Thursday, April 06, 2006

Shmuel Katz's Opinion on the Elections

I'm glad Olmert didn't do as well as expected, but I'm afraid that what the people of Israel are saying is very disturbing. There is a definite listlessness - as seen from the low voter turnout. Nobody seemed to be very concerned which way the race would go. No one expressed strong opinions about anything. All the while, Olmert never really spoke about what he expected from the Arabs - only what the Jews would give up.

The listlessness I referred to reminds me of 1933, the year Hitler was elected, and the Oxford Union passed a resolution that "this house will not fight for king and country." Has that become our attitude as well?

I had no suspicion that the Pensioners' Party would do so well. Many young people (probably left-wing) seemed to have found a way out of not voting by supporting the pensioners.

As for the Likud, it should hide its head in shame! I had advised Uzi Landau to leave the Likud. He's a man of principle and doesn't belong there.

The national camp has no Churchill. But it must nevertheless take a line straight from Jabotinsky: Tell the people to prepare for war with the Arabs, because the enemy is thinking of war all the time. And we need to go back to the basics and explain - to the West and to ourselves - what this struggle is about.


Jerusalem Post, March 30, 2006

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