Maybe Ariel Sharon was once hawkish, but he abandoned it
Published by Avi Green on Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 12:23 AM.
Power Line usually has plenty I agree with, but I'm going to have to seriously disagree with this item written here in which Paul Mirengoff, apparently one of those kind of people who doesn't have proper insight on Israel, says:
And isn't "pragmatic" a positive word? Ariel Sharon, who should be remembered in history in disgrace and shame, did NOT form that pretentious party for any positive reasons. It was little more than a pathetic, selfish vanity project, which he did because he wanted to form what he thought could help to conduct "peace negotiations" with the PLO, and to make concessions, which also led to what Sderot now has problems with. How can Paul say that Sharon formed Kadima for any productive purpose? That's not just ill-informed, that's also misleading his audience. Many people in Israel believe that the reason for the "disengagement" was so Sharon could please the anti-nationalist camp and evade a prosecution that the attorney general was threatening him with. If that's so, Sharon was a pure coward.
Update: here's an older subject worth noting: Yisrael Medad had an op-ed published in the Forward about how the so-called Israeli prime minister is throwing away democratic values for the sake of political correctness.
While it was interesting to read about, the part about the newspaper themselves that annoyed me, as he explained on his own blog, was that they apparently have a policy that the description for Judea/Samaria should be "west bank". No kidding. That could explain why the Forward was never really my favorite weekly newspaper in print.
Meanwhile, Kadima members reportedly have criticized Livni's refusal to consider joining Netanyahu. This is understandable, since many Kadima members probably do not share Livni's ideology. Indeed, I think it's fair to say that Kadima, formed a few years ago for pragmatic reasons by the hawkish former Likud chairman Ariel Sharon, has been essentially a party without an ideology. It is thus a bit much for Livni to insist that, in he name of her ideology, the party sit on the sidelines at this crucial moment in Israel's history."Hawkish"? In fairness, Sharon may have once been, but in the end, he betrayed just about anything and everything he ever stood for. I think the phrase "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" applies quite perfectly in a situation like this one, because, as I wrote a few years ago, Sharon had a very disturbing history of corruption.
And isn't "pragmatic" a positive word? Ariel Sharon, who should be remembered in history in disgrace and shame, did NOT form that pretentious party for any positive reasons. It was little more than a pathetic, selfish vanity project, which he did because he wanted to form what he thought could help to conduct "peace negotiations" with the PLO, and to make concessions, which also led to what Sderot now has problems with. How can Paul say that Sharon formed Kadima for any productive purpose? That's not just ill-informed, that's also misleading his audience. Many people in Israel believe that the reason for the "disengagement" was so Sharon could please the anti-nationalist camp and evade a prosecution that the attorney general was threatening him with. If that's so, Sharon was a pure coward.
Update: here's an older subject worth noting: Yisrael Medad had an op-ed published in the Forward about how the so-called Israeli prime minister is throwing away democratic values for the sake of political correctness.
While it was interesting to read about, the part about the newspaper themselves that annoyed me, as he explained on his own blog, was that they apparently have a policy that the description for Judea/Samaria should be "west bank". No kidding. That could explain why the Forward was never really my favorite weekly newspaper in print.
Labels: Israel
