Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

hap0206, Statement in ignorance, or lie. One of those, and only you know which your claim as Netanyahu's original war
goal was. I say you cannot find a link to support of yours. I say, on the evidence available, and on your form your claim

"Nah -- not what he said -- Netanyahu said his mission was wipe Hamas off the map
What he said was "we win. they lose"
also known as "unconditional surrender" -- which was how we fought WW2 -- sorry to say that objective of war has been forgotten"

is a lie. It's a claim you have just made up.

That said, here is a going on two year old opinion on your Israel which in basic
ways represents the anti-democracy Trump administration ending 2021...

Netanyahu’s Betrayal of Democracy Is a Betrayal of Israel

[...]

The Netanyahu government is the most politically extreme, the most morally corrupt, and the most contemptuous of good governance in Israel’s history. We have known governments with extremist elements, governments rife with corruption or incompetence, but not all at once and not to this extent.

This government that speaks in the name of the Torah desecrates the name of Judaism. This government that speaks in the name of the Jewish people risks tearing apart the relationship between Israel and the Jewish diaspora. This government that speaks in the name of the Israeli ethos is the greatest threat to the ethos that binds Israelis together. This government that speaks in the name of Israeli security is a gift to those seeking to isolate the Jewish state and portray it as criminal.

No Israeli government has had more ministers convicted of crimes or under indictment. None has had such disregard for our national institutions, dismantling ministries and distributing the pieces like spoils of war. No other government has shown such disdain for basic standards of decency. No other government has declared war on the judicial system, which even the U.S. lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a Netanyahu ally, has called the gold standard that should not be tampered with.

This government threatens to present liberal Israelis with a vision of the state antithetical to their own. Liberals have learned to live with the tragedy of ruling over the Palestinian people, because there was no alternative, no credible Palestinian peace partner—but how to live with that moral anguish if we ourselves make the occupation irreversible? And how to live with permanent domination of another people even as our democratic institutions are threatened? And how to live with that threat even as the growing ultra-Orthodox population, which relies heavily .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-public-paid-for-them-netanyahu-says-haredim-in-past-created-economic-burden/ .. on state benefits, becomes an ever greater financial burden?

[ INSERT: Imagine an existence where your only claim to contribution is to breed. This 12 years old - April 14, 201110:23 PM Updated 12 years ago
Jobless ultra-Orthodox weigh on Israel's economy
By Maayan Lubell JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Meir Gross is a Jewish ultra-Orthodox father of five who does not work. Despite
warnings that Israel’s economy may be threatened by his fast growing, often unemployed, community, he does not want a job.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-ultraorthodox-economy-idUSTRE73D25W20110414 ]

Read: The Israeli government goes extreme right
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/12/israel-election-bibi-netanyahu-ben-gvir/672572/

No government has the right to re-create the country so profoundly that it effectively disenfranchises whole parts of its population. The Oslo peace process of the 1990s, which the Labor government maintained through a contrived parliamentary majority based on political bribery, was an example of one part of the population trampling on the deepest sensibilities of another without seeking a national dialogue. Stopping a runaway left was why I voted for Netanyahu when he first ran for prime minister, in 1996.

The Netanyahu government of 2023 is the right’s Oslo.

[...]

This is Israel’s first post-state government. The open contempt for the political system that Netanyahu and his Likud Party colleagues in the Knesset have displayed over the past year—boycotting the Parliament’s committees and turning plenary sessions into staged scenes of mockery, encouraging thugs to harass the families .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/shaked-to-get-extra-security-amid-threats-to-yamina-traitors-for-joining-lapid/ .. of right-wing Knesset members who dared join the previous Bennett-Lapid government—was a mere rehearsal for the current assault on the nation’s institutions.

Not even the most binding Israeli institution, the military, is safe. The coalition has installed .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-appoints-smotrich-de-facto-pm-of-the-west-bank-gambles-on-restraining-him/ .. Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the extremist Religious Zionist Party, as a kind of alternative, shadow minister in the Defense Ministry. The coalition intends to remove the border police, the unit that most closely oversees the Palestinian population, from IDF authority and place it under the command of the far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, a man who despises moral restraint. For Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, the IDF has been corrupted by what the right regards as Western morality, by weakness and defeatism. The camaraderie at the core of the IDF, allowing Israelis across the political spectrum to serve together, means little to them.

That is why right-wing members of the Knesset taunt Yair Golan, a former deputy
chief of staff of the IDF and a left-wing politician, as a virtual traitor.

As for Netanyahu, only a man who no longer cares about the dignity and good name of Israel could have brought the most extreme elements of society into the inner sanctum of government.

Israeli democracy is a miracle. No other democracy has faced such relentless threats, whether from constant terrorism or periodic war, while fending off diplomatic isolation and economic boycott. Israel has maintained a balancing act between security needs and democratic norms, even as it has absorbed waves of traumatized refugees from countries with no democratic traditions. Other societies would have broken under the strain. Yet the country’s democratic institutions and ethos have held.

[Related: Why Israel is not a democracy
[...]
BY TIM WISE
NASHVILLE — Webster's New World Dictionary defines democracy as, among other things, "the principle of equality of
rights, opportunity and treatment, or the practice of this principle". Keep this in mind, as we'll be coming back to it shortly.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=147196479]]

True, Israel is not a paragon of democracy. A nation under permanent siege and caught in a long-term occupation from which there is no safe exit can’t be an ideal model. But it is a paragon of the struggle for democracy against overwhelming odds, a laboratory for testing the resilience of democratic norms under extreme conditions.

Far-left anti-Zionists dismiss the relevance of those circumstances as a whitewash. Far-right ultra-Zionists likewise despise Israel’s balancing act because they regard democratic norms and institutions as preventing Israel from using its power without restraint. But to judge Israel without considering its challenges is to miss the historic achievement of its democracy.

[...]

Most Israeli Jews, including committed democrats, regard the state’s Jewish identity as fundamental to its existence, perhaps even more than its democratic identity. After all, many democracies have experienced authoritarian phases and not only continued to exist as nations but eventually recovered their democratic identity. But an Israel stripped of its Jewishness would lose its reason for being, its internal cohesion, and the vitality that has enabled it to survive in a region hostile to its existence.

[It’s too late for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine
[January, 2016 - ] https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=119715629]

Netanyahu presented voters with a stark—and utterly false—dichotomy between his “Jewish” camp and his opponents’ “democratic” camp. The opposition’s campaign to save democracy will fail so long as substantial parts of the public are convinced that the left—Netanyahu’s all-purpose term for his opponents, most of whom in fact are centrists—is more committed to Israel’s democratic identity than to its Jewishness.

Netanyahu’s supposed proof that the previous government had betrayed the Jewish state was the inclusion in its coalition of the Islamist Ra’am Party, which he called “the Muslim Brotherhood.” (Although Ra’am’s ideological origins did lie with that group, the party has since repudiated it.) The participation of an Arab party in the coalition, which broke the traditional Arab political boycott, was a milestone for the integration of Arab Israelis. That victory was confirmed when Ra’am’s leader, Mansour Abbas, became the first prominent Arab-Israeli leader to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

In fact, Netanyahu himself had tried desperately to woo Ra’am to form his own government, only to be thwarted by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Netanyahu’s deception about his own overtures to Ra’am and his false accusation of the previous government as being in league with Islamic extremists helped return him to power.

If Netanyahu is allowed to claim a monopoly on loyalty to Jewishness, opposing this government in the name of democracy alone will only strengthen his argument that the rival camp cares little for Israel’s Jewish identity. Along with defending our democratic institutions from assault, we must challenge the Netanyahu coalition’s claim to be protecting the nation’s Jewish identity.

This last election exposed two opposing visions of a Jewish state. For the ultra-Orthodox and the ultra-nationalists, Israel is the state of Judaism, of Orthodox Judaism. For classical Zionism, though, Israel was intended to be the state of the Jewish people, with no imposed uniform notion of “authentic” Jewish identity.

The difference is crucial. A state of Judaism is bound by premodern norms defining membership in the Jewish people, and upholds traditional, rather than democratic, standards for who we as a people should be. The state of the Jewish people, however, accepts the Jews as they are.

The state-of-Judaism camp has a compelling argument. For 2,000 years, Jews defined themselves through a shared system of rabbinical practices and beliefs. The remarkable achievement of Orthodox Judaism was to hold us together despite our dispersal. A Jew could travel from Poland to Yemen and experience its diverse Jewish communities through a common religious language. Religion today, though, not only fails to unite us but is our primary divide.

[...]

The Israeli ethos I learned as an immigrant is to avoid both wishful thinking and despair. Like many Israelis, I am heartbroken by the self-inflicted wound of this extremist new government—and I am deeply afraid of the consequences. This coalition, united only by hatred and vengeance toward internal enemies, cannot possibly cope with the threats facing Israel. Sooner or later, the coalition will unravel. The nature of hatred is to undermine itself, eventually turning its own proponents against one another. I believe that the sanity and decency of Israel will endure. The question will be at what price.

Diaspora Jews, too, are facing their moment of truth. Some whose connection to Israel has been wavering will be further alienated; others may give up on the relationship altogether. But when someone you love is in danger, you draw closer, even if the threat is self-inflicted.

Although I didn’t realize it then, joining the Israeli story during one of its grimmest chapters was a gift. The experience taught me patience and faith and the meaning of love. To turn away from Israel at its time of desperation and failure would have been to evade responsibility for my moment in Jewish time.

Liberal diaspora Jews should lend their support to the centrist Zionist camp in Israel that is determined to save our democracy. They need to be allies in the effort to maintain Israel’s heroic struggle for moral balance in adversity. We Israelis need diaspora Jews as partners in that struggle.

This essay is adapted from the original published by The Times of Israel.

January, 2023 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170949384

One to your war goal:

Gaza War Goals, Evacuees and Philadelphi: Fact-checking Israeli PM Netanyahu

Since the war's start, PM Netanyahu has made many claims regarding a number of key issues. A closer look, however, shows that Netanyahu has not been as honest as he makes out to be, flip-flopping on Israel's War aims, the Philadelphi route and more

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference on Monday evening where he displayed a map of the Gaza Strip and claimed, among other things, that remaining on the Philadephi route is an Israeli diplomatic-strategic need. Fact-checking by Haaretz reveals that some of his remarks have no basis in reality.

Philadephi route

Netanyahu claimed that, for years, he had supported taking control of the Philadelphi route, which runs along the Egypt-Gaza border.

"I mentioned the importance of the Philadephi route 20 years ago. This route decides our entire future."

The facts: During the years of Netanyahu's terms in office, he never sought to take control of the Philadephi route, and never did he include its capture as a primary objective of the war. Furthermore, Netanyahu has failed to persuade the defense minister, the Mossad director, and the IDF chief of staff of the necessity of holding onto the route over advancing a hostage deal. Only last week, in the dead of night, did Netanyahu bring up the subject for a cabinet discussion and, in any case, he approved the American proposal to significantly reduce its pressure – even though, as he put it, "This route decides our entire future."

War goals

Netanyahu claimed that getting the hostages back and returning the residents of the north to their homes are among two of the war's objectives.

"We've set four objectives: eliminate Hamas, get back all our hostages, ensure that Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel, and the safe return of our residents to the northern border."

The facts: Netanyahu and the cabinet did not commit to the return of the hostages, resorting instead to ambiguous wording that calls for "maximum effort to resolve the hostage issue." Furthermore, contrary to Netanyahu's words, the war goals never included the campaign in the north at all or the return of northern residents to their homes.

The four war goals decided in October (which have not changed since then) are the collapse of the Hamas regime and the destruction of its military capabilities, removing the terrorist threat from Gaza, a maximum effort to resolve the hostage issue, and defending the country's borders and people.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-03/ty-article/.premium/gaza-war-goals-evacuees-and-philadelphi-fact-checking-israeli-pm-netanyahu/00000191-b7b9-d95b-a1d5-bfbdfd6d0000?lts=1729414660673

In essence: to wipe Hamas off the map. To eliminate Hamas. No suggestion of accepting the continuing existence of Hamas, as you clearly claim.

One other:

Benjamin Netanyahu insists on Hamas ‘destruction’ as part of plan to end Gaza war
Israeli PM says his country’s conditions for ending conflict have not changed after US president presented ceasefire plan
Bethan McKernan in Tel Aviv
Sun 2 Jun 2024 01.55 AEST
Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated that Hamas must be completely destroyed before Israel will agree to end its war in Gaza, casting doubt on Joe Biden’s announcement of a new Israeli-led ceasefire proposal.
P - The Israeli prime minister made a rare statement on Saturday, during the Jewish Shabbat, in which he said: “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/01/no-end-to-gaza-war-until-destruction-of-hamas-says-netanyahu-israel

See also: hap0206, As usual your facts are fucked.
December, 2023 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173385057