{"id":483,"date":"2016-05-19T20:44:38","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T20:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcschulman.com\/?p=483"},"modified":"2016-05-19T20:58:16","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T20:58:16","slug":"what-does-it-say-about-our-prime-minister-if-he-picks-lieberman-as-defense-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/19\/what-does-it-say-about-our-prime-minister-if-he-picks-lieberman-as-defense-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it say about our Prime Minister if he picks Lieberman as Defense Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

The past two days have been the craziest days I can remember in this country in terms of politics, and they certainly have not ended well.\u00a0 I try to write at least one column a week for Newsweek even when the news is slow.\u00a0 Yesterday morning I decided that there were two stories that were only loosely linked, the story of the ongoing disagreements between Netanyahu and the army and the story of the negotiations that Herzog was having with Netanyahu.\u00a0 Frankly I did not understand why Herzog was engaging in the negotiations since I did not see how they could turn out well.\u00a0 It just did not make sense to me that Netanyahu would be willing to give the minimum that Labor needed to justify entering into a coalition with Likud.\u00a0 The thrust of my article was clearly in that direction and initially dealt with how Labor was coming apart over the issue.\u00a0 Events of the day changed the article dramatically and the day ended\u00a0 with Avigdor Lieberman as our new Defense Minister.<\/p>\n

I have to say as someone whose son received his first draft notice today, the idea of Lieberman as Defense Minister is abhorrent.\u00a0 Netanyahu\u2019s actions in appointing him should prove to anybody who cares about Israel how dangerous he has become to Israel.\u00a0 There are only two reasons that explain the appointment of Lieberman- Netanyahu\u2019s perception that it will help him politically, or his interest in harming the army and its command. To many of us the army is one of the\u00a0 last bastions of intelligent people making decision in the public sector in this country.\u00a0 Either reason is frightening.<\/p>\n

To realize how terrible\u00a0 this idea is, you only have to reflect on the facts- and I am not talking about Lieberman\u2019s politics, which while I think are self-defeating and immoral- do not disqualify him.\u00a0 What should disqualify him, is his lack of experience, lack of temperament and the smell of corruption that surrounds him. Never has \u00a0 a man as unqualified been appointed to Defense Minister.\u00a0 He had a minimum army service, has never run a large organization and never shown any expertise in the matters of defense\u00a0 beyond making provocative statements.\u00a0 Worse than that, he is known not to have patience for meetings that last longer than 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

Who is he replacing ? A former Chief of Staff, commander of the Central Command, commander of the most elite units, who by all accounts has been an excellent Defense Minister.\u00a0 What might the current Defense Ministers sins be- he thought a soldier who by all accounts killed a wounded terrorist in cold blood for no reasons should be tried.\u00a0 He defended the deputy chief of staff who might have picked the wrong day to warn about certain racist phenomena in our society, but most of us think he was right in warning about.\u00a0 So now, Netanyahu\u00a0 has appointed one of the people responsible for those problematic phenomena in our country\u00a0 to be Defense Minister.<\/p>\n

By the way have I mentioned the fact that although he was not charged in the end with corruption after a 10 year investigation, the fact that his 19-year-old daughter received a $17 million shekel consulting contract remains very suspicious, to say the least. Now that same man is going to be responsible for the largest budget of the state of Israel.<\/p>\n

I repeat a qualified thoughtful experienced Defense Minister is being replaced to serve the narrow political interest of Netanyahu.\u00a0 I am yet to hear any thoughtful person come up with a single justification. \u00a0Everyone I know is very worried by this development and i am clearly understating the level of concern. \u00a0 I have to laugh when I read about the Conservative and Reform movements sending a delegation to convince Netanyahu to save the agreement on the access to the Wall. \u00a0Do American Jews really think that a man who put an unqualified demagogue to be in charge of the Defense Ministry because it was politically expedient, cares about the views of American Jewry when its not politically expedient to listen?<\/p>\n

\"Netanyahu\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past two days have been the craziest days I can remember in this country in terms of politics, and they certainly have not ended well.\u00a0 I try to write at least one column a week for Newsweek even when the news is slow.\u00a0 Yesterday morning I decided that there were two stories that were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcschulman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}