After the Likud primary, I wrote briefly here on the unprecedented power that Moshe Feiglin has gained in that party. My new piece in The American Prospect provides more information on Feiglin, his beliefs, and the danger he poses:
Until recently, Feiglin hasn’t hidden his goals. On the Jewish Leadership website, a Hebrew document proposes principles for a constitution for Israel. It would include a high rabbinic court, chosen only by clergy, that would overturn any legislation it saw as contradicting Jewish religious law. A newly established senate, with a guaranteed Jewish majority of over 80 percent, would have to consult the rabbinic court on all national issues. Israel would lay claim not only to the West Bank and Gaza, but also to all of Jordan.
An article by Feiglin on the group’s website, describing what he’d do if he gained power, has been blocked to public access since the Likud primary. In it, one step he proposes is holding a ceremony at every army base in which all non-lethal weaponry would be destroyed. Faced with Palestinian demonstrators, soldiers could only shoot to kill. On Jewish Leadership’s English website, another Feiglin tract contrasts parliamentary democracy with an “authentic Jewish regime” that would express the “organic unity of the Nation of Israel.” Put simply, Feiglin’s ideology is the meeting point of fundamentalism and fascism.
Read the full article here, and come back to South Jerusalem to comment.
Feiglin is no threat. Most people on what you would call “the Far Right” strongly oppose him, including myself. His “Manhigut Yehudit” (MY) is a self-destructive organization that has alienated a very large number of people who would have otherwise supported them. I’ll bet you don’t even know that Ehud Olmert today is Prime Minister thanks to Feiglin. How is this? MY is an organization that has no ideology other than getting Feiglin into the Knesset. In order to accomplish this, they have, in the past, supported the most Leftist elements in the Likud. They allied themselves with Sharon’s people in 2003 (it was THEY who encouraged Feiglin to join the Likud). They thus supported Olmert, who got something like spot 35 on the 2003 list. Without Feiglin’s support he never would have gotten into the Knesset. They also supported most of the people Sharon brought into the Likud who supported destroying Gush Katif and who were the ones who ended up in Kadima. I know for a fact they blocked several outstanding, intelligent right-wingers, some of whom are religious and instead supported some real dishonest airheads. Thus, they are no different than any of the rest of the mediocrities that are in the political system today. Don’t worry about them.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c40_a14232/News/Israel.html
“The man Netanyahu actively campaigned to keep from winning a top spot on the party list, far-right candidate Moshe Feiglin, ended up winning 8,000 of the fewer than 50,000 votes cast. But that was enough to earn him the 20th spot on Likud’s list and likely high enough for him to win a Knesset seat…
In another rebuke of Netanyahu, 19 of the candidates Feiglin endorsed landed among the top 36 candidates in a field of more than 140.
The Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted a day after the primary showed that if the general election was held now, Likud would still win 36 Knesset seats…
Feiglin also helped to bring into Likud some new faces…
Another of his candidates, Gilad Erdan, came in third. He is a strong defender of conservative values and of keeping all of Israel’s biblical lands…
One silver lining for Likud and its right-wing shift is that the party may now have an easier time reaching out to the ideological national religious right that used to vote for smaller niche parties, according to Aryeh Eldad, a veteran of the National Union party who is forming his own secular far-right party this year…
“A lot of right-wing voters will look at the Likud, see Begin and Feiglin, and think this is the right-wing party we dreamed about,” he said.
I would think that a translator knows his Hebrew. When you write “a Hebrew document proposes…” at Feiglin’s site, it would behoove you to note that the document was composed by Prof. Hill Weiss and that it was uploaded a part of an internals discussion as to the future character of a Jewish state. To suggest that that document is the accepted approach, decided upon at some official convocation is, well, let’s call a spade a spade: reprehensible or in Hebrew, גניבת הדעת but this is a “progressive” blog, so I guess that’s to be expected. Too bad that went out to the goyim in the Amer. Prospect.
Sorry, that “translator” remark was an error. But Gershom knows Hebrew enough in any case.
You have tried everything else-secular zionist, post zionism, nothing has worked. The world is still laughing at you. Why not Feiglin