Israeli Dissent Somehow Feels Different

Israel and her government are no strangers to dissenters and opposing opinions being presented, even in the halls of power, as arguing is almost an innate part of being Jewish. This has even been true in previous times of imminent peril as there are always those who are ready to pounce without bothering to see what and where they will land and those who will refuse to answer even the shrillest call to arms, this is normal. Yet somehow the sides seem more antagonistic towards each other than just people debating the next move. Now, in some ways, it appears we have more to fear from each other than from the outside threats, and that is not normal. I realize Jews will tend to argue, after all just look at the commentaries on the Bible and you will see examples of such. But usually when facing existential threats Jews have tended to gather or at least a core group gathers to fight the imminent threats even if others continue blithely on or seemingly ignorant to the problems and catastrophes happening all around them. But I fear that Israel has fallen victim to a disease which for Israel could become a fatal illness.

In previous times of peril there would be debate, often very spirited debate, but when the time came near that a decision had become necessary, then an uneasy quiet would fall over the country as they awaited the decision from their elected government. This is not to say that individuals did not discuss among themselves, but those in the halls of power no longer fought their differences out in public and did so in the closed halls with earnest seriousness. Today Israel has those who demand to have all discussions out in the public where they know that some of the most vital pieces of information are forbidden from discussion and often even kept from common knowledge as they are vital secrets which cannot be loosed in public. This gives one side an obvious advantage as often the most crucial points on which dire measures may be required often come from knowledge of just such information. But things have changed and now those who favor inaction even when facing the most dire of possibilities are pressing their advantage in ways previously unthinkable. This has been troubling me and I believe I can pinpoint the exact actions which initiated this anything goes as long as my side wins attitude that those believing Israel must always compromise and that she may not defend herself if it means resorting to violent means.

This event to which I have traced the origins of this dilemma dates back to the times during the administration of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The crucial event was the Oslo Accords. Ever since the signing of the Oslo Accords there has existed a growing group within Israel who favor negotiations no matter the threat, no matter the situation, no matter even the whole world catching fire. One of the leading proponents of this doctrine is none other than the man most responsible for the accursed Oslo Accords, Israeli President Shimon Peres. Making matters worse, as President, Mr. Peres is supposed to hold an entirely ceremonial position yet President Peres has often acted as if he were the Prime Minister speaking for the Israeli government and countering the position of the actual Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, when talking with foreign leaders such as the President of the United States Barack Obama. The members of this group, though not officially an actual political party, act as if they were members of an elite progressive political party with the total support of a vast majority. What makes those within this group most dangerous is that they do not care what acts they must commit to accomplish their goals, all is fair in support of their positions. They have an almost Messianic bend to their actions and are not limited to Israel. These are the people behind J-Street, an American NGO which supports almost every Palestinian position yet claim to be a pro-Israel peace camp support group. Within Europe there exists another group with very similar convictions called J-Call.

These groups are also intertwined with other extremist progressive groups such as the Occupy Wall Street Movement, now simply the Occupy Movement as they are attempting to become universal in their mission, ISM, which has also renamed themselves the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and numerous far left progressives who support to some extent the end of nations in favor of a world body which will be selected by those who have the proper qualifications for such a weighty task. Surprisingly, or not, those people are the same leaders of these groups, who would of thought that? Returning to the effect of such groups upon Israel, they are aghast at the idea that Israel be identified as the Jewish State as the one thing these people find more offensive than nationalism is G-d and religions in general. Their religion is the State and the State must be universal in its power, control and scope. This makes any idea of defending Israel a double dilemma; it is both pro nationhood and pro religion, what could be worse than that? The danger these people pose is due to their belief their cause is inevitable and as such they will be those who decide who committed any crimes on their way to power and as such they will be able to forgive their any transgressions. This allows then, in the name of inevitable progress, they are progressives after all, to do, say, destroy, attack, defame, and eventually break those few necessary eggs on their way to making their omelet. This is rapidly becoming obvious to many Israelis and their supporters worldwide and such awareness cannot come a moment too soon. These same people who oppose any Israeli actions addressing the Iranian nuclear problem are the same as those who support any and all actions against the Israelis who live beyond the Green Line. These are the people of BT’selem and other groups who are their comrades in protest who have supported false claims against Israeli settlers bringing charges of assault, land theft or other crimes while seeking out Palestinians who they assist in making claims against the Jewish settlers. They have been known to facilitate rock throwing episodes in order to film any reaction and then edit the tapes and releasing the edited version on U-Tube claiming it proves that the Jewish settlers attack the Palestinians without cause or reason. This is known as there have now been a number of these incidents where the entire event was filmed showing the entire set-up and the provocations being directed by the members of these groups. They, along with the no war for any reason and other groups use the emotions of many who are honest pacifists but are exploited for the ends of these progressive groups.

We have seen these tactics implemented whenever the government is conservative, nationalist, or even not progressive enough for these extremists’ fancy. Unfortunately for Israel and the majority of the people, these groups all seem to reach an accord and meeting of the minds when it comes to Israel, especially now with the government headed by Benyamin Netanyahu with a religious and nationalist coalition. The truth of the situation is this government has one of the largest coalitions in recent memory, even without Kadima, and this is something that drives these progressives totally off the deep end. It would not surprise me that should Bibi Netanyahu be overheard commenting one morning that the sky was a nice deep blue today that by noon there would be a thousand people demonstrating against calling the sky blue as that is one of the national colors on the Israeli Flag and thus that was an attempt by the Netanyahu government to claim Israel owns the sky. This is now an integral part of the coalition of those opposing Israel, or in some cases any country, taking action to prevent Iran from completing their efforts to attain nuclear weapons. These groups are so against the current situation where there are numerous nations not under one universalist governance that they would welcome complete and total anarchy or anything which might lead to a complete destruction of the present situation possibly leading to allow them to resculpt the world closer to their heart’s desires.  To the ardent progressives, anything is preferable to the world they currently inhabit and they are willing to put everyone through whatever Hell it might take to change the world. There is a particular subgroup who is dead set on beginning this transformation by destroying Israel by any means necessary, and they are loud and insatiable. Should these people ever get their wish I will be booking my reservations for the first manned launch to the outer regions of the galaxy.

Beyond the Cusp

President Obama not Necessarily as Vulnerable as Polls Claim

The current discussions as to which side is leading in the race for the Presidency between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama can be interpreted in either candidate’s favor. Republicans will quote those polls showing Mitt Romney with a narrow lead while the Democrats quote the polls where Barack Obama with a slight lead. But the poll reports are hiding the one count that really elects a President, the Electoral College votes. The Electoral College count is decisively in favor of Barack Obama by a count, if the polls in individual states are accurate, by 242 to150 in the most lopsided prediction we’ve seen to as close as 217 to 191 in one of the closer polls from among the 538 electoral votes with 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. That leaves Mitt Romney needing to win an additional 79 to 120 votes of the remaining 146 votes which are considered still in play in the twelve swing states while Barack Obama need only 28 to 53 additional votes. The two main swing states are Florida with 29 and Ohio with 18. This means that Mitt Romney would need to win at least one of these two critical states as these alone would very likely place President Obama safely back in the White House for a second term. These little inconvenient facts should have the GOP and Romney supporters scrambling to find some way of placing more states into the undecided column from the Obama column as well as concentrating on every one of the swing states as well as anywhere they have even the slightest possibility of catching and surpassing President Obama by November.

Most polls agree the swing states still in play are Wisconsin with 10, Colorado with 9, Virginia with 13, North Carolina with 15, New Hampshire with 4, Iowa with 6, Ohio with 18, Florida with 29, Nevada with 6, and possibly Pennsylvania with 20. These states have 130 Electoral Votes in total from which President Obama need take about one third of the votes while Mitt Romney will need closer to three fourths. This places Mitt Romney with the steeper hill to climb but should gas prices spike without any Middle East wars or revolutions breaking out or the job numbers continue to lack any improvement, that climb will become a much easier grade to climb but still require a fair effort. What helps Mitt Romney reach the necessary Electoral College majority has been hashed out endlessly over the Republican primaries as well as since whenever new poll numbers are released. Stressing the economy, jobs, sluggish housing market, and general feelings of what we referred to during the Carter Presidency as malaise are the Romney ticket to the White House. Did we mention jobs and the economy? Also, should inflation rear its ugly head, Romney will be able to pound that as well.

So, barring a rapid and decided economic recovery and stark drop in unemployment that is accompanied by a sharp rise in employment numbers, what else could President Obama have happen that would raise his chances of grabbing the necessary additional Electoral College votes? Listening to the news one would likely say that the above items are the only hope the President has for reelection, but that is not entirely accurate. There are other events and possibilities which easily could affect the November elections. Unless something unforeseen drastically changes things in either Iraq or Afghanistan, neither one should figure prominently in the election. In both cases President Obama can point to some success and having brought both conflicts to an end. Since neither Iraq or Afghanistan have been sterling successes, I doubt President Obama will even bother to mention either and as they have not proven yet to be unmitigated disasters, neither will Romney have any use for them as an issue. But there are some events out of the Middle East which could very seriously change the election results.

The first one would be should Iran test a nuclear weapon before the election, that might very well torpedo any hope President Obama has for a second term as he would appear to be totally incompetent for not having taken any precautions to prevent such despite repeatedly claiming that he would never allow Iran to acquire such abilities. An Iranian nuclear weapon would be a glaring and undeniable disaster showing President Obama as incapable in handling foreign and world affairs. If, on the other hand, Iran were to launch an attack on Israel or on our fleets in the Middle East and President Obama reacted swiftly and decisively, this might very well guarantee his reelection. Should he not react decisively, or in the case of an attack on Israel, not react at all, then his reelection hope would likely be sunk. The same would apply to any other county launching an unprovoked attack upon Israel; President Obama’s action or lack thereof would figure prominently in determining the November election results. If Egypt were to fall into complete chaos and have violence similar to the current events in Syria that too would reflect poorly on President Obama and could be used by Mitt Romney in his campaign to great advantage. Should Iran launch an attack on Saudi Arabia or any of the other members of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) that too would require determined reactions from President Obama with the results mirroring if the attack had been on Israel. As far as the Arab Spring turning out to be more of an Arab Winter, that will not likely do much damage to President Obama’s reelection hopes. Neither will the continuing violence that currently grips a band across Africa on both sides of the southern edges of the Sahara Desert and in the Horn of Africa as that area has not received much attention in the press and the terror and civil strikes and strife in that region has been slowly simmering but has yet to break into open warfare. This is an area that the next President may find the need to address as the intensity is closing in on a point where it will make news within the next two or three years should things continue to escalate.

What other foreign events might sneak their way into the mix before November? There is Europe which is teetering on the brink of insolvency. Should the European Union collapse or the Euro completely go bust and become near worthless against other world currencies, these might have some affect. Such events would heavily depend on two things, how much importance and coverage these events would receive by the mainstream media and exactly what the President and Congress chose to do about such actions. Should the European monetary problems be contained and the bailouts work as hoped or solely with the dismissal of Greece from membership in the European Union and from the Euro exchange, then Europe will likely be seen as a nonevent. Should France, Spain and Italy all go over the edge and have severe problems or if Germany decided to go it alone and refuse to assist her European neighbors, then President Obama would face a difficult situation. If, by some miracle, he could take effective steps and relieve the economic distress, though how I have no idea, then he would be lauded as a savior and easily win reelection. Anything short of this and the President would be open for serious criticism. Such a crisis in Europe would have no easy solution and be a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. In such a case of economic collapse in Europe, whatever President Obama chose, either intervention or avoidance, either could be used by Mitt Romney with a host of arguments on how the opposite would have been wiser and safer for the United States. Europe has the potential to be very destructive to President Obama’s reelection and the best he can hope for is that Europe continues to hold on financially until after the elections.

The last item which has but a remote chance of taking a toll and having meaning this fall would be the Occupy Movement. Should these protests return at some point this summer or even if they explode only at one or both party conventions, how such protests are handled could affect the election results. This would be especially true if the Occupy Movement were to continue to plague the campaigns of either or both candidates this fall. The likelihood that such protests could work in the favor of President Obama is unlikely unless they were to provide him with a stage to appear Presidential and if such demonstration also were kept from turning violent. If the Occupy Movement were to reassert itself and have violent demonstration throughout the major cities and disrupt daily life for the residents and shut down parts of major cities, then President Obama would face question from the Republicans and conservative groups as to why he had not reacted and put an end to the disruptions. If, on the other hand, the President did act against the Occupy Movement demonstrators, then he would run the risk of alienating a portion of his base which would pose a problem as getting the base out will likely be the determining factor this November.

Will any of these items or combination thereof actually make deciding who we should elect to run the free world before the election? Who knows? I do oft make predictions but on this one my bet is that both candidates will make statements despite their handlers best efforts which will be used by their opponents in the presumably unbiased media will ride for all it is worth and then some. It may come down to who makes the most gaffes in the final few weeks, day, hours or even election morning. Maybe one will be caught in such a tremendous misstatement that recovery will be near to impossible. And then again events might simply take control of the way the dominoes of fate are going to fall and make the choice seem like child’s play. Or, we may come upon election day and the candidates will still be close enough in the few critical last states that have yet to swing one way or the other that we will all need to make coffee and wait for the final results from west of the Mississippi River or even west of the Rocky Mountains before it is decided. I can predict that if by the time we hear the results from east of the Sierra Nevada and Olympic Mountains that if Romney has not received sufficient electoral votes for a victory, then President Obama will win reelection. I’m not really taking any chance when the only states I am predicting are Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska and Hawaii. We all can pretty much guarantee that Alaska will vote Romney and the rest will be for President Obama, so by then we can add the big three Electoral votes from Alaska to Mitt Romney’s column and the remaining seventy-eight Electoral votes from the rest to President Obama’s column. But then we just might have one or even as many as five or six states where the vote count is so close that we will have to wait through who knows how many recounts before it’s all said and done. We may all have gnawed our fingernails to the bone before this election is over or it may become a rout giving one of the two men a landslide victory, though that is not likely. There is one prediction I can make tonight, and that is that if “None of the Above” was one of the choices it might very well be the winning selection. What do you think?

Beyond the Cusp

A Truth Revealed on Tel Aviv Streets

Over this past weekend the leftist organizers, students, unionists, anarchists and their supporters held a demonstration protesting the Tel Aviv government refusal to issue them a license to establish a repeat of last year’s tent city anti-capitalism, pro-socialism protests. Adding fuel to their fiery disposition was the arrest of their outspoken leader Daphne Leef and the small group who attempted to erect tents in central Tel Aviv Friday afternoon. The protesters emotion escalated until fights broke out between the separate factions while anarchists and others set to throwing rocks and bricks through bank and store windows and attacking the police when they attempted to restore order using minimal force. Eventually everything escalated completely out of control and the result was the arrest of over eighty-five demonstrators Saturday night. None of this was the truth revealed on the streets of Tel Aviv. For that we need to look in a completely different direction.

The first item to be gleaned from the violent demonstrations Saturday night was the attitude of law enforcement personnel towards those who were destroying private property, resisting the police instructions which soon escalated to violent response to the police which is what eventually left the police little choice other than to arrest the most violent instigators. What was most revealing about the police and their initial attempts not to arrest or even overly restrict these demonstrators until well after their actions turned to violence and destruction was the stark difference between the attitude and civility shown these demonstrators, almost as if they were privileged people, with the outright contempt and disrespect shown by the violence used against both Haredi demonstrators at their similarly unsanctioned demonstrations and settlers during evictions and destructions of West Bank communities or illegal outposts. Such restraint and respect has not been the rule of law enforcement when dealing with Haredi demonstrators, nationalist and Zionist demonstrators, and settler families who have been treated with extreme prejudice and very rough treatment being awakened in the wee hours of the morning to be thrown into the cold darkness, children and all, and herded like animals while their homes are destroyed right before their eyes, often by hired Arabs from neighboring villages who take to their tasks with exuberance and glee and without any respect for property or the victims. In Amona the police utilized rubber bullets against the Jewish residents during their eviction and showed such vile disregard for their countrymen that eventually some of the officers were disciplined for using overly and unnecessary violence against the residents. In Tel Aviv on Saturday the police initially requested the cooperation of the demonstrators and only resorted to arresting people after the entire situation was pushed beyond any reasonable measure by the demonstrators who were set on provocation and destruction in order to force a situation. But even this contrast is not the really big truth revealed on the Tel Aviv streets.

The real truth came Sunday morning when the news shows and newspapers came out with their coverage of the disgraceful behavior by the leftist and anarchist demonstrators who provoked a confrontation despite all restraint and deference shown by the police. But this was not the story from the leftists who populate much of the media. Our trusted media in Israel told a different story when reporting on the poor, unfortunate young victims who were simply attempting to bring needed social ills and inequalities to the attention of those evil members of the government who refuse to implement honest and compassionate socialist governance. According to the reports on Sunday, these innocent and gallant defenders of the downtrodden had gathered peaceably in order to raise conscious awareness and focus the public attention on the inequalities in Israel. The police used unnecessary violence and a demeaning attitude showing complete contempt and disrespecting these paragons of virtue thus instigating the violent confrontations. Had the police not viciously attacked these innocents there would have been nothing but peace and virtue. It was despicable that these peaceful innocents were set upon as if they had resisted and acted just like those horrid settler types who have always forced police to utilize a heavy hand by their disrespect for law and order and these poor children did not deserve such disrespect and ill treatment. The entire violence was the result of the government’s evil ideology and the overreaction of the police who were not provoked in any manner. This complete whitewashing of this story by the media was the real truth revealed on the Tel Aviv streets. The reporting was so over-the-top slanted that if one did not have a reason to doubt the objectivity and honesty of the leftist press coverage in Israel before the reporting of this confrontation, they most certainly should have that evidence in spades. All one need do is to compare the coverage given by the apologist media with the video of the actual events and the police reports to understand how far the leftist media goes to purvey opinion as fact and sell a world view that is, honestly, inimical to the very existence of Israel itself. And if one still has doubts and is insistent on following the story woven by the mainstream media, then please go one small step further and take a quick trip to central Tel Aviv on Rothschild Street and witness the damage to the banks and businesses themselves and ask, where was this in the reporting about those poor innocent victims of an out of control state. Who are you going to believe, the sold-out press or your disbelieving eyes?

Beyond the Cusp