Netanyahu is hampered by his coalition – left-wing boob Ehud Barak is currently our Defense Minister – and by the Chattering Classes of Israel.

Center-right Israelis have debated for decades exactly what Netanyahu is made of: is he a squishy middle-of-the-road waffler, or a closet hard-core Likudnik hemmed in by the Israeli left?

We are about to find out.

Americans complain about RINOs – Republican candidates who simply go along with left-wing Dem policies. We have something similar here in Israel – after decades of socialist hegemony (and continued left-wing control of media, academia, and courts) the mainstream nationalist party (Likud) gets knock-kneed even when elected into power. It really doesn’t dawn on them that they can countermand the left-wing elite under which they’ve grown up.

This is very frustrating to a growing number of Israelis – Likud first came to power in the 1970s and there is now a young cohort of voters who never experienced the all-powerful Labor party of Israel’s early years.

Unfortunately that generation is not yet holding the reins of power.

Netanyahu has been exposed to American conservatism, but he has also shown himself reluctant to shift the gears of Israeli society – privatization and market reforms proceed at a snail’s pace, for example.

The Likud government could, with the stroke of a pen, liberalize the media and sell off the remaining government TV channel – which is virulently left-wing. Why don’t they? They are cowed by the Left’s projection of power, even though the Israeli left is a shell of its former self.

The more hawkish wing of Likud sees this as an opportunity to end the fiasco of the Oslo “peace” era. Whether they’ll have the will to follow through on it…

(Bob from Virginia: “born only as a stick to hit Israel,” wow, great summation.)

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/09/20/video-a-brief-history-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/

“Netanyahu gets it, but it seems a growing segment of Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere do not.”

No, that’s not the situation in my country.

The Israeli Jew in the street gets it, by and large. In the street, the events of the 2000s decade (beginning with the October 2000 Intifada) have decimated the land-concessionist Israeli Jewish Left.

The ones who don’t get it among Israeli Jews are, overwhelmingly, the same suspects as in the U.S.: Mainstream media and academe. Although Haaretz is usually brought up as the egregious example of a “Hebrew-language Arab newspaper,” the others (Yediot Ahronot / YNet, Maariv) are little better. As for the universities, words fail; even Bar-Ilan, stronghold of the Religious Zionist Right, has its fifth-columnists.

As for Netanyahu–and our politicians in general: Some of them get it, but nobody has the guts to go far enough. Netanyahu, like George W. “Islam is a religion of peace” Bush, is beholden to the bounds of political correctness. None of them shares the opinion of the majority of the Israeli Jewish populace, that “world opinion” and international “law” should be trodden underfoot for the sake of Jewish survival. Israel’s greatest peril, therefore, lies not intrinsically in the hostility of the Arabs (which is a constant), but in the lack of leadership that places Jewish survival above all.

Gringo,

“The minute Hamas or whoever launches a rocket, … Israel invades and drives them into the sea.”

World opinion doesn’t care who the aggressor here really is. Israel is deemed the aggressor by nature, by virtue of being a “colonial settler state, stealing the land of the indigenous.” Out of this predicament there is no way but to change the narrative–to disseminate the Jewish point of view that the Jews are the indigenous Palestinians while the Arabs are the settler-colonial invaders. The Jewish State, in its legal capacity as a state, will need to force the hostile media outlets (both home and abroad) to cease and desist from airing the Arab narrative, and to air the Jewish narrative instead. The MSM declared war on Zionism long ago, so it’s only fair for the Jewish State to make the MSM outlets atone for their treachery by working for Israel.

As for the positive responses to his article: One of the misfortunes about living in a prosperous and peaceful country is that many harmful biological traits are allowed to continue instead of being selected for extinction. We, who are more realistic about the world, can take advantage of this situation by using these people as prey, that is food in times of scarcity.

As for the Palestinians, look at their society, rotten, amoral, corrupt, backward, delusional, weak, poor, born only as a stick to hit Israel, no identity besides hatred of Israel. No unique anything that does not include Israel. This is what is up against what must be one of the most successful states in history. All their victories are hollow.

As for Israel being isolated, looks can be deceiving.

Netanyahu gets it, but it seems a growing segment
of Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere do not.

The “Can’t we all just get along” attitude means you get slaughtered.

“Lee Smith in Tablet Magazine notes that President Obama’s “sophisticated policy” towards Israel has created a gap through which the Palestinian state is now going to slip. The US promises to veto a UN vote to recognize Palestine, but the mere fact it has gotten so far has now created a slippery slope down which some future politician is going to tumble down. And that probably means trouble. It may mean future war. And yet it all began with framing the question.”

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/09/19/countersign/#more-17312