Moshe Feiglin - is he really a cuckoo in Likud's nest ?

On the 7th March 2008 kebab loving Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wrote a letter which received virtually no coverage in the UK MSM (The Times excepted) ...." After careful consideration, she has personally directed that you should be excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence here would not be conducive to the public good." (text here)

The letter was addressed to an Israeli passport holder, Moshe Feiglin and the Home Secretary noted that he had made several statements which included ...

“In order to declare that we are right, we have to declare war. War now! It’s not the Arabs who are murdering mothers, but those merciful people who gave weapons to the murderers. It’s not the Arabs who are burning babies, but the peaceniks that recognised the justice of the Arabs cause. It’s not the cruel people who are bombing us, but the merciful people who showed them mercy. War now! A holy war, now”

“War Now” article by MF, quoted on Channel 7 Israel National website

Moshe Feiglin is a Likud candidate in the forthcoming elections ( donate to his campaign here) The Israeli general election is scheduled for 10th February 2009.

Originally Feiglin got the 20th slot on the list, (about 48,500 people voted using a new computerised system = 49% of the Likud membership) upsetting the leadership and aware of the potential damage to the party’s image, especially in the United States Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu used legal tricks and arcane party rules to demote Feiglin from slot 20 to slot 36. However even if not elecd himself feiglin has many right wing supporters who need his help for example , Gilad Erdan, came in third. He is a strong defender of conservative values and the of keeping all of Israel’s biblical lands…

Even Netanyahu's allies have deep rooted ties in the right wing including Benny Begin, the child of a terrorist (like Kadema leader Tzipi Livni) former PM Menachem Begin - who dandled the infant Tzipi on his knee. Benny Begin is opposed to the peace talks with the Palestinians as is another Likud mainstream candidate Israel's ex-army chief Moshe Yaalon.

Moshe Feiglin is the founder and president of Manhigut Yehudit - "Turning the State of Jews into the Jewish State ", who have a somewhat dirigiste but nonetheless populist views on Jewishness .."The distinguishing element of a Jew is the soul that every Jew possesses. It differs from the soul of a non-Jew."

They believe that "The Land of Israel was given by God to the Jewish People." and that Zionism as originally conceived by Theodore Herzl has been waylaid by the way the state of Israel has a fixation on international approval.

But ... they have a cunning plan. "Our plan is clear. Israel needs a Prime Minister that will lead Israel based on authentic Jewish values and concepts. Our candidate for the job is Manhigut Yehudit's leader, Moshe Feiglin. "

To accomplish our goal, we plan to take over the leadership of the Likud -- the only party in Israel that is a microcosm of Israeli society."

Not a message that either Bibi Netanyahu, or many other people , including Jacqui Smith want to hear ...... or allow to be heard.

For more information you must read their plan for their first 100 days in

On the first day they seize the Temple Mount - which harks back to Ariel Sharon's notorious visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City on 28th September 2001 which kicked off the Al Aqsa intifada ... which is exactly what Sharon wanted.

Things however really start to warmup on their third week in power ...

Total cessation of support to the Palestinian Authority. Beside all monetary support, electricity, communications, television and radio, raw materials etc. will no longer be transferred to the PA. Any attack on Israel will prompt the conquering of the area from which the attack was initiated. The residents of that area will be expelled and the infrastructure made inaccessible to any hostile elements.

In one place the policy proposes holding a ceremony at every army base in which all non-lethal weaponry would be destroyed. Faced with Palestinian demonstrators, soldiers could only shoot to kill.

AMOTZ ASA-EL writing in the Jersualem Post last week (Dec 18, 2008) Middle Israel: Why Moshe Feiglin matters, identifies the weaknesses in the crazy Israeli electoral system.

He concludes ;

..."Moshe Feiglin .... is bent on steering the country in a certain direction, one that Middle Israelis flatly reject, but the soon-to-be ruling party is too shallow to debate, and too weak to resist, even while this political alien nests in its own arterial system.

This is why, despite what Likud's leaders will tell you, Moshe Feiglin matters."

Meanwhile the pogrom against the Palestinians in the West bank and Gaza continues relentlesly.
Britain's envoy to the Middle East, Bill Rammell, is sightseeing in Jerusalem and following up the the initiatives, outlined by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a December 9th letter to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, which are claimed to discourage Israel from expanding Jewish settlements. Ho.Ho.Ho.

Reuters quote him saying "This isn't about boycotting Israel. The settlements are not Israel," after meeting Israeli and Palestinian leaders and touring parts of the West Bank which included a visit , recorded by BBC to a hotel split by the 9 metre high exclusion wall used as a n IDF military barracks , and which the Arab owner is not even allowed to approach and a trip from the front to the rear involves a 2 hour car trip and passage through the barrier.

On the BBC4 Today programme he expressed his concern and said he was worried.

Regular readers (Saturday, May 07, 2005 Rammell free to fight off the terrorists again Saturday, May 07, 2005 ) will remember how Bill Rammell stopped off in Panama on the way to North Korea when 40 year old Martin Torrijos took office on September 1st 2004 as President of Panama.

His inauguration was attended by officials from around the world, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell (his 2nd visit in 10 months) and Bill Rammell, UK Foreign Office Minister for Latin America whilst re-fuelling on his way to North Korea (DPRK)..

Torrijos criticized the previous President Moscoso for her pardoning 4 Cuban exiles accused by the Cuban government of trying to kill President Fidel Castro at a summit in Panama in 2000. “For me, there are not two classes of terrorism, one that is condemned and another that is pardoned. . . . It has to be fought no matter what its origins,” Torrijos said. A point on which the US Administration and George Bush agreed.

The four - Luis Posada Carriles, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, Guillermo Novo Sampol and Pedro Crespín Remón-were convicted of lesser offences in April and given prison sentences ranging from seven to eight years.

Curiously Nether Powell nor Rammell were moved to criticize this wholesale export of terrorists to the US.

No doubt he would have expressed his concern, even worry.

UPDATE :

Feiglin and Fascism December 24th, 2008 by Gershom Gorenberg

The Rebel Prince Benjamin Netanyahu is the front-runner in Israel's election. Will voters notice that a radical rightist has hijacked Netanyahu's Likud party? The top of the Likud ticket is dominated by hardliners in debt to Feiglin

" Today, he (Feiglin) is closer to that goal than anyone expected. Netanyahu, it's true, is again the Likud's candidate for prime minister in the February election, and he's generally leading in the polls. Following the Likud's Dec. 8 primary for its Knesset candidates, however, Feiglin looks like the real power in the party. Though he himself is unlikely to enter the Knesset, he was able to exert more influence than Netanyahu did on the choice of candidates. The result is a slate of hard-right politicians indebted to Feiglin.

The idea of Netanyahu regaining power is disturbing enough. He supports West Bank settlement unreservedly and hopes to avoid substantive peace talks with the Palestinians. Economically, he is a doctrinaire free-marketeer. But a party beholden to Feiglin is a whole different level of danger. It's the difference between mere conservatives and the far fringe of the right.

This much is clear: The campaign packaging for the Likud will show Netanyahu's face. In his modulated MBA voice, he'll try to sell the Likud to voters as a pragmatic conservative party, willing to make peace if only the Palestinians agree to its conditions. Inside the package, however, is a party in thrall to a lean and hungry man offering extremist leadership for Israel. The question is whether voters will look inside, or care."

Hawks dominate Likud party vote
BBC ONline Tuesday 9th December 2008

Knesset elections : The Israeli system of prportional representation works like this. Seats are apportioned to the list derived by each Party however they wish. The main parties do it by a straight numerical vote of party members ( but this can be gerrymandered by rules etc.,) and shared as per the share of the popular vote.

There are 120 Knesset seats, so a 10% share gives 12 seats so the top 12 on the list get a Knesset seat.