Tzipi Speaks Out

What’s a person like Tzipi Livni, who, as far as we can tell, never put an agora in her pocket that didn’t belong to her, doing in a party like Kadima? In her first public attempt to act like a Prime Ministerial candidate, she made it clear. She’s announced that she wants to form a National Unity government which can stretch to include even Meretz and (horrors) the Likud, in order to deal with Israel’s situation, which is “not simple,” in her words.

Tzipi’s right about the situation. She also assumes that while the situation is not simple, her audience is.

Somewhere, beneath the spin and the corruption and the nauseating display of the titanic ambitions of little people, politics is about important issues. Eons ago, Tzipi Livni was elected on a platform of tossing another 100,000 Israeli citizens into the dustbin and making a lasting peace with the puppet of the Mukata.

That platform lasted for about 90 days, before the Olmert government could get properly comfortable in its chauffeured Volvos. Since then Israel’s situation has changed dramatically. Just about everybody realizes that instead of being on the brink of peace, we stand on the brink of a war of annihilation. We’re just not doing anything about it.

In this situation, which is “not simple,” Tzipi Livni is not a tabula rasa. She comes with a record. She bears more responsibility for Israel’s predicament than any person alive with the exception of Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak. Her political blindness has been monumental. She hasn’t done a single thing to warn the public of the dangers or to avert them. She hasn’t changed her personal positions an iota since the day before the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War. She’s pursued the will-o-the-wisp of peace with the Palestinian Nonentity long after a majority of the country has recognized it for what it is, a farcical scam. Till her statement yesterday, she seemed totally oblivious to the rapid and ominous darkening of Israel’s political horizon during her tenure in office.

That in itself would be reason enough for her to leave the political stage now rather than to seek to dominate it. At the very least, she should let the public know what she intends to do with her “national unity government.” What’s her platform? What does she intend to do about Gaza? About Judaea and Samaria? About Hizbullah? About Iran? Parties join a government on the basis of that government’s proposed policies. Nobody now has any idea what a Livni government would stand for, other than for Tzipi Livni.

Israel has had a hollow government for over two years now, full of comments about our serious situation but with no plans to do anything about it. The real object of those currently sitting around the government table is to . . . keep on sitting. When Livni discusses whom she wants in her government, as opposed to what she wants to do with it, she’s indicating that she’s really proposing more of the same. Like the entire Kadima lineup, she’s gotten the country into a situation that she’s too small to handle, or even to think constructively about. Good enough a reason to flee her “national unity government” rather than join it.

News scoop :)

Peres and Abu Mazen were meeting in the Israeli President’s residence when Abu Mazen’s constituent went on his tractor rampage on King David Street. In the ensuing uproar, few noticed when Abu Mazen pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and began measuring Peres’ rooms for his furniture.

Poor fool. He doesn’t realize that Ismael Haniya in Gaza has the complete floor plans of Peres’ residence in Jerusalem and Abu Mazen’s suite in the Mukata in Ramallah tacked onto the wall of his office.