Olmert appoints "dangerous politician, clever, fascist and racist" as Deputy PM.

Olmert has gone even further than I thought. He is not only proposing to make Avigdor Lieberman a member of his government, but he is now proposing making him his minister dealing with strategic threats and a deputy prime minister.

This is a shocking turn of events.

Knesset members on the left in general and from the Arab parties in particular are expected to challenge the appointment. MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al) called Lieberman a "dangerous politician, clever, fascist and racist. In other places people like him would be shunned, and in Israel [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert is promoting him to deputy prime minister."

In an interview to Haaretz, Tibi said that Lieberman is the Israeli equivalent of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Joerg Haider.

Why is Olmert promoting such a man?

I discussed here the kind of man we are dealing with. Nor has he modified any of his views before being promoted by Olmert, a promotion that makes no sense to anyone except as a cynical way for Olmert to preserve his power - a power that is not seriously under threat, and yet he reaches out to such dangerous people to ensure his survival.

He (Lieberman) has not apologized to Israeli Arabs, nor disavowed his statements of incitement against Arab MKs. Even after having reached agreement with Ehud Olmert about his inclusion in the government, Lieberman has stuck to his obscene views.

This racist is about to made deputy Prime Minister of Israel. This seriously undermines Israel's previous arguments against the inclusion of Joerg Haider into the Austrian government.

Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, warned Austria at the time that the inclusion of Haider in the coalition will "ostracize it from the family of nations." Matan Vilnai, then minister of science, culture and sport, threatened to boycott the Austrian national soccer team. In response to the Freedom Party's inclusion of him in the coalition, then-prime minister Ehud Barak declared that Haider was persona non grata in Israel. Jewish organizations the world over competed over the intensity of their criticism of the Austrian government.

The growth of extremist parties on the right in Europe is worrying to Israel, and justifiably so. The rising popularity of nationalists such as Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Vadim Tudor in Romania, Anto Djapic in Croatia and Christophe Blocher in Switzerland is disconcerting to world Jewry, and so it should be. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has barred Marine Le Pen, a member of the European Parliament and deputy in her father's National Front party, from entering the country. What will we say if European Union countries announce that the deputy prime minister is an unwanted personality in Europe?

The silence of the leadership of mainstream Jewry in the world, in view of the legitimization of a person such as Lieberman, undermines the moral high ground they hold in the struggle against Israel-haters throughout the world. If a Jewish politician who aspires to transfer an Arab minority across the border can sit in an Israeli cabinet, why should an anti-Semite not sit in an Austrian government?

The Knesset is due to vote on his appointment today and it looks likely that he will be approved. I don't know how the politicians who approve of him reconcile such an appointment with their consciences.

When the Palestinians elected Hamas, the US and EU refused to recognise the democratically elected government. Will there be any similar outcry to Israel making a man with such views deputy Prime Minister? Don't hold your breath.

Make no mistake, Israel has now promoted a man who openly calls for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to the post of Deputy Prime Minister. What hope is there now of a negotiated settlement? Where does this leave Bush's road map?

Olmert was elected on a platform that promised to evacuate the West Bank and Gaza. And now he has promoted a man who opposes all the issues that he was elected upon.

Olmert's government now has no function, it has no reason for existing other than ensuring it's own survival. Critics of the Likud Party, like myself, found ourselves applauding the old war criminal Ariel Sharon when he finally realised the errors of his ways and founded the Kadima party. It was a party that set out to do what Israel had been avoiding doing for some sixty years, to obey international law and return the land taken in 1967 to the Palestinians.

Olmert has now abandoned the very reasons that his party was formed to promote. And worse, he is now promoting to Deputy Prime Minister a man who's presence in his government guarantees that his party's original principled intentions can never be realised.

If ever a government deserved to fall, it is this one.

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So why are Israel's politicians, of the left and right, so comfortable sitting with Lieberman, the leader of Israel's only unquestionably fascist party?

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