OCCUPATION NOW, OCCUPATION TOMORROW, OCCUPATION FOREVER:

Soon, this newspaper will have to call Netanyahu what he's made himself into: "Prime Minister of the State of Israel-Palestine."

I raise this now because Israel under Netanyahu has gone from bad to worse. He just forced out Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. Yaalon, a former army chief of staff, is a very decent man -- a soldier's soldier, determined to preserve the Israeli Army as a people's army that aspires to the highest standards of integrity in the middle of a very dangerous neighborhood.

Netanyahu plans to replace Yaalon with the far-right Avigdor Lieberman, who boasts he could not care less what American Jews think about how Israel is behaving and a man whom, Haaretz reported, was only recently dismissed by Bibi's team as "a petty prattler," unfit to be even a military analyst, and whose closest brush with a real battle was dodging a "tennis ball."

Lieberman, when he has not been under investigation for corruption, has mused about blowing up Egypt's Aswan Dam, denounced Israelis who want Israel to get out of the West Bank as traitors and praised an Israeli soldier, Sgt. Elor Azaria, who fatally shot a wounded Palestinian assailant in the head as he was lying on the ground awaiting medical attention.

Describing Netanyahu's dumping of Yaalon for Lieberman, Yediot Aharonot columnist Nahum Barnea wrote, "Instead of presenting to the world a more moderate government ahead of the diplomatic battles to come in the fall, Netanyahu is presenting the most radical government to ever exist in Israeli history."

Yaalon himself warned, "Extremist and dangerous forces have taken over Israel and the Likud movement and are destabilizing our home and threatening to harm its inhabitants." Former Labor Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, "What has happened is a hostile takeover of the Israeli government by dangerous elements." Former Likud Defense Minister Moshe Arens wrote in Haaretz that Bibi and his far-right cronies "insulted not only Yaalon, they insulted the I.D.F. [Israeli Army]. It's a people's army."

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