Not good enough
Ministers say they object to pullout but fail to act
All those who view last week’s events as a promo for the summer’s horror movie, are right. The expulsion train and resistance train are heading for collision.
Police violence in dispersing anti-pullout protests has reached the level of documented sadism, while on the other hand, far right thugs can hurl a stone at an injured Arab lying on the ground with the knowledge that a long time will pass before they are stopped, because their actions serve Sharon’s needs, namely character assassination of his opponents and de-legitimization of settlers.
Tough Decision
Prince Charles Netanyahu
By Nahum Barnea
Netanyahu can only lose politically with opposition to pullout
It should be said again: It’s impossible to understand how 12-year-old girls spend 36 days in jail for road-blocking protests while the organizers of the lynch in Gaza, those who throw bricks on IDF soldiers, and other provocateurs are released immediately.
There is no other explanation for the release of far right activists aside from the possibility that their presence on the streets is much more important in the eyes of the Shin Bet and Sharon than imprisonment.
Public opinion polls indicating increased support for the pullout show Sharon his investment in provocateurs is bearing fruit.
The chicken and the egg
However, it is still possible to prevent this terrible collision. A handful of Likud ministers, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, can avert the disaster.
There are historical times where a genuine leader is tested, and if one feels he does not have the strength to assume responsibility and lead, one is apparently no leader. Indeed, one who does not feel he holds the key cannot become a key figure, and resorts to acting according to polls instead of facing the current and diverting it.
The polls tell Netanyahu that at this time he has no majority, because those referred to as “ministers” would not follow his lead. Those are the ministers who claim they oppose the expulsion, but are not doing everything in their power to prevent it.
Those ministers would not follow Netanyahu’s lead because they feel he is not worthy of being followed.
Indeed, one side is the chicken, the other one is the egg, and while one waits for the other to act first, the egg becomes rotten while the chicken is being prepared for slaughter.
Netanyahu is perhaps waiting for Sharon to crash during disengagement, so Bibi can appear as the national healer, but nobody will forgive him for sitting on the fence while the crash, the civil war, could have still been avoided.
Do any of the ministers who “object to the pullout” imagine that if they resign from the government in protest in the midst of the uprooting they would be spared the judgment of history?
It is impossible to win a political, moral struggle by skipping votes (as Netanyahu plans to do.) Indeed, one does not become a leader by being absent from the Knesset.
A minister who resigns in protest at the last moment or is satisfied with a ‘No’ vote once it is already too late would be like one who commits an offence and expects to be rewarded for it.
There will be no reward, but that person may be written off in the pages of history as one who in one hour, this hour, missed out on an opportunity to achieve glory.
