Too Many Leaves Have Fallen

 

In these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, Jews spend much of their free time, and some of the not so free time, reflecting on their actions and shortcomings of the last year and also their entire lives where less than golden practices became habit. In this time I have too often strayed beyond my shortcomings and looked beyond to the shortcomings of my people and the entirety of the human race. Slavery has to be a practice which was carried on far too long nearly into modern times and even now exists in some measure. We were slaves and know its hardships which we recount every year at our Seders. Passover is one of the singular observances where traditions are pretty much set in stone. The odd thing is there are different stones for Jews of different backgrounds. I should know as my father was as Ashkenazi as one can be and my mother was equally Sephardim. Perhaps this was why we only got a half serving of rice at Passover and never enough for a meal. The Seder service which is said in the home in privacy closes with an important and universal hope of all Jews, “Next year in Yerushalayim (Jerusalem). The Seder is far from the only set of prayers which end with this overriding and continual desire amongst all Jews no matter their individual customs, Jerusalem, as the Song of Babylon states, “If I forget thee may my right hand lose its cunning (strength) and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” That is the seriousness a Jew or any Israelite feels for their eternal Capital City and why the Arabs so demand they control the Old City, the part of which that pleading relates for they know that is the Jewish heart.

 

Remembering our past no matter where your ancestry originates there were pogroms, purifications, jihad, and just simple hatreds which drove our ancestors from their homes with what they could carry. All too often the older children had to carry the younger while father and mother carried what meager belongings they could, the Shabbat table cloth, candle holders, challah plate and cover were mother’s load in addition to what kitchen utensils she could manage while father carried his Tallits, Tefillin, Prayerbooks, Siddurim, Haggadah, necessities for his trade (which may include leading a cow or two or sewing machine, threads, cloth, butchery knives, or whatever and the Rabbi and sons carried the Torah, as many as possible and a few more as leaving even one behind was unthinkable), and whatever other items mother or children could not continue without (his was the burden of family). These fleeing Jews were often the fortunate ones as behind them were those Jews who joined the too lengthy list of fallen leaves. Every Pogrom, Purification, Jihad, forced conversions, Crusades, conquest for Allah, blame for every calamity, blame for disease in the community, and all too often just because we were Jews the leaves fell. People ask how humans could treat their neighbor so cruelly. Well, look to Europe or the past hundred years in the Arab and Muslim worlds or to Russia and remember Nazi Germany and the reasons abound.

 

One need understand the enormity of the history of the Israelite people. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob came from the time when agriculture and herding were just coming into their own and the city states were forming. At this point the first Jews were but a family and believe it or not we are largely still that very same family plus those we have married and the few converts over the ages, often these converts also married into the family and converted in order to do so. There are the claims that the Exodus from Egypt we brought numerous non-Jews with us and if one reads Torah they will see we know of this and these people were kept in a separate camp and were partially responsible for the sin of the golden calf. These others were sent on their separate way with many sailing to Greece with even some Jews who found our ways too difficult and desired a more earthy and pleasure seeking existence which was all the rage in those primitive times. Egypt saw us build a city to a Pharaoh who fashioned himself to be a god. The story of our exit from Egypt is chronicled in the best-selling book in history and one of, if not the, first books ever printed by the printing press. Our travels and travails of forty years in the desert are well chronicled and many youth learn of it early in their educations. The reason why is not so well noted. Put simply, we lacked faith in the promise from Hashem that the land would be granted us by His hand. Instead ten of twelve spies told of giants living in cities behind great and unbreakable walls. The illogic of giants needing walled cities never occurred to the Israelites who reacted to these recounting with great timidity and fear. The two who told of peoples in fear of the coming of the chosen of Hashem and a land flowing with goodness went unheeded as the Jewish people who had lived a life under slavery had not the bravery or independent spirit to conquer a land even with Hashem. For forty years we gave birth to a new people free of the yoke of slavery and filled with the miracles of Hashem such as the manna which fed them in the parched desert of the wastelands they traveled through.

 

Israelite Sin Worshiping of the Golden Calf

 

Jericho put to rest the fears of the former generation as its great walls were no match for the formulae given by Hashem which brought them down. The following victory of Ai and then of the combined armies of the Kings of Canaan proved Hashem truly would grant us the land. What is often passed over is that the Torah gives the Jews the exact method we are to pursue when coming into our promised land with any tribes of people who reside within and it is a very simple method for selecting how one treats those tribes. We are to make them a simple offer. They have three choices of varying ease for their people. The most easy is to remain within the lands on the lands they hold and simply obey the Seven Laws of Noah, the Noahic Code and we will both live and prosper in peace. They can leave the lands and we will not pursue them and wish them well. The least favorable choice is they can choose to war with us at which time we will endeavor to kill every last inhabitant and member of their tribe and burn their crops, slaughter and leave for the buzzards their cattle and remove any and all record that they ever existed from the story of mankind. That was then and we no longer live in those times. What is not well known is that some of the Canaanites chose the first two options and were granted what was promised.

 

History passed and we had an expository period under King David and King Solomon who conquered lands until they reached the Euphrates River, the farthest we have ever reached and we desire far less today, only what was promised which is well documented and for the sake of my regular readers we will not go over this again. You’re welcome. The life went well until we had strayed from Torah and had practiced even idolatry and thus lost the guardianship of Hashem so we fell before the Babylonian sword. This was not our best of times but this exile ended when the Persians conquered Babylon and knowing of Hashem from their recounting of history beseeched that we return and rebuild our Temple and worship Hashem as we desired and simply pay our tribute to the Persians and we would be left in peace. Rather nice of them had that continued forward but there came an overachiever named Haman the Agagite and descendant of Agag, the king of the Amalekites and our saving grace in the form of the Persian Queen Esther. We built the Second Temple and in human history soon thereafter came such luminaries as Confucius, Buddha, Tao, and others who all founded various ancient religions of which a few continue into the modern era. The namedropping was more as making note in history when much of what we call a more modern age came into being and where much of Eastern philosophy had its roots. Eventually we once again gained our freedom, but wait, there’s more.

 

Eventually there was the inevitable family squabble and the Tribes of Israel chose sides with the ten northern tribes taking the name Israel and the southern two tribes being called after the far larger tribe, Judah and the Priestly tribe remained spread amongst the people and largely in Jerusalem under Judah. After the ten northern tribes were carried away as slaves by the Assyrians there were just the priests in Jerusalem and the tribes of Benyamin (a smaller tribe) and Judah the lion, the defenders of the southern borders, remained where most belonged to the tribe of Judah so we became Judeans and eventually simply Jews. The Assyrian Greeks eventually defeated Judah as well and then the Polemic Greeks and one more the Assyrian Greeks followed by the Romans. The Romans got a little put out after the Jews, the name had cemented by them, did which no other people managed, threw off the Roman yoke twice. They dispersed the Jews to the far reaches of their kingdoms and everywhere inbetween such that we would never again challenge Roman rule. That worked rather well and as the Roman Empire slowly crumbled the Jews spread even further but we had a secret weapon through which we remained attached to Jerusalem and our lands always hoping for the Messiah to return us to Eretz Yisroel, and that weapon is Torah. Torah is our history, our rules for life, our traditions, and our defining center which keeps us in touch with Hashem and our covenant and the promises Hashem gave to us. The Torah has kept us a family despite great distances and the stories abound of Jews traveling to a strange place often not by their choosing and upon arrival finding family there, finding Jews who greeted them as only family greets one they have never even known existed. This too was one of the many strands of string that when twined together make the rope which will eventually be spun in Israel, in Jerusalem.

 

Now, as we gather slowly from the far corners of the globe from America to Europe to Japan and the Philippines and India or Ethiopia as well as South Africa, Australia, even the outback and places even stranger and more remote, the time has come to stop believing we are Jews as we no longer are. Jew was the name we were given in captivity by the Greeks and Romans who shortened Judean to Judian to Juw which became spelled Jew. The actual spellings and pronunciations are not important but what Jew came to mean to the gentiles is important. The Jew was the reason for famine, for plague, for war they were always siding with the enemy on both sides as both sides saw Jews fighting for their enemy but were blind to the Jews fighting with them in their armies. The Jew was accused of every ill and even potential harm and the fact that the Jews lived in their own small area, ghetto, and practiced a different religion, often the parent religion to the one the others practiced, they had to be the reason as they were the other wherever they found themselves. When the time came to clean the lands of the disbeliever, the Jew too was cast out or burned at the stake, hung, crucified or whatever punishment was dealt the disbeliever. Often they were simply driven from the land and forced to travel through place after place before finding one which allowed them to settle and reside for the time being. The Jew always kept a number of suitcases packed and one special suitcase in which all their religious items were kept. They would be removed when required to observe the Sabbat or to do morning prayers or observe a holiday and then carefully and respectfully repacked in case they had to leave with little notice. This suitcase was the first one grabbed by the mobs of the pogrom, Crusade or whatever reason was for killing the Jews as this suitcase must have precious jewels to be so carefully guarded. Imagine the look when all they found were some candlesticks, candles, a special tablecloth and few other religious items and books but no jewels or gold or silver other than the few religious items, often only the Shabbat candlesticks. The main thing is the Jew was a temporary guest to be bullied and thrown away when hatreds overwhelmed the people and a frenzied mob sought a target.

 

We are now coming home and we are not going to be bullied or thrown from our lands. We may not be granted easy access to all our lands, even our most precious Biblical Lands in Judea and Samaria. Jerusalem will hopefully not allow to be divided and we again forbidden from visiting our Temple Mount which we built during the times of the Second Temple before Christianity and long before Islam came into this world. Allowing the Synagogues we so meticulously restored or even rebuilt to once again be defiled and destroyed would be a sin of great magnitude. Where we need to try and be accommodating and live with our neighbors on this little sphere orbiting an insignificant star in a moderately large galaxy soon to be merged with an even larger galaxy, we also must remain true to ourselves, our history and, most of all, to Hashem which means that Jerusalem’s old city must remain with the Temple Mount as an intricate and vital part of Israel. The Islamics know the importance of these areas which is the sole reason they demand them to be separated from the Jews. This is the same story which was the reason there were so many wars between Christian and Muslim over Jerusalem and only Jerusalem as that was the reason behind the Crusades and the Islamic conquests, they both wanted to hold the City of the Jewish holiest of places as that is the home of Hashem which both claim to worship (the validity of such claims cannot be covered in brief even in this article). But Jerusalem must remain a part of what is Israel and that should not ever be placed in doubt and slowly the Israelis are realizing this fact.

 

As for the name Jew, that needs change. Those of us residing here in the Holy Lands of Israel are no longer merely Jews even if we are of the seed of Judah, we are Israelites once again. With the airlift of Ethiopians and the Bnei Menashe community from India home to Israel we are once again to be known as the tribes of Israel. There is a group in southwestern India who call themselves the Tribe of Ephraim who were found when a Chabad couple shared a Passover Seder with them. With these tribes of the ten lost tribes of Israel reappearing, the people of Israel are not all but universally of the tribe of Judah, we are once again in transition and should recognize such and refer to ourselves as what we are, Israelites, the Tribes of Israel reuniting in our ancient and holy homelands.

 

Some may ask what should become of the Arab Palestinians. Well, we can offer them three choices. They can live in their own area under their own leadership in a semiautonomous area within Israel where we promise them security and to live in peace and in return they obey the Noahic Code, or they can leave and settle elsewhere in the world and we will wish them safe travels and the best of luck and promise not to pursue them or do them harm as they leave, or they may choose to treat us with violence and hate and do injury to us as a form of war for which we will do as we can to destroy their existence and to erase the fact that they ever resided amongst us. That is what any other people would do and for those who doubt such we would like to point to items such as Northern Ireland and the British.

 

Continuing on, other examples abound such as the Spanish and the Tribes of the Basque and Spain and even France, the many different tribes which made up Yugoslavia until they each went their separate ways, the Czech Republic and Slovakia which separated from Czechoslovakia and the numerous nations which were formed by the victorious powers after World War I that make up much of the Arab Islamic world today and which are now breaking even further into tribal regions, and the conquered lands which now live under the fist of their conquerors such as Tibet or those threatened by nations claiming their right to regain control of these areas such as Taiwan and Mainland China (Red China if your old enough to remember that term) and also Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and the currently challenged Ukraine all of which are currently under direct or indirect challenge from Putin the Invader’s Russian bear. The changing tides of war and the formation and dissolution of nations has not ended as many wished to believe and world wars are no longer unimaginable. The claim that after the fall of the Soviet Union that history had ended and everything was now at peace and in equilibrium leading Francis Fukuyama to write a piece titled, “The End of History?” which has proven as much folly as the claim once made by the Commissioner of the United States Patent Office in 1899 who it is (attributed) claimed to have said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”

 

With all the turmoil in the world today, it is beyond reasonable but is yet true that the world considers what the Israelis do within the lands granted under international laws and treaties to them for their homeland dating from the early 1920’s and the numerous conferences, treaties and conventions which were signed by all the parties involved including the Arab League and King Farouk granting the lands west of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea to be the area for the land of Israel to be formed. We, the Israeli people ask for no more than that which all powers, even to include the Arabs and Japan, British, French, German, Ottoman, Russian, and eventually the United States, League of Nations and United Nations all recognized and gave their blessings and agreement and yet to this day this is contested. The facts are not contested, just the realization, and there appears to be an undercurrent which is driven by the concept that by ridding the world of Israel, and with it the Jewish people once and for all, will end their ever considering having a real home anywhere on Earth. This is considered a desirable and possible eventuality by the leaders of the Western World to appease and pacify the Arab World. There is one answer for such people, and it is what we promised, “Never Again!”

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

Where Again Are Six-Million Jews to Go?

 

The anti-Semites, anti-Zionists and anti-Israel forces are still at it claiming that the Jewish State must be dissolved and the Jews of Israel, well; they never really quite say what they are supposed to do. Often we hear that false adage that they can simply go back where they came from. That ignores the nearly four-million born right here in Israel as they came from here. Ah, right, they are supposed to return to where their parents or grandparent or back as far as necessary to find a forefather who came from elsewhere. For some that would be Babylonia, a place somewhat difficult to find in the modern world. How about the approaching half whose lineage came from the Arab world, they are supposed to return where again? Their former home nation if followed back is in the Middle East or North Africa, not exactly the garden spot for Jews these days. Even those who came here from Europe are not exactly going to be permitted back into those nations; they are too busy finding homes for displaced Syrian refugees. The ones who can from the former Soviet Union and others from Russia cannot return to a nation which does not even have sufficient economy to support its dwindling population. The United States made their position on where does one place six-million Jews whose lives would otherwise be forfeit quite clear with the SS St. Louis which they not only had forbidden landing in any American port even to take on fuel lest a single Jew escape over the side and instead sent the ship and its nine-hundred plus Jews back to Germany. Canada, same story. Then there was that other nation suggested by some Muslim spokesperson, Alaska, which apart from not being a nation would have the nativists in the United States claiming the native Inuit People were being displaced and we do not need to start all over with a real native population this time as the false claims of a Palestinian Peoples is bad enough. And what of the small but still related to tens of thousands of native Jews whose parents can trace their lineage back to the tribes arriving from out of Egypt, an Egypt which is nonexistent today? The problem is nowhere near as simple as they can go back where they came from. Nowhere from which they came from wants them either. So, once again, where do we place over six-million Jews?

 

We could go from nation to nation and give the logistics as to why an influx of six-million people, let alone six-million of the world’s most notoriously unwanted people, would be an imposition making such a transfer impossible. To be entirely honest, the transfer of the Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria would be less problematic as for them as refugees, if it were not for the desire to abuse them as a bludgeon to destroy Israel and murder her Jews, would be readily accepted throughout the Western World with open arms as are the Syrian refugees, or at least the Syrian refugees were being accepted until some legal difficulties arose. Now accepting even the Syrian refugees is proving to be quite difficult. The one continent which would not have a voice from its native population would be Antarctica as the penguins are a fairly affable lot. Still, does the world really want to risk turning Antarctica into the next Garden of Eden when the Jews turn it into a garden like environment? Oh, wait, the nativists’ ecological wing of the world would really be upset and would start screaming climate change. And the world’s oceans might be upset with all that melting ice but I presume the Jews might be persuaded to keep a frozen ring around their new Garden of Eden and store the water within just as long as they did not permit it to spill into the oceans. Face it, wherever the Jews would be placed would become the next garden spot on the planet and somebody would immediately claim it was their peoples’ native land and demand the Jews be sent elsewhere. That is what happened here in Israel.

 

Early American and European Zionists
Returned and Rebuilding the Holy Lands

 

Early Zionists Working the Land,
Digging Irrigation Channels, Removing Tree Stumps
and Other Structures Needed by the Community

 

Perhaps we should refresh everybody’s memories, and for some inform them for the first time. Before 1850 the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was where people were sent as a punishment all the way back to before the Roman Empire. When Pontius Pilate was sent to Judea, yes, Judea as it was not named Syria Palaestina a Roman province around 135 AD; he was sent off into oblivion hoped never to be heard from again as Judea was where the romans sent people as a punishment. The same with the Greeks and the sole people ever to want to come to this region were the Jews and whenever they did they were sent gleefully as those remaining behind snickered. The strange thing is the heat and lack of rain for much of the year and flooding the other three months and some fetid swamps and rocky terrain were viewed as a curse. Even the British sent their unkind here to perish in the heat and swamplands. Yet, as soon as the Jews have returned to these lands they would blossom and some empire would sweep in and conquer them, remove the Jews and then puzzle as to what it was they ever saw in this forbidding land. After a while when the Jews screaming and kicking up a fuss to return to their homeland became too much of a headache, the Jews (originally called Hebrews) were sent packing with the blessings of whichever empire wished to be rid of them. The Jews would return, refurbish and rebuild as the busy little beavers they appear to emulate and rebuild the land. The newest empire, not knowing the heartache that awaited them, would sweep in, remove the Jews and the land would spit them out and cry for the Jews to return. Yes, the land wanted the Jews and the Jews wanted the land and they too were always happy with one another. Read the Bible, the Old Testament.

 

This cycle is still true to this day. Ask yourselves exactly what do you think the Arabs, there are no real people called Palestinians and were none before 1964 when Yasser Arafat and the KGB invented them and before that was a phrase used to describe the Jews. What do you think the Arabs will do once they are given Israel? Yes, that’s right, kill the Jews and take the land for themselves. And exactly what do you expect to happen then? Right, the land will grow wild and inhospitable and the Arabs will flee back from whence they came and the land will be empty again just as Mark Twain, almost every British historian and so many others including the leader of the Muslims who ruled from Damascus found even Jerusalem to be inhospitable and gave up attempting to make it into a fun park for vacations and ran back to nice, civilized and temperate Damascus. When one compares Damascus favorably to a land, that land is not a nice place to live, but we Jews love it here and the land loves our being here, so why not save everybody a real load of difficulty and trouble, leave the Jews alone here for a change and allow everyone else to go on their merry way. Those Arabs who really want to remain here and live in peace with the Jews, wonderful, they can sign a loyalty oath and we will design some path to full citizenship and the rest can return where their ancestors came from as the vast majority arrived after 1900 anyways, and that is documentable by simply reading the British census information going back to just after World War I and the Ottoman census information for centuries before that. Can we try that for a change instead of allowing everything the Jews have built to go into ruin again and eventually sending the Jews back and the next “indigenous peoples” to claim it was all their land before the Jews came despite everyone knowing it was a lie but stealing Israel from the Jews only to have it turn to rubble within fifty to one-hundred years as this cycle will need to be broken eventually, why not now?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Might Naftali Bennett be Responsible for Unity Government?

 

First allow me to say that I respect and really like Naftali Bennett and even agree with him to a point about broadening the scope of the Religious-Zionist party making it a stronger party with a broader base but only as far as retaining its defined perspective and within the boundaries placed by the Rabbis who guide and define the Religious-Zionism. All that said, it might be that Naftali Bennett might be responsible for the danger that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu might turn to the Labor-Hatnua allied parties under the misnomer of Zionist Union, they should have been named as the Anti-Zionist Union, thus not having to provide influential and vital ministerial positions to the many obvious allies were the Prime Minister desiring to form a right-wing Zionist and conservative coalition. The past political performances over the years by Prime Minister Netanyahu should have given many people pause except it seems that nobody is permitted to speak of such things as they are considered political poison and an area none dare tread for fear of ostracization for going into these past tendencies. There was the reluctance when as Finance Minister in the government of Arik Sharon in the leading days before the Gaza Disengagement and many were calling for him to withdraw from the government and do whatever he could do to bring the government down through a vote of confidence by which to defeat the entire Gaza Disengagement and force new elections. He fought that call insisting that he had a larger voice by remaining in the government and at the last exit Netanyahu finally resigned from the government after Prime Minister Sharon had formed a new Party and coalition making the resignation by Netanyahu all but meaningless. When winning the elections in the 2012 elections the first party which Prime Minister Netanyahu sought to include was the Hatnua Party and rewarding Tzipi Livni with the Minister of Justice position, which is powerful enough in its own, and delegated her chief negotiator for the perpetually, never-ending peace process negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas and fiends. This appointment was incredulous and virtually unacceptable to any Zionist, let alone Religious-Zionists, but all this was taken in stride and Prime Minister Netanyahu was still rewarded with having a truly Zionist government with a coalition depending heavily on Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni, two politicians not exactly enamored Zionists when one remembers they both support the formation of a Arab Palestinian state and Ms. Livni would prove so desperate to make a deal, any deal, that she continued her negotiations even after being told to cease by Prime Minister Netanyahu though she received no sanction until Yair Lapid also took steps which forced the dissolution of the government and calling for new elections. Now we hear from Naftali Bennett himself that he is prepared to sit in the opposition should a unity government be formed by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

 

None of these events are within the ability of Naftali Bennett to change but there was a particular point where I continued to support Jewish Home and desired the best for Naftali Bennett but felt he had failed in serving in the best possible manner the Jewish Home Party and the Religious-Zionist camp of Israelis by removing from their range of choices the ability to have Naftali Bennett be the next Prime Minister and giving a true Religious-Zionist the ability to be forming the next government. This was the point when Naftali Bennett stated that he was not prepared to be made Prime Minister and was more suited at this time to be a supporting and strong force in a right wing Zionist government led by Prime Minister Netanyahu. First thing, it is the voting public which decides who is ready and best suited to form a government that best represents their needs and beliefs. By simply stating by Naftali Bennett that he was not prepared to take such a step and series of responsibilities and desired to solely support Prime Minister Netanyahu should he win and be selected to form the next government. While I respect his honesty, I am disappointed that he took his name from contention for the position of Prime Minister. This meant in the final days the position was still undecided and there was this surging of support assuring that there would be a Zionist and strong Prime Minister capable of holding their own against a hostile United States President all benefitting the sole logical choice. Without Naftali Bennett as an alternative, these people, the majority of which were Religious-Zionists, many very strongly so, had but one choice to support to prevent the leftist, post-Zionist, post-modernist, politically correct and passive, weak leaders offered by the Zionist Union cooperative alliance of Labor Party Yitzhak Hertzog and the Hatnua Party. That left them only Netanyahu, the same Netanyahu who had left them hanging as he wilted claiming there was no other choice as President Obama pressured him time and time again. So, what could have been an alternative situation?

 

I’m glad you asked. Let us go back to the evening before Naftali Bennett issued that fateful commentary where he described how he did not yet feel he had sufficient whatever to be the next Prime Minister of Israel and would merely desire to play a supportive roll behind Prime Minister Netanyahu should Netanyahu be tapped to form the next governing coalition. Well, color me enthused to support Jewish Home. This meant that coming down the home stretch the only person voters desiring a strongly Zionist governance were faced with the somewhat of a wet noodle who had frozen building unofficially in deference to President Obama, had repeatedly stated his support for the formation of an Arab state named Palestine cut out of the heartland, the ancient and holy heartland of Israel. This resulted in damaging the Jewish Home Party more than anything else, even the announcing the placement of a well-known soccer player who, as it turns out, might have been actively supported by the council of Rabbis who should have been given much earlier notice and perhaps they might have assisted in facilitating the placement thus having it not have created any controversy. That was more a problem of appearance and lack of sufficient planning before the announcement of his placing amongst the candidate lists. But the announcement that the leader of one of what is aspiring to become a major force and potentially head of a ruling coalition in the future stating he was not sufficiently seasoned and not yet ready to be Prime Minister basically took a lot of potential voters from supporting Jewish Home. Anybody wishing to vote for a strong right-wing government and not overly comfortable with Benyamin Netanyahu could not now support Jewish Home if Naftali Bennett was not making himself relevant to be Prime Minister and was only ready to play a supporting role behind Prime Minister Netanyahu, where could they turn? This may have sent those who are mainstream Jewish Home voters in any normal election cycle to either seek one of the other Religious-Zionist parties or vote for Likud and the selection of Benyamin Netanyahu as that was where Naftali Bennett was already promising to commit his Knesset seats to support. Why vote for Jewish Home who would only work to promote Netanyahu if they could simply vote for Netanyahu and cut out the middleman which is exactly what Bennett had relegated his position for. This was made even more dire when at the closing hours the cry went out for all Zionists and conservatives to rally around and make sure that the person selected to form the next government was not those who the efforts of President Obama and his meddling interference were pushing for victory, but was the only other choice, Netanyahu for Prime Minister. The choice should have been between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett.

 

Had the alternate choice of Naftali Bennett been available there could, dare I say would, have been those who came out later in the day answering the call and voted for Netanyahu when they would have preferred somebody other than Bibi as well but not the leftist Zionist Union as the selected party so they bit the bullet and voted Likud. Additionally, there were very likely a good number Jewish Home supporters who when answering the call to vote to assure that Israel would have a strong and Zionist government which fully represents the conservative, right-wing, Zionist governance, one that Netanyahu promised would stand and prevent the formation of an Arab state of Palestine despite any pressures from Europe, the United States, the United Nations or anywhere else, a promise made by Netanyahu personally, would have preferred to have voted for an alternative candidate but were left only with the choice of Netanyahu as Naftali Bennett has stated he will only support Netanyahu as he was unprepared to be Prime Minister. This brought forth the votes required to thrust the Likud to win in an unprecedented fashion claiming thirty mandates and it can be easily guessed that a percentage of these voters would have voted Jewish Home intending to place Naftali Bennett as the one tapped to form the coalition knowing that then Likud Ministers, including Benyamin Netanyahu, would be in a solidly Religious-Zionist, right-wing, nationalist government coalition. As far as Naftali Bennett’s admission that he was not prepared to lead the nation of Israel, allow me to wax about those who also were not prepared to lead the people of Israel. There was Moses who when facing the burning bush and was addressed by G0d to go tell Pharos to “Let my people go that they may serve me,” replied that he was unworthy, unprepared, not the man to lead and take such an important role. We thank the L0rd that Moses was set straight and given the power to lead the people from bondage, give them the laws and deliver them to the doorstep of the Promised Lands. Not that bad for one who was not prepared or worthy to lead. David may have stepped to the fore to fight Goliath but not until after a number of days of taunting by this overgrown Philistine, but he did not feel prepared to be the King and even hid from Saul and his family not trusting that he was the chosen to lead the people of Israel. Samson denied his Heavenly callings and yet, in the end, brought the house down on the enemies of the people of Israel. Jonah went to great lengths to run from his tasks as he too felt he was not the man of the hour, but he was brought to perform those deeds for which he was chosen. We probably do not have the complete list by far of those who shirked their calling simply because they did not believe themselves ready to fulfill some destiny but missed their crucial role leaving it for somebody who we likely now treasure for answering the call. Now we have Netanyahu who has already backed away from his promise for no Arab state being formed under his watch. What next, the formation of a unity government with Buji and Tzipi? Will there be additional things we were told were impossible as Prime Minister Netanyahu had seen the light and was now a true Zionist and would defend Israel from the pressures from the outside world and if, or when, so, what will the next shoe falling be the sign of that betrayal? Is this because nobody else was ready, willing or able to be Prime Minister except those who are willing to fold before President Obama, the European Union and assorted European leaders? Next election cycle, if there is one, please if you are still not prepared to be Prime Minister, then please allow a new leader of the Party climb to the fore and be ready for us to support to be Prime Minister so we will not be left wondering what kind of government will result, somebody who is supportive of the Religious-Zionist ethics and positions through and through, somebody we will not fear what they might compromise next and we will support them and hopefully place them in as the one tapped to form a government that will support and serve the ideals we cherish.

 

Beyond the Cusp