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Photo: Avi Ohayon, GPO
Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu at the prime minister's official residence
Photo: Avi Ohayon, GPO
Aviad Kleinberg

How dare we throw a prime minister out on the street?

Op-ed: Like Amona’s residents, Netanyahu sees the prime minister’s official residence as a patrimony. It actually belongs to him and to his family. This harmony is destroyed by the annoying democratic process and the leftist law that permits the evacuation of people from a home that doesn’t belong to them.

In a night meeting with the residents of the Amona outpost at the prime minister’s bureau, Benjamin Netanyahu revealed a personal heart-rending story that would have granted him the cover page of the weekend supplements. It’s not for ideological reasons that Netanyahu support the baseless demands made by the Amona people and treats the land robbers as a beggar at the door trying to convince the master to give him a donation.

 

In other words, the prime minister actually believes that when Jews rob Arabs’ lands, even if it’s done in complete disregard for the law, they are doing an ethical, moral and Jewish act—disenfranchising Arabs is always for a purely spiritual purpose and for the glory of the State of Israel—but that’s not the whole story.

 

In Bibi’s eyes, the home on Balfour Street is not the prime minister’s official residence, it’s the Netanyahu family’s home (Photo: EPA)
In Bibi’s eyes, the home on Balfour Street is not the prime minister’s official residence, it’s the Netanyahu family’s home (Photo: EPA)

 

He might think that a handful of land robbers beyond the Green Line should be showered with money at the expense of the rest of the country, and mainly at the expense of those living below the poverty line. But that's not the whole story.

 

Because it isn't even that he is competing against Bayit Yehudi Leader Naftali Bennett over who believes less in equality and who incites more against the values of equality before the law (otherwise known as leftism). He does all this and more, but beyond all these ideological-political moves, there is a warm human sentiment, identification based on personal experience with people who have suffered injustice.

 

Whoever claims that the man from Caesarea and Balfour Street is unemotional, save for feelings of self-love and political survival, is wrong. Here’s the emotionally moving story the prime minister told the Amona residents. It’s a difficult one, so you may want to have a box of tissues on hand. Ready? Here we go. “I understand what it means to lose a home,” Netanyahu told them. “After the 1999 elections, with zero warning, my family and I were simply kicked out of the house on Balfour Street. Just like that, with all of our belongings, we were just thrown into the street. We had to go to the Sheraton Plaza Hotel. It’s a terrible feeling."

 

Who wouldn’t be filled with pity for a man, who has a well-kept luxurious home in Caesarea (aid for by the state), but who finds himself homeless, and not just homeless—but homeless at the Sheraton Plaza? Who wouldn’t be shocked by the zero warning (the idea that he may lose the elections never crossed his mind), by the fact that an Israeli prime minister was thrown “into the street”? Only leftists.

 

Because in Bibi’s eyes, the home on Balfour Street is not the prime minister’s official residence, it’s the Netanyahu family’s home. And suddenly, ne'er-do-wells (i.e. the voters) arrive and throw him out on the street. That really is a terrible feeling.

 

Like the Amona residents, Netanyahu sees the prime minister’s residence as a patrimony. It’s actually his. This harmony is destroyed by the annoying democratic process (in which even Arabs, Heaven forbid, are allowed to vote) and the law in the State of Israel (a leftist law, of course), which permits the evacuation of people from a home that does not belong to them.

 

And just as Amona’s residents should be left with their plunder in their hands, or be generously and compensated for the injustice they suffer at the expense of the rest of the state’s citizens, it is all the more appropriate to leave the prime minister at the home on Balfour Street and let him and his family eternally live their quiet life there as masters of the state. And if the High Court or the voters indeed intervene and God forbid force an evacuation, the victims should be compensated. By how much? I’ll let you throw out a number. Have you thought of one? Raise it.

 

And what about the legal owners (the Palestinian land owners or a different prime minister elected by the voters—some of whom are Arabs)? That’s their problem. In other words, I suppose we should try to find them some kind of a solution. There is no reason, for example, why the elected “non-Netanyahu” prime minister shouldn’t receive pecuniary compensation from the state. He may even be given a different home in a nearby Palestinian village.

 

The truth is that we don’t really care about the legal owners. They’ll manage. We all hope that Netanyahu and Bennett will manage to prevent such incidents from repeating themselves in the future—through the Regulation Bill, for example. So from now on, we must say: If a prime minister who is not Netanyahu (or Bennett) is elected, he should be offered to run the Palestinian Authority. For Jews (the Left, as you may recall, has forgotten the meaning of the word) will never again be evacuated from their homes.

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.24.16, 15:50
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