The Tzipi Hotovely Extravaganza

 

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely is, for all intents and purposes, and in reality, the Foreign Minister refusing the actual ministership as a matter of modesty so she would not be placed above the men in the Cabinet. This was done out of her religious convictions and out of respect of the advice she received from some rabbis she respects. This has not prevented her from standing tall and strongly stating truths as she sees things. This, as one might guess, has a distressing habit of ruffling feathers placing Prime Minister Netanyahu under pressure to dismiss her. That would be a mistake as she is going to be part of the future of the Likud Party if it is to remain as the leaders of the conservative center-right and any claim to leaders of the Zionists even if largely the secular Zionists. Prime Minister Netanyahu took the politically correct path surrendering to pressure from the leftist Jewish leadership of the United States and rebuked his fellow party member and actual acting Foreign Minister. This will not satisfy the leftist Jewish leadership of the United States as they are out for ultimate blood and they smell blood in the water. They want Tzipi Hotovely removed from any position of power in the cabinet and then will possibly pressure for more. What more, you ask? Well, Ms. Hotovely removed from the Knesset. That demand will be the test case as if they can get her removed from the Knesset, they will feel empowered to go for the entire ten yards, to us American slang.

 

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely

 

First, what was it that Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely actually said? We have included the entire interview below. It has the parts where she was attacked about not bending to the leftist Jewish pressure to impress American secular-leftist-faux-Judaism which is more interested in a woman’s right to abortive services and other unJewish stands which would not be acceptable to the majority of Israeli Jews who are growing more and more religious, the opposite direction from the American leftist Jews, yet believe that their Judaism must be imposed in Israel. They demanded their own sectarian place at the Walls of Jerusalem and were told that one already existed. They demanded that this was unacceptable as it was separate from the traditional Western Wall and demanded that they be granted a section of the main wall in order to practice their irreligious actions in plain view of religious Jews. Their demands were not for a space but for a stage in order to be able to insult religious Jews with what to those Jews would border on idolatry or a direct insult to religious Jews. Memo to those paying attention, the more sectarian area of the wall is most often empty and hardly used. If this was where it ended, that might be able to be worked out. They have taken names to disguise their ulterior motives by calling their reform and reconstructionist congregations by names including the word orthodox. They used New Orthodox, Open Orthodox or other “adjective” Orthodox and demanding that their conversions as well as Conservative and even Reform and Reconstructionist conversions, which are not accepted in Israel by the Rabbinical Organizations, be accepted. These are branches of Judaism which include same-sex marriages, inter-religious marriages and numerous other activities and practices completely unacceptable to the orthodox and Torah observant Jewish mainstream in Israel. Their demands are that Israel and her Jews must become leftists and all but join the Democrat or Green Parties in order to be acceptable to American Jews. Their belief is that without the United States and the American Jews, Israel would collapse. We will discuss that in a moment.

 

 
First thing we would like to place as Exhibit A is a survey review by the Pew Research Center. The Pew Report, published a few years ago, reported there were the truths that seventy percent of American Jews have no connection to Jewish identity. This includes their lack of any connection to Israel. Over seventy percent of American Jews voted for Obama and Clinton in the last three Presidential elections despite their animosity towards Israel and favorability towards Arab Palestinian claims over all of Israel. This indicates that Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely was not particularly telling any untruths. But the leftist Jews see a crack of light in the wall and a hint of light. Their first wedge was to get Tzipi Hotovely rebuked by Prime Minister Netanyahu and receive the demanded apology from Ms. Hotovely. These they won easily and now for the next level. They passed level one receiving everything they demanded, but now they are going for round two. Round two is getting Tzipi Hotovely fired from her position as Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister. Should they manage to have this granted, then they will enter the bonus round which will be their attempt to have Tzipi Hotovely removed from the Likud Knesset membership and preferably replaced with somebody only if they are approved by the American Jewish leadership. Then they get to go for level three where they can win one of either two ways. The first would be for Prime Minister Netanyahu to step aside and be replaced by somebody from Likud more acceptable to the American Leftist Jews. Failing this, their secondary target would be to cause the government to fold and a call for new elections. Then Israel can expect a slew of political advisors and campaign experts to swamp Israel to assist the left most Israeli parties into power and forming the next government. That will prove difficult, as Israel has been moving inexorably rightward. The only means they might find which would work is to run such a negative campaign as to poison the political waters suppressing voter turnout. Their ultimate prize is the end of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the rise of a left wing government led by Meretz or the Labor Party.

 

The one myth which appears to exist on both sides of the world is that Israel is dependent on American money and that the American Jews are the larger Jewish community. The current Jewish populations, using Core Jewish Populations, are approximated to be the United States 5,300,000 and Israel 6,399,000. But that is the least of the changes. Below we have two very telling graphs. The top shows United States aid dollars measured in billions of dollars. The interesting revelation here is that until 1970 the United States gave Israel virtually no aid despite the common rumor that the United States has been Israel’s main and most dependable aid since her founding. Not exactly a valid statement, as military aid was illegal for much of Israeli existence from 1948 through the Six Day War. The truth be known, the United States took an interest in Israel after the Israelis won the Six Day War despite facing massive Arab military advantages in manpower, tanks, planes and every imaginable category. When Israel prevailed against the odds, then Lyndon Baines Johnson sat up and took notice and Richard Nixon increased aid, particularly military aid, considerably during his years in the White House. Looking at the aid from the United States, one can state that Israel received a steady average of 3.0 billion dollars which we will use as the benchmark level of aid. In 1960, the Israeli GDP was almost 2.6 billion dollars and by 1970, the GDP has gained reaching just over 6.25 billion dollars. Using our benchmark 3.0 billion dollars of aid then the United States aid was almost fifty percent of Israeli GDP. That is significant and the kind of aid that a nation could not survive as well without. Part of this aid was to compensate Israel for their not producing their own developed military aircraft and instead being dependent upon United States military aircraft. This had negatively affected Israeli nascent aircraft industries who were ready to move into production on the Lavi fighter (pictured below). Israeli GDP had increased by 1980 reaching almost 22 billion dollars reducing the United States aid package to less than fourteen percent, a drastic decrease from ten years before. Moving to 1990, Israeli GDP had become just short of 52.5 billion dollars thus reducing United States aid to around five and three-quarters percent. In 2000, the Israeli DGP reached just over 132 billion dollars making the three billion United States aid sinking to a mere two and three-elevenths percent. Moving along to 2010 the Israeli GDP rose to slightly over 233.75 billion dollars leaving the United States aid to fall to under one and one-third percent. The last year for which we have data is 2016 where Israeli GDP reached just short of 318.75 billion dollars reducing United States three billion dollars of aid to under one percent. In just forty-five years, the aid given Israel by the United States has shrunk from slightly below fifty percent to measurably below one percent. So, obviously Israel should no longer be dependent upon aid moneys from the United States.

 

United States Israel Aid (Military)

 

 

Lavi the Lost Dream

 

So, what does keep the Israelis dependent upon United States aid? That is simply, military aircraft. Israel gets the F-35’s plus has a large number of F-16’s and F-15’s left from the deal made to become dependent upon guaranteed air-superiority provided by the United States in exchange for Israel dropping plans to manufacture their own military aircraft which would have added more competition to the American aircraft being sold to the world. The United States manufacturers of the F-15 and F-16 and others planning on providing the next generation fighters were concerned with the Lavi, which Israel had just completed air trials and was going to put them into production. The United States stepped in and offered the Israelis a deal they could not refuse, F-16’s in numbers to replace the Lavi at a lower price and the F-15’s almost for free. Israel has since purchased additional fleets of these aircraft to reduce her dependence on the F-4 Phantoms and French Mirage Interceptors and other older aircraft. This has placed Israel dependent upon the United States for updates, upgrades, software patches and spare parts. Further, no longer manufacturing aircraft domestically, Israel has also become dependent upon American helicopters, largely the AH-64 Apache, CH-53 Stallion, UH-60 Black Hawk, SH-60 Seahawk and the Eurocopter AS565 Panther. Should Israel decide that she needs for her own security and to remove dependence from a vital military set of components, namely aircraft, both fixed wing and rotary wing, could they afford to go without the United States aid package and military aircraft? This is a question which plagues every sector of Israeli society’s political debates.

 

Most Israelis have so long believed they were dependent on the United States military and financial aid that to try to go without these seemingly vital areas of aid is unthinkable. These Israelis still believe that United States aid is a sizeable part of the total of Israeli GDP. As we have depicted, this line of thinking was true into the 1980’s but since 2000 has not been the necessary measure it once was. Others have realized that Israel is no longer an economically weaker nation and has moved from her early times to become an economic force. Still, they recognize that Israel would be required to build almost from the ground up any aircraft-manufacturing sector in order to break from the United States military aircraft dependence. Israel also knows that her relations with other nations are often fluid and can be uncertain in these wildly fluctuating political environment. Even should Israel have contracted delivery or service, these agreements can be cancelled and forced to not be honored by political advocacy against Israel from leftists and other anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and other anti-Semitic forces and groups. Recently, a contract with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems worth five-hundred-million-dollars was cancelled by India after all negotiations and contracts were completed as it was on the way to be signed proving the volatility of such items when it comes to Israel. Whatever the official face-saving motives which are made public, such decisions are more often far different in reality from what is stated. Israel should contract with their aerospace industries for developing what they foresee as the next generation, sixth generation, aircraft and developments in rotary wing aircraft. Such would potentially increase Israeli GDP and advance industrial production and practices plus produce some thousands of jobs not just in the production of the aircraft themselves, but also in numerous supporting industries.

 

The relations between Israel and the United States faced some heavy strain over the last decade with the push by President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the massive pressing for Israel to surrender the Gaza Strip which became a terrorist haven run by Hamas. Then there were deep rifts between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama largely over the Iran deal and other Middle East policy decisions which the former felt placed Israel in jeopardy. This should have served to push Israel to lessen the Israeli future dependence upon the United States for aid monies and military hardware of any variety as the only prudent measures going forward would be for Israel to become completely self-dependent. Israel can no longer be dependent on any one nation for any form of aid or support as any change of which party is in power or even which person is in power, whether elected or using other means for attaining power, can result in leaving Israel vulnerable to a complete change in relations. Israel can go from good friend to mortal enemy overnight as happened with South Africa for one example. This recent dust-up with American liberal Jewish establishment over a perfectly valid observation is another example of being too reliant on the United States. Because both Israelis and American Jews believe that Israel would crumble like a stale cookie without the United States that Israeli politicians are expected to walk on eggshells when speaking about the United States. Yes, Israeli Jews love our cousins in the United States and would love to have them return home. Unfortunately, that is a foreign idea for Jews in the United States, as they believe that the United States should be the homeland for the Jews. They are assimilating into the American scene very similar to how they had in Persia as a Jewess even was chosen by the King to wed and become the Queen of Persia, which was very fortunate when Haman came to have all the Jews in Persia murdered. They are becoming as assimilated as they were in Spain right before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella decided that Spain should be strictly Catholic and began the Inquisition. They are becoming as assimilated as they were in Germany as the 1920’s came to a close. What is strange is how whenever the Jews assimilate beyond a certain point is precisely when we get reminded exactly who we are, and it is always in a rather testy manner. There have been numerous politicians from the United States who have said very critical and often libelously false accusations and commentary about Israel and there is never a demand that the President fires them or even contradicts them, let alone censors them. We remember when we announced to our Synagogue that we were making Aliyah and moving to Israel. The majority of our Synagogue was made of your average liberal and leftist Jews with maybe between a half dozen to a dozen conservative Jews, almost all, other than us, clandestinely, as their request for anonymity, asking not to be outed as a conservative and have their political leanings revealed. Other than these conservatives, all of whom were very happy for us and some were even envious and told us of their plans for making Aliyah themselves some day, the liberal almost universally Democrat Party members were split at best with 5% supporting our move, 75% unimpressed and asking why in the world would we even consider moving to Israel with the remainder accusing us of being disloyal and hating the United States and being very accusatorial as if we had committed some form of traitorous act against their beloved homeland. The vast majority of the Jews in a very conservative region of the nation, middle of Trump country one might claim, saw Israel as a horrible and terrible place and definitely not a place that any sane American Jew could ever desire to move without some overriding threat on their heads. We probably should be happy that none that we know of called the authorities to turn us in for whatever crime we had to have committed in their minds to have us consider moving to Israel. Until Israelis realize that the friends they have in the United States consists of maybe twenty percent of American Jews (we are being very generous) and the reason the Congress and Presidents campaign on a pro-Israel platform, in as much as they have, it is because Israel has the support of the majority of Evangelical Christians, and that is a very influential and large voting block, just ask President Trump who was elected on their tepid like of his positions and their abject loathing of Hillary Clinton. Until Israel completely weans from dependence, then Israeli politicians will need to placate American groups who can make things difficult, and that includes groups which would sell Israel down the river in a second for universal healthcare.

 

Beyond the Cusp