Avigdor Lieberman. 'We insist' on receiving Defense potrfolio
Keep Lieberman out of Defense Ministry
Op-ed: A defense minister must be a person who understands what an army is all about, who doesn’t talk about occupying Gaza or sending IDF to show Lebanese what we're capable of. He must also be someone the prime minister trust.
This is how Avigdor Lieberman,
the man and the arithmetic, does his calculations: He has six Knesset seats and is demanding two portfolios. In other words, the key is one portfolio per three Knesset members. According to this calculation, with the egalitarian assumption that this key applies to an apparent coalition of 67 Knesset members, there will be 23 ministers around the government table.
Meaning either a government miracle – a coalition of 54 members, or a political miracle – favoring a failing, irrelevant party, which avoided a welcome sink into oblivion at the very last moment.
But Lieberman, the man and the arithmetic, has another demand: Not just two ministers for his Yisrael Beytenu party, but that the government won't have more than 18 ministers. He "won't agree," he said in an interview four days ago, to an addition of even one minister.
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But that's not all. And it's not the really important thing. Because Lieberman has another demand: The Defense portfolio. "We insist on it," he said in that interview, failing to clarify who exactly are these "we" and what they are relying on in their "insistence."
Because I, for example, and some of my friends, and some other people who share our opinion, are insisting that Lieberman will not receive the Defense portfolio under any circumstances. In other words, there is no circumstance, and definitely no circumstances, which can justify this horrible thing. Not the defense portfolio.
Lieberman with President Reuven Rivlin. 'There are no circumstances which can justify giving him the Defense portfolio' (Photo: Marc Neiman, GPO)
And the truth is that it's so unrealistic that there's no need to ask, let's say, what this person knows about an army, when and which forces has he ever moved, and if he hasn't moved, when and with which forces has he moved himself.
Yes, I have also heard about Moshe Arens, who was exceptionally good, but didn't teach us a thing about Amir Peretz (have we already mentioned the Iron Dome system?). And Arens, if I may elaborate, did not recommend by mere words storming Gaza, occupying it and holding on to it, along with its two million hungry people. Or did not send the army, simultaneously and alternatives, by mere words, to show the Lebanese what we are capable of.
The Defense Ministry, in the reality of our lives, needs a person who understands very well what it's all about. A person who won't think that Bint Jbeil is a small Lebanese village which can be occupied by a number of infantry regiments at night, or that the huge bloody price involved in the unnecessary occupation of a strip we have already entered and left time and again is a worthy price to be paid by others.
And if that argument is not enough to make it clear to Lieberman and his five friends where the line is, we can add an argument which is as relevant: A defense minister must be someone who the prime minister trusts, any prime minister. One who the prime minister will not have to think twice before he opens his mouth in his presence, before he, for example, consults him. One who the prime minister won't have to wonder whether he might say to him later, "Look me in the eye," while exposing, or nearly exposing, state secrets. Or one who will elaborate a moment later about the whiskey and cigar stories from inside the room.
One cannot hold a real discussion, listen, consider, examine the things said by a defense minister, as well as a Mossad or Shin Bet chief, when the amygdale is busy solving the future threat. And Benjamin Netanyahu knows that.
So what will happen and how will the coalition be formed? Don't worry. Yisrael Beytenu is nothing more than a rickety shed. Another light gust of wind in the opposition, uncomfortable seating in the back benches, another two or three delusional cries about traitors and fifth column, and all this will fade away. And this is something which even Lieberman – the man who "demands" and "won't give up" and "insists" – understands.
