Jerusalem Post to its readers: vote Sharansky

Miriam · 01-26-2003, 12:26 PM

...calls today's editorial:

From news article:
[...]

That Israel's most intellectually serious and personally credible political figure can be so readily dismissed by our entrenched political class for the most unserious and incredible of reasons only serves to reinforce our point. Israel needs a prime minister with the integrity, strength, and policy prescriptions of Natan Sharansky. That we realize this will not happen on Tuesday does not lessen our conviction that it should. Like the country he is uniquely positioned to lead, Sharansky's greatest days are yet to come. It is for this reason that we support Natan Sharansky and Yisrael B'Aliya, and why we urge our readers to do the same.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...=1043295334415

Your opinions on this?

**Mediocrates** · 01-27-2003, 04:58 AM

If the names of only two parties were to appear on Tuesday's ballot, our choice would be clear. Despite its faults, which are both serious and unsettling, the Likud Party of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is infinitely preferable to a Labor Party led by Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna.

Not too long ago, Israel's Labor Party was proud and dominant. Today it is neither. Labor clings ever tighter to the perilous notion that the only way Israel can make peace is to sue for it. Labor's journey to the periphery of Israeli politics mirrors its hypnotic obedience to folly.

While not the only issue facing voters next Tuesday, preventing those who want to raise Oslo from the dead from returning to power is, in our view, the most important. Like most leaders, Sharon's record is anything but perfect. His best days as prime minister were his earliest. He found a country deep in a hole and he stopped digging. For that reason alone, he deserves gratitude and the reelection that will surely be his.

But the choice Israelis face Tuesday is not simply between Sharon and Mitzna. There are other parties, some of them farcical, others dangerous, still others parochial. But one man stands out above the rest. He is Natan Sharansky and his party, Yisrael B'Aliya.

We support Sharansky not just because his stand against tyranny and for freedom helped unhinge the foundations of a totalitarian superpower, although that would be enough. Other candidates Sharon as well are also owed debts of gratitude by the people of Israel.

We are attracted to Sharansky, because we believe he is the only candidate who sees clearly what kind of state Israel can become and how to take us there.

Sharansky's insight is this: Freedom matters. It matters in economics, which is why he has pushed for tax cuts, deregulation, and free trade words without apparent meaning to Sharon and Mitzna - as the only policy mix that that can truly deliver the country from the economic collapse toward which it is dangerously headed and from which there may be no return.

Freedom matters to Sharansky in social affairs, which is why he has opened his traditionally Russian-based party to the Anglo community, and why his party is represented by secular and religious candidates committed to pursuing policies that promote Jewish unity. And it matters, above all, in our approach to the Palestinians.

Sharansky understands that our conflict with the Palestinians is not, at bottom, about clashing ethnic or religious identities. It is about clashing political systems one open, representative, compromise-oriented and basically pacific, the other closed, dictatorial, uncompromising, and addicted to violence.

In its essence, then, this conflict is no different from the West's clash with totalitarian Nazism and Communism. And its solution lies less in carving out borders, which can always be breached, but in ensuring that our neighbors share, and enjoy, at least some of our democratic values.

The peace to which we are entitled, therefore, can never be bought, much less guaranteed by a dictator for whom violence is the only way to get power and the only means to keep it. Rather, it requires a profound reform of Palestinian institutions.

This begins with the elimination of terrorist organizations, the expulsion of Yasser Arafat and his like-minded minions, and the destruction of the organs through which they exercised power. It continues with the reform of Palestinian schools and the purging of hate from their curricula. It reaches into the Palestinian media, with their agenda of incitement and celebration of murder. It concludes with the establishment of a genuinely representative Palestinian government based on human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law; an economy that is free; and institutions that are secular, pluralist, and tolerant.

Only when Palestinians themselves, either with help or without, have opted for the path of open, accountable government can Israel's future ever be secured. This is what Sharansky understands and what Sharon evidently does not. A Palestinian state conceived in hate and murder will pose a mortal threat to Israel no matter how small it is.

A Palestine conceived in liberty and tolerance, bound to peace with Israel, and committed to bettering the lives of its own people will not threaten Israel even if its borders approach those of 1967.

Put another way, a Palestinian state should not be the goal of Israeli policy but rather its result. It is not the date upon which a Palestinian state is established, nor even its size, which shall determine the scope of its threat to Israel. It is its nature.

That Israel's most intellectually serious and personally credible political figure can be so readily dismissed by our entrenched political class for the most unserious and incredible of reasons only serves to reinforce our point. Israel needs a prime minister with the integrity, strength, and policy prescriptions of Natan Sharansky. That we realize this will not happen on Tuesday does not lessen our conviction that it should. Like the country he is uniquely positioned to lead, Sharansky's greatest days are yet to come. It is for this reason that we support Natan Sharansky and Yisrael B'Aliya, and why we urge our readers to do the same.