Moshe Kahlon – The Next Yair Lapid?

December 9, 2014

3 min read

In almost every Israeli election in recent years, there arises a new center party, anointed with supposedly unique, yet moderate qualities that the media trumps as the rising political power to be reckoned with. Two years ago, it was the Yesh Atid party, established by one Yair Lapid, which took the political scene by storm, suddenly becoming the second largest party in Israel.

In this new election season, the latest superstar creating this year’s new and improved centrist party is former Likud Minister of Communications Moshe Kahlon. Kahlon was a very popular Likudnik, at least until he temporarily left politics, apparently dissatisfied with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s failure to reward Kahlon’s popularity with an appropriate position of stature in the party.

Kahlon has claimed that he left the Likud because of the lack of sufficient emphasis on socioeconomic issues, which he considers to be his strong suit. As Communications Minister, he was responsible for successfully breaking up the monopoly in the cellular telephone industry, impressively using competition in the free market to lower prices for the consumer. Now in his position as leader of a new centrist party, Kahlon is promising to extend those reforms to banking and other industries in which monopolies still hold sway.

Breaking up monopolies should have been vintage Netanyahu, but the nation’s leading politician, who happens to be a very knowledgeable MIT-trained economist,  seemingly wasn’t willing to take on the oligarchs at the ensconced banking, (regular) telephone, and electric industries, an admittedly awesome task that could create labor chaos and temporary or prolonged disruptions of service. That being the case, or at least the public perception, Netanyahu left open the playing field for a Moshe Kahlon to portray himself as the potential socioeconomic savior, having made his name by trumpeting the capitalist virtues of competition and thefree market.

Unfortunately for Kahlon, man does not live on bread alone and a national candidate must address controversial foreign policy issues. Now that he is a candidate and a centrist one at that, he wants to appeal to the Left as well as to the Right, and for that reason, he seems to be making an intentional shift from his former professed loyalty to the Land of Israel. Speaking in a Tel Aviv pub yesterday, Kahlon showed that he is perfectly willing to part with parts of the biblical heartland of Israel:

“I am a former member of the Likud, a real Likud that knows how to achieve peace, that knows how to give up land,” Kahlon proclaimed. ”My friends and I will not miss a chance for peace. I believe we must act on that front.”

Sounds a bit like his former boss in the Likud, or even further left. Ever wonder why Israel has such bad international public relations? A country that is so willing to surrender its most historical places for a promise of peace by those who are holding a gun to our heads cannot win the public relations battle. It’s worthwhile to remember that the State of Israel was established in 1948, not for the purpose of peace, but for the purpose of reestablishing Jewish sovereignty in its ancient homeland. Someone should point that out to Kahlon, lest he continue to declare his lack of faithfulness to the Land of Israel in order to get votes from the left side of the political spectrum.

Economics and social mobility are important values, but the Land of Israel is eternal. The purpose of our return to the land in fulfillment of prophecy wasn’t and isn’t just to create a thriving economy. That may be a nice result of the return to the land and the consequent free ex‎pression of Jewish creativity and initiative, but economics alone is not the goal. Resettling, rebuilding, and spreading the light of Torah from the entireLand of Israel in fulfillment of prophecy is the goal. Hopefully, Kahlon will remember that on his next visit to the local bar.

Reprinted with author’s permission from israelnationalnews.com

 

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