Israelis will not turn on U-turn Bibi

Two articles, 1) JPost, 2) Haaretz premium

Palestinians stand in front of Israeli police officers and newly installed metal detectors at an entrance to the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City July 16, 2017. Photo by Reuters

77% say Netanyahu gave in on Temple Mount metal detectors

When asked whether the metal detectors should have been placed on the Mount in the first place, 68% said yes, 23% no, and 9% said they did not know.

By Gil Hoffman, JPost
July 26, 2017

Three-fourths of Israelis believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surrendered to pressure when his security cabinet decided to remove metal detectors from the Temple Mount, according to a Midgam poll broadcast Tuesday night on Channel 2 News.

The poll of 502 Israelis representing a statistical sample of the adult Israeli population, found that 77% called the decision a surrender, 17% said it was not and 9% said they did not know.

When asked whether the metal detectors should have been placed on the Mount in the first place, 68% said yes, 23% no, and 9% said they did not know.

According to the poll, 67% believe the way prime minister is dealing with the crisis over Temple Mount was not good while only 23% believe it was good, with the rest not knowing.

Recent polls have shown that Netanyahu’s approval ratings have been harmed by his lawyer David Shimron’s embroilment in an investigation over the controversial purchasing of submarines and other naval vessels from a German company whose representative in Israel, Miki Ganor, employed Shimron as his lawyer.

In an interview with Channel 2 on Tuesday night, Shimron said Netanyahu had no idea he was hired by the representative of the German company ThyssenKrupp.

Shimron also denied reports that he was summoned by the police for questioning when he returns from a private visit to California.

He said he regretted working with Ganor.

“Ganor testifed about himself that he is an arch-criminal,” Shimron said. “I didn’t know until recently that I was not dealing with an honest man with proper ethics.”

Shimron lamented he’d been tried and convicted by the press but said he was not worried about what would happen in court.

Israeli security officers dismantle the metal detectors at the Lions’ Gate, near a main entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, on July 24, 2017. Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/ AFP

Loathing for Leftists Compels Israeli Right to Excuse Netanyahu’s Temple Mount Fiasco

Just as support for Trump’s appeasement of Putin proves partisan resentment overcomes long-held ideologies

By Chemi Shalev, Haaretz premium
July 25, 2017

The government of Israel buckled and broke. It was defeated and humiliated. It surrendered without a fight, got down on its knees, was caught with its pants down, ran away with its tail between its legs. It weakened Israel, diminished its stature, damaged its good name and harmed its deterrence. It desecrated sacred values, corroded the cornerstone of Israel’s existence, and gave a prize to terror and a reward for violence, and so on and so forth.

This is but a small sampling of the bombastic lexicon that would have highlighted the tough statements, outraged reactions and damning speeches we would have heard from the Israeli right, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, if a leftist government had dared to beat such a hasty retreat from a decision to place metal detectors at the entrances to the Temple Mount, which was portrayed up to the last minute as measured, appropriate and absolutely irreversible. But because the perpetrator in this case is a right wing government led by Netanyahu, the reaction is decidedly milder.

Settler darling Naftali Bennett will protest, firebrand Miri Regev will express reservations and defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman will state, mostly off the record, that things could have been handled differently. A shameful capitulation and a shonda [ Yiddish, that which brings shame on the Jews] for centuries when it comes from the left, is but a minor hiccup when the party in question is on the right.

Viewing the world through a partisan prism isn’t exclusive to right-wingers, of course – though they have elevated it to an art form. When Yitzhak Rabin expelled 400 Hamas activists in 1992, when Shimon Peres bombed refugees in Lebanon during Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996 or when Ehud Barak declared there’s no Palestinian partner after the Camp David debacle in 2000, the left savaged them furiously and many of its voters abandoned the camp.

Many right-wingers are angry and disappointed about Netanyahu’s flip-flop, but most of them prefer to keep their feelings to themselves, even when their leaders betray their principles or are implicated in criminal investigations.

The same phenomenon, though infinitely more ludicrous, is happening these days on the American right. The once-proud Republican Party that made life hell for then-President Barack Obama because he was too soft on Russian President Vladimir Putin remains solidly behind President Donald Trump, who worships Putin, used his help to get elected and is doing anything he possibly can to please him.

Instead of a popular uprising against a president who would be pilloried as a collaborator and traitor if he or she were a Democrat, many Republicans simply changed their point of view. Putin, it turns out, is their kind of guy.

The American right still sees itself as tough and patriotic, and the Israeli right is still devoted to the Greater Land of Israel and to never giving an inch. But surpassing them all is the supreme ideology that trumps all the rest: hatred and resentment for the left.

In the eyes of the right, the real enemy isn’t overseas or over the border but right here, within us, consuming us from within. For right-wing Americans, it is knee-jerk liberals and the minorities that support them. And for right-wing Israelis, it is Arab-loving leftists and the European anti-Semites who fund them. Surrender to Putin hurts and withdrawal in the face of Palestinian violence stings, but both are negligible compared to the nightmare of leftists celebrating, or worse, returning to power.

After all, attacking leftists has become the main preoccupation, if not the raison d’être, of many right-wing politicians. Israeli journalists from the right have abandoned any effort to cover or uncover government misdeeds, focusing instead on the supposed bias and “fake news” of their colleagues on the left.

Netanyahu, national champion of Israeli inciters for many years, knows that the right’s hatred for the left is his main insurance policy. It can purify any pollution, erase any crime, and put him back on his feet if he should stumble and fall.

This is why the most inevitable thing in the universe right after the metal detector debacle is a new Netanyahu assault on the traitorous left that surrenders to the Palestinians and capitulates to terror with blood money provided by the New Israel Fund.