{"id":1366,"date":"2006-03-27T22:39:54","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T02:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2009-02-19T19:23:09","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T00:23:09","slug":"diving-headlong-into-a-racist-abyss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1366","title":{"rendered":"Diving headlong into a racist abyss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel’s Controversial Candidate<\/em> by Tim McGirk [ 23 March 2006<\/a> Time<\/em> ] examines the post-election alliance that he says is likely to form between a victorious Kadima party, led by acting prime minister Ehud Olmert since Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke in January, and Avigdor Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel, Our Home”), which “is expected to scoop up at least 11 seats, mainly from Israel’s 900,000 Russian immigrants.” A settler who immigrated to Israel from Kishinev, Moldova in 1978<\/a>, Lieberman advocates ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from Israel by redrawing borders and forcing them into the occupied territories. In fact, what Lieberman is proposing complements the strategy of the segregation wall and is part and parcel of Olmert’s plans for unilateral withdrawals from illegal settlements of Israel’s choosing. Lieberman’s “rise” in Israeli politics is neither sudden nor unexpected. <\/p>\n

Together with Tzachi Hanegbi and Yisrael Katz, he was a member of the right-wing student cell Kastel. In 1996, Lieberman headed Benjamin Netanyahu’s election campaign for the Likud leadership, and, following Netanyahu’s election as prime minister later that year, served until 1998 as director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office. In 1999, Lieberman established the Yisrael Beiteinu party, a right-wing party targeting immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States. Until March 2002, he served as National Infrastructure Minister in the government of Ariel Sharon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Allegations that surveillance on Lieberman was used for political purposes became the official, some said convenient<\/a>, reason to fire Moshe Mizrahi in 2004 even though all wiretaps had been court-approved. Ariel Sharon was in the hot seat, partly due to Mizrahi’s investigation into election financing illegalities involving Sharon, his son Omri, and lawyer Dov Weisglass. On 14 February 2006, Omri was sentenced to 9 months in prison, given an additional 9 months suspended, and fined for the crime. He has yet to actually go to prison due his father’s health.<\/p>\n

Mizrahi ordered Lieberman watched, including the wiretaps, because of suspicions he was using his influence in the PMO to strike deals with top Russian Mafia figures. Inevitably, the wiretaps on Lieberman’s home phones led to tapes of Lieberman’s family on the phone, and conversations between Lieberman and politicians on the Right with whom he was planning the formation of a new political party. The wiretaps came to light when one of the Russian language transcribers working for the police stole transcripts and fled to Canada, from where he tipped off a reporter at Maariv (whose owner, Ofer Nimrodi, had his own reason for a personal vendetta against Mizrahi, who ran an investigation that led to Nimrodi’s conviction for illegal wiretapping and fraud) about the transcripts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Russian immigrant Michael Chernoy, who was alleged to be a “Russian Mafia” connection, is described in this article<\/a> as Lieberman’s “close personal friend.” Chernoy provides most of the funding for the Jerusalem Summit<\/a>, “an international forum seeking to develop moral and efficient strategies against twin dangers facing the mankind: totalitarianism of the East, as represented by radical Islam, and moral relativism of the West (represented by atheistic globalisation), aimed at depriving cultures of their spiritual content.”<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes of the large Evangelical gathering in Jerusalem this week, a mini-drama, produced by the well-known preacher Pat Robertson, was played out. On Sunday evening Robertson was the keynote speaker at the annual Sukkot event organized by the International Christian Embassy (ICE) in Jerusalem. In his speech, which was recorded on tape for distribution to believers around the world, Robertson took aim in every direction. He deplored homosexuality, claimed that the multiplicity of abortions was the cause of poverty in Russia and entwined Osama bin Laden, Yasser Arafat, the United Nations and the U.S. State Department as being responsible for the attempt to sabotage God’s plan.<\/p>\n

But the real bombshell came when, in the “heat of the words” (in fact, measured and carefully considered) he spoke about the four conditions for the second coming of Jesus. One of the conditions is a spiritual awakening among the Jews. “There needs to be a spiritual awakening among the Jews who begin to cry out for their messiah. We are beginning to see that. I have talked to messianic Jews all around the world – in Siberia, Brazil, America and here in Jerusalem – wonderful Jewish people, who are saying: ‘Yes, Jesus, you are our messiah.’ Hope is coming up in their hearts, it is God’s plan.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And just recently, Jerry Falwell dropped a bomb<\/a> on Dr. John Hagee’s alleged support of dual covenant theology.<\/p>\n

In a study by journalist Yair Sheleg, published in 2004<\/a> by the Israeli Institute for Democracy<\/a>, “Jews Not Considered Jewish by Law: The Case of Non-Jewish Immigrants to Israel ,” it was reported that “240,000-300,000 people who have immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union since 1989 describe themselves as non-Jewish, although one third of them have a Jewish father. About 11% of immigrants openly describe themselves as Christian (about 3% of all immigrants). Additionally, in 2002, 51% of immigrant soldiers were non-Jews; in the past few years hundreds of new soldiers have sworn their oath of loyalty on the New Testament rather than the Old Testament.” <\/p>\n

The enemy of my enemy is my friend?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel’s Controversial Candidate by Tim McGirk [ 23 March 2006 Time ] examines the post-election alliance that he says is likely to form between a victorious Kadima party, led by acting prime minister Ehud Olmert since Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-m2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6758,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/6758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}