Magnum opus

  There's new campaign shown on Walla! named 'Bibi? I don't believe him'. It shows a game named 'Recognise the Bluff' (in which they show some of his ridiculous lies), quotes about him by other members of the Likud party members about him, and animation videos in which politicians criticise him.

  Now, unlike my friend Yotam Berger, who decided to refer to the campaign itself and its tactics (which is also important to do), I decided to write about the politician himself, Binyamin Netanyahu. The man, in case you don't know, is a practically pathological liar. He said a lot of nonsense, like talking about how he saw the British soldiers leaving Mandatorial Palestine when the Mandate was over (funny; it was over before he was born...), speaking about Rekhav'am Zeevi and his acts as a Minister when he was a Prime Minister (and he wasn't a Minister when Netanyahu was a Prime Minister), and telling of how he rejected an invitation to be the Minister of Economy in Italy (and he was never invited). It sounds a little like we're as drunk as drunk can be.

  However, as Senia Waldberg mentioned on his blog, politicians should not be criticised for what they say, but for what they do, and when we consider what they do, we should compare their contribution to their corruption (his exact words were, 'A Minister of Economy who boosts up the economy by milliards of dollars and takes a million into his own pocket is preferable to a Minister of Economy who does the economy by milliards of dollars and donates another million to the market from his own pocket'). And so I shall:

1. He isn't consistent. He said once that he will never raise the children's stipend, which Shas wants to raise, because raising it means they get more money for making more children. Three months later, he said that raising it a little is harmless.
2. He told Yitskhak Kaduri the day before he was elected in 1996, 'The Left-Wingers forgot what it means to be Jewish.' Appealing to those who 'remember' is a very, very dangerous thing to do, because these people forget what it's like to be Western. (I'm not talking about colonialism or cowardly 'pluralism' here, I'm talking about the Lumières.)
3. He's against gay rights. This is unforgivable.
4. He wants to ban speaking of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. My Arabic teacher is already in danger of getting fired for teaching it; now he wants to tighten the ban, which is retarded. What he should to is put it in the history study material, but teach it properly: teach the students that it was done because there was no other choice (you try winning a war without territorial consistency!) and that it was done as morally as possible (the residents were warned ahead of time in the Deir Yassin massacre. How many Western countries would do that?).

  In short, this man is a potential danger. He should be sent again as the Israeli Embassador at the U.N., a job he did marvellously. Honestly, why doesn't anyone criticise all those hypocritic countries criticising Israel? (You should hear how bad it gets: Australians can tell one moment how the indigenous people of Australia were first acknowledged as humans in the 70's, and give the Israelis dirty looks the next one.)

  Just to clarify: the other candidates are terrible choices as well. Tsipi Livni, the Kadima candidate, had the nerve to tell Bush that being a Jew means living the Holocaust and passing it on to your children, which will live the Holocaust as well. How stupid can you get? In the Israeli Labour Party there is still no definite leader (they're going to have a primary election today), but hopefully, it won't be the current one, Ehud Barak, who does nothing but chaos in the Parliament and saying retarded things like, 'I am the Minister of Defence, not a war-lord,' when asked about a solution to the situation in Sderot (which, as my non-Israeli readers were probably never informed on their media, gets bombed daily by Qassam missiles from the nearby Gaza). And Shas... well, they're Shas. (And the only reason I'm not criticising more broadly is that I'm too much of a layman when it comes to politics.) Perhaps Netanyahu is the best choice.

  And I can hear the Jewish fiddles accompanying the Shas members' singing:

'You're drunk, you're drunk, you infidel fools, stop this silly fuss:

For they are devious angels that the 'Shem' has sent to us!'

  And this makes me quite cross.

'Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more,

But a good man more corrupt than Shas I've never seen before.'

  Let's just hope it's a phase. Maybe some day Israel will once morehave a leader that will actually have a complete term.

  Ceterum censeo Meam-She'arim Benem-Barakque esse delendas. Unum diem...