Maybe I'm just too much a product of the idealist 1960s America. You can bookend my formative years with the most iconic line of John F Kennedy's Inaugural Address and the 1967 Six Days War.
Just weeks after the recent Knesset Elections, our experienced and wily Prime Minister Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu is ready to throw down the towel and give up trying to find enough MKs and political parties willing to work together, compromise and form a viable government coalition for the good of the State of Israel.
Bibi is my age and spent a lot of his youth in the United States. No doubt he is extremely familiar with Kennedy's cry to galvanize idealism for the good of the country. Unfortunately the attitude of most of the Israeli party leaders who should be negotiating with Netanyahu is horrendous. They each announce to the press that the will not compromise their cabinet demands, and they expect Bibi to give in. This is awful and bodes badly for Israeli society and the State of Israel.
We may need to go through elections yet again, Gd forbid.
There was a time when MKs were willing to cross lines and form National Unity Governments, but since Gantz, Lapid, Bogie and Ashkenazi made their entire campaign the demonization of Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu and insisted that they wouldn't work with him... A National Unity Government isn't on the menu. The "Blue and White" wannabes didn't campaign that they'd put their egos aside and do what's best for the country.
So unless a miracle happens, we're going to be suffering through another few months of election litter.
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“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”I somehow tweaked Kennedy's idealist and patriotic challenge and transferred my loyalty to the Jewish People, Jewish Religion and Jewish Land. Here I am a just over half a century later, not only living a Zionist version of Kennedy's ideal, but naively and idealistically expect to see that idealism in those elected to Israel's Knesset, the politicians.
Just weeks after the recent Knesset Elections, our experienced and wily Prime Minister Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu is ready to throw down the towel and give up trying to find enough MKs and political parties willing to work together, compromise and form a viable government coalition for the good of the State of Israel.
Bibi is my age and spent a lot of his youth in the United States. No doubt he is extremely familiar with Kennedy's cry to galvanize idealism for the good of the country. Unfortunately the attitude of most of the Israeli party leaders who should be negotiating with Netanyahu is horrendous. They each announce to the press that the will not compromise their cabinet demands, and they expect Bibi to give in. This is awful and bodes badly for Israeli society and the State of Israel.
We may need to go through elections yet again, Gd forbid.
There was a time when MKs were willing to cross lines and form National Unity Governments, but since Gantz, Lapid, Bogie and Ashkenazi made their entire campaign the demonization of Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu and insisted that they wouldn't work with him... A National Unity Government isn't on the menu. The "Blue and White" wannabes didn't campaign that they'd put their egos aside and do what's best for the country.
So unless a miracle happens, we're going to be suffering through another few months of election litter.
May Gd help us.
