The Israeli press is far harder on Israeli politicians and policies than media state-side. This weekend's Haaretz for example has the following opinion pieces.
Zeev Sternhell writes in What Israel's founding fathers never imagined:
Contrary to the prevalent assertion that what protected Israeli democracy in the states early days was ambiguity on fundamental constitutional questions that arose at the time, ambiguity was part of the problem, not the solution. The policy of obfuscation that David Ben-Gurion decided upon for reasons of political convenience allowed the Arabs to be kept under martial law for the entire period of his rule. The shame of the Shin Bet security service state was lifted only in 1965, though Arab inferiority was perpetuated.
Another aspect of this early failure is the fact that the founders made laws for themselves, not for human beings as such. They never imagined that the Feiglins and Elkins would have ruling power in the most persecuted nation in modern history. Their great foe was Jabotinsky, whom Ben-Gurion and Katznelson knew, and against whom they fought for power and for the means to achieve their common goal, but not for the goal itself.
No one ever envisioned the actual possibility that power would fall one day into the hands of people with the demeanor of masters, for whom the oppression of another nation was second nature. Who ever imagined that the Jewish community might one day turn into a colonialist entity and lay the foundations of an apartheid regime as a permanent condition, and would want to engrave that shame in its law books on top of that?
The gravediggers of liberty and equality of our time are dragging Israel down toward the violent and fanatic Third World that surrounds us. The politicians of the centrist parties would do well to draw their own conclusions as the election approaches, and use all the energy and honesty that they still have to prevent the disasters that are on their way.
Meanwhile, Haaretz's editors plead:
Israelis, listen to the world:
No election campaign can blur this new international reality, which clearly indicates that the world has had enough of the Israeli occupation and the settlements that strengthen and deepen it.
The world’s message must become an important issue in the election campaign. Israelis will be required to choose between a government that increases Israel’s isolation and one that brings Israel back to the family of nations. The end of the occupation is crucial, of course, for internal reasons as well – freeing resources for Israelis’ welfare and reinstating the state’s democratic and moral character.
Gideon Levy writes
Netanyahu shaped a different, darker Israel: In his own image:
Even when he hid his beliefs, he did so in order to advance them. Netanyahu never believed in peace with the Arabs — and he removed peace from Israel’s agenda. He never believed in the rights of the Palestinian people — and he destroyed the two-state solution. He genuinely believed that Jews are the chosen people — and he brought Israel closer to a future apartheid state modeled on his beliefs, including in its constitutional aspects.
Once there was an Israel that subdued its racism and was ashamed of it; that did not alternate only between rivers of hate and waves of intimidation. Where Arabs were not only suspicious objects and where war refugees were not only “infiltrators.” Where Judaism was not only for ultranationalists and the flag was not waved only by the settlers. Once there was hope, but it disappeared; someone severed it.
To top it all off, Yoel Marcus pleads with voters to
Stop Israel's political pyromaniac
If an alien from another planet were to visit us these days, he would probably ask himself: What? Netanyahu’s still here? What’s going on with Israel? How did this nice, tiny country – whose values and survival abilities were so admired by most of the world – morph into a monster that is endangering everyone’s welfare?
Underneath all this outrage is a palpable nervousness as centrist and left-of-center Israelis evaluate their prospects in the upcoming Knesset elections.
Or as someone once told me, Haaretz is just a leftie paper no one in Israel pays any attention to, that's why it's circulation is dropping like a rock.