ISRAELI HARD MAN TEST FOR OBAMA

Israel’s failed war in Lebanon in 2006 not only sent Israelis lurching to the political Right and the Far Right, it also enabled the meteoric rise of Avigdor Lieberman, often described as Israel’s own “strategic threat.”
Lieberman who has the charisma of a political thug, which can be an attribute in the bear pit of Israel’s politics, has emerged as his country’s political king maker and the leader of its third largest party, Yisrael Beiteinu - also called “Israel is Our Home .” He admits to being a controversial figure but claims it is not a negative thing, though it has to be said he has a penchant for allowing his mouth to work faster than his brain. Still, he is a shrewd political operative otherwise he could not have rallied considerable support for his party among settlers, Russian-born Jews and mainstream opinion which, prior to the war in Lebanon and the recent invasion of Gaza, supported leftwing or centrist politicians.
Ever since Israel’s military defeat in Lebanon in 2006, Lieberman’s political star has been rising, with some pundits predicting he has the talent and support to become a future prime minister. For now, however, his ambitions appear limited to holding a senior Cabinet post in the next Israeli government; a role that would give him more power than the government jobs he held under Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
Not everyone is happy with his growing ability to shape the future of Israeli politics. The Haaretz newspaper has called him irresponsible while some have warned that he is the most dangerous politician in the history of the state. The Labour Party leader, Ophir Pines-Paz has warned that, “Lieberman is himself a strategic threat.”
So who is Avigdor Lieberman? What are his roots? And why should the Obama administration and his allies in Europe be wary about his rise to power?
Lieberman was born on June 5, 1958 in what was the Soviet republic of Moldova, a country with a population of 4 million that had no natural resources and whose economy was based on agriculture. Today, it remains a poor country that has ambitions to join the EU and NATO. By his teens, Avigdor had the barrel-chested, tough guy image he still sports to this day and it enabled him to earn money as a nightclub bouncer. According to his version of history, he was also a broadcaster before he left Moldova in 1978 and settled in Israel. Once there, he earned a degree in political science from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.
Within a decade, he was involved in building the Zionist Forum for Soviet Jewry and was running a branch of a workers’ union. As a consequence, he created a political base among Soviet immigrants and within the union movement. His party allegiance at that time was to Likud and he rose to become its Director General, remaining in the post for three years. By then, he had established close ties to the party’s figurehead, the tough, non-sense right-winger, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was prime minister. He recognized Lieberman’s strong ties to grass roots movements and made him Director General of his office. The two men had a lot in common in that both were brash and opinionated. Netanyahu also had a reputation for being devious and extreme and was the one Israeli leader whom President Clinton disliked intensely. The president’s White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart once said that Netanyahu was one of the most obnoxious men he had ever met and was also one of the most untrustworthy. “He could open his mouth and you had no confidence that what came out of it was going to be the truth,” claimed Lockhart. Lieberman served in Netanyahu’s office for a year and then went off to found his own party in 1999.
His party - Israel is Our Home - advocated making Israel a singular Jewish state based on the principle that the Arab minority within the country, numbering over 1 million, posed the greatest threat to future security. His solution was to hand over some Arab areas of Israel in return for seizing large parts of the West bank for building and expanding Jewish settlements. He also proposed that, aside from moving Arabs out of Israel, those living there should be subject to a “loyalty test” in which they could only hold identity cards if they swore allegiance to the Jewish state. Members of Lieberman’s party have also argued that Arabs could be deprived of the right to vote.
While many of those pronouncements attracted the ire of mainstream figures they paled in comparison to some of Lieberman’s more outrageous public utterances. He declared in January 2009, during the Gaza invasion, that Israel should deal with Hamas the way the U.S. dealt with the Japanese. His comments were seen as a reference to the dropping of the atom bomb. He has also called for Israeli politicians willing to talk to Hamas to be tried before Nuremburg-type courts. Back in 2002, his solution for dealing with the Intifada in Ramallah was to tell the Palestinians that they had 24 hours to end the violence or all their places of business would be bombed.
When it comes to issues like Iran, he has made no secret of his view that Hezbollah must be defeated, by whatever means necessary and Iran’s nuclear infrastructure should be bombed irrespective of international opposition. If such statements were coming from a politician on the fringes of Israeli society they would be dismissed as the ranting of someone unhinged. But Lieberman is not on the political fringes. He is now at the apex of the country’s political machinery, playing the king maker in a state in which its proportional representation voting system has created instability and at a time when the Israel public is m ore hawkish than ever.
At the core of the support for Lieberman are the people he, his wife and three children live among – West Bank settlers, who applauded him when he resigned from parliament in 2008 in protest at U.S. backed peace talks with the Palestinians. He has also benefited from the fact that over 1 million Soviet Jews like him have settled in Israel since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. More are arriving every year and they tend to be more extreme than Jews who have lived all their lives in Israel.
Lieberman has successfully argued that Israel cannot afford to make concession because they convey weakness. He has pointed to the failed war in Lebanon as an example of Israel not being prepared to use all its military might to crush Hezbollah. In doing so, he has tapped into hurt Israeli pride and a growing belief even among mainstream thinkers that only a strong military response to outside threats will keep Israel safe. He has equally received widespread support for his contention that uprooting Jewish settlements on Arab land only emboldens the Palestinians.
Some have called Lieberman a fascist while others have used terms like far-right nationalist and ultra-nationalist. In contrast, he sees himself as a populist and it could be argued that with Israel’s seeming political drift to the Right, his ultra- Right political philosophy is not far divorced from the type of mainstream thinking that applauded the bombardment of Gaza and sees value in the principles of Likud leader and former Lieberman mentor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
For the Obama administration and its European allies the rise of Lieberman and the growing political fortunes of Netanyahu present worrying challenges and make the prospects for a Middle East peace deal seem father off than ever. There is also a real possibility that Israel, with Netanyahu in charge and with Lieberman at his right hand, might decide in the year ahead to ignore Washington’s advice and attack Iran or invite a war with Hezbollah to ensure this time that Israel will be victorious. The new U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, will be well aware of the pitfalls of dealing with Netanyahu, given her husband’s history with him. Now she must also keep a wary eye on Lieberman. That duo could spell real danger for the Middle East and the West.
Finally, like many recent Israeli political figures, including Sharon and Olmert, Lieberman is reported to be the subject of an ongoing fraud investigation.