Minister Of National Fears

The Minister for National Fears

Take Home Essay

In the article "The minister for National Fears", Gershom Gorenberg writes about the political situation in Israel, and the uprising extremist Jewish politician called Avigdor Lieberman. Born in a small town in Soviet Moldova in 1958, Lieberman today is an important political figure in Israel. After his party "Israel is our Home" had one tenth of national votes last March; Lieberman was appointed minister of strategic affairs. His main responsibility is to coordinate Israel's responses to outside threats, for example Iran's nuclear program. However, despite Lieberman's roles on paper, his real focuses are on domestic fears menaces?.

Lieberman considers that Israel's parliamentary system has gone through many years of instability. Lieberman's solution to end this instability consists of granting the Prime Minister unconstrained power, and removing the country's Arab minority from the state or the voting pole. Consequently, trying to make Israel as Gorenberg says "from a Jewish State to a Jews only State" (2). More recently, Lieberman has "changed" his opinion on moving the Arabs out of the Israel. His new idea proposes that everyone in Israel should swear loyalty oath to the state, flag and Israeli national anthem. Hence, Lieberman's plan consists in a scheme in which, anyone who does not swear oath would not be allowed to vote. Furthermore, in the article Gorenberg states some of Lieberman's main goals and his views of the Palestine situation. Lieberman has fears that there will be in the near future another Holocaust at Iran's hands and his goal is to protect the country from this threat. Talking about the Palestinians, Lieberman, a Jewish immigrant, asserts that there must be a political division and Israel must be free of disloyal Arab minority.

On the next section of the article, Gorenberg gives a thorough biography of Lieberman. An interesting aspect of this biography is the influence of where and how he grew up, and the influence of his parents in his life. He was raised at the height of the Cold War by a father who battled the Soviets, and worked hard for ten years in a Siberian labor camp. These events and situations definitely influenced his life and molded who he is today. One could compare Lieberman's life story to that of Ariel Sharon who was also tremendously influenced by his parents and his childhood.

Lieberman has many plans, proposals and objectives; however some, especially rivals, agree that he does not have any power to execute his plans. Nevertheless, in Gorenberg's article Lieberman says that the Prime Minister does not have the time to deal with all affairs. Consequently, he has that time, and that is how the country's most crucial decisions in the past were made; in situations where dramatic solutions such as Lieberman's plans had to be made sentence is not clear to me. Gorenberg ends his article stating that Lieberman "[spoke] quietly, in a low growl, and in his hand the cigar is lit" (5). At the beginning of the article, Gorenberg called Lieberman's cigar a canon, a symbol of destruction and power.

At the end of the Cold War, there was a great influx of Russians into Israel. Most of which was not desired by the Russians-do you mean the Russian regime or those who came to Israel?. With the number of Russians coming from the former Soviet Union increasing to fifteen percent in the early 90's, a Russian-language press flourished. With it, an immigrant political party was formed by a former soviet prisoner. Using these immigrant supporters, Lieberman found the opportunity to form his own party Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel is Our Home").

This article is very relevant to the study of the Israeli Palestine conflict. In 2004, despite Lieberman's hard core Zionist ideals, he proposed a division of the land between Jews and Palestinians. At that time, Ariel Sharon had announced his plan to pull out of Gaza, and Olmert had come out of one-sided removal from much of the west bank??What do you mean?. On the other hand, Lieberman had his own ideas proposing a solution. The solution was that Israel would keep its largest West Bank settlements, and give away some of its own territory near the West Bank boundaries.

These views held by Lieberman depart from earlier Israeli leaders' positions. Under no such conditions ?expression? would previous leaders consider giving away their own territory to the enemy. Lieberman is unlike traditional right wingers, willing to give away land; however, he is a very strong Zionist. According to Gorenberg, Lieberman's desire above all things is to achieve the Zionist vision of a "Jewish State for the Jewish People" (1). For some of the Israeli population this is very appealing