Danon's golden opportunity

A week after learning that he had been selected to serve as Israel's next U.N. ambassador, it seems Science, Technology and Space Minister Danny Danon is ready to take on his new role. After all, having survived the Israeli Left's pummeling over his nomination, how hard can tackling the U.N. General Assembly be?

The criticism by Zionist Union heads Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni and Meretz leader Zehava Galon is understandable. Their idea of Israel's diplomatic path, and any achievement it may yield in the international theater, includes first and foremost Israeli concessions in favor of a robust peace process. Danon has a different agenda.

After 60 years, it should be clear to all that the U.N. is hostile to Israel, regardless whether the government is led by the Right or the Left. One must remember that the various envoys in the U.N. did not exactly rush to embrace Professor Gabriela Shalev when she became ambassador in 2008, despite her stated support for the two-state solution, so apparently it makes no difference whether the Israeli ambassador is a member of Likud or of Meretz.

Israel's troubles in the U.N. did not begin in 1967 and they will most likely not end in 2015. There is no need to even go as far back as 1975, when U.N. Resolution 3379 -- adopted at a time when a leftist government ruled Israel -- declared Zionism "a form of racism and racial discrimination," and then-U.N. Ambassador Chaim Herzog took the document on which it was printed and tore it to pieces right before the other envoys' eyes.

Just look at the last leg of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government in early 2009. Olmert was willing to negotiate peace on every possible front -- Syria, Lebanon, and Judea and Samaria -- and the U.N. still slapped Israel with the Goldstone report over Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, a report that would later prove to be one of the most putrid fruits ever grown by the U.N., and not just on the Israeli level.

An incumbent minister, and a rather popular one at that, who decides to resign his Knesset seat, pack his bags, and travel across the ocean, effectively curtailing his own ability to be an active participant in local discourse, all so he can one day return to the Likud and the government, does so with one successful model in mind -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Other Israeli ambassadors have made a successful round trip, of course -- Abba Eban became the foreign minister and Chaim Herzog eventually became Israel's sixth president -- but none noted Netanyahu's meteoric rise from a somewhat anonymous diplomat to candidate for the premiership shortly after his U.N. stint came to its end.

One could say the U.N. ambassadorship made Netanyahu's career, something Danon surely hopes will happen in his case. The key, however, is not making the concessions his critics demand. On the contrary, Danon must demonstrate unwavering determination, as politically it may prove to be his only saving grace.

Most Israelis are not fans of the U.N., so they are unlikely to shed any tears if Israel stands its ground against its ill-wishers in one of the most hypocritical, morally corrupt organizations formed by the international community following World War II.

"This is a house of lies," Netanyahu bluntly leveled at the General Assembly in 2011, quoting a warning given to him by the Lubavitcher rebbe 26 years ago, when Netanyahu assumed the ambassadorship. The heads of state attending that annual assembly remains seated in their chairs, admonished, while back home, Israelis applauded their TV sets.

Absurdly, the only success an ambitious politician assigned to the U.N. can hope for is failure. The more they hate Danon at the U.N., the more Israelis at home will love him. Only those willing to swim against the current as fast and as hard as they can will have the opportunity to stage a political comeback. Those who get swept up in the diplomatic vortex will most likely need to pursue a career change once their term ends.

Reality is lopsided in Israel as well, where the fate of Islamic Jihad member Mohammad Allan, who has staged a hunger strike to protest his administrative dentition, has practically made the Left and the Right switch ethical sides: The Left, which opposes force-feeding hunger strikers, has effectively endorsed a move that would bring about Allan's demise, while the Right, which supports force-feeding, is fighting to save Allan's life.

Anti-force feeding medical ethics, as presented by the Israeli Medical Association, are incompatible with reality. True, every patient has the right to refuse treatment, but a detainee or a prisoner is not the average patient -- he is a ward of the state. The IMA may not recognize the difference, but reality does.

By definition, a detainee is an individual deprived of his freedoms, including freedom of movement, freedom of choice, and freedom of speech. He must abide by the rules of the detention facility in which he is held, and he is not free to converse with anyone he wishes. Why is removing these rights from a detainee different from removing the right to refuse medical treatment, even in the form of force-feeding? Only the IMA knows.

The natural gas labyrinth

Finance Minister and Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon's decision to allow Kulanu MKs a free vote on the proposed framework regulating the natural gas industry instead of imposing faction discipline is problematic, and Netanyahu has no real leverage he can use to make Kahlon revise his decision.

Regardless of the issue, a situation in which a faction affords its MKs a free vote after the government had already declared its position on a certain matter undermines the coalition. Government decisions mean very little if it cannot control the Knesset.

Antitrust Authority Commissioner David Gilo refused to sign off on the proposed framework and even resigned in protest, although he has yet to leave office; Economy and Trade Minister Aryeh Deri, who was supposed to sign a special directive circumventing the antitrust commissioner, got cold feet and asked the matter be decided by the government and the Knesset; and after it seemed a Knesset majority had been secured when Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman suggested he would support going above the commissioner's head, Kahlon has created a situation in which Netanyahu has to court anonymous Kulanu MKs to ensure their support for the framework.

The endless saga of the natural gas deal is becoming more complex, and the only leverage Netanyahu has on any MK who opposes it is appointing them Israeli ambassador to the offshore Leviathan gas rig.

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