But they should look at the bright side — at least they’ve proven that American presidents can influence Israeli elections. Clinton and Obama have done more than any two people alive to weaken the Labor party and push the entire Israeli electorate to the right.

[Don Corleone]

Thats what you get when you don’t wait for the polls to close in the panhandle of Florida.

[SoFloFreeper]

Oh and the Obama worshipping American media HATES the fact that Bibi won and Bibi won BIG!

Has ANYONE reported that Obama operatives were in Israel trying to defeat Bibi???? (I mean since the election ended.)

[Vendome]

Iran doesn’t get the bomb?

[sickoflibs]

RE :”If their memoirs are to be believed, Clinton-administration officials would get depressed when conservatives won elections in Israel, and there are probably a lot of long faces among Obama-administration officials right now. But they should look at the bright side — at least they’ve proven that American presidents can influence Israeli elections. Clinton and Obama have done more than any two people alive to weaken the Labor party and push the entire Israeli electorate to the right.”

HAHA, rub it in.

[gr8eman]

Iran doesn’t nuke Israel?

[Vendome]

Hopefully...

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Has ANYONE reported that Obama operatives were in Israel trying to defeat Bibi????

I noticed one thing — The White House congratulated the Israeli people on their democratic elections, but here’s what you’ll notice missing — NO MENTION OF BENJAMIN NETANYAHU at all !

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Iran doesn’t get the bomb?

Honestly, even if Isaac Herzog became the Prime Minister, I am sure that the Hawkish defense policy of Netanyahu will remain in place.

The main difference between Herzog and Netanyahu lie in their fiscal and economic policies ( the former is more to the left ).

[TexasCajun]

It’s an old liberal ploy, try to depress the vote by declaring your opponent’s demise.

[SeekAndFind]

This latest elections in Israel is really a second consecutive defeat for Obama (and his policies), BY PROXY.

[bert]

Why it matters....

Some one, we don’t know who, has caused serious problem to the Iranian nuclear effort. If it was Israel under Bibi then it is important that he be allowed to continue the effort.

Although promised by 2010 by American officials, Iran still doesn’t have the job done.

Bibi or the King of Saudi Arabia or possibly both are likely the reason

[V_TWIN]

“Has ANYONE reported that Obama operatives were in Israel trying to defeat Bibi?”

Very few.

Every time I think I understand how despicable obama is, he does something else that shows I underestimated him.

[thirst4truth]

The report I heard, do not know the names of the actors, but one of the campaign metro sexual genius’s that helped BO in his reelection campaign, formed a 501c4, applied and received a grant of $350,000 from the State Department and now congress is investigating if that money from state went directly into Israel to defeat Bibi.

[V_TWIN]

“How Much Does Netanyahu’s Big Win Really Matter?”

“A big game is never one you win,” “It’s always one you lose. If you won the dang thing, well, it just wasn’t big enough.” _ Bobby Bowden circa 1999

If Bibi woulda lost it woulda been “oh he shouldn’t have come to the US and gave a speech”............we never would have heard the end of it. Now that he won, we will never hear ABOUT it.

[EQAndyBuzz]

Elections have consequences. Let’s see what Bibi does.

side note: This would be a great time to see Obama’s college transcripts and who funded his entrance into the colleges he supposedly attended.

[Yosemitest]

Subtitle: OBAMA FAILS AGAIN !

Your tax dollars at work - in defeating Netanyahu?



GOP Congress memebers rip Obama on use of American dollars to defeat Netanyahu (Video)



Obama Using U.S. Tax Dollars and HIS Campaign Team to Defeat Netanyahu



SENATE TARGETS OBAMA MEDDLING IN ISRAEL ELECTION
Committee with subpoena powers eyes group given $350,000 in U.S. tax dollars



EXCLUSIVE: HAS PRESIDENT OBAMA LAUNCHED A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU?

And are these likely children of Obama?

Source:



.... In the wake of the aforementioned murder and another death in the area which was also thought at the time to be another murder, the local chapter of the NAACP is blaming ... (I can't believe I'm typing this) ... the public school system:

NAACP Blames School System for Crime

Two murders in less than 48 hours have the community searching for answers. How can we put a stop to the Meridian's violent crime?

"We should not have to have the crime at this rapid level," Meridian/Lauderdale Co. NAACP President Randle Jennings says.

Jennings says they believe the root of the problem lies within the Meridian public school system. He says many of these criminals drop out, can't find jobs and they run out of choices.

"The criminal is at fault, but what we're seeing is that these are young people that are almost in a position where they're desperate," he says. "I've been in education, my entire life. I've never seen a chaotic community and a sensible, productive school system."

A press release from the NAACP says:

"Meridian school board members consistently expelled or pushed out young people, creating early juvenile offenders!"

By that "logic" that not being able to find a job guarantees a high level of criminal activity American should have utterly imploded during the Great Depression. Note that it didn't.

The demise of Eva Carmichael is just one small item in a long list of such crimes (to be clear, none of the others involve murder) chronicled by Colin Flaherty at American Thinker earlier today.

The press's consistent refusal to give prominence to black youth crime, clearly even murder, is undeniable, pervasive — and a national disgrace.

So WHO is Marcus Steele, II, Juwan McCallum, JaQuis Houston, and Deshay Shively,
and WHY is their MURDER of Eva Carmichael not being publicized by the LAME STREAM MEDIA.?

[scooby321]

I would like to see some Obama’s people in Jail in Israel

[V_TWIN]

“This would be a great time to see Obama’s college transcripts and who funded his entrance into the colleges he supposedly attended.”

Yeah, good luck to us all with that one. If his grades were anything to brag about (and legit) he woulda stuck our noses in it waaaaay back.

[upchuck]

Here's the article that thirst4truth reported on in post 14.