The political crisis in
Israel, caused by Foreign Minister David Levy's decision to stop crying wolf
and finally resign from the government, unleashed fresh press attacks on Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday. In an editorial
titled "No Choice But New Elections," the respected daily Ha'aretz said
Levy was right to have resigned over the budget's stinginess on welfare,
because "much funding has been diverted to settlements in the territories, to
the ultra-Orthodox sector and to various political pressure groups."
"It is likely that the
majority in the cabinet will seek to exploit Levy's resignation to delay the
implementation of the next withdrawal in the West Bank, and perhaps even to
cancel the prime minister's forthcoming visit to Washington on Jan. 20,"
Ha'aretz said. "With Levy's resignation the government has reached a
political impasse and a nadir in its performance. Gesher's [Levy's political
party's] pulling out of the coalition removes a cornerstone from the Netanyahu
government. A general election is a must."
The
Jerusalem Post said, in
an aquatic metaphor, that Netanyahu seems to "have a penchant for steering for
the worst part of each rapid, and that escaping each does not mean that he has
survived unscathed. The damage is cumulative, and eventually the boat takes on
so much water it is impossible to steer." The only way to stabilize the
government, the Post 's editorial
concluded, is "by marking out a clear stance on the peace process that either
works or results in new elections. Move forward, or go back to the people;
wobbling in place is not an option."
The massacre of more than 400 civilians in Algeria by
Islamic extremists was described in Le Monde of Paris as the worst such
carnage ever carried out during the holy month of Ramadan. Libération, the left-leaning Paris daily, said that the Islamic
terrorists 1) were much more numerous and resilient than the Algerian
government would admit and 2) had "inexhaustible reserves bred by hatred,
poverty, and the desire for vengeance." The Times of London, in an
editorial, called on the Algerian government to stop censoring the truth about
the massacres: The Algerian Armed Islamic Group "is the most murderous
fanatical force the world has seen since Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge; it must be
destroyed." But for this to be achieved, the government must stop trying to
minimize the horror. Telling the truth, said the Times , is one of the
most potent of counterterrorist techniques.
La Repubblica of Rome
described Germany's call on Sunday for an immediate pan-European initiative
against the Algerian terrorists as a conscious decision to override the
feelings of its great ally, France, out of "fear of seeing the triumph only a
few hours' flight from Frankfurt, Paris and Milan of intransigent and violent
Islamic fundamentalists on a par with those of Afghanistan or of Iran before
[President Mohammed] Khatami."
Reporting President Daniel arap Moi's election
to a fifth five-year term in chaotic and controversial polling in Kenya, the
Kenyan daily the Nation emphasized the problems he was now facing, especially "severe
criticism by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund," which were
withholding aid payments "citing tardiness in effecting reforms in the energy
and telecommunications sectors and in tackling corruption generally." The
Nation also reported that "a thorough cleaning" of the venue for
Monday's presidential swearing-in ceremony had been carried out the day before
by "hundreds of prisoners under tight security." In a separate article, the Nation reported on the desperate
plight of Kenya's tourism industry, which had seen a 50-percent drop in
hotel-room occupancy, and 150,000 jobs lost because of pre-election
violence.
The death of Michael Kennedy
in a skiing accident was the subject of an exceptionally heartless editorial in
India's the Pioneer, which said: "A generation of Kennedys has slipped into a
tedium of tabloid headlines involving an overdose of the usual ingredients of
sex, drink, and drugs. In the process, the word Camelot has been reduced to a
bad, smutty, phonemic [wow!] pun in the past tense."
In a column in the
Times of London, William Rees-Mogg, the newspaper's conservative former
editor, claimed a special understanding of the Kennedy clan because, "on my
mother's side I come from a somewhat similar Irish-American family." "In their
ideal form, the Irish-Americans ... are risk-hungry risk-takers [who] see every
risk as a challenge, and believe that failure to meet any challenge is
cowardice," he wrote. "Cowardice is unforgivable. This imposes on them a heroic
view of life, though continuous heroism has the odds stacked against them."
Saying that this generation of Kennedys "does not seem to have inherited the
exceptional ability of the family" and pointing out that "[r]isk-taking without
high intelligence is not a good way of life," Rees-Mogg concluded: "The family
has been doomed by its best as well as by its worst qualities; most of all,
perhaps, by the rashness of its courage. As each new blow falls, we react with
pity, astonishment, horror and compassion."
