Mofaz, Dahlan meet; Israeli Mnstr suggests ''drown Palestinian priso

Mofaz, Dahlan meet; Israeli minister suggests to ''drown Palestinian prisoners in Dead Sea''

<snip>

((Mofaz)) "I personally, as defense minister, want to give this process a chance, and I will make every effort to make this progress advance, but without endangering in any way the security of Israel's citizens," Mofaz told reporters.

Meanwhile, Israel's Transportation Minister Avgidor Liberman, asked to serve in a committee to decide the details of the release of the Palestinian detainees, rejected the offer.

The minister said that he would be happy to drive the prisoners to a place where they will never come back from. During the Sunday cabinet meeting, Liberman, the leader of the far right wing Russian immigrant party Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home), suggested to drown the Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea.

http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=253475&lang=e&dir=news

Kind of like Dr Doolittle's Push-me-Pull-me...

Ha'aretz Follow-up to this story.

Lieberman blasted for suggesting drowning Palestinian prisoners

By Gideon Alon

A storm erupted in the Knesset plenum yesterday, following Transport Minister Avigdor Lieberman's reported proposal to provide buses to take the Palestinian prisoners that Israel releases to a place "whence they will not return."

According to another report, Lieberman said the prisoners should be drowned in the Dead Sea and he would provide the buses to take them there.

<snip>

"How can you suggest transferring thousands of Palestinian prisoners to the Dead Sea and drowning them there?" Dahamsha asked in a debate on traffic accidents. Lieberman retorted that MK Dahamsha visited an Arab murdered in Afula by Palestinian terrorists.

The Arab Knesst members were furious. MK Talab A-Sana said "that's the ultimate fascist statement, shame on you."

<snip>

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=315541&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

This statement is similar to those made by French minister when visiting England a year or so ago, commented that Israel was something to the effect of "a shitty little country". He was forced to resign. This may work out that way for Liberman also, who spoke his personal feelings on a matter of state importance. This should not be allowed.

On edit: The headline of article refering to a meeting with Mofaz, the Israeli Defense minister, including his picture, and then quoting Liberman saying Israeli minister says...., is very misleading and amounts to manipulative reporting.

:grr:

Y'know, the pollies can say what they like only in parliament without fear of legal repercussions and stuff? Somehow I doubt this guy would be forced to resign, seeing as how Benny Elon is still a cabinet member despite his criminal actions...

A note on yr edit: Lieberman was included in the headline of the story and it looked like a two-for-one deal to me. Nothing misleading or manipulative about that at all, as news stories with more than one angle are published on a regular basis by most media sources...


Violet...

because of the rules. I thought it would be obvious upon examination.

but the question is he be tolerated? I think Uri Avnery hits the nail right on the head in this excerpt from one of his articles. Liberman will be more than tolerated because he's one of the 4 senior partners in Israel's Right-Wing Cabal.

Liberman has done a lot more than speak his personal feelings on a matter of state importance. For years he's been acting on them and implementing dangerous policies that have escalated the violence against Israelis.

Americans for Peace Now, an American Jewish Peace site, has been denouncing Liberman's activities- as you can see he did a LOT more than express his personal feelings- he has been driving the hate train for years and pushing disastrous policies that innocent Israelis are paying for.
-----
From June 2001

Maariv daily published this morning a "bypassing political obstacles" initiative for building beyond the green line. Behind this initiative are Housing minister Nathan Sharanski, and Infrastructure minister Avigdor Liberman. The initiative suggests transferring the marketing of land for building in the territories to local authorities, without publishing tenures and without being exposed to the public.

Publishing the initiative in the eve of secretary of state, Colin Powell's, visit, shows an intention to sabotage the diplomatic process.

Ministers Sharanski and Liberman obviously do not understand the full meaning of democracy, law and order. The initiative they suggest is an act of deceit, towards the Israeli public, the Palestinians, and the whole world. Should this initiative come about it will prove that the Sharon-Peres government is working towards inflating the conflict.

The Mitchell report clearly states that all settlement building should be stopped. Ministers Sharanski and Liberman intend to bypass the understandings that the Israeli government has accepted, by hiding the building from the public eye.

http://www.peacenow.org/shalomachshav/transfer0601.html



******************************************

Sharon has created exactly the government he intended to set up right from the beginning: a government of the radical right that will do the things the words were designed to hide. At most he was ready to imprison the Labor party in this government, shackled hand and foot, to act as a fig-leaf.

Amram Mitzna has to be commended for refusing to fall into this trap. When Sharon tried to divert his attention by his prattle about peace, Mitzna demanded that he put his words in writing and sign them. Sharon threw him out.

If there had been a competition for the nomination of the four most extreme anti-Palestinian chauvinists in Israel, the winners would surely have been Ariel Sharon, Effy Eytam, Avigdor Liberman and Tommy Lapid. And here they are, wonder of wonders, by sheer accident, the four senior partners in the new government. (Other candidates for the title would have been Benny Eilon, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Olmert, Tsachi Hanegbi and Uzi Landau, all of them ministers in the new government.)

<snip>

When one understands the aim, the composition of the new government is eminently reasonable. It is custom-made. Sharon at the helm. The army in the hands of Shaul Mofaz, the most brutal Arab-fighter of them all. The police in charge of Tsachi Hanegby, a rowdy whose career began with pogroms against Arab students at the university. Eytam building housing units in the settlements. Liberman, himself a settler, responsible for the roads. The treasury, that must finance all this, in the hands of Netanyahu.

<snip>

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery03042003.html
******

...angry, because Liberman, together with National Religious leader Effi Eytam and some of the Likud leaders, is in the vanguard of the dirty column that is besieging Israeli democracy. <snip>
<snip>

Liberman’s program shows clearly that something similar is happening now in our country. They started with the incitement against the Arab citizens and their expulsion from the political system. Now they speak of eliminating the “extreme left.” Is there any doubt, that in the next stage they will demand the elimination of all the left, “moderate” and “patriotic” as they may be? And then, following the historic precedents, it will be the turn of the “liberal” Likud members.

An apocalyptic vision? Not really. The President of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, this week compared our situation with Nazi Germany . In the presence of the President of Israel , the Chief Justice, himself a Holocaust survivor, said that “if it has happened in the country of Kant and Beethoven, it can happen everywhere. If we do not defend democracy, democracy will not defend us!” <snip>

In Israel , we don’t like to make comparisons with the dark regimes. The memories are too fresh, and nobody in Israel advocates genocide. But undoubtedly, parties and leaders who openly advocate “transfer,” would have been called anywhere else in the world Neo-Fascists (even if the term “Neo-Bolsheviks” would be more appropriate, since it was Stalin who used to transfer whole peoples in the Soviet Union .)

<snip>

For 54 years, the State of Israel has prided itself of being “the only democracy in the Middle East. ” All Israeli propaganda abroad, and especially in the United States , is based on this slogan. Now Liberman and the Libermen come and try to destroy Israeli democracy, our creation, and to set up a kind of Fascistan, somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan .

If somebody is “defaming our country abroad,” it is surely this person.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/avnery/avnery12.html

There will be no peace in Israel until Americans STOP excusing and tolerating this vile, repulsive cabal.

This fellow Liberman has no business being in any government: he ought to be tossed out on his ear.

Thank you for your vote of reason!

There are dangerous right-wing governments throughout the world right now and the entire international cabal needs to go. A few years ago, I noticed their emergence with growing alarm.
Is it really a coincidence? Is this the New World Order Bush Sr promised?

He sounds like a real skunk of a person, and there should be no place for someone like that in any government...

Cheers...

Violet...

These Knesset members are both immigrants from the former Soviet Union. They grew up under Soviet oppression. The concept of democracy has not, as noted, been internalized completely. They are part of the Immigrant Aliya party, which is why they are tolerated. It is an influencial group in Israel, with a sizable representation. They have been in the government not more than 10 years, perhaps less. I'll have to see if I can verify that.

Here are a few paragraphs from the biography of Sharansky:

Once freed, Sharansky labored on behalf of other dissidents and then turned his attention to issues confronting Soviet immigrants. He became head of the Zionist Forum, an organization dedicated to lobbying on behalf of Soviet immigrants. Increasingly disappointed with Israel's absorption of the large influx of Soviet Jews, he wrote frequently on the subject, and in 1995 created a new political party, Yisrael b'Aliyah, dedicated to helping immigrants' professional, economic and social acculturation. In the elections the following year, the party won seven Knesset seats, and Sharansky was named Minister of Industry and Trade.

Sharansky served as Minister of Industry and Trade from June 1996-1999.

He served as Minister of the Interior from July 1999 until his resignation in July 2000.

In March 2001, Natan Sharansky was appointed Minister of Housing and Construction and Deputy Prime Minister.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/sharansky.html

And Lieberman:

Avigdor Lieberman was born in 1958 in the USSR and immigrated to Israel in 1978.

Elected to the Knesset in 1999, he served as a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

In March 2001, Avigdor Lieberman was appointed Minister of National Infrastructures.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/ALieberman.html


Sharansky was elected to the Knesset in 1996 and Lieberman in 1999. Both are rather new to democracy and to the political process.

If both are new to the whole concept of democracy and the political process, why is Liberman a Minister in the Sharon govt? I don't know details about how the Knessnet operates, but aren't there back-benches that idiots like that can be stuck on for however many years it takes them to grasp the concepts needed to participate in a worthwhile manner in a parliament?

Has there been any government censure of what was said by Liberman?


Violet...

Lieberman's party, which was a the merger with another right-wing party, had decided to leave the government in Sept of 2001 in protest of Sharon's policies in the administered territories. However, the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavham Ze'evi of Moledet party, by a Palestinian terror group, caused them to change their mind and remain in the government.

Sharon called for a broad co-alition, to which he welcomed every party, from the beginning of his formation of the government after his election in 2000, and also in 2003. He has tried to work a balance between the right and left wing groups in order to gain a consensus among the Israeli public.

The National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu faction in the Knesset decided today not to resign from the government. Its previous decision to resign nine days ago was rescinded when one of its two leaders, Minister Ze'evi, was assassinated only hours before the resignation was to go into effect. At the time, Ze'evi and his co-leader National Infrastructures Minister Avigdor Lieberman explained that the army's withdrawal from the Abu Sneineh and Haret A-Sheikh hills in Hevron was the "last straw" and that Sharon was not fighting a strong enough war against Arafat's terrorism. Today, however, Lieberman recommended that his colleagues not vote to quit the government.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=11836

So Lieberman and the Moledet and National Union parties, stayed in the government.

He represents the more than 1 million immigrants form the former Soviet Union. It is up to each party to chose candidates for the Knesset list, and then the number of votes that party receives determines how many on that list receive seats in the Knesset. That's how the system works. Lieberman is a democratically elected member of the Knesset.

does anyone except for the Israeli people have the right to toss anyone out of the government? He was elected. I disagree with him, as do you, but that is no reason to throw him out until the Israelis themselves do it in an election.

They had damned well better do it quickly: the wretch is not fit.

It seems to me Sharon has some say who sits in his cabinet: he could request a resignation, even at the risk of breaking his coalition.

In this instance, he ought to do just that.

My point was only that only the Israelis have that right, and no one else.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the Israeli political system seems much more closely related to ours than to those in the US. I doubt that it's entirely true that only the people can remove someone from their parliament. The party can force the offending member to resign and the people can't do jack-shit about something like that. And I'm not sure whether in that case it'd be the people or the party itself that selects a replacement...

Violet...

The party WON'T. That should be clear to someone who knows about Israeli politics. Even if they do, it would still be Israelis removing them, Israelis who are supposed to represent a portion of the people. Anyway, the majority of the people can't do anything about this anyway, in the multiparty system in Israel. Does anybody know what position Liberman has within his party? I know I'm ignorant of such things; I pay far more attention to the major parties.

I don't know if disciplinary measures can be taken in a case such as this. Parliamentary immunity applies for some law, but can be lifted in certain cases, as when the Arab MK who spoke in a Syrian pariamentary session advocating attack on Israel, or so he was charged. His immunity was lifted so that he could stand trial.

Lieberman's comment seems qualified enough that it may pass on closer examination. That is, he said it as though it was a personal opinion, and not actually recommending the action be taken. Although it did raise a furor in the Knesset, apparently no action was taken to punish him.

Since the merger with the National Union-Yisrael Beitenu party, Lieberman is a faction leader in that party.

Edit: to correct spelling errors