Doctor Strangedove

The Labor Party primaries are coming up.  At the moment there are only three contenders left running to head what is Left of the once dominant party in what had been a One-Party Israeli State.

The three who remain include Amir Peretz, whose chances of getting elected are about the same as those of Dennis Kucinich.  After last summer's fiascos, the public understands that Peretz is incapable of properly managing a felafel stand or of tying his own shoes.

The other two contenders are Ehud Barak, who was Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001, and Ami Ayalon.  Ayalon is slightly ahead in the polls.  Ayalon is basically a bald Yossi Beilin and his preferred policies and platform are simply Uri-Avnery-Lite. 

So from the point of view of Israel's survival, which of the three is the contender whose victory in the primaries would be the most beneficial?

The answer is clearly Ehud Barak.

Huh, you say!   How can that be?  After all, Ehud Barak personally dropped 4000 katyusha rockets on northern Israel this past summer!

Well, if you are going to answer your own questions, you don't need me.

Of course, Barak dropped 4000 rockets on northern Israel this past summer, some not very far from me.  That is why it would be good if he were to win the Labor primaries!  The public KNOWS that those missiles landed in northern Israel all because of Barak's cowardly unilateral capitulation to the Hizbollah in 2000.   So with Barak as head of the rump Labor Party, any leader of the Likud or of a post-Olmert Kadima could easily defeat the Labor Party!  Labor would pass into history as a curious anachronism, sort of like the Whig Party.

In contrast, Ayalon would be the new boy on the block and that might protect him from the public's contempt for the Labor Party.  Of course, Amir Peretz is hated even more so than Barak and is regarded as much stupider than Barak.  So his winning the primaries would also be good for Israel, by producing the demolition of the Labor Party.  But that seems unlikely to happen.

Hide the Twinkies

YNET News reports that Oprah Winfrey (which probably should be spelled Wingfry) will be waddling into town. 

Oprah has a history of running Israel-bashing pro-Palestinian articles in a magazine she publishes: "O" Magazine.  She also has made insensitive and ignorant comments about the Holocaust.

Whenever the subject of terrorism is broached on her show, Oprah studiously avoids allowing anyone to link it to Palestinians or the Hizbollah. She interviewed mothers of suicide bombers who were distraught because their houses were bulldozed. There was no mention of Israeli babies and their mothers being blown up in buses, pizza parlours blown to smithereens, nor Jewish teens murdered while at the disco in Tel Aviv. Not even the Jews murdered when two guests of the International Solidarity Movement blew up Mike's Place in Tel Aviv. Debbie Schlussel has dubbed her the affable Joseph Goebbels of daytime talk TV. Columnist Naomi Ragen demolished Oprah for her politicized bias. The Anti-Defamation League has denounced her for bias, noting that 'Palestinian girls will be rescued when their leaders say "No" to the incitement, hate and violence that has permeated their political and cultural landscape for years now.'

O!!!

Maybe she can analyze the problems of self-esteem among suicide bombers and other terrorists.  Israel may need Doctor Phil to treat us after Oprah leaves town, to return to her bored overeating overspending housewives with the closet reorganization crises.
 

Let Them Unite

According to our own Gil Ronen, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told Israel Radio that responding to Palestinian Authority artillery attacks on Sderot and other Negev towns by cutting off fuel, water, electricity and communications in Gaza, "would cause the entire Palestinian population to unite around Hamas."

I have four brief comments on this latest insane statement by our venerated and mustachioed leader:

1) Maybe I missed something, but wasn't Hamas freely elected in a landslide election by the PA Arabs? Haven't all polls shown that the PA Arabs deeply desire continued murderous attacks against Israeli Jews? The PA Arabs are already united around Hamas....

2) ...except for those united around PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, which is, of course, much better. After all, Fatah members murder Jews while releasing communiques from the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades; whereas, Hamas members murder Jews while releasing communiques from the Izz A-Din Al-Kassam Brigades.

3) How long exactly would the PA Arabs be "united" around Hamas without water, electricity, fuel and communications? And what good does that "uniting" do for Hamas if the organization is crippled - without electricity for their rocket manufacturing, without fuel for their rocket-bearing vehicles, without water for their thirsty militiamen, and without phone
The PA can't continue to fire rockets at Israeli schoolchildren using their "unity."
service to order their minions around? Not to mention the justice of cutting off their continuing broadcasts of the Mickey Mouse Mullah.... In other words, the PA can't continue to fire rockets at Israeli schoolchildren using their "unity" - they need electricity, water, fuel and communications.

4) And why does Peretz think that Arab psychology works differently than in Israeli society? Has the ongoing siege of Sderot caused 'the entire Israeli population to unite around Olmert and Peretz,' or has the effect been exactly the opposite? Aderabeh, the Arabs unite around that force that proves (or boasts of being) effective in reaching their murderous goals. Deny them that victory.

I'd also like to point out what Peretz did not say in response to the suggestion that cutting off the Palestinian Authority's fuel and electricity would end the Kassam rocket barrages.

He never argued that it wouldn't work.

May 20-21 UPDATE:
In northern Lebanon, a faction operating in a "Palestinian refugee camp" clashed and attacked the Lebanese military. Guess what the Lebanese government and army did?

"The camp’s electricity, phone lines and water were cut off," reports the Beirut-based Daily Star. The army also started shelling the Nahar Al-Bard camp fairly indiscriminately, as far as I can tell.

What's the matter with those Lebanese? Don't they know that all that will "cause the entire Palestinian population to unite around [Fatah Al-Islam]"?

Maybe they do, but they don't care. The Lebanese people are out in the streets cheering.