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Bumpy politics with a mix of peaceful tree planting

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BY CHERYL BENTLEY

THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: February 21, 2009

PORT RICHEY - Members of Pasco Hadassah learned of both Israel's toughness and its gentleness at their Wednesday meeting at the Jasmine Lakes Civic Center.

The guest speaker, Ra'anan Gissin, who was an adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and an Israeli government spokesman to the international media, gave an account of the rough and tumble politics of the Jewish state.

At the same time, Gissin's sponsor, the Jewish National Fund, an organization devoted to preserving the environment, is reminding members of the country's gentler face.

Gissin, who was raised in Brooklyn and holds a doctorate from Syracuse University, reflected on how he had spent 15 years in the military and 10 years working in government as an advisor to Sharon, the onetime hard-line general turned would-be peacemaker, and spokesman for the Ministry of National Infrastructures.

"The last part of my life, I decided to be involved in the Jewish National Fund, an organization that promotes life," said Gissin.

The Jewish National Fund is a nonpolitical organization that, according to regional director Uri A. Smajovits, has planted 240,000 trees, cleaned up rivers and put in 200 water reservoirs in Israel.

"We bring speakers from the left and from the right," he said of his group's sponsorship of Gissin. "We have no political agenda. We just want to live in peace and improve the environment."

Gissin's talk centered on a more mundane factor in Israeli life, politics. He gave details on the current political situation. With no party receiving a majority in Israel's recent parliamentary election, the more moderate Kadima Party's Tzipi Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the hawkish Likud Party are trying to form governments.

Sharon founded Kadima after breaking with Likud in the wake of his 2005 decision as prime minister to withdraw Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu quit the Israeli cabinet to protest the Gaza pullout.

"There is no difference between the winner and loser," Gissin said of Livni and Netanyahu, likening Israeli politics to mud wrestling. "They are both smeared with mud."

Israeli President Shimon Peres had to choose whether to give Livni or Netanyahu the first try at putting together a working coalition with other parties within the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. "I think he will probably give it to Livni," said Gissin Wednesday.

On Friday, however, Peres gave Netanyahu first crack at forming a government.

The country doesn't have a strong leader such as former primer minister Ariel Sharon, who could govern from the force of his character, Gissin said.

Gissin called for peaceful negotiations with Israel's Arab neighbors but took a hard line against attacks from increasingly sophisticated homemade rockets from Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Sderot, a city in the Negev Desert in southern Israel. It is believed Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, is fomenting the attacks.

The rocket fire will not deter Israel, Gissin observed. "We're here to say. We were here 4,000 years ago. We're going to be here another 4,000 years."

Hadassah is a volunteer organization whose members want to strengthen ties to Israel. It is the Jewish National Fund's largest corporate sponsor.

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