But which spoils? It seems highly likely that Bibi Netanyahu will form a rightist governing coailtion with Avigdor Lieberman as his junior partner. That should entitle him to a post as deputy prime minister along with either the foreign, defense or interior ministry portfolios. However, there are a few problems that raise their ugly heads: Lieberman has no military expertise to speak of and so cannot realistically become defense minister (note: try to avoid Amir Peretz fiasco). Since he and his family are under investigation for money-laundering he can’t reasonably oversee the ministries that would be investigating him. Giving him the foreign ministry would prove a slap in the face to the world community which wants to have nothing to do with his racist, proto-fascist views.
That leaves Finance as a reasonably senior post and he has expressed interest in it (though what experience or special knowledge he brings to it is news to me–unless you count possible corruption charges as evidence of finance experience). Haaretz reveals that the money-laundering charges involve claims of tax fraud:
M.L.-1 [is] a business consulting firm set up by Michal Lieberman in 2004, when she was 21 years old. She was listed as the sole shareholder, but one of the company’s two official addresses was her father’s house in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim.
…The company received NIS 11 million from anonymous overseas sources in exchange for “business consulting.” Avigdor Lieberman received a salary of over NIS 2.5 million from M.L.-1 during 2004-06, when he was not serving in the cabinet or Knesset, and was thus legally entitled to do so. But the company itself remained active even after Lieberman rejoined the Knesset in March 2006.
The police suspect Lieberman of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust. However, the investigation was delayed for over a year…because of lawsuits filed by Lieberman…claiming that various documents the police wanted to examine were protected by attorney-client privilege. Only after the courts finally rejected these suits were police able to begin studying the documents.
Once again, Lieberman would be excluded since Finance for the same reason he’s excluded from the Interior post. That doesn’t leave much to offer him that wouldn’t look like an insult to the major electoral victory he won.
I’m so delighted to have Netanyahu face such dilemmas. When you sleep with rats, you will wake up with fleas. So to all Lieberman’s other ideological peccadilloes listed above, we may soon be able to add corrupt politician with hand in till. Israel has quite a bit of experience with this considering the current prime minister resigned after three separate corruption investigations hounded him from office.
In U.S. politics, we usually elect politicians we believe are clean only to find they’re dirty or become dirty AFTER they take office. In Israel, they elect politicians suspected of being dirty even before they take office. Nice work if you can get it. Lieberman looks like he will.
I am surprised that everyone has forgotten that Lieberman sat in the Leftist coalition that makes up the outgoing government, and, when Olmert was under pressure from the Winograd report which scathingly criticized Olmert for his conduct of the Lebanon II war, Lieberman helped prop up his government. Yet, we didn’t hear about all this concern about his being a “fascist”, “racist” or “corrupt” then. All the policies he advocated in the last election campaign were well know even at that time.
Richard-I note that you have pretty much blocked all comments that disagree with your postings. Of course, this is your blog and you can decide what policy of comments you want, so are under no moral obligation to post this, either. I am writing it simply to remind you of these facts about Lieberman, and the “two-faced” policy of Left and its allies in the Israeli mass media. I would, however, be interested to know why you have decided to change you policy regarding comments, which seems to coincide with the recent Gaza war. If you want to contact off site, you are welcome to.
“Leftist” my arse. You really make yrself out to be totally lacking in any seriousness with such blatant rightist partisanship.
Lieberman’s party has something like 8 seats in the current Knesset. That’s why he wasn’t as scary to as many people in the current government, but he’s a helluva lot scarier now with almost double the number of seats in the upcoming Knesset.
More rightist lying or posturing. There are MANY comments published here that disagree with me. What HAS changed is that since Gaza many more progressive readers are posting. So it only appears to you that your ideological chums aren’t getting published. During the war I had so many comments from both the right & left that I decided not to publish 99.9% as I had before. Instead I published 95%. I did not publish comments from the left AND right which either were vituperative or violent or racist or repeated propaganda that has been published here scores of times by earlier posters. One of the points of comment threads should be to tell us something new. Not merely to rehash arguments proffered and rebutted scores of times here before.
If you can seriously claim what you wrote above then you simply haven’t been reading the threads.
I would have thought Finance would be difficult also after the PM and Defence it is the main ministry in almost any country; also usually you can’t have somebody accused or suspected of financial corruption in charge of the countrys’ finances and financial regulation (usually).
don’t know enough about internal Israeli politics but I would assume that one of the patronage ministries like Housing or Welfare might be a compromise; influential since they direct large subsidies and attractive for someone like Lieberman who likes to dip his fingers into the sweet jar.
Very interesting.
Yea I really dont like Liberman, and lots of Israeli’s dont like him either.
I dont get how he could have gotten so many seats!
-The Muslim Kid-
Lieberman has either 11 or 12 seats in the outgoing Knesset, not 8 as you indicated. He has gone up to 15 so it is not that big of an increase. The main parties in the outgoing government are Labor and Kadima which call themselves “the Peace Camp”, in addition to SHAS and the Pensioners Party which is a satellite party of Kadima. Israelis call this as “center-Left” coalition.
He will be the 3rd largest party in the coming Knesset. He is much more a force to reckoned with than in the Knesset session that will soon come to an end. You called the current government “leftist” not “center left.”