Concerns About Livni

Here are the first and last two paragraphs from Ari Shavit’s “A Cautionary Note” in today’s Haaretz.  Shavit is a man of the left and one of
Israel’s finest journalists:

Over the past week I took statements from about a dozen people who know Tzipi Livni quite well.  None of them is close to either Benjamin Netanyahu or Ehud Barak.  Most support Kadima or parties on the left.  Nevertheless, all are concerned.  The portrait they paint of Livni is a disturbing one.

* * *

One of the people I spoke to was especially agitated despite being a mature, restrained and conservative person.  He told me he felt like a member of some cult with a terrible secret:  Tzipi Livni is not fit to be prime minister.  There is a black flag waving above her journey to the Prime Minister’s Office.

The witness said it was inconceivable to him that the media are not revealing this secret; intolerable that the public does not know.  That is why he spoke, that is why I recorded his words.  That is why this piece was published.  So the public will know – and decide.

Here is a link to a 10-minute excerpt of Livni’s January 16, 2009 appearance before the National Press Club in
Washington, before a hostile press.  I think she did a good job.  But she was the architect of
Israel’s Irwin Corey Diplomacy over the last two years.