'Gov't exchanged Jabotinsky with Nakba'

[דוד בן זאב אריה]

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"The government took Ze'ev Jabotinsky out of the school books and inserted the Nakba [the Palestinian "disaster" of Israel's founding] instead," opposition leader and Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday during a special Knesset session called during the legislature's summer recess.

Slideshow: Pictures of the week Netanyahu was referring to the decison by Education Minister Yuli Tamir (Labor) to remove the writings of Jabotinsky from the curriculum.

Jabotinsky (1880-1940) founded the revisionist movement in Zionism, the precursor to the Likud Party. He also helped form the British army's Jewish Legion during World War I, and the Irgun (IZL) underground movement. In additional, he was an author, orator, soldier and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa.

Netanyahu also slammed the government's decision this week to release 199 security prisoners, two of them with "blood on their hands," as a gesture of goodwill to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"The government decided several days ago to release hundreds of terrorists, and I ask a simple question: Why? What did we get in return? Releasing killers without gaining anything crosses a very dangerous line in the war on terror. They tell us it will strengthen Abbas, but it only strengthens terrorist groups," Netanyahu said.

He recounted "failures upon failures" in the government's handling of security issues, "beginning in the Second Lebanon War, through the resolutions that came after the war, Hizbullah rearmament, rocket fire on our communities and, of course, the [Gaza] cease-fire [that began in June] that is helping Hamas rearm itself. Now we can add this prisoner release to that list of failures."


Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee: Netanyahu thinks the public has the memory of a fish.
Photo: Courtesy
Netanyahu also criticized the government's economic policies.

"After it has finished harvesting the fruit of the economic growth we created, this government is going to lose [this growth] - the tsunami is on its way. This bodes ill for Israel's economy. You cannot have security without [a strong] economy."

Netanyahu "must think the public has the memory of a fish," Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee (Kadima) responded. The government had agreed to release only 199 prisoners and "not hundreds," including two murderers who had already served more than 30 years of their sentences, Whbee said. "The government wants to strengthen pragmatic elements in the Palestinian Authority - the forces that wish to make peace with us."

He also reminded Netanyahu that when the latter was prime minister in the 1997, he approved the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the longtime spiritual leader of Hamas, in return for Mossad agents captured in Jordan.