Tel-Chai Nation: If Naftali Bennett's career is over, he may deserve it

World Israel News has an analysis of now former Israeli government education minister Bennett's fortunes following the catastrophe of his "New Right" party, which did not make it over the threshold for the Knesset:

Those dreams may have ended with what is turning into his biggest misstep. In December, Mr. Bennett unceremoniously dropped the Jewish Home party, which he led, in order to found the New Right party.

The Jewish Home is still angry, justifiably so as Mr. Bennett left the party in disarray. In a sign bad blood still exists, senior Jewish Home members on election day disseminated video clips of Mr. Bennett four years ago telling voters to choose Jewish Home. Mr. Bennett complained to the Central Elections Committee, which ordered Jewish Home to cease and desist.

The Jewish Home party only survived the elections because it combined with still smaller religious-Zionist parties.

The bigger problem for Mr. Bennett is that he burned bridges with his national religious base, which is likely to view any political comeback by Mr. Bennett with a jaundiced eye after his shattering act of disloyalty.

More to the point, the voting public is furious because Bennett's laughable maneuver cost them thousands of votes at the ballot box:

Mr. Bennett had hoped the soldiers’ vote, which is counted later, would put him over the top. It did not. The New Right came up 1,461 votes short. No party has missed the threshold by such a small number.

The more important number is 138,491 — those who believed in the New Right and saw their votes wasted. They’ll think twice before signing onto any Bennett ticket in the future.

My sister is one of those people who had her vote wasted by a man whom I've come to view as an utter disgrace. To make matters worse, he even - at least initially - resorted to the classically cheap notion of trying to siphon voters from Likud, proving he lacked faith in his ability to convince voters on the left to try him out. After all the hard work Netanyahu did to get Jerusalem and the Golan Heights recognized by the US, and they return the favor by making it sound like he's suddenly going to turn traitor overnight?!? That was degrading. It goes without saying if Bennett hadn't split up, there might've been another seat or two won for the right-wing bloc, and he just had to ruin everything.

And while Ayelet Shaked may not be innocent in all these mistakes either, she did do a positive job as justice minister, and now Bennett cost her a Knesset seat too. She may be able to rejoin the Likud, where she once worked, and even work as a non-parliament minister, but it still doesn't excuse the damage Bennett's wrought. Therefore, I honestly think it best for him to retire, and his grave errors serve an important lesson why you don't just simply divide the right, period, and you also don't act desperate for a neighboring party's votes instead of convincing the other side of the spectrum to try your platform.

Update: Bennett's managed to get the central elections committee to do a partial recount of votes. We'll see how well things fare from here.

Labels: Israel, Knesset, Moonbattery

Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura said this
(in a letter to his father in year 1488 August 15 CE):

“Jews in Muslim lands make themselves appear poor.

They go about like an impoverished, despised people,
with their heads bowed before Muslims.”

SOURCE: Pathway to Jerusalem:
the Travel Letters of Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura
(page 40) written between 1488 CE and 1490 CE
during his journey to the Holy Land,
translated by Yaakov Dovid Shulman,
year 1992 CE, 93 pages, CIS Publishers,
Lakewood, New Jersey, ISBN 1-56062-130-3

QUICK BIOGRAPHY NOTE: Rabbi Ovadiah
of Bartenura’s commentary on the Mishnah
is still studied very often, even in our times.

-------------------------------------
Martin Gilbert said:

“The conquests of Islam made Jews the subjects
of Arab and Muslim rulers in a wide swath of land,
stretching from the Atlantic coast of Morocco
to the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan.

Being non-Muslims, these Jews held the inferior
status of dhimmi, which, despite giving
them protection to worship according to their
own faith, subjected them to many vexatious and
humiliating restrictions in their daily lives.”

SOURCE: In Ishmael’s House:
A History of Jews in Muslim Lands
(introduction chapter, page xx)
by Martin Gilbert, year 2010,
Yale University Press

-------------------------------------
Martin Gilbert said:

“In the 5th century [of the Common Era] Yemen
[the land immediately south of Saudi Arabia]
adopted Judaism as its religion.

King Ab Karib Asad, the ruler of the Himyarite
kingdom, introduced the change after converting
to Judaism himself under the influence of Jews
at his court.

Many south Arabian converts to Judaism followed.
Jewish rule in Yemen lasted almost 100 years.”

SOURCE: In Ishmael’s House:
A History of Jews in Muslim Lands
(chapter 1, page 5) by Martin Gilbert,
year 2010, Yale University Press

---------------------------------------

Martin Gilbert said:

“Internal Koranic evidence shows that the
Jews of Medina [a city now in Saudi Arabia]
were steeped in rabbinical tradition.

While celebrating him [Mohammed] as an
unlearned person, the hadith
[Islamic holy books] acknowledges
that Mohammed was confounded by
the learned questions of these Jews.”

SOURCE: In Ishmael’s House:
A History of Jews in Muslim Lands
(chapter 2, page 13) by Martin Gilbert,
year 2010 CE, Yale University Press