Livni Lashes Netanyahu Over Bar-Ilan Zig Zag

Zionist Camp co-leader Tzipi Livni sought on Monday to impale Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on his 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, when he declared support for a Palestinian state, after he appeared to backtrack on Sunday, The Jerusalem Post reported.

“In the situation created in the Middle East, any territory that will be evacuated will be taken over by radical Islam and terrorist organizations supported by Iran. Therefore, there will not be any withdrawals or concessions. The matter is simply irrelevant,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying on Sunday, though it was subsequently denied.

Livni told Israel Radio on Monday that Netanyahu gave everyone the impression that the negotiations with the Palestinians were serious, when in fact they weren’t.

She accused the prime minister of habitually zig-zagging and undermining Israel’s international image.

“He talks but he won’t evacuate, he talks but he will not agree, and the world has lost a basic trust in the prime minister and I say this regretfully.”

Taking her attack on Netanyahu’s credibility a step further, Livni charged that “when the Bar Ilan speech cannot be believed, then the speech on Iran cannot be believed either.”

But Netanyahu’s office denied reports that he backed away from the two-state solution with the Palestinians.

A statement by the Likud party disassociated the prime minister from the “simply irrelevant” remark quoted above, and claimed that Netanyahu “never said such a thing.”

Meanwhile, Livni’s Zionist Camp was being asked questions this week about its use of an image of Latin American revolutionary figure Che Guevara in the election campaign, Arutz Sheva reported.

Guevara was notorious for his part in the brutal repression that followed Fidel Castro’s takeover of Cuba, and for his lead in exporting communism to other Latin Amerian countries.

In addition, Guevara was virulently anti-Israel, actively supporting the PLO from its inception in 1965.

Yet, at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, the Zionist Camp set up a stand featuring a cut-out of Guevara’s face with the words “we are the revolution” under it.

The stand is set for display on college campuses in Israel throughout the week, a party spokesman said Monday.

When asked by a  reporter what connected Guevara to the party, activists at IDC Herzliya responded that he represents “the spirit of revolution” and “symbolizes someone who came from the people and made a change.”

“We’re not Marxists or something like that. We wanted something that puts the spotlight on the word ‘revolution,’ because we’re going to bring a revolution,” an activist said.

“Young people don’t connect him to the Marxist revolution. We don’t want to turn the country into an anti-democratic dictatorship or something like that.”

This article appeared in print on page 6 of the March 10th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.