Elections 1999 -- Ariga Editorials

FYI: Ariga endorses Ehud Barak for Prime Minister of Israel.

May 17 Days of secular rites

May 15 1999 Why Netanyahu Shouldn't be Re-elected -- and Probably Won't Be: At www.intellectualcapital.com Robert Rosenberg endorses a change of leadership in Israel.

Jessica Montell of B'Tselem on the Israeli elections: and how the human rights issues were never mentioned in the campaign.

Beate Zilversmidt on When things get worse they aren't getting better - a letter to those on the left who wonder why they should vote for a "right-winger" like Ehud Barak.

April 25 1999 No, we haven't stopped this page. Here are some Election Stickers that are making the rounds of the 'net -- and bumper stickers.

March 9 1999 In the midst of the election campaign, there's another, more important campaign:
ANNOUNCING AN ISRAELI CAMPAIGN AGAINST PERPETUATING THE OCCUPATION A report by Jeff Halper on how 15 peace groups have joined forces for a series of house-building and tree-planting demonstrations against the apartheidist policies of the settlement government.

February 27 199 Yitzhak Rabin's 77th birthday At the coldest corner in Tel Aviv, a small gathering of sad well-wishers gathers to remember Rabin, and the small rituals of social gatherings shows Yitzhak Mordechai still thinks the election campaign is about his ego.

Feb 11 1999 "Me too! Me too!" By Uri Avnery According to a story, Ze'ev Jabotinsky was giving a speech in a Jewish town in Poland when someone heckled him: "What happened yesterday in Petah-Tikva?" Jabotinsky had no idea what had happened in Petah-Tikva. But without missing a beat, he shot back: "Yes, but what happened the day before yesterday in Rosh-Pinah?" In truth, nothing had happened in Rosh-Pinah, but the heckler was silenced and Jabotinsky went on with his speech.

Feb 1 1999 The word fascism made it into the headline of the second edition of Yedioth Ahoronoth this morning , after thirty two years (since the "Six Day War" put the mysticism into the nationalism, leading all the way to Rabin's assassination) of the term only appearing in the radical press trying to describe what was happening here.

Jan 24 1999 Today is a very good day for peace in the Middle East: The re-election of Bibi Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel seems even more distant, now that he has fired the popular Itzhak Mordechai as his Defense Minister. (By Gila Svirsky)

Jan 6 1998 Shahak announces Former Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak announced today he was running for the premiership in the Israeli elections set for May 17, the 22nd anniversary of the great "Mahapach" of 1977, when 29 years of Labor rule came to an end, replaced by what has now been 22 years of Likud rule (except for four years of shared rule in national unity governments in the 1980s, and the 2.5 years that the Rabin/Peres government served in the mid-90s). By Robert Rosenberg

Jan 6 1998 Squaring the Circle an election piece by Ami Isserof: "PM Benjamin Netanyahu got elected on a program of squaring the circle. Of course, he couldn’t do it. So it is no wonder that Bibi’s government, the Israeli economy and our role in the peace process look like a lopsided polygon which gives evidence of no planning, poor execution and many compromises."

Dec 26 1998 "The center does not hold," wrote W.B. Yeats early in the outgoing century and here it's either nowhere to be found or everywhere -- maybe because just like the polls so weirdly showing 70 percent of the Americans like Clinton despite his lies, 70 percent of Israelis (and Palestinians) still want peace, despite Bibi's lies.

Dec 25 1998 a Last Chance for Peace Few Israeli elections have generated so many candidates and so much voter apathy. All candidates are in a rush to convince us that they are really Centrists - and that it is the other fellows who are extremists. This creates the illusion among many, especially in the peace camp, that there are no real differences among the candidates, and no compelling reason to vote.

Dec 23 1998 As usual, it's easy to say that the coming elections are the most critical in Israeli (and Palestinian) history. But it's not a usual time, and these aren't going to be usual elections.

Yahoo's Full_Coverage links to the Israeli Elections/

Ariga's coverage of the 1996 Israeli elections