Partners in bombast: Eitam and Hikind

Dov Hikind and Effie Eitam are each posturing loudly about their support for the Gaza settlers set to be moved out by the government in early summer. Hikind says he will bring thousands of American supporters of the settlers to Gaza. Eitam says he will move to Gush Katif this spring. The two grandstanding politicians - one a New Yorker, the other an Israeli - are made for each other in their preference for outsized rhetoric, and their failure to perform. Neither of them will come close to coming through on their recent statements, which are only serving to further poison an already debased debate. For those who don’t know him, Hikind is a state Assemblyman from New York, where he represents the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Borough Park. He is nominally a Democrat, but has a Shas-like tendency to cross party lines to support whichever politician is more likely to serve his interests. Hikind backed a Republican for governor in New York over then-incumbent Mario Cuomo in 1994, for example. Newly elected Republican Governor George Pataki returned the favor by hiring Hikind’s wife and brother and accrediting a school whose managers later ended up convicted of financial shenanigans. Hikind's website’s legislative section is virtually non-existent, and the most he can show for actual accomplishments is that he convinced the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City to add Hebrew and Yiddish language instructions to the machines that sell subway entrance cards in a few Jewish neighborhoods. Even 'NY Post' told Hikind to butt out With little real work to do, Hikind busies himself sticking his nose into matters in which his ultra-Orthodox constituents feel they should have influence. In this case, it is their safe-from-a-distance effort to preserve every scrap of land of the Biblical Israel in Jewish hands even at the expense of the blood and limbs of young Israeli soldiers and scores of Palestinians, let alone a chance to unravel the tangled knot of Israeli-Palestinian interconnectedness. Hikind’s claim is a non-starter, and even the New York Post, that bastion of knee-jerk right-wing politics, has told him to butt out of our affairs. Now, let’s look at retired IDF General Effie “Messiah” Eitam, who is fresh from destroying what is left of the once-influential National Religious Party. He now heads the new Religious Zionism Party, a two-man show destined to go nowhere. In a form of grandstanding as preposterous as Hikind’s, Eitam has stated loudly (that is, in front of the same microphones, notebooks and cameras that give Hikind glee), that he plans to move to Gaza’s Gush Katif community despite an IDF order banning Israelis from moving to Gaza Strip settlements slated for evacuation. He's not moving anywhere There has been speculation Eitam's legal immunity as a Knesset member would keep him from facing charges. But don’t believe for a second that Eitam has any serious intention of moving there. It is simply another publicity stunt designed to inflame the political situation. The famously intemperate Eitam was kicked out of a Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee session last month after charging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with incitement, that all-purpose term Israelis throw around when they want to scare people. That and other incidents show that Eitam has no standing as a reasonable person with something constructive or productive to say. I would like to see Eitam and Hikind together in front of one microphone sometime soon they’d spend so much time jostling for position the press would walk away in exasperation. It would be just the response they deserve.

Partners in bombast: Eitam and Hikind

Grandstanding politicos' empty promises serve only to divide