A tipster named Ben writes the following:
Based on The New York Times article you linked yesterday, it looks like
there's some image-scrubbing at work to ensure that Avigdor Lieberman
doesn't get the full Jorg Haider treatment if he becomes Israeli
Foreign Minister. If that happens, Marty Peretz is not the only one
who will have to do some back-tracking on his prior statements about
Lieberman.
In this regard, I thought you might be interested in a short clip from
the video linked below from a talk by Nadav Tamir, the Israeli General
Counsel in Boston, at the University of Vermont on February 10
(election day in Israel). While most of his talk was intended to
allay concerns resulting from the military action in Gaza (a somewhat
more sophisticated version of the usual propaganda), Tamir, in response
to a question from the audience, made an admirable (and somewhat brave)
comment that the electoral success of Lieberman was "a very frightening
phenomenon" and invoked the Haider analogy.
"I just feel that its right for me to speak against it even though I'm
not supposed to as a diplomat, because when Haider became part of the
government in Austria, even though diplomats are not supposed to talk
about other governments' politics, we did talk. So I feel the same
rationale works this time for my country, and I have to right to speak."
http://www.retn.org/ondemand.php?id=21416
(this quote is 1 or 2 minutes from the end of the talk; slide the
button almost to the very end of the video control slider to see this
segment)
From Wikipedia, re Haider:
"In 2000, [Jorg] Haider's Freedom Party and the People's Party formed a
coalition government. This caused widespread outrage both in Austria
and the rest of Europe. The heads of government of the other fourteen
EU members decided to cease cooperation with the Austrian government,
as it was felt in many countries that the cordon sanitaire
against coalitions with parties considered as right-wing extremists,
which had mostly held in Western Europe since 1945, had been breached."
