AxisMundi Jerusalem
Inside Israel and the Palestinian Territories
Send in the drones
Israel’s economy is, in large part, mirroring what is happening elsewhere in the world – with job losses, factory closures and all the other symptoms of the global financial meltdown.
One sector though is defying all the odds.
Elbit Systems – an Israeli company that makes electro-optics, airborne systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and command and control systems – announced this week a record 4th quarter with profits rising 32.6 percent and strong forecasts for continued growth in the year ahead.
Their results presentation gave the company a chance to show off some of its latest technologies as you can see from the video below.
While the credit crunch is forcing governments, companies and individuals around the world to rethink spending across a huge range of goods and services, defence spending seems to be immune.
A ‘pop-psychologist’ would probably have a field day interpreting this trend, in an uncertain world where many of the basic pillars of our society seem to be tottering and the natural instinct to protect and defend comes to the fore.
Top job in the new government? No thanks!
By Tova Cohen
Though it’s considered one of the top three cabinet posts in Israel’s government, in these troubled times there seems to be no takers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party for the job of finance minister, according to the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
Netanyahu, who is in the process of putting together a government after last month’s general election, is seeking to give the finance post to someone in his own party, but senior members are reluctant to step into this “honey trap”, the country’s top selling daily reported.
“It’s not a secret that these days no one wants the Treasury,” the paper quoted a Likud member of parliament as saying. “Only a Shiite suicide (bomber) would take on this job. Everyone knows that Bibi ( Netanyahu) will rise or fall on the financial issues so who wants to get into this mess?”
A senior Likud member who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for finance minister was quoted as saying that if he took the post in these times, he would be a “marked man”.
Two senior Likud members expecting ministerial positions in the new government have served as finance minister – Dan Meridor and Silvan Shalom. But they both are said to prefer the defence ministry to avoid having to deal with a looming recession and the global financial crisis.
Foreign Affairs
Israeli newspapers are abuzz this morning as they mull over the possibility that ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman could be appointed foreign minister in the government that Benjamin Netanyahu is working to stitch together.
The strong showing by Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel our Home) party in last month’s election – where it won the third most Knesset seats ahead of the Labour Party - has put the Moldovan-born former nightclub bouncer turned bureaucrat in a strong position in the lobbying for top ministerial posts in the new government.
With Israel’s coalition building process such a tortuous and drawn-out affair, speculation, much of it wild, about who will get what job is inevitably rife in the local media.
As we reported yesterday – Netanyahu has ruled Lieberman out as a future defence minister, one of the top jobs in an Israeli government.
Lieberman is also understood to be interested in other key jobs for himself and his people including Justice, Interior and Internal security.
His aides, though, play down talk of all this horse-trading and deal-making.
“He has said he wants the defence portfolio, but he has also said cabinet positions are not a deal-breaker. What’s really important is that we agree on basic policy lines,” Yisrael Beiteinu spokeswoman Irena Etinger said.
‘ultranationalist’? Lieberman is a psychopath. His comments on the Palestinians are too obscene to repeat here. Only in Israel would a person of his stature be considered a statesman. To everyone else, he’s simply a terrorist in a cheap suit.
This vile racist needs a straight jacket, not a ministerial post.
Heaven or Hell
To be in the right place at the right moment – this is every photojournalist’s dream. To be on the scene to record the “decisive moment” with your camera.
Most photojournalists around the world consider Israel and the Palestinian Territories as ”heaven” for great stories providing great pictures. Well they are wrong.
For a long time this place has produced some of the most memorable news photos ever but at a high cost, and not just to the millions of Israelis and Palestinians who have suffered in their daily lives through the conflict of the past two decades or so. A number of photographers and camera operators lost their lives or been badly injured while trying to convey the story and a great number of others have psychological scars from being exposed to scenes of death and destruction over long periods of time.
Yes, Israel and the Palestinian territories are full of great images, but how easy is to find them and record them?
Well – the ’finding’ part is not too hard. Beepers are constantly beeping, SMS messages are constantly being sent keeping the large international press corps up to date on even the most obscure goings-on. The Israeli Government Press Office, the Palestinian Authority, NGOs, the Israeli Defence Forces, settler groups, religious groups; all have very sophisticated media operations that fill your e-mail inbox, mobile phone and beeper with a constant stream of information.
You’ve set my mind at ease
Israel’s political picture has been so unclear and complicated since an indecisive Feb. 10 election that President Shimon Peres said he asked right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu to put it down on paper that he had in fact agreed to accept his mandate to go out and form the next Israeli government.
“And he has put it in writing, so now my mind is at ease,” Peres joked as he announced his decision to designate Netanyahu, rather than centrist Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, as potential prime minister — once he completes that task of coalition building.
Livni’s Kadima party had outpolled Netanyahu’s Likud, winning 28 seats in parliament to his 27. But Peres chose Netanyahu for the job of would-be prime minister because Netanyahu, a former prime minister, had the most other parliament members recommending him for the job.
But as much as Netanyahu, U.S.-educated and a polished speaker, wanted another shot at the nation’s top job, he certainly had a complex task ahead of him to rebuild a coalition with politicians whose views were disquietingly similar to the far-right lawmakers who effectively toppled his previous government in 1999 and forced an early election.
Writing in the Haaretz newspaper’s Web site, veteran Israeli political columnist Yossi Verter averred that dealing with such a divided Israel was “not how he planned to begin his second term.”
Livni has thus far indicated she would not join any coalition headed by Netanyahu, as she has said she objects to serving as a “fig-leaf” for policies that would not help advance negotiations with Palestinians for a two-state solution.
Once Peres had formally designated Netanyahu, Kadima’s faction leader in parliament Yoel Hasson told Reuters that the party’s lawmakers were likely to ratify exactly that position when they meet on Sunday, and announce they would opt for the opposition benches in parliament.
Team of rivals for Israel?
Coalition-building in the aftermath of Israel’s inconclusive Feb. 10 election kicks into high gear on Wednesday, when the final results become official and President Shimon Peres begins sounding out party leaders on whom he should appoint to try to form the next administration.
To recap: neither the centrist Kadima party led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni nor Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud won enough seats for a majority in the 120-member parliament. Kadima took 28 seats to Likud’s 27, but Netanyahu could stand a better chance of getting the nod from Peres because he is likely to have the support of a majority right-wing bloc of 65 legislators.
Can Israel do a power-share?
A predawn victory party for Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had all the trappings of a fairytale, including a ballroom setting in a Tel Aviv hotel.
The woman who had edged ahead of rival Benjamin Netanyahu in a national election stood to become Israel’s first woman prime minister in 30 years, and she had surely beaten the odds to get there, just weeks after polls predicted a resounding defeat for her centrist Kadima party.
“This is truly amazing, the public has had its say and it’s Tzipi,” Yaacov Edri, a former cabinet minister from Kadima, told me as supporters broke out in song and dance, proclaiming Livni as “queen of Israel,” and waving blue and red party flags.
A hip-hop style ode to the centrist party leader blared from loudspeakers.
Livni, flashing a triumphant V sign with her fingers called it “a wonderful day for Israel,” and said “the Israeli people have chosen Kadima and we will respect that choice by forming the next government, headed by Kadima.”
It didn’t take long for it to sink in for many that Livni’s victory celebration may have been premature. Netanyahu, whose right-wing Likud party trailed Kadima by only one seat in the 120-member parliament, also claimed victory, saying parties belonging to the “nationalist camp” had secured a governing majority.
“It’s not going to be easy at all,” Edri remarked about Livni’s chances of pulling together a coalition.Her first order of business may have to be implementing an electoral reform plan that whittles down the number of parties running in Israeli elections from the incredible 30 that took part in this latest contest.
from Global News Journal:
Twittering from the front-lines
Who remembers the Google Wars website that was doing the viral rounds a few years back – a mildly amusing, non-scientific snapshot of the search-driven, internet world we live in?
It lives on at www.googlebattle.com where you can enter two search terms, say ‘Lennon vs. McCartney’ or ‘Left vs. Right’, and let the internet pick a winner by the number of search hits each word gets.
As we reported here – the virtual world has become a real battleground in the ongoing Gaza conflict – with all sides deploying significant resources.
For Israel – where hasbara or PR has often been frowned upon as unnecessary pandering to international opinion that never turns in Israel’s favour anyway – the second Lebanon war underlined the need for a coherent media and PR strategy coordinated at the centre of government.
The post-mortem of the month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 - known as the Winograd Commission - recommended a centralised approach to hasbara to avoid spokesmen from different ministries, the army or the police telling different or conflicting stories to a voracious local and international media.
Notwithstanding the fact that the head of the new National Information Directorate did not make it to a scheduled interview with our reporter on the story above – as my colleague Dan Williams reported here the strategy certainly seems to be working for domestic consumption.
Sources inside the Israeli government have said they are generally happy with the way the strategy has worked internationally as well despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and increasingly angry protests around the world.
Joe the plumber is right. Journalists are incapable of being unbiased always having some political bias. Apart from that, what soldier wants to rescue journalists who get themselves captured risking their own lives?
actually if you would hav read your history properly, jews were actually killed even more by the romans, it was under muhammed they found refuge and saftey although there were still persecuted by other arab tribes who not only opposed but also muhammed himself. so it might suit you better if you learned the intrecacies of history and not generalize people as one. which is why there the world seperates judaisim from zionism, it is an insult to blend the two together. and u say that americans have accepted their wrong doings? really, how so? by moving the indians onto unhabitiable land, where they can’t grow anything, don’t have proper access to water and medical and educational needs, much like how the zionists are doing to the palestinains. fundamentalist muslism hate everyone including other muslims, much how like fundamentalist jews hate everyone else, christians, arabs, and even other moderate jews (it was a jew who assasinated yitzak rabbin). let’s also not forget how israeli forces have bombed and killed thousands of women and children in palstine and lebanon because they refuse their right to exist. why should pakistan have a need to have any diplomatic ties with israel? what purpose will it serve them? none what so ever, every country has a right to choose who it is they speak with, u know kinda like how the U.S and israel refuse to talk to iran, or the democratically elected Hamas in palestine. israel openly talks about bombing other countries and has done so and now with the israeli version of the taliban taking over the government in israel, they openly talk about ethnic cleansing of the arabs. so who really is the extremist and terrorist?? i am including a link to a documentary which interviews many israeli jewish human rights workers exposing the truth for the crimes israel commits, perhaps you should find the truth about your own country before trying to tell someone else what to do.
http://www.occupation101.com