Rattling the Cage: The threat from Within (click for website)
Apr. 7, 2009
Larry Derfner , THE JERUSALEM POST
Since our country not only legitimized Avigdor Lieberman but made him our
showcase to the world, since Likud, Labor and Kadima all accepted him as a
national leader, he's gotten cleaned up for public consumption. Overnight.
Now the news stories don't use "racist" or "fascist" or "neo-fascist" or
"anti-Arab" as adjectives before his name; now they say he's "considered by
some to hold anti-Arab views" or something like that. Israel's defenders are
spinning Lieberman as a fellow who's more bark than bite, whose style may be
problematic but whose politics are well within reason. Look, they say, he
supports the two-state solution!
The truth about our foreign minister - and this is no scoop, it's old news
everywhere, but a lot of people have conveniently forgotten it - is that he
used to belong to Kach. He is a one-time member of a murderous anti-Arab
movement, one whose ideology is summed up in the chant "death to the Arabs,"
one that was banned here and is listed by the US and EU as a terrorist
organization.
That was back in 1979, when Lieberman was studying at Hebrew University. "I
made out his membership card," said former Kach general manager Yossi Dayan.
"I stapled his photo to a card that said 'Kach' and had our symbol on it."
Baruch Marzel, the movement's long-time leader, said, "He joined us. There
were salon meetings in Tel Aviv that he organized for Rabbi Kahane."
Avigdor Eskin, a Kachnik who led the cheering after Yitzhak Rabin's
assassination, said, "Kahane recognized him as Kach's representative at
Hebrew University. He distributed material for Kach."
These statements were made on-camera to Channel 10 in early February, not
long before the election. Lieberman, understandably, doesn't want to talk
about it, and claims it was all a pre-election smear by his political
enemies. "I deny any connection with the Kach movement and I have no
intention of addressing these orchestrated provocations," was his statement.
THE YOUNG LIEBERMAN, then as now a practical politician, soon left Kach and
joined Likud, but his views of Arabs remained the same. After the election,
author Daniel Gavron wrote: "Working as a reporter for The Jerusalem Post in
1984, I interviewed three young Likud party members on how they felt about
Meir Kahane, who had just been elected to the Knesset on a platform that
included expelling Israel's Arab citizens. Two of them condemned Kahane and
lectured me about the liberalism of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of the
Revisionist Movement out of which the Likud had emerged. The third, Avigdor
Lieberman, remarked laconically in his strong Russian accent that Kahane was
'saying out loud what many of us are thinking.'"
Kach, Likud, Israel Beiteinu - the label may change but the merchandise
doesn't. "Only Lieberman understands Arabic" was the campaign slogan he
broadcast into Israeli homes night after night before the election; what he
says privately can only be imagined. He fantasizes aloud in the Knesset
about executing Arab MKs; there's hardly an Arab patch of land anywhere that
he hasn't marked rhetorically for bombing; and he wants to kick hundreds of
thousands of Arab citizens out of the country for the crime of being Arab.
The foreign minister of the Middle East's only democracy once called a press
conference in which he pointedly, repeatedly described Israel as a "police
state," a dictatorship of lies run by the Israel Police, the State
Attorney's Office and, of course, the Supreme Court. This may have had
something to do with Lieberman's being under investigation for
multimillion-dollar corruption, for allegedly being a bagman for rich
Russian criminals - an investigation that's been going on for a dozen years.
A former barroom bouncer, a lapsed Kachnik, a relentless Arab-basher, a
warmonger, an enemy of the law in word and, allegedly, in deed - if this guy
isn't a fascist, who is?
BUT LOOK, say Israel's damage-controllers, he supports the two-state
solution!
Right, and Ahmadinejad isn't an anti-Semite, he's just anti-Israel.
Oh, wait a minute now - am I comparing Avigdor Lieberman, foreign minister
of Israel, to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran? Yes, as a matter of
fact, I am. They both exult in beating the drums for racism and war. They
both brand entire ethnic and religious groups as the enemy and promise a
sweeping, violent solution. They both appeal to a nation's spleen. The main
ideological difference between them is that Ahmadinejad is a religious
fanatic, while Lieberman is secular - which, I imagine, is one reason he
left Kach to develop his secular brand of Kahanism in the political
mainstream. Otherwise, he and Ahmadinejad are cut from the same cloth.
Lieberman talks a lot about "the threat from within" being more dangerous
than the threat from without - that the Arabs inside our borders can destroy
this country easier than the Arabs outside. He's right about the threat from
within, but it isn't from Israeli Arabs, it's from Lieberman himself and
what he represents and the power he's gained. He's now taken over the
Foreign Ministry. He's gotten the stamp of approval from the leading parties
of the right, center and center-left - the Israeli consensus. He's being
laundered and sanitized by virtually the entire American Jewish
establishment.
And he's not through by a long shot. At this point, he seems to have an even
brighter future ahead.
Lieberman is more dangerous than Ahmadinejad because we have the military
power to deter Iran's threat to destroy us physically. I don't know if we
have the power to deter Lieberman from destroying us morally - from turning
us into the image of what we claim to hate.