Trump is America’s Netanyahu…
Or perhaps Netanyahu is Israel’s Trump.
I happen to think a lot more of Netanyahu than of Trump. Netanyahu has a history of physical and mental courage in a lengthy military career, as well as a great deal more political experience than Trump. But I think the points Glick makes are good ones, and food for thought.
An excerpt:
Netanyahu has never enjoyed a day in office when Israel’s unelected elites weren’t at war with him.
From a comparative perspective, Netanyahu’s experiences in his first term in office, from 1996 until 1999, are most similar to Trump’s current position. His 1996 victory over incumbent prime minister Shimon Peres shocked the political class no less than the American political class was stunned by Trump’s victory. And this makes sense. The historical context of Israel’s 1996 election and the US elections last year were strikingly similar.
In 1992, Israel’s elites, the doves who controlled all aspects of the governing apparatuses, including the security services, universities, government bureaucracies, state prosecution, Supreme Court, media and entertainment industry, were seized with collective euphoria when the Labor Party under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres won Israel’s Left its first clear-cut political victory since 1974. Rabin and Peres proceeded to form the most dovish governing coalition in Israel’s history…
The 1996 election was the first opportunity the public had to vote on the Oslo process. Then, in spite of Rabin’s assassination and the beautiful ceremonies on the White House lawns with balloons and children holding flowers, the people of Israel said no thank you. We are Zionists, not post-Zionists. We don’t like to get blown to smithereens on buses, and we don’t appreciate being told that victims of terrorism are victims of peace…
n 1996, the Israeli elite greeted Netanyahu’s victory with shock and grief. The “good, enlightened” Israel they thought would rule forever had just been defeated by the unwashed mob. Peres summed up the results by telling reporters that “the Israelis” voted for him. And “the Jews” voted for Netanyahu. His followers shook their heads in mildly antisemitic disgust.
Their mourning quickly was replaced by a spasm of hatred for Netanyahu and his supporters that hasn’t disappeared even now, 21 years later.
Please read the whole thing.
“Today it is clear that Trump is wrestling with how to proceed in governing, as the American elites openly seek his political and even personal destruction. One day he tacks to the establishment in the hopes of appeasing those who hate him, and the next day he embraces his supporters and repeats his campaign pledges to “drain the swamp.”
The lessons of Netanyahu’s first term — and to a degree, his subsequent terms in office as well — are clear enough and Trump would do well to apply them.
You cannot appease people who want to destroy you. And you cannot succeed by embracing the failed policies of your predecessors that you were elected to roll back. The elites who reject you will never embrace you. The only way to govern successfully when you are under relentless assault is to empower your supporters and keep faith with them.” Caroline Glick
Bingo. It will turn into a war to the knife. Not because we wish it but because they will have it no other way.
How many people hate Trump because he is ugly? If he looks like George Clooney would and act and speak exactly the same would that make a difference?
Dave:
Funny thing; Trump used to be a handsome guy.
A lot of the hostility to Netanyahu and to Ariel Sharon is probably related to their rejection of Socialism. They have both championed the free enterprise system which has made Israel rich.
Trump has not aged well, probably due to unhealthy diet, his terrible haircut and too much tanning bed in his young days. Mitt Romney and John Kerry being around the same age are much better looking and more well kept.
“Trump used to be a handsome guy.”
Everyone gets ugly if they live long enough. The only cure for old age is to die young.
So, Trump is another of us old white guys who got a paunch and jowls, but so what. I had to forgive him for sounding New Yorker before I could enjoy his putting it to the pinched-mouth college elites. Now I cheer him on, as would my Revolutionary War / Civil War / WWI grandfathers and immigrant-father, once they had got over the shock of our contemporary speech and manners (possible ?). This goes along with my Korean war corporal’s stripes outclassing my PhD on the wall.
Ozyripus,
My respect for advanced degrees began plummeting in 2001. My paratrooper wings outclass my MBA. I am much prouder of my two years in the 101st Airborne than my time in the computer industry with an MBA. I learned more good lessons about life in the 101st, too.
Dave…did you really say John effing Kerry is better looking than Trump…?
Maybe better looking than Trump’s horse’s hind end. Dude…step away from the crackpipe.
😉
GB beat me to the Glick finale, which is one-hundred-percent true, but this is also worth looking at, in the context of the people who reject Trump, not for his policies, but for his character (or their estimation of it, to some degree (weaseling out of naming the details)).
“In one memorable exchange after Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, where he presented the US as the moral equivalent of its enemies, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas told MSNBC host Chris Mitchell that Obama was “kind of God.”
Obama’s job, Thomas explained, was not merely to lead the US as his predecessor Ronald Reagan had done. Obama was above “provincial nationalism.” His job was to teach morality to humanity.”
* **
Once you have put the presidency on that kind of pedestal (and a lot of Republicans conceded Obama’s right to stand up there, even those who opposed his policies), then electing Trump is indeed a slap in the face.
No elected, appointed, or employed official of a democracy or republic should be given that kind of worship, even if he/she/whatever somehow (very unlikely) deserves it.
And BTW, the corollary was this:
“In Thomas’s words, “He’s going to bring all different sides together… He’s all about ‘let us reason together’… He’s the teacher. He is going to say, ‘Now, children, stop fighting and quarreling with each other.’ And he has a kind of a moral authority that he — he can — he can do that.” ”
Obama not only didn’t “do that”, he lost most of whatever (dubious, given Ayers and Wright) moral authority he started with by his egregiously blatant partisanship, pandering, and prevarication.
John kerry is better looking than trump at this moment. John Kerry is in sharp with a slender body while trump is over weight
Mike K Says:
August 29th, 2017 at 5:33 pm
A lot of the hostility to Netanyahu and to Ariel Sharon is probably related to their rejection of Socialism. They have both championed the free enterprise system which has made Israel rich.
* *
This.
Israel was founded in large part by European socialists, who tried to make it work in the kibbutzim, with varying degrees of success, and most of the defects noted by Hayek.
One thing that I haven’t seen a lot of talk about: free market liberal capitalism scales up better than socialism, which can only work without massive violent coercion in small groups, and they still practice the kind of “social coercion” that the Left seems to deplore when it’s based on conservative values.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450905/bourgeois-values-scandal-tars-law-prof-amy-wax-racism-charge
by HEATHER MAC DONALD August 29, 2017 4:00 AM
Two law professors face racism, sexism, and homophobia charges for urging Americans to act responsibly. Were you planning to instruct your child about the value of hard work and civility? Not so fast! According to a current uproar at the University of Pennsylvania, advocacy of such bourgeois virtues is “hate speech.” The controversy, sparked by an op-ed written by two law professors, illustrates the rapidly shrinking boundaries of acceptable thought on college campuses and the use of racial victimology to police those boundaries.
(RTWT and the original story as well.)
I knew about most of Bibi’s bio listed in Neo’s post but little more than that.
I suppose it’s not a bad comparison between him and Trump, though I thought that Bibi was always quite conservative, if that’s the correct term in Israel. Trump’s connection with conservatives is rather a new found religion or possibly opportunism. I’d like to think that Trump was always moderately conservative, but chose to surf NYC’s wave of ideology in the past as an act of self-promotion.
The Trump comparisons I liked during the 2016 campaign was to Silvio Bersluconi and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But unlike Schwarzenegger, I now suspect that Trump actually cares about the future of the nation. Maybe just like Bibi.
Dave:
I don’t care for the looks of either of them, but Trump was much better looking in youth, and (if I HAD to choose one) I’d take Trump over Kerry even now.
I cannot stand the looks of Kerry, for whatever reason. He’s always rubbed me the wrong way.
I sincerely apologise if I have unintentionally triggered anyone here by complimenting Kerry’s look.
Dave:
Just mentioning Kerry’s name is a trigger for me 🙂 .
Neo…I second your motion…but I’m deadly serious.
Kerry’s a traitorous SOB…that he’s still stealing air is a grace he should be thankful for every day.
All comparisons break down at some point, but it necessary to understand the difference of political situations in Israel and USA. In Israel leftists are mostly politically marginalized and could not win a single general election for many years. Academia, arts, courts, senior Army officers and media are their last bastions, while public opinion goes further to the right with any new election cycle. And demography permanently changes not to the left advantage: the more conservative parents are, the more children they have. Add to this 1 million new repatriates from Soviet Union, all of very conservative views and having no illusions about socialism. And strategic situation also does not favor pacifism, to say mildly. All these factors are absent in USA.
Israel was originally the 12 tribes, but it only has 2 so far, the tribes of Benjamine and Judah. The Jews are thus of Judah, but what happened to the rest of the tribes? They got lost up north before the Babylonian captivity.
Until those tribes are returned, Israel isn’t Israel, and they can’t be Zion either.