Haim Misgav
Rightist wakeup call
Left has stuck to false agenda for many years; new rightist party aims to counter flawed policy
I wanted to write a few words in support of the establishment of “HaTikva” (the hope), a Zionist national party, and respond to all the critics who argue against another apparent split in the “National Camp.” There is no such thing. Forget about these mantras.
Leftists have an agenda. An erroneous, false, and deceptive one. But they have been pursuing it for many years. At first they were marginal, and only very few of them dared as much as mention the phrase “Palestinian state.” However, today, unfortunately or regrettably, they managed to bequeath their theory to American government institutions as well.
The National Camp, as it is being referred to erroneously, lacks the determination of the leftist public. All we see there are a bunch of pompous, egotistical politicians overcome by baseless self-importance and lacking any clear ideology. They have already proved that a government seat means more than anything to them.
This is how Benjamin Netanyahu and Limor Livnat and Silvan Shalom conducted themselves when Ariel Sharon led the process of expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, and this is how the members of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s court conducted themselves. Today, this is how Israel Our Home leader Avigdor Lieberman conducts himself.
Therefore, when something bad is threatening the Jewish people’s national home, we must speak out with full force, without thinking about all sorts of considerations – and serve as a mouthpiece to the hundreds of thousands of secular Israelis residing in large cities who did not hit the polls in the last elections, or to those who expressed their disgust with the corruption that has taken over the Likud Central Committee by voting for the Pensioners’ Party, for example.
David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel, which was defined as a Jewish state (a phrase that appears several times in the Declaration of Independence) almost 60 years ago. When we heard Shimon Peres, his loyal and trusted student, delivering a speech in his memory at his gravesite, it was difficult not to feel that something fundamental, irreversible, went wrong with us.
Perhaps this is not a complete or cohesive explanation, but this is the reason why many members of the National Camp feel “homeless.” They do not hear the politicians raising an outcry and heading to the town square in order to tear their clothes in mourning. They also remember how Benjamin Netanyahu, the current head of opposition, conducted himself when he was prime minister. Indeed, Ehud Olmert can calmly travel to a God forsaken town on the Eastern Coast of the US and trade in Israeli land.
Nobody believes in land-for-peace formula
It’s apparently difficult to draw the masses sitting in their bubbles and feeling secure, with Qassam rockets only landing in Sderot and the outskirts of Ashkelon, for the time being. Yet the big explosion shall come. The residents of Kfar Saba, for example, should imagine what will happen in their town once the West Bank town of Qalqiliya is handed over to the Palestinians, or what will happen to airplanes at Ben Gurion International Airport after the hills to the east of it will be populated by rocket launchers.After all, nobody really believes that handing over additional “territories” would bring the long-awaited peace.
I, a native of Tel Aviv, a secular Israeli scared of what’s to come, am offering my support to the establishment of the new party in order to try and wake up the people and convey the anxiety that I’m feeling at this time.
The Oslo agreements were put into action, and we know how that ended. I cried out against Yasser Arafat’s arrival to the Gaza Strip, and I failed. I sought to prevent the escape from southern Lebanon, and failed there too. I cried out against the “disengagement” – and again nobody listened. How long will we keep on being right? Until there is no longer a way back?
