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Israeli Populist`s Hardline Message Draws Voters: The right-wing party leader seems to be gaining support for Tuesday`s election by campaigning on populist anxieties. (Javno, 2/08/09)

Avigdor Lieberman does not appeal to the finer instincts of Israeli voters.

The right-wing party leader seems to be gaining support for Tuesday's election by campaigning on populist anxieties, such as the enemy within and how to expose him by challenging his loyalty.

He wants Israel's 20-percent Arab minority to prove they love the country, or leave it. He would redivide Israel and the West Bank so some Arab towns would pass to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state, while Israel "annexes Jewish areas".

"Israel is under combined terror attack, from within and without the country," Lieberman says. "The internal terror threat is more dangerous than the external and we should understand that and react correspondingly." [...]

Polls put him in third place behind Netanyahu and Livni but ahead of Israel's once-dominant Labour party. If voters confirm that new lineup, liberals will be shocked. They see the party as a font of racial intolerance alien to their ideals of Israel.

Europe's xenophobic rightist leaders are condemned for racist rabble-rousing against blacks, Muslims and, subliminally, Jews. Lieberman is accused by Arab and left-wing opponents of the same fault, only he goes exclusively for the Arabs.

He does not appear to have political star quality. He exudes neither menace nor magnetism and he does not have the smiling ease of a natural campaigner. He left jacket and tie at home for his trip to the seaside town, but his jeans were neatly pressed.

He prides himself on saying the politically unsayable, on behalf of voters he says are deprived of a voice because their views are considered shameful in a pluralist democracy.

Such politics are less of a threat to Israel now than they will be after another decade or two of demographic grinding. But, at that point, if Judaism comes to be defined as predominantly racial and Israel as a racial state then it will cease to be a worthy ally and the regime will lose its claim to sovereignty.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 8, 2009 11:09 AM