1Israel, 1Malaysia, UMNO & APCO

Kata orang tua-tua:

"Mengata Dulang Paku Serpih, mengata orang dia yang lebih"

Yang jelasnya, APCO mempunyai cawangan di Tel Aviv di sini.

Dari website APCO:

"APCO Worldwide in Tel Aviv helps clients navigate the complex international business and regulation arena in Israel. We also assist multinational companies in understanding Israel’s unique political and business climate, which operates in a dynamic setting facing constant changes and challenges".

Dan APCO adalah antara syarikat yang mempunyai hubungan rapat dengan parti-parti politik di Israel kerana itu adalah sumber perniagaan mereka.

PAda waktu yang sama, UMNO mengambil sebuah syarikat yang mempunyai hubungan dengan pemimpin2 Israel sebagai penasihat mereka.

Kenyataan APCO baru-baru ini juga MENGESAHKAN APCO sebagai syarikat yang diambil UMNO untuk menjadi penasihat mereka:

In 2009, the Government of Malaysia retained Apco, an international strategic communications company with 29 offices throughout the world, to assist in evaluating its capabilities to communicate through new media. Apco was also asked to assist the Malaysian government by sharing recent developments in strategic communication undertaken by governments in Europe, North America and Africa.

Apco’s work has included communication support for a broad range of reform initiatives undertaken by the government of Malaysia, especially in the areas of creating jobs, promoting education, and strengthening delivery of services to the people. Apco is honoured to be provided the opportunity to assist the government in this important work.

Dan kenyataan APCO juga tidak menafikan hubungan mereka dengan Ehud Barak yang telah melancarkan kempen “OneIsrael” seperti yang boleh dibaca di bawah artikel ini.

Kesimpulannya:

1.0 - UMNO adalah hipokrit kerana mengutuk orang menjadi agen Yahudi tapi dia sendiri mengambil syarikat Yahudi sebagai konsultan.
2.0 - Sikap menipu UMNO ini menjijikan serta amat memualkan.
3.0 - Sikap hipokrit ini diajar oleh Dr Mahathir bin Muhammad Iskandar Kutty sebab Dr Mahathir dahulu mengambil sebuah syarikat Yahudi seperti APCO bernama ”Saatchi and Saatchi” sebagai konsultan mereka.
4.0 - Kerjasama UMNO dengan Yahudi sebenarnya telah lama dan bersarang serta berakar umbi. Tak hairanlah waktu Natrah dimurtadkan, UMNO cuma duduk dan lihat sahaja.
5.0 - Agen Yahudi di Malaysia yang sebenar adalah UMNO dan bukannya parti-parti lain.
6.0 - Duit rakyat dibayar untuk menguntungkan syarikat Yahudi bernama APCO dan Saatchi and Saatchi oleh UMNO.

Sekian

Tulang Besi

Barak’s ‘One Israel’
By Tzvi Fleischer

Israeli Opposition Leader Ehud Barak has had a good couple of weeks. First, on March 4, he managed to put together the "One Israel" bloc, the linchpin of his plans to re-position his Labor party to gain more swing votes and deliver him government in the Israeli elections scheduled for May 17. Then, the results of an inquiry by the Israeli State Comptroller, released on March 15, cleared Barak of any improper conduct during the 1992 Tzeelim training accident, hopefully clearing him of allegations which have dogged his political career since he retired as IDF Chief of Staff to eventually become Foreign Minister under Shimon Peres in 1996. And finally, opinion polls have taken a turn for the better for Barak, moving him from a position where he was at best neck and neck with Prime Minister Netanyahu to a position where he seems to have opened up a lead over Netanyahu of at least five percentage points (although Israeli opinion polling is notoriously inaccurate).

Israeli political analysts have begun to rethink their political wisdom. A few weeks ago, the majority view was that, barring a major scandal or political shake-up, Netanyahu was more likely than not to retain government. Today, the majority view is that election results are at this point too close to call. However, so far Barak is doing everything right.

One Israel is a new electoral coalition of Labor, the Gesher party associated with former Likud Foreign Minister David Levy, and Meimad, a party that marries a religiously observant supporter base and dovish views on the peace process. Under agreements signed between the three, the combined One Israel list will see the Labor party list of candidates, established in party primaries last month, modified to include a number of candidates from the two other parties. Gesher is to get three safe positions for its candidates, including the Number 3 spot (behind Barak and former party leader Shimon Peres) for Levy, and a promise that Levy can have a senior ministerial position in any Barak government. Meimad receives one safe slot, one doubtful slot, and a promise that a Meimad leader who is not a Knesset member will be a cabinet minister. (Changes to Israeli electoral laws in 1992 make it permissible for up to half the Cabinet to non-elected.)

The One Israel concept has been pursued by Barak since last year as a way to make his candidacy more acceptable to the large number of Israelis who would never vote for Labor. For many Israelis, Labor has been seen as elitist, leftist, snobbish and dominated by European secular Jews (Ashkenazi) to the exclusion of both the large number of Israelis who hail from the Middle East and North Africa (Sephardi) and the religiously observant. One Israel has been Barak’s attempt to cure that stigma. It is an idea that is modelled on several forebears; one is Tony Blair’s transformation of the British Labour Party into "New Labour," another is the "One Jerusalem" coalition developed by the long-serving Labor-aligned Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kolleck, which kept him in power for more than 20 years despite the unpopularity of the Labor party in the city generally.

The specific parties that One Israel brings into the Labor fold theoretically represent precisely those political sectors which have been most suspicious of Labor, and which Labor most needs to reach out to if it is to have any chance of securing government.

Levy and his Gesher movement offer Labor the opportunity to obtain greater support among Jews hailing from the Middle East and North Africa. Sephardim are generally poorer on average than Ashkenazim, often live in outlying areas with high unemployment, and generally resent what they see as the condescending attitude of the Ashkenazim who largely dominate the country’s elites. They also frequently blame Labor, in power from 1948 to 1977, for the poor economic conditions and social discrimination they experienced during the early years of the state.

Levy is of Moroccan origin, and himself the product of one of the poorer Sephardi neighbourhoods. He was originally a protege of Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but after Begin’s departure from the political scene, came into conflict with his successors, Shamir and Netanyahu, over social welfare for his constituents and his own ambitions within the Likud party. This eventually led to the formation of his Gesher party, first as a faction within the Likud and later as an independent party. Conflicts over Netanyahu’s failure to implement promised social spending led Levy to leave the governing coalition last year. Barak has been reaching out to Sephardi voters since his selection as Labor leader, for instance, by offering a public apology for Labor’s past policies, and clearly hopes that the addition of Levy and Gesher can win him some votes in the Sephardi sector.

One Israel faces significant competition for Sephardi votes from the Centre Party leader Yitzhak Mordechai, a Kurdish Sephardi, and the religious Shas party, which is able to garner almost all the religious Sephardi vote.

Meimad, it is also hoped, can attract some religious voters to Labor. Religious voters, who are about 20% of the Israeli population, are even less likely to vote for Labor than Sephardi voters. In many religious neighbourhoods in 1996, votes were 98% for Netanyahu, and only 2% for Labor leader Peres.

For its future political survival Labor must increase its vote among religious and Sephardi Israelis because demographics are against the Labor party. Political analysts say that changes in Israeli population demographics have made the right-left divide in the Israel population approximately 55%-45% since the late 1970s. And since this period, the Likud has come out ahead in most of the elections. Furthermore, the faster population growth in the religious and Sephardi communities, as well as the influx of immigrants from the Soviet Union, is making matters worse for Labor as time passes. Unless Labor can re-position itself to capture larger segments of these three communities, it may gradually drift into perpetual opposition and political irrelevance.

This is one reason that, unusually for Israel and despite being Israel’s most decorated General, Barak has chosen to focus on social issues as the centrepiece of his campaign. While Netanyahu hammers his ability to protect Israel’s security in radio and television interviews, Barak has used many election appearances as opportunities to tell stories about elderly women unable to get hospital treatment, and about the effects of unemployment on families, and to promise remedies. His hope is to gain a "hip-pocket vote" from some segments of the Sephardi community, and as part of this process he needs to overcome the stigma against voting Labor to do it.

Levy, in part, gives Barak this opportunity and he was quick to exploit it. Within days of the signing of the One Israel agreement, Levy and Barak were out campaigning together in several poor towns with a heavily Sephardi population, normally Likud heartland.

However, there are some positive signs. Barak’s success in getting his One Israel project off the ground seems to be reflected in improved poll numbers. Polls in late February had placed Barak barely neck and neck in a one-on-one contest with Netanyahu. A poll on March 13 showed Barak ahead on two party preferred by 5%. And Barak also continues to increase his lead over the third major candidate, former Defence Minister Yitzhak Mordechai of the new Centre Party.

On top of the One Israel success and the positive polls, Barak seemed particularly pleased with the results of report by Israel’s State Comptroller, an independent auditing and investigation body, into the 1992 Tzeelim II training accident. Barak was accused by some of the families of the 5 soldiers killed at Tzeelim of having fled the scene in his helicopter without seeing to wounded soldiers or taking one severely wound man, who later died, with him, and in newspapers reports of possibly having orchestrated an army cover-up of the circumstances behind the incident. When the report was released on March 15, Barak told the media "The blood libel to which I fell victim for several years, as a man and as chief of staff, comes to an end today." The report exonerates him of both charges: it found that he did not leave until after all the wounded had been evacuated, and that there had been no cover-up.

Still, despite the gains of the past two weeks, there are almost two months until polling day, and likely, a further run-off poll to decide the Prime Ministership will be required two weeks after that. Despite his current poll lead, Israeli political experts do not rate Barak’s chances as more than even because there is still a large undecided segment, and the majority of undecided voters are aligned with the Israeli right and most likely to vote as they have in previous elections. Both these facts indicate that most of these votes will go to Netanyahu.

It is also the case that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been a much better media performer than Barak. It remains unclear whether Barak can overcome this clear disadvantage in the long run, especially as the fight for undecided voters heats up.

Furthermore, other parties have been moving to form alliances to counter Barak’s One Israel. The small right-wing Herut party of Benny Begin, the son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, has set up a joint electoral list with two other small right-wing parties, Moledet and Tkuma. Likud is talking to the right-wing Tsomet party, led by another former IDF Chief-of-Staff Raful Eitan, which is also likely to include some defectors from Gesher who did not follow Levy into the One Israel combination.

Barak has had a couple of good weeks, and the truth is, he badly needed them. Whether he can sustain his current momentum into an election victory on May 17 is still very much an open question.