(Jpost).....LASTLY, THE war has also produced political winners and losers. The winners are Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu, and the loser is Kadima.
The defense minister has reminded his many eulogizers that he has not forgotten how to fight. It took poise and resolve to plan and execute this operation, and it is good to see that under Barak’s leadership the IDF has addressed its flaws of summer ‘06. It is good to see the IDF now appears disciplined, equipped, trained, agile, motivated and well organized, and it is good to see civil defense properly managed. All this means renewed respect for Barak and his party, and therefore also more votes. Yet those will come from Kadima, not Likud.
For Netanyahu, the very emergence of hostilities in the Gaza Strip is a vindication of his warnings three years ago that unilateralism would result in violence. All he needs, and can be counted on to now do, is broadcast the statements he made while announcing his resignation as finance minister.
Kadima, at the same time, will have to explain what happened to the unilateral-retreat ticket on which Ehud Olmert made it run back in ‘05. How is it that what began with fuddy-duddy convergence ended up with bloody vengeance? Kadima can be counted on to emerge with answers of its own, but the real answer is that what united this party since its inception was not an idea, but opportunism.
The only common denominator among its leaders is that they were part of Ariel Sharon’s circle of sycophants. As such, some of them are able technocrats, most notably Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, but during three years in power they never jointly produced even one idea or plan, let alone a gospel.
Yes, they had Law Committee chairman Menahem Ben-Sasson, who fought for a constitution and electoral reform, but Kadima never backed the former Hebrew University rector’s idealism and in fact disposed of him, and of world-renowned scientist Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, just like it had previously shed top-notch jurist Uriel Reichman.
