The Last Exile

These two seemingly unrelated headlines grabbed my attention this morning. Arutz Sheva:

Rabbi Schmidt, 43, is the Rosh Yeshiva (head) of the Hesder Yeshiva in the community, and is also the Rabbi of the town of Shavei Shomron.
According to the rabbi’s wife, Ofra, some 200 policemen arrived at the community Monday with bulldozers to demolish four structures that were being built, allegedly in contravention of the current freeze order on construction by Jews in Judea and Samaria. The bulldozers drove through the yeshiva compound, which adjoins some of the property that was razed. The rabbi instructed some twenty yeshiva students who were present not to confront the police.

On their way back from the demolitions, she said, the destruction crews wanted to pass through the yeshiva grounds once again, although there was an alternate route. This time, the rabbi parked his vehicle in a way that blocked the bulldozers’ way and asked them not to pass through the yeshiva compound, which is private property.
Upon hearing this the police beat the rabbi, knocked him down and continued to beat him severely when he was on the ground. He did not require medical attention, she said, but expressed horror at the fact that Jewish police would beat a rabbi, even after being told that he was a rabbi. 

So the Yassam strike (literally) without an eye to the optics of attacking a rabbi on Yeshiva property. The days when this kind of incident would pass without anyone outside of the immediate circle are long gone with the internet but the fact that the Yassam continue to operate from an exaggerated sense of entitlement without regard for the laws of Israel speaks volumes to lack of accountability the Minister of Defense holds his department to as long as Jews are his chosen victims.

The second is announcement from Moshe Feiglin. Arutz Sheva:

Moshe Feiglin, head of the Manhigut Yehudit oppositional faction within the Likud party, has decided to leave the Likud along with his movement, Makor Rishon reported Friday.
Feiglin has called a meeting of the central activists in Manhigut Yehudit for Sunday, in which he intends to announce his decision. He will recommend that the movement seek its political home outside Likud. On the record, Feiglin would only tell Makor Rishon that “we are in a period of internal inquiries that will last about two weeks and we are involving the activists in the dilemmas.”

(…)Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu has seen Feiglin as his nemesis within Likud, and accused him of trying to effect a hostile takeover of the Likud with the aim of turning it into a religious party. “We are not an extremist messianic party; we are a national and liberal movement,” he said ahead of the latest confrontation with Feiglin.

That confrontation took place late April and centered on an internal Likud vote to change the party’s constitution in a way that would put off to 2011 the elections to its central committee. The move was seen as a bid to prevent Feiglin from gaining strength in the party’s grassroots leadership and to give Netanyahu time to add more moderate grassroots members to Likud, to offset the ones that Feiglin had brought in.
Feiglin said the showdown would ultimately determine the fate of Jerusalem. Netanyahu, he warned emotionally, wants to silence opposition in the Likud because he has made a secret pact with US President Barack Obama that involves partitioning Jerusalem. Several Likud Knesset members, including Danny Danon, Tzipi Hotovely and Yariv Levin, also opposed Netanyahu’s move – but Netanyahu succeeded in passing the resolution anyway. This last failure is what seems to have convinced Feiglin to leave the Likud and essentially abandon his decade-long project. 

While on first glance these two stories seemingly have nothing to do with each other; they both speak to the democratic deficit within Israeli politics. Feiglin would have been sitting in the Knesset if Netanyahu hadn’t given into subverting his own political party’s process – not once, but many times in pursuit of keeping Feiglin’s Jewish leadership out of power within the Likud. Feiglin’s fraction makes up at least 25-30% of the Likud membership base and has acted as a straw to draw away support from the national religious camp in general elections.

Netanyahu may think the Likud can make-up a 25-30% loss of membership by poaching from Kadima – and Bibi may be right but what he doesn’t seem to fully comprehend is the potential to harm Likud interests Feiglin’s membership represents; if Feiglin decides to do something fresh, creative and controversial…which just happens to be a Feiglin hallmark.

The natural fit for Feiglin’s fraction is to opt to join the National Union and I expect Bibi is counting on that as the impact on national elections wouldn’t be all that much to write back to the diaspora about but if Feiglin wants to keep to his strategy of joining the mainstream political process and influencing change his way; he would be far further ahead to keep his to his strategy and join forces with…Ysrael Beiteinu.

Not to mention the humongous entertainment value I would get watching such a merger but it could potentially mark Yisrael Beiteinu as a fraction too large to be denied no matter if Kadima or Likud took the most mandates. If Yisrael Beiteinu could successfully integrate its party platform with Feiglin’s Jewish Leadership fraction it could potentially lead Israel in the years to come when the country is set to undergo another demographic first – transitioning from a secular Jewish majority to a religious Jewish majority. If I was Lieberman, I’d be calling Moshe.

Can you imagine Lieberman and Moshe both sitting across the table from the Palestinian Authority in ‘direct’ negotiations? I almost (not quite)feel sorry for the Palestinian Authority but the one thing no Jew anywhere in the world would be worrying about is whether Lieberman or Feiglin dividing up Jerusalem.