Actually, Avigdor Lieberman Is Just What Israel Needs Right Now

T. Belman. The author is a former party official in Yisrael Beytenu and served as an adviser in the Israeli Ministry of Defense. In contrast Algemeiner reports,

In at least four articles published over four days — a Thomas Friedman column, a staff editorial, a news article and an op-ed by Ronen Bergman — the New York Times has taken the side of ousted Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon against the man Prime Minister Netanyahu has chosen to replace him, Avigdor Lieberman.

The Times has described Mr. Ya’alon as “pragmatic,” while denouncing Mr. Lieberman as “far-right” and “extremist.”

And so does the BBC and many other major news outlets.

Liberman is neither “far right” nor “extremist”.

Liberman is not a right-winger

by Gregg Roman, FORWARD

Peaceniks may be up in arms about the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as Israel’s next minister of defense, but the country’s enemies are worried — and rightly so.

Yes, as the inevitable flurry of articles accompanying his appointment are sure to point out, Lieberman once said that Israel could bomb the Aswan dam in the event of war with Egypt and he also said that captured Palestinian terrorists should be “drowned in the Dead Sea.” But Lieberman, arguably the biggest loudmouth in Israel (he recently called Netanyahu — the man he’s been angling to work for — “a liar, cheater and crook”), is also a reasonable politician.

Lieberman’s core beliefs are squarely rooted in principles that most Israelis accept and that make good sense. He has expressed support for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as part of a final settlement, but he also maintains, as he put it at the Saban Forum in 2006, that the negotiating process is based on three fundamentally erroneous assumptions: “that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main fact of instability in the Middle East, that the conflict is territorial and not ideological, and that the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders will end the conflict.”

Although willing to trade land (including the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, where he lives) under certain conditions, Lieberman resents the Obama administration’s relentless pressure for upfront Israeli concessions, noting that two decades and more of concessions to the Palestinians “brought neither results nor solutions.” He is correct that finding more things for Israel to give up, even as the cycle of Palestinian incitement and violence continues, is not the answer.

Having experienced poverty first-hand while growing up in the Soviet Union, Lieberman has spoken eloquently about the need to address the deplorable socioeconomic conditions among Palestinians. This is partly why he has long called for toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza, which Netanyahu, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon and the rest of Israel’s political and military establishment have come to accept as a manageable problem.

Not everything Lieberman believes is nestled firmly within Israeli public consensus, but even his more extreme ideas are rooted in hard-nosed realism, not ideology or ethnic particularism. His long-standing advocacy of the death penalty for convicted terrorists, for example, is premised on the simple recognition that Palestinian terrorists are today free to murder based on the correct expectation that they will later be released in prisoner exchanges.

Lieberman is also cognizant of the fact that the U.S.-Israel relationship is of the utmost importance. When Israeli minister Naftali Bennett attacked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to rekindle the peace process, Lieberman quickly fired back, stating, “There can be disagreements among friends, but one [Israel] doesn’t have to attack someone [the U.S]. When the supply of ammunition ran out during Operation Protective Edge, it was the United States that supplied it. The Americans were the ones who gave the money for Iron Dome. The United States was the one that helped us at the United Nations Human Rights Council and they prevent a lot of trouble in the Security Council with vetoes.”

Of course, Obama administration officials hoped that Netanyahu would stabilize his coalition by drawing in the center-left, not someone like Lieberman. Just days before the announcement, it was widely expected that Netanyahu would form a coalition with Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union, which advocates greater accommodation of Palestinian demands.

But the Zionist Union has been paralyzed by internal divisions, with numerous members of this bloc openly opposing Herzog’s coalition talks with Netanyahu, while Lieberman’s MKs are expected to remain loyal. A stable, right-leaning government may have more credibility with the Israeli public than a fragile “national unity” government when it comes to making compromises for peace. After all, it was the “hard-line” Likud leader Menachem Begin who signed the Camp David Accords with Egypt in 1978.

My esteemed colleague David Makovsky worries that Netanyahu is “closing the door” on policies that “could have blunted a string of international initiatives” targeting Israel in the months ahead. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Lieberman accepts the Middle East Quartet’s conditions for a two-state solution. Most important, he stated, “When there is a dispute between the integrity of the nation and the integrity of the land, then integrity of the nation is more important. I support a [peace] agreement…when we insist on security arrangements, this is just to avoid the crazy reality we are in.”

The doom-and-gloomers are right that Lieberman’s appointment to the defense ministry will almost certainly be consequential. Word has it that he demanded and received assurances regarding the latitude he will have in office. But Lieberman may just be the man of consequence Israel needs right now.

Gregg Roman is Director of the Middle East Forum, a research center based in Philadelphia. He is a former party official in Yisrael Beytenu and served as an adviser in the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

May 26, 2016 | 9 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest

Leave a Reply

9 Comments / 9 Comments

  1. @ bernard ross:

    It’s the position he always craved not the FM.

    Lieberman wants to be PM and needs to become the leader of the visible political right wing he need the DM ministry and the thousands of patronage jobs he can give out. All of IMI comes under his purview and authority besides the IDF. DM rounds out his CV. He now has BB by the cojones, unless BB has a plan B If Lieberman becomes too ornery or demanding? I like the idea of civilian control of the MOD. Arens was also a civilian as was Peres, Peretz & as was Eshkol (for a short time)

  2. although I am not pro yaalon… it seems to me that liberman is not the right pick for DM…. that it should go to a person with a great deal of military experience…. I wonder if liberman is in the position temporarily… it is an odd choice of ministry to give him, I thought.

  3. Keli-A Said:

    Lieberman has spoken eloquently about the need to address the deplorable socioeconomic conditions among Palestinians

    those who teach their children that jews are sons of apes and pigs deserve deplorable economic conditions, chaos and suffering. It is best that such lunatics and criminals are kept powerless and punished severly for their incitements and murders. I have not one tear for those bastards who teach their children that jews are sons of apes and pigs… it is best for the jews and the world that such folk disappear. I think it is absurd to even humor the idea that jews should negotiate peace treaties with folks who teach their children that jews are sons of apes and pigs….. that would be my only reply to the euros, un, the world when they arrive with their peace plans and suggestions. I would tell them its a no brainer… that after they have dismantled those ludicrous behaviors they could return with suggestions…. until then they should pray that they are not slaughtered like the deserving dogs they are.

  4. Having experienced poverty first-hand while growing up in the Soviet Union, Lieberman has spoken eloquently about the need to address the deplorable socioeconomic conditions among Palestinians

    Economic development won’t change Palestinians for the better. On one hand, Jews started their state dirt poor, so poverty is no impediment to statehood; on other hand Israeli Arab youth is used to relative affluence, has digested Israeli benefits, and being economically secure can afford to hate Israel, their benefactor. If anything, the economic development of Palestine will militarize the Arabs: before affluence trickles down to the commoners it is concentrated at the state level. Historically, this is the most dangerous phase: the state has the economic means to wage a war, and the poor population has not yet grown averse to it.

    No Cyprus solution is possible here: both the Turkish and Greek Cypriots lived there for centuries, none are newcomers—or worse, refugees—whom the other views as having taken the land from them. The separation which so far had worked out in Cyprus (and will fail eventually) cannot work for Jews and Palestinians.

    Any true separation must involve expelling all Arabs from Israel into a state of their own.

    Lieberman is even worse than BB more duplicitous if that’s possible and he speaks when it serves his purpose more extreme than BB…… This is his big chance to become leader of the ideological right and even push BB in that direction but I think he will revert to the petty low life political demagogue that he has always been. I expect his policies to emulate that of BB and Ya’alon….

  5. TV report: Top Israeli politicians believe coalition could soon fall apart

    As Netanyahu loses a second minister in eight days, strains in PM’s relations with other coalition members prompt speculation about early elections

    The Channel 10 report Friday night quoted unnamed political “party leaders” as saying …………. [ 😛 😛 😛 ]

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-report-top-israeli-politicians-believe-coalition-could-soon-fall-apart/

    its starting to sound very much like the bought and paid for orchestrated anti trump media campaign where every whoring media site used to taking bribes is quoting all their fake unnamed sources trying to whip up a storm in a teacup. It is so transparent to see that all the bought foreign paid leftist mole politicians and “journalists” have had their puppet strings activated in unison. LOLROFLMAO

  6. A civilian at the Defense. That is what democracy ought to be and the F…k West is bitching around.
    NYT, The Guardian, BBC and “Huffingpuffing” and plenty others Goebbels in action. They have decided to plagiarize the Islamists.
    They all hate Israel successes!!!
    As the Clintons shamed the US people with all his/her repeated public lies, Obama is promoting large scale lawlessness throughout the country, starting with the DoJ, defaming the police forces, promoting Black lives matter and Int. Islamism!
    I prefer the former democracy to the latter.

  7. The Times has described Mr. Ya’alon as “pragmatic,” while denouncing Mr. Lieberman as “far-right” and “extremist.”

    And so does the BBC and many other major news outlets.

    This is a sure sign that Bibi has made a superb decision.