Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu Come Together

Mike L.

PM, foreign minister announce Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu merger in special press conference; 'Joining forces will give us the power to defend Israel and generate social and economic change,' Netanyahu says 

Dramatic development: Nearly six months after shocking the political system by forming a unity government with Kadima, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thrown another curve ball and joined forces with Avigdor Lieberman ahead of the upcoming elections.

In a press conference held Thursday evening, the two men announced they were uniting the Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu under one ticket.

Well, this is certainly interesting and from what I can tell at the moment reactions are all over the  board.  The progressive-left is, of course, going to scream bloody murder that Israel is going fascist.  The hard right will argue that this is a sell-out because both parties favor a two state solution.  And both will contend that the whole thing is corrupt political gamesmanship for electoral reasons.

All I can really say is that I am not the least bit surprised that the mainstream Israeli right is coming together because the Israeli left, like the left, in general, has shown itself either hostile to Israel or "morbidly naive," as my editor at the Times of Israel put it in an intro to one of my articles.

Speaking strictly for myself, I feel no particular need to rush into judgment on this.

All that I know for certain is that the left refuses to recognize the failure of the Oslo peace process, blames their fellow Jews for Palestinian refusal to accept a state for themselves in peace next to Israel, and in the United States, supports a president who helped bring a genocidally anti-Semitic organization into power in the much larger neighboring state of Egypt.

So naturally the mainstream Israeli right is consolidating power and the Israeli left has gotten decimated.

The western left has killed the Israeli left.