One has to assume that Netanyahu is trying to “carve out the center” as his position. Of course that is no longer possible, as the center simply doesn’t exist. In the last election, instead of fighting Olmert and trying to differentiate his politics, Netanyahu chose to waste his energy fighting Moshe Feiglin, to show why he, Netanyahu wasn’t a real right-winger, but rather a centrist.
Congratulations, you proved you weren’t a right-winger and so therefore there was no reason to vote for the Likud anymore, was there?
Even now Netanyahu continues along the same path.
He toured the Binyamin region the other day, and discussed why Adam should be inside and not outside the fence. Wonderful, so Netanyahu takes a maximalist left-wing position, instead of, at least, a minimalist right-wing position.
The public is tired of this nonsense. If they want a Leftist, they’ll vote Left, but there is no reason to vote for a wishy-washy Right(?)-winger who will go Left anyway– and that is part of the reason why voter turn-out was so low in the last elections.
And that is really why Netanyahu is afraid of Moshe Feiglin.
It is not because the Left will attack Netanyahu as a right-winger, or the Likud as an extremist party, but because Feiglin is doing to Netanyahu, exactly like Feiglin did to Sharon in the Likud internal vote against the Expulsion. He is showing how empty Netanyahu’s position is, how unLikudlike his politics have become, and how Netanyahu is no longer in sync will the will of the Likud and the people.
That is what annoys Netanyahu, and that is why he is using every legal, but anti-democratic method he can to disqualify Feiglin from running against him.
When Feiglin speaks of a Jewish State, everyone jumps and says Taliban. And certainly after watching the Chareidim ban music concerts this week, people are definitely afeaid of what a Halachic state could be (I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a Chareidi Halachic state).
And that is the problem.
People hear sound bites that the media choose to present, but don’t actually hear the message that Feiglin is saying. Feiglin isn’t talking about a Halachic state, but he is talking about basing the Jewish state on Jewish values, not “universal humanistic” values (and we know what those are worth).
He is talking about reversing the lack of proper Jewish education and history that Jewish children in the public school system receive. He doesn’t say force them to think a certain way, but he certainly says they shouldn’t be ignorant of their own heritage and what they are doing in Israel.
He is talking about introducing Checks and Balances into the Court system.
Personally, I think it is time, right before the primaries, for people to hear for themselves what Feiglin has to say, rather than what they hear from the talking heads.
Copied word for word from JoeSettler