Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 January 2003 — Page 10

NAT 2 January 29. 2003

Jewish Post & Opinion Israeli parties offer choice JERUSALEM — Voting in Israeli elections — for outsiders — seems nearly as puzzling as confronting the menu of a Chinese restaurant. So many choices. Israelis had 29 parties to choose from this week — left, right, center, and go-figure. The Jewish Chronicle of London listed them alphabetically, with brief explanations: Ahavat Yisrael: A breakaway from the Sephardi Orthodox Shas Party, led by Rabbi Yosef Kadouri, the son of kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Kadouri. Am Echad (One Nation): A social democratic party led by Histadrut Labor federation chief Amir Peretz, who left the Labor Party. It promotes the rights of employees and pensioners. The Center Party: What's left of the party touted to be the great reformers' hope in the 1999 election. None of its founders remains. Citizen and State: A Russian immigrant party, which broke away from Natan Sharansky's Yisrael B'Aliyah. Democratic Front for Peace and Equality/Arab Movement for Renewal (Chadash-Ta'al): The mainly Arab, mainly (So-viet-style) Communist party, Chadash, has been joined by Ta'al, led by former Arafat adviser Dr Ahmed Tibi. Gesher: Party set up by former Likud Foreign Minister David Levy (who has since returned to his political home), and which champions the poor and underprivileged. Green Leaf: Supports legalization of soft drugs, such as marijuana, and of prostitution. Greens: Environmentalist party, fighting against road expansion and turning beaches over to property-developers. Herut: Describing itself as the most right-wing Israeli party, supports "transfer" — moving Arabs out of an Israeli-annexed West Bank and Gaza. Labor-Meimad: Main center-left party, led by Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna. Supports "separation" from the Palestinians and a two-state solution, as well as expanded economic help for underprivileged areas inside Israel. Lahava: A small party that supports small businesses. Leeder: A newly launched Russian-immigrant party with reported connections to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultra-na-tionalist firebrand. Likud: Led by Premier Ariel Sharon, a center-right party with populist roots. Declaring the Oslo peace process is dead, it supports a tough line on security, but accepts eventual Palestinian statehood. Economically, supports the privatization of Israeli public services. Men's Rights: an often-running, always losing party led by Ya'acov Schlosser. Meretz: Left-wing Zionists, led by Yossi Sarid, who support renewed push for peace, and social democracy. Has support of the lower classes on social issues. Moreshet Avot: Led by former Prime Ministerial candidate Rabbi Yosef Ba-Gad, it has a strictly Orthodox and right-wing agenda. National Democratic Assembly (Balad): Led by philosophy professor Azmi Bishara, it wants Israel to be a "state for all its citizens," by removing Jewish symbols such as the Menorah and the Magen David, and changing the words of national anthem, Hatikvah. National Religious Party (NRP): Heirs of the religious Zionist Mizrachi movement, the party has moved the right in recent years and is linked to the settlement movement. National Union: Composed of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu, Moledet and Tekuma parties, it backs "voluntary transfer" of Arabs. Says it would join a Likud-led government only if peace moves are halted. Organization for Democratic Action: A Marxist-Leninist workers' party. Progressive National Alliance: A breakaway from the Communists, it supports minority rights. Shas: The strictly Orthodox Sephardi party says it wants to make a more Jewish Israel by supporting the underprivileged in development towns and other deprived areas. Shinui: the party of middle class Ashkenazim led by Yosef (Tommy) Lapid. Demands military service for all (especially the Orthodox), the cutting of welfare funds, and lower taxes. Continued on next page

Maybe You’ll Agree Are you comfortable? Chances are that, as a reader of the P-O, you are "comfortable," in the sense that you have enough money and material goods to get along. Your kids or grandkids probably don't have to go to the inner-city schools. We're comfortable, too. And it makes us uncomfortable. A newspaper is supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Yet we really don't have enough staff to inflict the affliction. So we'll just ask you to make it a do-it-yourself project. Look at your life, your congregation, your community, the wider community, the institutions, the attitudes. Ask yourselves if everything's okay and if okay is really good enough. Or should you be speaking up at the school board, the legislature, to your federation, to your congresspeople? In a perfect world, there would be no need to do so. But there are things going tragically wrong with the world - and not just in the oilrich Middle East. We see large articles in our local newspaper about the Middle East and Iraq — and the occasional 2-inch mention that 14 million people in Africa might soon be starving to death. And there are probably things going wrong in your city that don't directly touch you. We know that's true in Indianapolis, where we live. We're right to be concerned about Israel, for example. If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us? But if we are only for ourselves, what are we? We know you know the last line of Hillel's admonition. Maybe you'll agree. Ed Stattmann

Why Israel returned to voting for parties

JERUSALEM — Israel this week returned to voting for parties rather than individuals for the prime minister's selection. In the experiment on voting separately for prime minister candidates it was learned that votcis split their votes between a mainstream prime ministerial candidate and a special-interest party. The Knesset became home to 15 parties, none of which held more than 26 seats. That made it harder than ever for a prime minister to secure a stable Knesset base. The governments of both Likud Pre-

mier Binyamin Netanyahu, who won the 1996 election, and Labor's 1999 victor, Ehud Barak, failed to see out their fouryear terms. This year's election was Israel's fourth in six years. No one party in Israel's history has won an outright majority in the Knesset. The potential prime minister has 28 days to form a government — a term which can be extended by a further 14 days by the president. If a workable coalition still doesn't emerge, he can ask another party leader to try to do so. In the unprecedented event that this, too, were to fail, new elections would be called.

How To Kill A Business In Ten Easy Steps

1. Don’t advertise. Just pretend everybody knows what you have to offer. 2. Don’t advertise. Tell yourself you just don’t have the time to spend thinking about promoting your business. 3. Don’t advertise. Just assume everybody knows what you sell. 4. Don’t advertise. Convince yourself that you’ve been in business so long customers will automatically come to you. 5. Don’t advertise. Forget that there are new potential customers who would do business with you if they were urged to do so.

6. Don’t advertise. Forget that you have competition trying to attract your customers away from you. 7. Don’t advertise. Tell yourself it costs too much to advertise and that you don’t get enough out of it. 8. Don’t advertise. Overlook the fact that advertising is an investment in selling — not an expense. 9. Don’t advertise. Be sure not provide an adequate advertising budget for business. 10. Don’t advertise. Forget that you have to keep reminding your established customers that you appreciate their business.

You decide... it's your business in good times or bad.