{"id":717,"date":"2026-07-28T04:37:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T04:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=717"},"modified":"2026-07-28T04:37:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T04:37:14","slug":"the-rise-of-avigdor-lieberman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=717","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of Avigdor Lieberman"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article>\n<header>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Feature<\/li>\n<li>December 14, 2006<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>The Rise of Avigdor Lieberman<\/h1>\n<h1>The Rise of Avigdor Lieberman<\/h1>\n<h2>Many Israelis and their American allies are sleeping through the rise of the virulently anti-Arab Avigdor Lieberman.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section>\n<time>December 14, 2006<\/time><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Tzipi Livni\u2019s Kadima Party received the most overall votes in Israel\u2019s February 10 elections, but the real winner may have been Avigdor Lieberman\u2019s far-right Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) Party, which surged to third place, outpolling the Labor Party with fifteen seats. In this prescient 2006 <i>Nation<\/i> article, Ben Lynfield dissected the Lieberman phenomenon.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p> <i>Jerusalem<\/i><\/p>\n<p> When the Galilee town of Sakhnin\u2019s predominantly Arab soccer team was awarded the Israel Cup in 2004, Avigdor Lieberman was not in the mood to bestow congratulations. Instead, Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) party, implied in a newspaper interview that the team, Hapoel Bnei Sakhnin, would one day be expelled from Israel to the West Bank. \u201cSakhnin will not play in the Israeli league and will represent the other [Palestinian] league. They may even call it Hapoel Shechem [Nablus],\u201d Lieberman joked. <\/p>\n<p> Far from his nakedly anti-Arab approach disqualifying him from the political mainstream, Lieberman is today its rising star. He was welcomed into the ruling coalition in October as \u201cminister for strategic threats\u201d and is now the main ally and crutch of faltering Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. <\/p>\n<p> An immigrant from the former Soviet Union who lives in the illegal West Bank settlement of Nokdim, Lieberman is stoking anti-Arab sentiment and exploiting insecurity and disillusionment after the fiasco of last summer\u2019s Lebanon war. Top office, or at least the Defense Ministry, is a realistic goal for Lieberman, a shrewd political tactician who helped Benjamin Netanyahu gain election as Prime Minister in 1996 and served in Ariel Sharon\u2019s Cabinet. \u201cIf elections were held now, based on the polls, he could presumably be either prime minister or demand any other ministry he wanted,\u201d says Yossi Alpher, former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. <\/p>\n<p> If Lieberman\u2019s pronouncements are to be taken seriously\u2013and there is no obvious reason they should not be\u2013a Lieberman government would exclude some Arab citizens from Israel, would expel others who refuse to sign a loyalty-to-Zionism oath, would turn Gaza into Grozny and would execute Arab members of the Knesset who talk to Hamas or mark Israel Independence Day as the anniversary of the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948. <\/p>\n<p> Many Israelis\u2013and many Americans\u2013are sleeping through the rise  of Lieberman. Others are through their actions facilitating the ascendance of fascist ideas in Israel. Lieberman is more than kosher as far as Washington is concerned. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice welcomed him at the State Department on December 11, a day after he was featured at a forum, sponsored by the Brookings Institution\u2019s Saban Center, that also included Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and several other members of Congress. <\/p>\n<section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2>Popular<\/h2>\n<p><span><span>&#8220;swipe left below to view more authors&#8221;<\/span>Swipe \u2192<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>Impale and Cry: Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                Impale and Cry: Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nBooks &amp; the Arts<br \/>\n<span><br \/>\n                            \/<br \/>\n                        <\/span><br \/>\nChristian Lorentzen <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>Trump Humiliated a Submissive Mainstream Media at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                Trump Humiliated a Submissive Mainstream Media at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nJeet Heer <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>The Bitter Paradox of German Racism<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                The Bitter Paradox of German Racism<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nEdna Bonhomme <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>The War on the UAW<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                The War on the UAW<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nElla Fanger <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p> There have been voices of alarm inside Israel. The daily <i>Ha\u2019aretz<\/i> has warned that the appointment of the \u201cunrestrained and irresponsible\u201d Lieberman \u201cconstitutes a strategic threat in its own right,\u201d and Hebrew University political scientist Ze\u2019ev Sternhell says, \u201cLieberman is perhaps the most dangerous politician in the history of the State of Israel.\u201d Sternhell believes Lieberman poses a greater threat to democracy than previous far-right politicians because Lieberman has not been confined to the margins and because \u201che has a genuine social power base among the Russian immigrants and in the lower middle class among people who think the Knesset and Supreme Court have too much power.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Like Hamas, which swept the Palestinian elections last January, Lieberman, though striving for power through the ballot box, believes democracy is at best a secondary value. In a September interview he said: \u201cThe vision I would like to see here is the entrenching of the Jewish and the Zionist state. I very much favor democracy, but when there is a contradiction between democratic and Jewish values, the Jewish and Zionist values are more important.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Lieberman has no tolerance for pluralism. In one of his first pronouncements as minister, he called for making Israel \u201cas much as possible\u201d a homogeneous Jewish state. His party\u2019s platform includes a plan under which some Arab areas of Israel would be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, albeit without consulting the Arab citizens. \u201cIn exchange\u201d Israel would annex large West Bank settlements. In his book <i>My Truth<\/i>, Lieberman argues that the Arab minority poses the greatest threat to Israel\u2019s future. Ridding Israel of Arabs is necessary because they are disloyal, he says. Lieberman\u2019s platform could be used to disenfranchise the Arab minority, now one-fifth of the population, or pave the way for its expulsion. <\/p>\n<p> Disenfranchising Arab citizens, whose votes are crucial to the Israeli left wing, would have the advantage of keeping the right wing in power for the foreseeable future. In some ways this would be a radical departure from a tradition of universal suffrage as old as the state itself. At the same time, however, the idea of stripping Arabs of the vote draws on concepts well rooted in the discourse of both the Israeli right and the left. In recent years Ariel Sharon advanced the idea of a \u201cseparation,\u201d in which Israel would solve the conflict with the Palestinians without any Palestinian input and by  erecting a wall inside occupied territory that keeps West Bank Arabs out. The left wing, for its part, has for many years used the phrase \u201cdemographic problem\u201d to describe Arabs. <\/p>\n<p> Along with Netanyahu, Lieberman is the prime beneficiary of the sea change in Israeli politics after the Lebanon war. Israel\u2019s leaders rushed into the conflict without weighing alternatives and showed a disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians and even their own soldiers. Most Israelis cannot forgive Olmert or the hapless Defense Minister Amir Peretz\u2013who just a year ago was the great new progressive hope of the Labor Party\u2013for their inept handling of the campaign. In political terms, the major casualty of the war was Olmert\u2019s \u201cconvergence\u201d plan to unilaterally withdraw from isolated West Bank settlements while annexing large settlement blocs. Olmert now has a void instead of an agenda. The entire power structure has been discredited\u2013but not Lieberman, who was not associated with the Lebanon debacle and who unabashedly adheres to the same stances he held in opposition. <\/p>\n<p> With no background in security and a record of threats against other countries, Lieberman is an unlikely choice for handling Israel\u2019s strategic challenges, including how to deal with Iran, or for joining in decisions about Israel\u2019s nuclear arsenal. But for Olmert, it seems, Israeli security comes second to political expediency. \u201cWhat totally disgusts me is the fact that Olmert saw fit to create a security ministry for a man who is a security liability for Israel. He is prepared to use Israeli security as a political goodie,\u201d says the Jaffee Center\u2019s Alpher. <\/p>\n<p> Democracy is also for sale in Olmert\u2019s Israel. Legislation Lieberman has prepared, for which Olmert mustered Cabinet approval, would transfer many of the Knesset\u2019s powers to the prime minister\u2013powers that will be in Lieberman\u2019s hands if he is elected. The plan does away with no-confidence votes, calls for direct election of the prime minister and allows the prime minister to appoint a Cabinet without  Knesset approval. The prime minister would not have to wait for Cabinet or parliamentary approval to promulgate emergency regulations that could overturn existing laws. \u201cLieberman wants a Putin-style regime here,\u201d says Tel Aviv University political scientist Yoav Peled. \u201cI don\u2019t think it can happen under the current government, but it\u2019s very significant, because this is the plan he will implement when he has the power. And pretty soon he will have the power.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=714\">Dispatches From the First Great British CPAC<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=716\">Trump Humiliated a Submissive Mainstream Media at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<footer>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>                Submit a correction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Send a letter to the editor<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Reprints &amp; permissions<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p><span> Ella Fanger<svg>\n<\/svg><br \/>\n<\/span>Ella Fanger is a writer, researcher, and labor organizer based in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=712\">The War on the UAW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n<p><input\/><br \/>\n<input\/><br \/>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n<p>Ad Policy<br \/>\n<!-- <a class=\"inifiniteLoader\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/new_infi_loader.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> -->\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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