Kadima - Follow Me
Straight to the Middle of Nowhere
by Naomi Ragen (27 February 2006)
During dinner one evening at the
recent Herzlyia Conference I sat next to a well-fed local businessman, a man of
middle-age with an expensive black suit and shiny black hair. We were there to
hear Benjamin Netanyahu, so we got to talking politics. Are you going to vote
for him?” I asked. He shook his head no. “I’m going to vote for Kadima,” he
said, painting a straight line in the air with his finger. “Right down the
middle.”
“In what way,” I asked him in surprise, “is Kadima in the
middle?”
He looked at me blankly, astonished at the question.
Israelis love slogans. Come up with the right slogan, even
if it makes no sense, if it’s a total lie, and they will support anyone, and any
cause. Sell them “Peace Now” wrapped up in little white doves, and they’ll vote
for that. And if instead they get exploding buses and pizza parlors, dead babies
on the streets, they won’t stop believing. They won’t look back and say: “Gee,
those politicians were incompetent liars, let’s kick them out of office and keep
them there. “ Not at all. Come up with another slogan and the exact same
politicians will get their vote again.
Take Shimon Peres, architect of Oslo. author of the “The
New Middle East” which has to go down in history with “Peace in Our Time” as the
political blooper of the century. Peres has a new slogan: Kadima! Peres is now
“in the center.”
Kadima is a great slogan. It’s the cry of a general leading
men on a battlefield. Follow me, don’t look around at the fallen and dying all
around you! Keep going. Don’t look back! Never mind that it was founded by a
controversial general known for his impulsiveness and determination – qualities
sometimes helpful on the battlefield, but quite disastrous matters of state.
Never mind that his greatest accomplishment in office, carried out with
bulldozer determination, has in record time already proven an unmitigated
disaster: The disengagement was the Hamas’ successful campaign slogan:” Ten
years of negotiation, five years of Intifada.” Never mind that daily rockets now
land in the Negev and Ashkelon and Ashdod and Sderot. Never mind that for the
first time in our history the national consensus towards Tzahal has begun to
unravel. Never mind that. Kadima!
So the head of the party and its moving force is now
incompacitated? Replace him! Never mind that Ehud Olmert was the worst Mayor
Jerusalem ever had. A man whose coalition with the haredim turned the city into
a filthy, poor backwater full of ugly high-rises. In between his own police
investigations, Mr. Olmert has had a chance to totally change his political
slogans with the times. He is a man who stands for nothing and has accomplished
even less. But never mind that. Kadima!
Never mind that the Party has collected such Israeli political luminaries as
Dalia Itzik, Haim Ramon, Ruhama Avraham, and Omri Sharon. Never mind that Tzachi
Hanegbi now sits with them, and that Avi Dichter, a former head of intelligence,
who said: "The numbers speak for themselves. . . it is clear that disengagement
has decreased terror" is number five on their list. Never mind. Give them your
vote. Kadima!
The Jews, the Bible tells us, are a stiff-necked people. As
everyone knows, when you have a stiff-neck, you can’t turn around and look
behind you. You have to face forward. Those voting Kadima can only do it if they
stick with the slogans and don’t check them against reality. If you turn around
and look at where the party came from and who is in it, you, like my friend in
Herzylia, would be astonished. Why, you would ask yourself, would anyone vote
for the biggest collection of losers in Israel’s political history all gathered
in one spot?
Brothers and sisters, we have a very little country. We
have made so many, many mistakes. Isn’t it time we stopped electing leaders who
blindly put our women and children on the front lines against our enemies? Isn’t
it time we stopped listening to our not very intelligent journalists and TV news
people, clueless leftists all? Isn’t it time to look back before we jump over
the cliff once more? Kadima is in the middle all right. In the middle of
nowhere.
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