Quote:
Originally Posted by microbet
Yeah, the numbers were much bigger after the USSR fell, but there were blips of emigration earlier in the early and late 70s.
I was just thinking about their political impact in Israel. You always hear about the Orthodox and their impact, but Leiberman is a right wing not-Orthodox. I hadn't really thought of that group's political orientation being formed around the militaristic nationalism of a refugee group assimilating like the Cubans or like many Vietnamese in California.
Sounds like an interesting theory. Don't know much about Cuban or Vietnamese, but the majority of Russian-born Israelis are very right-wing while being very secular. A generally less common combination Israel. It's worth mentioning that left vs right in Israel is almost entirely related to the Arab conflict. The different types of RWNJ in Israel have completely different economical and social views. They just agree on hating Arabs and Libs.
Liberman ran once with the slogan of "Only Liberman understands Arabic" (which implies he gets that you have to pound them into submission). The "problem" is that you can't actually "pound them", which is why every right-wing Defense Minister ends up resigning and become Bibi's scapegoat.
In a little too in-depth analysis, Bennett, who is a much more dangerous right-wing figure than Liberman (and the current Education Minister which partially explains why I live in the US now) tried to bully Netanyahu into giving him the role of Defense Minister.
Netanyahu is a much better politician and in a serious of well orchestrated spins has managed to twist the situation so that Bennett now takes the blame for the collapse of the government.
It's expected that tomorrow morning Bennett will resign which means Netanyahu doesn't have a coalition anymore and there will be new elections probably around March. The results will be exactly the same as they are now, an almost identical coalition will form and literally nothing will change except a few billions in tax payers money gone.
I know it doesn't look like that, but the only half decent quality of Bibi is that he doesn't like wars. He likes the status-quo where everyone is miserable and he keeps getting elected.
Last edited by Yuv; 11-18-2018 at 10:43 PM.