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"It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world," adding his willingness, as Transportation Minister, to load up busses and take them there.
In January 2009, he compared Cast Lead to America's 1940s war in the Pacific, saying Gaza should be "treated like Chechnya," and Israel "must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II," suggesting ending it the same way with weapons of mass destruction.
He also believes pandering to international opinion is a mistake, showing weakness, not strength. He's so ultranationalist and hard-right, many call him fascist. Under investigation for alleged fraud, accepting a bribe, money laundering, embezzlement, and obstruction of justice, others say he's corrupt. In addition, on May 24, 2010, Israeli police recommended indicting him for Breach of Trust for receiving classified information about his criminal investigation.
Earlier, on September 24, 2001, in Jerusalem District Court, he admitted attacking a 12-year old boy in December 1999 in the Nokdim settlement who'd hit his son. Charged with assaulting and threatening him, he was convicted, but copped a plea to pay a fine and avoid harsher punishment.
Jamal Zahalka, an Arab MK Balad Party head, says Israel lurched to the right after Yitzhak Rabin's 1995 assassination. The 2000 Camp David failure, followed by the second Intifada, Hamas' January 2006 election, the Lebanon summer 2006 war, and Cast Lead solidified hardline views. "Lieberman didn't suddenly appear like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. He rode the wave and he's not alone."
Hassan Jabareen, founder and director of the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, agrees, saying:
"He didn't establish racism in Israel....This product wasn't shaped by him. He just got the fruits of the others," using them for his own advantage. Israel is in crisis, he believes, caused by a lurch to the right. "They try to suppress our identity. But the state won't be more Jewish if we stop commemorating the Nakba (or) stop criticizing Zionism. When segregation becomes ideology, (it) has only one place to be translated - (into) law. Here in Israel, segregation (has become) ideology. The Jews want to live alone without Arabs."
Lieberman is their most prominent spokesman. He's not a traditional "Greater Israel" right-winger. He's more pragmatic, opportunist, and secular, but unbending in his views like Netanyahu. As long as they're in power, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs face persecution of the worst kind short of total expulsion or outright extermination. But those possibilities can't be ruled out.
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