“I’m telling you, and you can quote me on this, and here everything is being recorded,” MK Avigdor Lieberman told the host of an interview show called Shabbat Tarbut (Shabbat Culture) in Be’er Sheva on April 16, 2016, “If I’m the defense minister, I give Mr. Haniyeh (Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh, a senior political leader of Hamas) 48 hours: either you return the [IDF soldiers’] bodies and the [two wayward Israeli] civilians [held by Hamas], or you’re dead.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you should order for yourself a plot in the nearest cemetery. That’s the only way,” Lieberman concluded his threat.
That was a little over a month ago, and, as these strange things tend to happen, Avigdor Lieberman is about to inherit the position of Israel’s defense minister, and the question is, should the Hamas leader be worried?
Dr. Yuval Dror, communications dean at the College of Management in Rishon LeZion, decided to keep the Yisrael Beiteinu leader honest, and set up a website titled: “Is Ismail Haniyeh Dead Yet?” with the video of that interview.
So far, the website says: No, in big, red letters. As Dror put it in his blog: “Because we’re only talking 48 hours, which is a real quickie, I bought the domain isismailhaniyehdeadyet.com where I’m following the fulfillment of the promise of the new defense minister of the State of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman. I’m convinced that within 48 hours I will be changing the word No to yes. Why? Because only the right can, that’s why.”
OK, on occasion leftwingers show a healthy sense of humor; also, if the outcome of this experience would be for certain politicians to keep their bragging and their promises to a minimum, then the entire experience will not have been a total waste of time.
Should we launch a website for every promise made by senior politicians? I’ll bet you someone is already cooking up a kickstarter for that one…