Netanyahu, Livni declare win in Israeli election

Apparently these results are a bit distressing for Palestinians. Many believe that with such a strong showing of right-wing parties, the future of the Arab-Israeli peace process is at risk.

mendokusai....you want to know what Netanyahu did last time...........................

Response:

Sharon was rewarded for his war crimes by having his "Unit 101" .... as the result of a lawsuit filed on June 18, 2001 by 23 survivors of the attacks. ... he held until 1990, when he was named Minister of Construction and Housing, ... post that had been created for him by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, .

=============================

n 1953, Sharon founded "Unit 101," a secret death squad within the IDF that committed several mass murders of civilians. In October 1953, Sharon's "Unit 101" massacred 66 innocent civilians during a cross-border raid into the Jordanian West Bank village of Qibya. Under intense machine-gun fire, local residents were driven into their homes, which were then blown up around them, killing the occupants by burying them alive in piles of rubble. The April 2002 IDF massacre at the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin was, in fact, modeled on Sharon's "Unit 101" operations at Qibya.

On Oct. 18, 1953, the U.S. State Department issued a bulletin denouncing the Qibya massacre, demanding that those responsible be "brought to account." Instead, Sharon was rewarded for his war crimes by having his "Unit 101" absorbed into the Israeli paratroop corps. By 1956, Sharon had been appointed paratroop brigade commander.

Israeli exit polls show dramatic swing to centrist Kadima party

However, it is still not clear who will be Israel’s next prime minister as the right-religious bloc still led the centre-left bloc by a six-to-eight seat margin.

Every Israeli government in the past has been headed by the largest party but President Shimon Peres, after consulting next week with all the parties who have won seats, will ask the candidate he believes has the best chance of cobbling together a working coalition to form the next government.

A political rotation is a distinct possibility, with Ms Livni and Mr Netanyahu alternating as premier, possibly with Labor leader Ehud Barak continuing as defence minister.

The result was a political bombshell, and marks a great disappointment for Mr Netanyahu (59), who served as Israel’s prime minister between 1996 and 1999, and was the frontrunner throughout the campaign.

In light of the result, political commentators last night were already talking about the possibility that a new coalition will not last long and more elections may be likely next year.

The television predictions showed Kadima winning between 29 and 30 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, just ahead of Likud with 27 to 28 seats...............

Let Netanyahu Win

By Gideon Levy

February 09, 2009 "Haaretz" - -Benjamin Netanyahu will apparently be Israel's next prime minister. There is, however, something encouraging about that fact. Netanyahu's election will free Israel from the burden of deception: If he can establish a right-wing government, the veil will be lifted and the nation's true face revealed to its citizens and the rest of the world, including Arab countries. Together with the world, we will see which direction we are facing and who we really are. The masquerade that has gone on for several years will finally come to an end.

Netanyahu's election is likely to bring the curtain down on the great fraud - the best show in town - the lie of "negotiations" and the injustice of the "peace process." Israel consistently claimed these acts proved the nation was focused on peace and the end of the occupation. All the while, it did everything it could to further entrench the occupation and distance any chance of a potential agreement.

For 16 years, we have been enamored with the peace process. We talk and talk, babble and prattle, and generally feel great about ourselves; meanwhile the settlements expand endlessly and Israel turns to the use of force at every possible opportunity, aside from a unilateral disengagement which did nothing to advance the cause of peace.

With the election of a prime ministerial candidate who speaks of "economic peace," the naked truth will finally emerge. If, however, Tzipi Livni or Ehud Barak are elected, the self-delusion will simply continue. Livni herself is enamored with futile, useless and cowardly negotiations, and Barak has long abandoned the brave efforts he made in the past. The election of either will only perpetuate the vacuum. The world, including Washington, will breathe a sigh of relief that for once, Israel has elected a leadership that will pursue peace. But there is no chance of that happening.

End terrorism in Gaza

The news we Americans get via commercial media outlets with respect to what Israel does often excludes important facts. Both AP and UPI wire services reported Israel's breach of the ceasefire on Nov. 5 and 11, respectively, yet the story went largely overlooked here. Instead, the media chose to echo without scrutiny what our heads of state kept repeating, i.e. that Hamas broke the ceasefire by lobbing rockets into Israel, and most Americans bought it.

Ceasefires are, at best, tenuous and subject to disruption from either side, so we often don't bother about who started what and when. But considering the magnitude of Israel's aggression in Gaza, killing and injuring thousands, the facts need to be told. We should not allow Israel to use this lie to justify immoral actions.

It would be an interesting exercise in critical thinking if we paused with conscience to define what constitutes "terrorism."

Is it terrorism to occupy another people's land with brutal force or put up 600 checkpoints in an area hardly the size of Delaware, thus preventing a population's freedom of movement?

Is flying jets daily over cities and towns, causing sonic booms that emulate bombs, or building an immense concrete wall, separating families from families and families from their farms and orchards, terrorism?

Is it not terrorism for illegal settlers to monopolize clean water resources to water lawns while the general population queues in line for a gallon of it, or to close all borders, preventing humanitarian aid, food and basic needs from entering a desperately impoverished territory? Is it not terrorism to bomb mosques, hospitals and well-marked humanitarian safe havens, or flatten apartment buildings with the families inside, or bulldoze homes and uproot centuries-old olive orchards, the only means of survival for many? Hamas and other Palestinian militants firing homemade rockets randomly into Israel, rarely hitting anything, may be terrorism; how can we in good conscience conclude that all the above is not 'terrorism', too?