There is now a certain amount of relaxed celebration among the non-Leftists of Israel who are seeing how Netanyahu is leading Barak by at least three-to-two in the polls. In desperation, some on the Left are even calling for Peres to throw his kafiya into the ring and run. Sharon is basically out of the picture, as his pathetic attempt at a campaign speech last week at Likud headquarters illustrated so dramatically. Here we saw Sharon pledging to bring Barak into his government as Minister of Defense, to the howls and booing of the party rank and unemployable.

But before anyone gets too carried away, I think it behooves everyone to understand what the implications would be of a Netanyahu victory in the coming elections.

The problem may be stated simply. As long as Netanyahu would lead any Likud government or Barak any Labor government, the only real difference between the two possible governments emerging from the elections has to do with what the Opposition would be saying, and NOT with what the government would actually do.

Now since that may have left you in shock, let me elaborate. Regardless of whether Netanyahu or Barak will lead the next government, the Israeli government will pursue unilateral concessions and appeasement as its national strategy. It will continue to beg the PLO to sit down at some negotiation table, while offering to accept nearly all the PLO’s demands as a precondition for negotiation. It will continue to conduct "negotiations" with the PLO at the same time that the PLO’s campaign of terror and atrocities continues. It will cointinue to try to hand ALL of the Golan to the Syrians.

So what would be the difference between the two governments? Under a Netanyahu government, the Opposition will scream that there is terror and violence because the Government is not being generous enough or forthcoming enough with the Arabs. Under a Braak government, the Opposition will scream that the Government is being too pusillanimous and weak-willed. In both cases the Government will pursue the same thing.

There is every reason to believe that a 2001 Prime Minister Netanyahu will once again devote himself to trying nonstop to win over the media and the Israeli Left by trying to prove that he can implement the political agenda of the Labor Party even better and with more skill than can the Labor Party itself. That the Likud is the "Me-Too-Labor-Party". That the Likud is more competent at implementing Oslo than Labor, but Oslo it is. This is the lesson from the previous Netanyahu government.

The following was posted and widely circulated days after Netanyahu lost the last election:

Why Netanyahu Lost

Several years back I wrote a piece for the now-defunct magazine Betzedek while Netanyahu was Prime Minister. In it I predicted that Netanyahu was going to lose the next election. The argument went something like this. Since taking office (the piece was written a year into Netanyahu’s reign) Netanyahu had demonstrated that he was pursuing what I called Oslo Lite, which was basically a slightly watered down version of the Labor/Meretz program of the Oslo "peace process". Netanyahu had abandoned Hebron, which even Peres had not done. He was intent on continuing the process of one-sided Israeli concessions (notably later in Wye), and was not serious about conditioning these on PLO compliance, all rhetoric notwithstanding.

My conclusion was that Netanyahu offered the electorate a second-rate alternative incompetent version of Oslo, and that the Likud was trying to be, in fact had been trying to be for decades, nothing more than a Me-Too Labor Party. The Likud was appealing to voters by arguing that it stood for pretty much the same things as did Labor, but would pursue these things more skillfully than Labor.

Since no one in Israel considers the Likud more competent than Labor in ANYTHING, this reduced to offering voters a choice between an incompetent second-rate Labor Party pursuing Oslo half-heartedly, or the original classic true Labor Party. Like with Coke Classic, if offered such a choice, I predicted the voters would prefer the original.

In the short time the Likud held office, Netanyahu managed to achieve record levels of failure. Having been the victim of Labor’s anti-democratic McCarthyist campaign before the previous elections, in which free speech (or "incitement") was declared by Labor to have been the cause of the Rabin assassination and Netanyahu accused openly by Labor of having been the murderer, the Likud did nothing to capitalize on its victimization after its 1996 victory nor to discredit the Left’s McCarthyism. Instead, the Likud tried to out-McCarthy the Left, agreeing that yep incitement had surely caused the assassination but trying to claim that the Left was more guilty of incitement than the Right. In a sense this was true, but it made the Likud look idiotic, like the scene in Seinfeld where Jerry and his girlfriend are arguing over who is the bigger Shmoopy.

The Likud continued the prosecution of anti-Oslo dissidents, and the Zo Artseinu Two were actually convicted and served their time under Likud’s reign, for "incitement and sedition", this for blocking traffic intersections. (Not a single conviction for "incitement" of anyone on the Left or any Arab took place under the Likud rule.) On election day, Haaretz carried a bitter letter from Moshe Feigin, one of the Zo Artseinu Two, expressing the view that there was no reason to vote for Netanyahu as he differed in nothing from the Left. The Likud victory in 1996 was in part thanks to the street protests organized by Zo Artseinu; then Netanyahu rewarded it by prosecuting its leaders for "incitement". Feiglin was a victim of Netanyahu’s support for anti-Right McCarthyism, but not the only one.

In virtually all other areas of policy, Netanyahu pursued a set of Labor policies. Having run on a free-market platform, one of Netanyahu’s first acts in office was to announce that no serious reform of the banking sector would be implemented, this the most essential economic reform needed in Israel. In privatization, things proceeded at the same trickle they had under Peres and Rabin. Deregulation, like the weather, was something to be talked about, except in telecom thanks to Limor Livnat, who came very close to ditching Netanyahu for the Center Party. And the one Netanyahu achievement, inflation dropping to American levels, is generally (correctly) seen as the work of Bank Of Israel’s Frenkel and not the Likud government.

Despite Netanyahu’s campaign about how Barak would divide Jerusalem, despite the pyrotechnics of the last month of the campaign regarding Orient House, there was not a single day of the Netanyahu administration in which the PLO’s illegal offices did not operate in Jerusalem under Netanyahu’s nose, including Orient House and including the PLO "police".

The very worst crime of the Likud government of Netanyahu was the acquiescing in the conversion of Oslo into a national consensus. Until 1996, Israel was divided. After 1996, the entire world could insist that the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Israel to its 1949 borders or worse was a matter of inevitability. There was no questioning of this within Israel, so how could there be overseas? And thanks to Netanyahu, they were correct.

There was no longer any serious opposition in Israel to Oslo suicide. The Likud had adopted Oslo as its own policy and was trying to overtake the Labor Party on the Left. Netanyahu was pow-wowing with Arafat and his reps, including Feisel Husseini. Likudniks were talking openly of adopting Beilin’s plan allowing the PLO capital to be set up in Abu Dis in East Jerusalem. Oslo became a matter of national consensus in Israel due to Likud vacuousness. Opposition to Oslo became moot and mute. This will be entered into the books as Netanyahu’s contribution to history. The would-be Churchill of Israel decided to outflank Chamberlain in his own support for Munich.

The Likud over the past three years made it crystal clear that it was not the least interested in turning itself from a party of yahoos and hooligans into a party of ideas. It had no interest in the ideological vibrancy and rebirth that sent the Republicans of Reagan and the Tories of Thatcher skyrocketing to stellar victory and to social revolution. With all the ruckus over Tiki Dayan’s comments about the "riff-raff" of Likud constituents, there is actually quite a lot of truth to what the bovine Baraknik said. The Likud is very much a party of anti-intellectual demagogues and incompetents. Most party activists and even Knesset Members are people who could not find gainful employment outside soft political jobs. The Likud is the party of unwashed cab drivers, talentless apparatchiks, and the urban unemployable. It is a party opposed to analysis and thought, a party based on screaming one-liners.

Despite some flirtation with intellectuals on the Right before the 1996 elections, such as those comprising the Shalem Center, Netanyahu had no interest in ideas or those who develop them once in office, and most of the rest of the subliterate Likud party leadership could not read a policy proposal if it were elaborated by comic strip characters. Most of the handful of competent people or politicians of depth abandoned the Likud long before the elections. Ehud Olmert was still nominally a Likudnik, but had abandoned Netanyahu when he and Milo were nudged out of the party leadership by Bibi in the early 90s. Milo is a cynical demagogue who ended up in Barak and Beilin’s lap, trying to build a career as a Tommy Lapid clone. Olmert is a smart guy who built his own empire in the Jerusalem municipality and may someday emerge as a Likud Prince Charming.

Among the Likud evacuees was Dan Meridor, who is rather dovish and was driven out by Netanyahu, not over Oslo but over Meridor’s relatively competent running of the Treasury. Benny Begin, about whose competence I have as much doubt as I do over Bibi’s, took the party’s Right out into the wilderness, merging with the quasi-Kahanists of Moledet. Begin had been one of the few Likudniks who believed in something besides promoting his own career.

Limor Livnat was so enraged at Netanyahu that she faked Right, faked Left, and then stayed on with obvious reluctance. Sylvan Shalom was shoved to the sidelines. Moshe Arens, well past 70, is still a smart ideologue, someone with an agenda and ideology, and was brought back to fill the Defense Ministry for a few months after his fruitless challenge to Netanyahu in the 1996 primaries. Uzi Landau is a smart guy but weak in the party and devoid of charisma. There is almost no one else (beside Dr. Yuval Steinetz) with any integrity or an IQ above 85 left in the Likud.

Who is left? Very few Likudniks were left who believed in anything other than their own career advancement. Well, there is Tsahi Hanegbi, Netanyahu’s lapdog, a corrupt little street thug trying unsuccessfully to persuade people otherwise. There is Arik Sharon, who is one of the most corrupt and least principled politicians in the history of the country. Netanyahu had to scrape so far down in the bottom of the Likud barrel to fill cabinet posts that he made Yehoshua Matsa the Minister of Health and Meir Sheetrit Finance Minister. Netanyahu even made Shaul Amur, a know-nothing loyalist who is not qualified to be a janitor, into a cabinet minister. And Netanyahu could find no one at all to replace Mordecai as Defense Minister after he bolted.

The appointment of the touchy-feely Itzhak Mordecai himself was testament to the emptiness in Likud ranks of people of quality. Mordecai in 1996 had wanted to run with Labor, but Labor had a surplus of generalissimos, and Netanyahu thought he could use at least one, so he gave Mordecai the Defense Ministry. This insane act came back to bite Netanyahu in the crotch with Mordecai taking out the Likud Left to set up the Center Party and then dropping out at the last minute to support Barak.

No one has ever gone bankrupt underestimating the intelligence of the Israeli voter. The Labor Party of 1999 is far worse than that of 1992, when Labor still ran on a platform of Zionism and non-recognition of the PLO and determination to fight terrorism with force. Labor was not trustworthy back then, but convinced the public that its lunatic Left would be held in check by Rabin, a general thought to be tough and hawkish. In fact it became clear quickly after the election that the lunatic Left of the party controlled Labor and controlled Rabin, who joined it with enthusiasm.

Now years later the public has chosen to make exactly the same silly gamble. The Labor Party is more extreme than it was before 1996, indistinguishable from Meretz and moving in the direction of the Arab anti-Zionists. Barak is a Rabin, in the worst senses of the term. Like Rabin, his entire career has been in the military (Rabin actually had a diplomatic post and brief stint as Prime Minister before 1992). Like Rabin, Barak does not believe in anything, has no agenda besides holding power, and so will be easy roadkill for the ideologue Far Left within Labor, the Beilins and Ramons and Pereses. These will lead him by the nose, as they did Rabin. (The previous sentences were my prediction the same week that Barak took power after his election. --Cyber)

When Labor takes power, it is all but impossible to dislodge it, due to the near-totalitarian set of controls it exercises. Labor has a hegemony over the media, over agriculture, the trade unions, the health system, the pension system, an alliance based on patronage with most of big industry and commerce, a near-monopoly over the chattering classes, including the universities, and a shallow and questionable belief in democracy. Its minions dominate the army elite and the police, and the courts. In its years in office, Netanyahu and the Likud did not contest Labor’s control over a single one of these areas of power, and in fact continued to acquiesce to taxpayer financing of Labor’s power bases. Netanyahu was reluctant to endorse any change in the media, despite his attempt to drum up support by grumbling about its bias.

It took the debacle of the Yom Kippur war to dislodge Labor from its monopoly perch the first time around in 1977. It took Shimon Peres’ cosmic stupidity and exploding buses in Jerusalem to do so the second time. And it may take a blood bath of Jewish martyrs killed by Arabs and produced by Oslo to do so again. If there is a hell, I am sure it contains a special level reserved for those who assist the Israeli Labor Party in seizing power. Labor automatically gets the votes of Arabs because they believe Israel is more likely to disappear under Labor. Likud needs a large majority of the Jewish vote just to squeak through to victory, and this time Barak seems to have even taken a small majority of the Jewish vote.

There is a Midrash that when Adam was created in the Garden, God ordered him "Teemshol", govern. The first command given to humans was also the first order of the day to be abandoned by the Likud government of 1996. The Likud was committed to NOT governing, to promoting the Labor Party, to financing the partisan institutions of the Labor Party, to satisfying itself with putting a bunch of Likud hacks into cushy pork barrel jobs and then keeping the Labor ship it had inherited on its Labor-Oslo course.

In Barak’s victory speech, he promised a rapid unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. Moments later the Hizbollah sent a barrage of Katyusha rockets crashing into northern Israel, sending the population scrambling into shelters. The Hizbollah was celebrating ITS victory and taking advantage of the interregnum confusion. Barak had the Jews packing and Hizbollah wanted to make their stampede run faster. Doe-eyed Labor supporters appeared on TV expressing their anguish in near tears: Barak has just promised a withdrawal from Lebanon, they cried, so why is the Hizbollah shooting rockets at us? I love it when Israeli Leftists answer their own questions.

Copyright © 2000 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission