Israel's summer of discontent

Nonsensical analysis

Or maybe a miracle will happen, Israelis will come to their senses, and throw Bibi Netanyahu out of office.

easy:each party undertakes,in advance,to either attack or not attack iran.if they lie they lose job and all shekels.sound reasonable?

Fact No 1 - Does is matter who is responsible for the coalition breaking down, isn't the only important thing now the coming election? Fact No 2 - If Bibi had gone full term he wouldn't have had to hold an election till 2013 and if he wants to get Obama to attack Iran then the last thing he would want to do is hold an election firstly because there is no guarantee he would win the election and if he lost he can't be sure the next government will not just accept the idea of a nuclear Iran and even if Bibi does win the election he doesn't know who his coalition partners will be and they not support his position on Iran. If he waits until after the US election he can keep putting the pressure on Obama because he knows the closer Obama gets to an election the weaker he gets so there is no logic in the idea that he is holding an election because of the US election. Fact No 3 - Who wins the US elections has no influence on who wins the Israeli elections and also lets not forget under the right wing George W Bush Israel had a right wing PM ( Sharon ) and then a centerist party ( Kadima ) a party that was very much elected on a sympathy vote for Sharon and Olmert was replaced by the right wing Bibi and Bush was replaced by the left wing Obama. Clinton left office nearly 16 years ago now and the pattern that existed with George H W Bush and his immidiate successor is broken, these are different times back in the 90s everybody was full of hope because we had just signed oslo and so the left were the natural choice for many also Labor hadn't imploded but then we had the intifada and the right gained power. Fact No 4 - Once again if Bibi wants to get Obama to attack Iran the last thing he is going to want to do is hold an election because he cannot control the outcome of the election and as long as he is PM during the run up to the US election he will have alot of influence, if he loses he may end up with somebody weak like Shelly Y who will say how high when Obama says jump and so nothing will be done to stop Iran so there is no logic in the idea that Bibi would want to hold an early election over Iran. If the election is in September and Bibi plans to do something about Iran he would probably go for June - July that way he still has time to get back to his campaigning and if he takes out Iran and he pulls it off ( provoke Iran into attacking Israel and force Oama to do the job because he is in just 6 months away from an election and he can't be seen to abandon Israel in its hour of need so close to an election so Bibi will force Obama into attacking Iran kicking and screaming, it would also be disasterous for Obama and cost him the election because attacking Iran is no popular amongst American voters so for Bibi its great Obama takes out Iran and Obama who Bibi hates loses the election so Bibi kills 2 birds with 1 stone but to do that he needs to remain in power so it would have been foolish to call an election if he wanted to deal with Iran. The Israel election is not a referendum on Iran because Iran is not the central issue of these elections. What the elections do is give the incoming PM a mandate to carry our operations like this because the elected government is responsible for making policies on defense matters not protestors in Tel Aviv.

Planning to attack Iran when newly installed in office has no advantage for Netanyahu, as opposed to attacking Iran now -for example-. The only difference would be that the American administration would be in its last months. But even that doesn't render it lame. The entire gambit and its reasoning escapes me just as much after reading Shavit's column. Maybe it has nothing to do with Iran either.

France, Germany, Danmark, the US, Canada, Japan, . . So much for wanting to be like the rest of the world.

id never thought id say this. But your fundamentalists are worse than ours.

The holy Flying Spaghetti Monster appeared to me in a vision and told me I was The Chosen One. You shall now renounce your false Gods and your false religions, kneel in front of me and bow to my awesomeness.

Men invented religion shortly after they invented God...

Yes, its true. Thank GOD

G-d promised in Old Testament, but under condicions: "If you obey!!!" Send prophets to no avail...Zionist "shortcut" to promissed land, disregarding G-ds comandments is insult to to"him". All this ongoing brutal colonization of other peoples land will end up horribly for large part of the World. Temporary succes enjoyed by constant blocking UN rosolutions by US Knesset is well known fact and soon may change...

I get that you mean this in the most sarcastic and negative light possible, but every word is the absolute truth. You know - the Biblical kind?

It is possible to believe in something higher than ourselves, which on can call God, and still be liberal, humanistic and open-minded towards progress. I believe that also in most European countries - and certainly in Iran - 80% would agree with a spiritual world's reality, no matter how they otherwise feel about humanity. One of the most harmful consequences of the Israeli division between "secular and religious" is the fact that the haredim with their conduct create a reacton that totally neglects a line of thought that includes spirituality as well as progress... In Germany it is the non-believers that are the neonazists... The haredim just use God for their ethnis purposes and the concept of chosenness to boost their ego...

I CAN AGREE PARTLY WITH GIDEON LEVY. With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. --- AMEN ---

Judaism articulates it. That's the only difference. Israel's problems come from acts, not sentiments.

A poll shows 80% of Israeli's believe in God and you try to turn it upside down say the questions are loaded etc. well sorry Gideon the haredi are not the only ones who believe in God, Can't you think of something a little more interesting to write about? Iran, Syria, Turkey. All the things going on in the world right now and you write an article on why a poll on why so many Israelis believe in God is wrong.

Ya, that says it completely.

If you people choose to stew in a vat of hate and self-worship, that's your business. I'm not bailing you out anymore. My advice is to use those passports you've been collecting and go be normal, respectable people with the rest of the human race. By the way, this "Chosen" stuff is getting old. Who rides a single compliment for 3000 years? I regret saying it in the first place. Now I "Choose" you to leave me alone. Put the book away and go watch a movie or something. You're like a creepy guy following a young girl too closely. I just want to turn around sometimes and yell at you "Quit following me!" Enough already.

One can believe in God and make rational decisions, be reasonable in the end with what's right and what's wrong. Is this small sample of 2,803 Israeli Jews polled indicative of the Israeli mindset? That sample is small first of all - it's the number of say four huge ultra- Orthodox weddings! But the survey indicated 46% as identified secular Israelis (almost half); 32% as identified Traditional Israelis (here we call them also Conservative & Reform Jews); and only 22% as Orthodox. The terminology of the " Chosen People " is more utilized by the non-Jewish nations, because I rarely heard amongst us that we are the Chosen People...it's more of Mishpacha (family) or tribe even. Perhaps amongst the Orthodox it's taken literally as " the Chosen People ".