The world's Israel-bashing media can hardly control their excitement, and the State Department is also having trouble hiding its pleasure. Saeb Erakat of the PLO praised the choice, as did the Beirut Star. The Israeli Labor Party has elected a new leader in its primaries, a lily-white dove, and he is a candidate whose selection seems to promise good fortune and well-being to nearly everyone - except to Israelis.
Amram Mitzna is the radical leftist ex-general and Mayor of Haifa. He defeated his Labor Party challengers, including Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (who had been Minister of Defense in Ariel Sharon's national unity government), in the primaries by a wide margin and so now is the party's contender for Prime Minister. But Mitzna is positioning himself so far to the Left of the Israeli political spectrum, in essence to the Left of partially-Marxist Meretz, that he is likely to lose by a huge landslide to the Likud in coming national elections in a few weeks. The Likud should have an even easier time trouncing Mitzna than it would a more centrist Labor Party leader.
The bad news is that the Mitzna coffers will now be filled to overflowing by the usual culprits from overseas who generously fund any Israeli politician promising to lead Israel towards the Far Left: the EU, possibly the Saudis, the PLO, the leftist Jews from the US, the Democratic Party, Carter, Clinton, and so on. Israeli national elections are invariably more corrupted by overseas interference and intervention than those in any other democratic country. The main contributors are those who seek to assist those Israeli politicians whose policies promise to weaken its defense and compromise its security, while striking nice unilateral deals with the PLO that then result in even more Palestinian violence.
The Israel Labor Party Left went for Mitzna in a parody of its past primaries and campaigns. They say history repeats itself as parody, but this is a third repetition of the same strategy by the same Labor Party. Because the Labor Party is universally and correctly viewed as soft on Israeli defense, it repeatedly tries to play its "militarist card," to punch its way into power by placing an ex-general as its leader. It assumes Israelis will be persuaded that a Labor Party led by a military man will be tough on terrorism and on the Palestinians.
It worked twice before. Labor did this with Yitzhak Rabin and again with Ehud Barak, and in a sense even also with Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who had been party chief before the primaries, although Ben-Eliezer was widely disliked by the Left for sitting in a national unity coalition with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. There have also been lots of other generals in other Labor Party leadership slots, besides the party leader himself.
However, Rabin and Barak at least went through the motions, during their campaigns for office, of being tough on terror and strong on defense, and Rabin even ran on a pre-Oslo platform promising unequivocally: No Deals with Arafat or the PLO. Remember Rabin promising to "break their bones," in reference to intifada terrorists? Those two ex-generals turned out to be soft appeasers only after taking office. To Mitzna's credit, he is not even pretending now to be tough on defense or on the Palestinians. He has stated openly this week that - if elected - he plans to carry out an immediate unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, with no quid pro quo and with no security measures to prevent the inevitable escalation of atrocities by the PLO this will produce. If he carries through with all this, Mitzna will no doubt be entirely amazed when the PLO violence escalates in consequence. No wonder that Mitzna is being openly endorsed by the PLO and even by Syria, through its controlled Lebanese press.
In essence, Mitzna wishes to take Barak's 2000 capitulation to the Hizbollah and unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon and apply it to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. When this inevitably produces the next full-scale Middle East war, Mitzna may well no longer be in office and so will be able to wash his hands of responsibility and blame his successors for failing to follow his pristine example.
Most Israelis know little about Mitzna. He has the image of being a preppie bleeding heart, because he is an eloquent and polite speaker, unlike most Israeli pols, and because of his insistence as a general on sitting out parts of the 1982 Peace for Galilee invasion of Lebanon. He spends a lot of time sucking up to Israel's radical Arab nationalists rhetorically. And he has the popular image of being a Mister Clean, at least outside of Haifa, which is an inexplicable mystery to me. Anyone living in Haifa knows Mitzna has a long history of corrupt and dirty deals, especially with large contractors, who were granted absurd construction zoning variances and public lands by Mitzna's Municipality without tender, who were allowed to build on parklands and beaches illegally, all apparently in exchange for support for Mitzna's political ambitions. His municipal staff consists of sycophants and yes-men all devoted to promoting their guru's political fortunes. And Mitzna's dirty campaign financing methods are at least as bad as were Ehud Barak's. If Mitzna ever gets elected and invited to the White House, I suggest that the secret service count the silverware when he leaves.
So, here we will have the spectacle of an Israeli civilian election in a few weeks between two ex-generals, Mitzna and Sharon. That is, if Sharon ends up as the Likud's candidate. He is hardly a shoe-in; Benjamin Netanyahu is putting up a serious challenge. Sharon has been a bungling and befuddled Prime Minister, trying to tap-dance his way around American obstacles and pressures to suppress Palestinian savagery. But he clearly and sincerely seeks the good of the country, and, in his own way, thinks that his policies minimize damage to Israel and increase security. The main alternative to him is now the bearded Mitzna, who has yet to learn anything from eight years of Oslo bloodshed, who still thinks a deal can be struck with the PLO that the Arabs will honor, and who seeks to challenge Sharon's Churchillian posturing by playing an Israeli Chamberlain.
Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has warned that Mitzna is trying to turn the Israeli Labor Party into a second Meretz, a small leftist party. In reality, of course, he is trying to turn the Israeli Labor Party into a third Hadash (the Arab Communist Party).
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).
Amram Mitzna is the radical leftist ex-general and Mayor of Haifa. He defeated his Labor Party challengers, including Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (who had been Minister of Defense in Ariel Sharon's national unity government), in the primaries by a wide margin and so now is the party's contender for Prime Minister. But Mitzna is positioning himself so far to the Left of the Israeli political spectrum, in essence to the Left of partially-Marxist Meretz, that he is likely to lose by a huge landslide to the Likud in coming national elections in a few weeks. The Likud should have an even easier time trouncing Mitzna than it would a more centrist Labor Party leader.
The bad news is that the Mitzna coffers will now be filled to overflowing by the usual culprits from overseas who generously fund any Israeli politician promising to lead Israel towards the Far Left: the EU, possibly the Saudis, the PLO, the leftist Jews from the US, the Democratic Party, Carter, Clinton, and so on. Israeli national elections are invariably more corrupted by overseas interference and intervention than those in any other democratic country. The main contributors are those who seek to assist those Israeli politicians whose policies promise to weaken its defense and compromise its security, while striking nice unilateral deals with the PLO that then result in even more Palestinian violence.
The Israel Labor Party Left went for Mitzna in a parody of its past primaries and campaigns. They say history repeats itself as parody, but this is a third repetition of the same strategy by the same Labor Party. Because the Labor Party is universally and correctly viewed as soft on Israeli defense, it repeatedly tries to play its "militarist card," to punch its way into power by placing an ex-general as its leader. It assumes Israelis will be persuaded that a Labor Party led by a military man will be tough on terrorism and on the Palestinians.
It worked twice before. Labor did this with Yitzhak Rabin and again with Ehud Barak, and in a sense even also with Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who had been party chief before the primaries, although Ben-Eliezer was widely disliked by the Left for sitting in a national unity coalition with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. There have also been lots of other generals in other Labor Party leadership slots, besides the party leader himself.
However, Rabin and Barak at least went through the motions, during their campaigns for office, of being tough on terror and strong on defense, and Rabin even ran on a pre-Oslo platform promising unequivocally: No Deals with Arafat or the PLO. Remember Rabin promising to "break their bones," in reference to intifada terrorists? Those two ex-generals turned out to be soft appeasers only after taking office. To Mitzna's credit, he is not even pretending now to be tough on defense or on the Palestinians. He has stated openly this week that - if elected - he plans to carry out an immediate unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, with no quid pro quo and with no security measures to prevent the inevitable escalation of atrocities by the PLO this will produce. If he carries through with all this, Mitzna will no doubt be entirely amazed when the PLO violence escalates in consequence. No wonder that Mitzna is being openly endorsed by the PLO and even by Syria, through its controlled Lebanese press.
In essence, Mitzna wishes to take Barak's 2000 capitulation to the Hizbollah and unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon and apply it to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. When this inevitably produces the next full-scale Middle East war, Mitzna may well no longer be in office and so will be able to wash his hands of responsibility and blame his successors for failing to follow his pristine example.
Most Israelis know little about Mitzna. He has the image of being a preppie bleeding heart, because he is an eloquent and polite speaker, unlike most Israeli pols, and because of his insistence as a general on sitting out parts of the 1982 Peace for Galilee invasion of Lebanon. He spends a lot of time sucking up to Israel's radical Arab nationalists rhetorically. And he has the popular image of being a Mister Clean, at least outside of Haifa, which is an inexplicable mystery to me. Anyone living in Haifa knows Mitzna has a long history of corrupt and dirty deals, especially with large contractors, who were granted absurd construction zoning variances and public lands by Mitzna's Municipality without tender, who were allowed to build on parklands and beaches illegally, all apparently in exchange for support for Mitzna's political ambitions. His municipal staff consists of sycophants and yes-men all devoted to promoting their guru's political fortunes. And Mitzna's dirty campaign financing methods are at least as bad as were Ehud Barak's. If Mitzna ever gets elected and invited to the White House, I suggest that the secret service count the silverware when he leaves.
So, here we will have the spectacle of an Israeli civilian election in a few weeks between two ex-generals, Mitzna and Sharon. That is, if Sharon ends up as the Likud's candidate. He is hardly a shoe-in; Benjamin Netanyahu is putting up a serious challenge. Sharon has been a bungling and befuddled Prime Minister, trying to tap-dance his way around American obstacles and pressures to suppress Palestinian savagery. But he clearly and sincerely seeks the good of the country, and, in his own way, thinks that his policies minimize damage to Israel and increase security. The main alternative to him is now the bearded Mitzna, who has yet to learn anything from eight years of Oslo bloodshed, who still thinks a deal can be struck with the PLO that the Arabs will honor, and who seeks to challenge Sharon's Churchillian posturing by playing an Israeli Chamberlain.
Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has warned that Mitzna is trying to turn the Israeli Labor Party into a second Meretz, a small leftist party. In reality, of course, he is trying to turn the Israeli Labor Party into a third Hadash (the Arab Communist Party).
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).