Epstein Secrets

overnment. EFTA00693045 Then, in 2008, Olmert was forced to resign because of corruption allegations, and new elections brought Netanyahu and the Likud back to power. This development proved awkward for Barak, who had promised during the campaign not to join a Netanyahu government. But in one of th

ty and foreign policy thinking in the last 20 years." In a land of dirty politicians, furthermore, Barak is more or less clean. Yet leaders such as Lieberman and Olmert, both of whom have been convicted of criminal charges, are more popular and are seen as viable candidates while Barak, whom one comment

t movement since the fall of Communism.) The overt anti-Arab racism in Yisrael Beytenu's campaign in 2008, and the fact that it has now merged with Likud, may be a national embarrassment to many Israeli liberals, but it, too, illuminates another tempting pathway for Putin's outreach to a changing Mid

to the rise of Avigdor Lieberman, the former Moldovan nightclub bouncer turned Israeli foreign minister who was just cleared of corruption charges. Lieberman not only congratulated Putin on his party United Russia's parliamentary "victory" in 2011—he was the first foreign politician to do so, in fact—but

EFTA00630432 population in the West Bank, and jeopardizes Israel proper. The explosion of settlements, encouraged and subsidized by both Labor and Likud governments, has led to a large and established ethnocracy that thinks of itself as a permanent frontier. In 1980, twelve thousand Jews lived in th

acy," Beinart writes; now they number more than three hundred thousand, and include Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's wildly xenophobic Foreign Minister. Lieberman has advocated the execution of Arab members of parliament who dare to meet with leaders of Hamas. His McCarthyite allies call for citizens to swear

re building a nuclear reactor. I had got to know Olmert fairly well over the years, initially when I was in the kirya and both he and another rising Likud politician to whom I became closer, Dan Meridor, were members of the Knesset’s defense committee. But from the day I returned to the Israeli governme

lition, that was not an easy argument to make to my reduced Knesset contingent. They saw joining Bibi, especially in a government with the right-wing Lieberman as Foreign Minister, as a betrayal of all the efforts that they and I had made to achieve peace with the Palestinians. Still, the decision on whether

building a nuclear reactor. *** I had got to know Olmert fairly well over the years, initially when I was in the kirya and both he and another rising Likud politician to whom I became closer, Dan Meridor, were members of the Knesset's defense committee. But from the day I returned to the Israeli governme

ent down six seats, to 13. The big gainer was a far-right, stridently anti-Arab party called Yisrael Beitenu, led by a former Likudnik named A vigdor Lieberman. Tzipi's attempt to form a coalition became less a political process than a contest between rival stalls in a Middle Eastern bazaar. Bibi was holding