Some Misperceptions of the Arab Israeli Conflict

 

Back in the earlier and more innocent days of the State of Israel the world had little trouble discerning the main problem the Arab nations and the vast majority of their peoples have with Israel, the fact that it existed. This was made all the more obvious by their near constant threats to destroy Israel and drive the Jews into the sea. This was easy for most people, especially those in the western world, to figure out as numerous Arab spokespeople went out of their way to stress this point at every opportunity, and none more so than Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and PLO leader Yasser Arafat. It was common perception until 1967 at the earliest and by the end of 1973 at the latest for many to realize that the Jews were not going to be overrun by any combination of Arab nations. The near outright victory in the Six Day War in June of 1967 in what many have thought would be the war that destroyed tiny little Israel as the numbers favored the Arab militaries by at least fifty-to-one and many thought even higher odds may have begun the perception of Israeli superiority. After the initial surprise attack having been launched in the Yom Kippur War it was again commonly thought that Israel was being overrun, that too led many to even begin mourning the death of Israel, even if a bit prematurely. Israel again turned the tide of battle once again. These two conflicts changed the perception of Israel as that small little country precariously clinging to life at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea located in the midst of the core of the Arab world and the midst of those who most wished to destroy Israel and her citizens and seemingly had the military might to do so. That misconception was dispelled and was replaced with an equally erroneous expectation of Israel as the hegemonic power of the Middle East.

 

This perception was further enhanced by Israeli actions which themselves purported an enormous amount of pride and self-confidence. And why not walk proud and sound loud when one had vanquished their main and most immediate foes even after a surprise attack which many saw as the final Arab victory when initially the Arab forces had broken the Israeli defensive lines and were advancing towards Israel herself. Had it not been for the distance provided Israel by still holding the Sinai Peninsula having yet to return them upon making peace with Egypt, Israel would have easily been overrun and her Jews likely slaughtered. With the Sinai Peninsula Israel was afforded the time to gather her reserves and turn the tide which then led to immediate demands that the fighting be halted as Israel was now advancing on Cairo, Damascus and Alexandria and to completely routing her Arab foes in Egypt and Syria. During this period the Egyptian armies were under the command from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat. It was the eventual routing of the Egyptian military which cinched the mind of Anwar Sadat to seek a peace with Israel as there appeared no other route, especially militarily, to regain the lost lands of the Sinai Peninsula which Israel hung out in total as an enticement for peace. This peace came about being signed in 1979 and taking effect in January of 1980. This was the reason given for the eventual assassination by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood of Anwar Sadat.

 

There are some, especially military historians, who believed at that time that this was an Israeli blunder as she could have retained at least half of the Sinai Peninsula retaining her mountainous midsection and the mountain passes allowing for greater tactical depth. Such a retention would also have set a precedent for Israel retaining lands gained in 1967 and defended in 1973, something considered normal and actually expected by most of the world. Israel, on the other hand, felt that little sacrifice was to be too excessive to make for peace. Still, it was this sacrifice which has long been used as the main argument that Israel realized that her conquest of the lands from her 1967 Six Day War to be illegal and thus imperative for them to be forfeit. Jordan proved to be the one who insisted Israel retain the lands that she retained after the war of 1948-9 knowing full well that those lands of Judea and Samaria and that Jordan had renamed West Bank to remove the obvious claim which Israel possessed over the lands. Jordanian annexation was refused by the entire world even to include the Arab League and its members with only Britain and Pakistan recognizing the annexation.

 

There has been a long period of time since the hot warfare erupted almost as if on a time schedule between the Arab world and Israel. This has permitted a sea of changes in the perceptions of the conflict and by that in the expectations for making peace. Forgotten is the peace with Egypt where the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt but that Egypt surrendered the lands she occupied and proved so by never annexing or incorporating them into Egypt, namely the Gaza Strip. After making peace with Egypt the Gaza Strip was returned unto Israeli rule as had been the default condition at the beginning of the war for Jewish genocide against the nascent state of Israel starting officially on May 15, 1948 and ending almost a year and a half later. The next to make peace was Jordan who also returned those lands she had occupied since the end of hostilities in that same war against Israel, returning to the originally drawn border between the two, intended to be the Jordan River. It was subsequent to this peace treaty that Jordan then backed the claim that there existed some state known as Palestine that had rightful claim to those lands of the West Bank and that Jordan had ruled over these lands illegally and that Israel was now obliged to give up the lands for the formation of Palestine. This was an enormous hoax by which the Arab League using Yasser Arafat’s PLO terror group to make a spurious claim of another Arab nation, the twenty-third, and claiming that Israel was occupying that nation’s actual homelands. Check history in 1967 before June and find Palestine on a map existing from any modern time before June of 1967 which has any reference to a nation known as Palestine. Unfortunately, the education system, the media, the European nations, the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League and much of the remainder of the world even including the United States State Department all now support this fiction and the youth who were born after about 1960 have grown up much of their lives and all of their adult lives under this misconception that Israel stole through the 1967 war the lands destroying the nation of Palestine and that the area referred to as the West Bank replacing the names for the lands historically of Judea and Samaria, a substitution made by Jordan when she annexed these lands in 1950 leading to her being the occupying power of Israeli territory and never of anything named Palestine. Palestine is a fabrication meant to take land from Israel, and there is where the deceptions grow deeper still.

 

The deceptions grow deeper the more one connects the dots, dots being obscured by what are some very skilled and practiced deceivers who have funding beyond imaginations. Foremost amongst the deceptions is that all the Palestinians desire is their small homelands returned to them. Do not believe me then perhaps you can believe a member of the PLO executive committee. Zahir Muhsein. You see, way back on March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here’s what he said:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

 

Don’t want to believe me? I understand, but would you believe Wikipedia or Daniel Pipes or Wikiquote or simply use the search engine of your choice and query, Zahir Muhsein Dutch newspaper Trouw.

 

Then there is that reputed grassroots effort which goes by the name of BDS and has infected unbelievable campuses of colleges and universities in the West and untold numbers of mainstream media types and politicians around the world, yet probably less than 10% know the actual origins and financial support for the entirety of the BDS movement. The BDS movement originated as the Arab boycott and at some point it was thought that this boycott could be taken to the international audience and that the world was ready to join with this idea. Imagine the shock when the BDS movement did not catch on like wildfire. So it was turned over to be managed out of Ramallah by the PLO’s successor, the Palestinian Authority or PA. The PA would invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and eventually hundreds of millions of dollars and who even knows the full extent of the monies now invested in the BDS movement which is still primarily supported out of the PA budget but hidden under Fatah or the PLO or any number of different entities such that it is never discovered except as being amongst the information propaganda efforts. The monies used by the BDS movement is distributed through a system of channels through which everything flows as cash money, no bank accounts or other such traceable revenue streams, it is an all cash business and as such numerous people have been greatly enriched personally by the BDS cash flow. The BDS is sold in the Western World as a boycott of items from Israel which has some connection to the West Bank and never as a boycott of Israel itself. That is a deception as the BDS movement is designed by the PA and PLO to continue, as stated honestly in the literature, until Israel has been removed from all of their occupied Palestinian lands, code words for that chant you hear so often at rallies for the Palestinian cause, “From the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea; Palestine must be free.” There is no differentiation between inside and outside the Green Line; the BDS movement is designed to destroy all of Israel. The leadership of the BDS movement mostly serves double duty as they also organize the Israel Apartheid Week (or month) on campuses across the Western World once again to vilify all of Israel. Most of these efforts were launched at the first two Durban Conferences which were titled as “The United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” one of the greatest misnomers in the history of deceptions. The conference broke down into a few separate items with one subject serving as the overriding target covered though there was also mention about reparations for slavery mostly to be paid by the United States and European powers and none to be paid by Middle Eastern and Asian nations. By and large the conference became a bash Israel fest to such a point that Canada joined the United States and Israel in quitting the first conference and not returning for subsequent conferences as they appeared to be simply updates and devising new tactics in the war against Israel.

 

The BDS movement lies and hypocrisies are just the tip of the iceberg. The proof has been easy to see if one just opens their eyes. Numerous of the store assaults, something often used against supermarkets or department stores, are not delicate surgical procedures, they are slash and burn procedures. They are riotous assaults where participants storm through the victimized location knocking over displays and showing a general disrespect for property all in the guise of BDS. They storm throughout the store seeking any items which are made by specific companies as well as any items marked as being produced by Israel without the slightest concern for whether they were manufactured or grown within the Green Line or in the disputed territories. There is little if any surgical precision or even the remotest attention to nuanced targeting, they are simply slash and burn of all items Israel and any mistake, well, it was an honest mistake and doesn’t Israel deserve the additional monetary price being paid. The sad item is that it is the store owner paying that price and actually their insurance provider. The truth is that the eventual price tag falls to the consumer as they will pay the increased price eventually.

 

But all that does not matter because the truth is in the message and that message is that Israel is an evil occupation force which stole Palestinian Lands during the war in 1948-9. Wait, I hear many of you calling out, don’t you mean in 1967? I mean 1967 as much as the Arabs and their stooges mean 1967 and I mean starting with the war that went officially hot in 1948 just as they mean 1948 and finally I mean to infer that this war started in 1922 with the first Arab anti-Jew pogrom just as they see this as a continuation of the 1922 riots and do not plan on stopping until the Jew has been entirely erased from all of their lands from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea just as many Arab nations drove the Jews from their soil by the middle of the 1950s possibly keeping a few remnants just as back before the 1960s numerous companies had the ‘company Jew’ which proved they were not guilty of anti-Semitism. The Hamas Charter goes the additional step of demanding that all of Israel be liberated from the Jew and then the world be cleansed of the Jew and only after that does the final conversions begins to take place. Once again we see one group telling the truth that what they plan to start with the Jew will end with all others once the Jew has been eradicated. Then there was the desire stated by Hezballah leader Nasrallah who hoped that all the Jews from every corner of the globe would make their way back to Israel so that his terrorist armies would not be required to search all over the globe to eradicate the last Jews as they would all be gathered in Israel. What is frightening is that Nasrallah might just get his way as far as religiously observant Jews outside of a small number of super-religious Jews who will refuse to leave until the Messiah gives them a hand written gold-leaf embossed personal invitation on perfumed stationary before they will even debate if the Messiah is the real deal. In the meantime I am simply trying to figure out how to get my daughter and grandchildren to make Aliyah.

 

The lies and deceits are deep beyond imagination. There are those who when speaking of Jews and Israel will come out, this has been done by a number of Iranian Imams and leaders as well as other Islamic Holocaust deniers who in a single breath will proclaim that there never was a holocaust and the Jews invented it and Allah willing there will be another Holocaust this time perpetrated by the Arabs or Muslims. Others have denied the Holocaust only to turn and claim they are dedicated to finishing what Adolph Hitler began. Abbas has made a perfectly valid statement knowing full well that the World and especially the political and media worlds will misinterpret what he meant and he can continue in his duplicitous stratagems. His comment is that he simply desires to claim his rightful 22% of the lands and then he will be satisfied, and in that he is speaking the truth. But the Western politicians and media will interpret this as meaning that all he wants are the lands of Judea and Samaria and then some even add in Gaza which places the error on the other end. You see there is only one measurement of lands that comes out almost within a few square meters of being exactly 22% and only one. When one takes Judea and Samaria compared to the entirety one finds that to be just a smidgeon above 21% and if then adding in Gaza the amount climbs to just short of 23%. But if one takes the British Mandate and subtracts the almost exactly 78% of the lands which constitute Jordan that leaves 22.06% of the lands not taken to form Jordan thus making all of Israel including Judea, Samaria (West Bank), Gaza and everything within the Green Line it is basically Abbas’s 22% plain and simple. People argue that I am splitting hairs and if I am it is only because I have seen not only Mahmoud Abbas be accurate to that degree of fault, especially when using a fuzzily and hazily defined set of terms to misdirect a willfully-blind media, but to lead easily doped hypocritical politicians and the rest of the useful idiots out in the world.

 

There has recently begun a very troubling and, though not at all unexpected, disconcerting set of events which has shown a growing tendency for those who are anti-Israel and anti-Zionist to also add a new feather to their bonnet which is an ancient feather which some have claimed is the feather representing the most ancient of hatreds, anti-Semitism. This had been manifest originally by the rampaging hooligans who destroyed anything labeled made in Israel and then blamed Israel for not denoting which merchandise was occupied-lands-free. This has now spread just that one next step to a bigger circle to include Jews as a guilty party by inference of possibly supporting Israel. Before going further into this, please allow us to predict the next and undeniably obvious incrimination to include another select and hated group to the list of guilty of the sin of Israel and that will be Evangelicals followed subsequently by conservatives of almost any stripe which is not anti-Semitic in nature to begin with. The worrying part in all of this has been the indoctrination of the youth, in particular those impressionable students in the colleges and universities and now starting to be brought into the classrooms of the high schools and lower grades as well. The problem with this is that today’s college, and especially high school, students are the leaders and shapers of society tomorrow (tomorrow = one to two decades but this is already well on its way so say five to ten years). The other fronts which are being implemented through intervention have been prison populations and the unions, especially teachers’ unions.

 

The BDS and anti-Israel and anti-Zionist leadership have already largely taken over the steering and defining of one of the United States two major political parties and in many European nations taken a grasp on many if not all political parties. One is guaranteed to find these views supported by the Communists, the Fascists, the Socialists and the leftist human rights guarantors. The conservatives are not completely above these influences but do tend to be the less confused and fooled. If we look around the Western World we find the staunchest supporters of Israel on the right of the political spectrum. Let’s talk first about the conservatives and leftists where they are most easily to differentiate, the two main political parties in the United States. The few Democrats who remain strong supporters of Israel are also the moderates and almost squeezed from the Democrat roles. One of the most conservative of the Republican hopefuls for the ticket for President in 2016 is Ted Cruz who is about as pro-Israel as they come as are many of his supporters. Some other true conservatives who fall heavily on the side of Israel and some even willing to claim that Israel is at the forefront of this culture war and the real leader of the Western World are former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, former Florida United States Congressman and retired U.S. Army Colonel Alan West, and current District One Representative in Oklahoma Jim Bridenstine. The reality struck home to those paying attention, a select few and you know who you are (our readers of course, the informed few), during the 2012 Democrat convention. There was a motion on the floor before the delegates which was to restore to the platform faith in G0d and support for Jerusalem to be the recognized capital of Israel. They called for a voice vote and it failed so the shocked chair restates the motion more deliberately and it is voice vote refused once again, and finally, after a quick consult from a ranking member, call for the vote again not hearing much in the way of a change, simply pronounced the motion adopted and moved on to a somewhat disturbed and perturbed hall. To watch the profound and shocking train of events for yourself see below or click for the YouTube video.

 

 

Other examples exist headed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and British Prime Minister David Cameron with other notable supporters such as Geert Wilders who is a Minister in the Dutch Parliament. Unfortunately, supporting Israel is beginning to become a difficult position to hold through much of Europe and the rise in anti-Semitism is one of the lagging indicators. A direct relationship can be drawn between the drop in support for Israel and a coming increase in anti-Semitism. The rising anti-Semitism takes a number of different paths and like water it finds the paths of least resistance initially and then builds until it has the powers of tsunami and then comes the horrific and heinous results which if left unchecked anti-Semitism inevitable leads to. The proof of this is written throughout the over three-millennia of Jewish history from the Egyptian enslavement to the Babylonian exile to the eventual dark times under Persia to Greece, Rome, to Muslim and Crusader treachery alike to Muslims across North Africa and in the Middle East to European Kings and Barons to the Inquisition to the pogroms of the Czars and the Caliphs of the Ottomans and their lessor officials to the Nazis and the Communists to the current day Islamists and the coming waves of hatreds which now appear on the verge of cascading across the world from numerous equally volatile sources leading to potentially unprecedented levels with previously uncharted ramifications. Where the current spiral of hatreds will end or even if it will have an end is beyond any mortal perceptive intellect. One might ponder as to where are the prophets when one needs their guidance more than ever as threats and ravenous beasts rage at the gates and the barbarians have already found entrance ahead of the dark and ominous clouds on the horizon. One might hope that the threat of a previously unknown and apocalyptic storm perched on the horizon waiting for the sunrise simply to burst from its moorings and dissolve the sunlight into the pitched darkness of the darkest night and winds howling like the midnight wolves hungering for fresh meat leaving even the sane screaming against the thought of what the next precious hours of history may unfold quaking in fear of the unknown horrors now imagined. Is this our time, is this our destiny, is this the end of ends.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Could a Real Zionist Leader Please Step Forward

 

Yesterday the Israeli public received a surprise as Avigdor Liberman resigned as Foreign Minister and announced that his Yisrael Beytenu Party would sit in the opposition rather than sit in a centrist government which does not represent a strong right wing and nationalist governance. Whether this was a political ploy to try and gain additional positions despite Yisrael Beytenu’s less than overwhelming show in the elections or an attempt to cast himself and his Yisrael Beytenu Party as the real leader willing to stand apart, if that is what is necessary to force a real nationalist coalition with real nationalist goals and directives forming the coalition agreement; Avigdor Liberman may mean exactly what he claims or this may be a restructuring while performing a facelift for what appears to be an ailing Yisrael Beytenu Party. Whatever Avigdor Liberman may have in mind, it remains to be seen whether his prediction of an ill functioning coalition will spend much of its time plugging holes and cracks in the coalition attempting to hold a governing coalition of merely sixty-one Ministers, as slim a majority as one might ever hope to make a working ruling coalition. Avigdor Liberman has struck the heart of the problem and probably knows exactly what he is doing by pointing out that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not only not a proven nationalist but actually a reluctant nationalist. I hope Avigdor Liberman is not expecting to be awarded a Zionist achievement medallion with which he can claim to be the nationalist answer to Benyamin Netanyahu and find himself being chosen to form the next ruling coalition after the next election. But the best bet is that Avigdor Liberman is simply jostling the electorate and rattling everybody’s cage both within the coalition and in the opposition basically claiming he is willing to go it alone rather than enter a coalition which ignores or even opposes what he sees as some of the most vital of nationalist and Zionist principles which he is claiming as the core beliefs of the Yisrael Beytenu Party. Whether this move is just a ploy to gain advantage for his joining of the coalition between now and the deadline this week for forming a coalition remains for us to see.

 

Whatever the result of the Liberman gambit and the Netanyahu coalition cobbling, the realities are that there may not be an actual Zionist or nationalist leader whose political party is capable of garnering sufficient support to warrant being tapped to form the coalition after the next elections. That begs the question of what is the most likely alternative and how can any alternative to another Netanyahu coalition be formulated as the best possibility for those who might offer a more positive governing coalition leadership. That is where the crux of the problem lies. Prime Minister Netanyahu speaks probably one of the best Zionist and nationalist arguments one could ever imagine but when it comes to putting action to those wonderful sounding worlds it appears that Prime Minister Netanyahu has an application problem which he is unable to get past. The chance that anybody might have come by having the religious Zionists and nationalist camp combine together and promise that if given the necessary representation as a combined group that a new form of government would be installed where the Ministerial department positions would be awarded experts from industry, academia and wherever else they may be found is possibly too much to expect happen by chance. The promise is that the ministers on your party list are intending to be members of the Knesset but not be rewarded with positions for which they have little if any expertise. There would be two completely separate lists of candidates, one would contain close to or over seventy names taken from the several parties and a secondary list of proposed cabinet positions as Ministers of the Cabinet who were chosen for their expertise and not as bribes to patch together a ruling coalition. This would be a fresh new concept where the Prime Minister was not using the myriad of Ministerships which make up his cabinet as rewards for those choosing to join the coalition and instead offer a coalition of parties who have agreed upon a purely Zionist grounds to become part of a new governance where the coalition is formed purely on principles and the Ministers in the Knesset would be responsible for addressing the matters of law and regulations. A few examples might be in order, Foreign Minister could be held by Benyamin Netanyahu where he could use his special powers of persuasion; Professor Stanley Fischer would make an outstanding Minister of the Economics Portfolio as he is unrivaled in his abilities in the field of economics, a military leader such as General Ganz could be charged with Defense Minister and other similar such discerning selections could be made to fill the other Ministerships which would make up the Cabinet Ministries.

 

The problem with this idea is getting the members of the political class to agree to forgo their egos and simply do what would in the long run be best for Israel. I am sure that every Minister who manages to land some prestigious Cabinet Ministership would feel they are exquisitely qualified to address anything required by the position and they are so brilliant that they would not even gain by the advice of an actual expert. This has usually been most evidenced by those tasked as Minister of Finance, Minister of Defense, Minister of Public Security, Minister of Housing and Construction and we could simply go down the list until we had all of them listed for one reason or another. Part of the problem with the current system is that the separate ministers are also using the power of their particular ministerial position to gain leverage over other Ministers who also can use their ministerial powers to take revenge and in the end the Israeli public pays the price as government ends up being grossly mismanaged. If at the top of the whole government is a Prime Minister who is having difficulties threading the needle while walking a tightrope over a river swarming with crocodiles because he is attempting not to upset the leaders of the rest of the world while keeping a lid on a cabinet filled with egomaniacs all vying to undo the other’s position while ignoring their own responsibilities and still run a nation, well, that is a recipe for a disaster. The biggest problem is the lack of a positive and strongly led group which knows what the end result that is desired and they all can actually agree on that desired result. Such leadership has to be resolute and determined and must be sufficiently sure of their position thus capable of taking command of any situation and continue to move towards that goal while solving every problem actually of any consequence along the way. The problem is there has been no such leader who has come forward and declared such a vision and painted a picture for the Israeli people to also see that vision and be supportive, or at least fifty-five percent voting public behind this vision.

 

There was such a vision and slogan that could have made that difference when Naftali Bennett hit on the no apology for desires to keep that which belongs to Israel according to International Law. He was on target with this idea and could have built upon this base structure by giving the explanation why we no longer need to say we are sorry for living on our own homeland and we have had enough with the demands for the dividing of our lands, of our Jerusalem, of all that is ours forevermore. But then Naftali Bennett made a cardinal error even if he believed that which he stated when he stated that he was not yet ready to be Prime Minister. Mr. Bennett, let me let you in on a little secret, nobody who is honest with themselves is ever ready to be Prime Minister but that does not mean that they should come out and say so. Once you lost faith in your ability to lead, on that moment your entire no apology campaign apologized and died. The really sorry thing is that honestly we the people of Israel should never forgive you for stealing out opportunity to follow an idea whose time had come and had a vibrant and energetic leader saying what we needed and wanted to hear and then he balked and stole from us our opportunity. Naftali, if I may be so casual, it was not your place to decide if you were ready to be Prime Minister; that decision belonged to us, the Israeli public. If we decided you were ready then it was up to us to give you whatever you needed to lead and do so with vigor and confidence grown by the faith of the people you lead. The secret is that anyone can lead providing they have drawn a clear picture for the future, defined how they plan to take us to that future, tasked the people with their role in this plan and then step forward and let the wave of the supporters assisting and pushing you on ahead as the leader. You see, the people choose a leader and when there is no true and real leader with an idea and a picture they can draw for everyone of what they aim to accomplish and the people agree and ask again for the initial steps they should take that lead to your future and then get ready to run. If as the leader you falter, then the people will have to carry you until you regain your footing; but if we detect that your faith has wavered and the dream has dimmed in your eyes and deserted your hearing, then the people will seek a new leader as you will have left them stuck half way, but the people will live on and find their next leader as that is how it works. Read about Winston Churchill’s life. He was ridiculed and chased from public life, called a warmongering old man who never left the big war. Yet when Hitler was knocking on Britain’s door who did they call? Winston Churchill, and almost as soon as that war ended they unceremoniously punted him from office and into retirement until a few years later they once again needed a leader as they were facing dire problems. Winston Churchill may not have been the leader they needed then, but during World War II there could not have been a better leader than Winston Churchill and the Queen steadied the ship and even joined the crews working in the wreckage that was south London. She assisted in stacking the whole bricks and the broken bricks each according to size and reusability and her assistance did little in the theme of things but few did more. The Queen, Churchill, and the Royal Air Force (RAF) saved Britain to fight another day, and fight on she did. Great times will make great leaders more often than great leaders will make great times.

 

When the situation is dire and the enemies are closing on all quarters leaving nothing on which to hope than one last charge into the breach, then that is when a great leader is required. Israel is in just such a position. The friend who gave promise after promise barely keeping a one of them but still a friend is all one can hope for when the stormy winds do blow. The winds are blowing and swirling all about Israel yet thus far she has held her ground and not been swept into the mire quite yet. It is just these winds which are blowing everywhere just outside our borders and beyond does not bode well as these items have a way of dragging us down and into the fray. Israel needs a great leader with a cool hand and a mind capable of nimble calculations made on the fly yet critically accurate. The rules for judging human beings and their often emotional outbreaks are not as well defined as a game of chess or checkers. Israel’s main problem lies at a distance but is also being permitted to enrich uranium and plutonium such they will be a virtual nuclear armed nation, whatever that means. United States President Obama may have misspoken when answering a question about Iranian breakout point when he answered that their breakout time would be zero. The media pretended that he had not made any odd or worrisome statement and the interview continued without returning to that question or making any note when summing up the interview. A breakout time of zero means that the Iranians after a decade will have the ability to make an advanced nuclear weapon in as little as six weeks, possibly less. Additionally, should the Houthis in Yemen conquer the entirety of their nation, something which appears to be all but guaranteed, then indirectly Iran will have control over the two most strategic chokepoints for shipping in the world. Additionally, this will add Yemen to the list of nations directly or indirectly which include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and their foothold in South America in the Tri-Border Region. Iran has ties with the Cuban government as well as loose alliances with the Mexican drug cartels through Hezballah and by whom they gain access into the United States. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are getting rather edgy with Yemen being their immediate concern. The Saudis have even gone so far as to seek a possible alliance which would include Turkey, the wildcard which nobody knows where they will appear but one can bet that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan which will make Egypt more than a little edgy as Turkey and especially Recep Tayyip Erdogan have direct and deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood. One item which everyone can rely on from Turkey sometime this summer they will again launch the Mavi Marmara on another attempt at breaking the Gaza Embargo blockade. Thus far there is no solid data on how many ships and activists they plan in sending along with the Mavi Marmara on this summer’s little stunt which the leaders of IHH have planned with the finest Islamist blessing from Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As one can see from just this sampling of the realities, pressures, problems, challenges and other calamities waiting for those who choose to desire to lead the state of Israel, it is no wonder that Naftali Bennett and others would think themselves not ready to take on the challenges any Israeli Prime Minister must face even briefly, let alone for four years should he also manage to keep all the disparate groups making up his coalition happy, and this would prove difficult even if one was blessed with a coalition with only three or four parties giving the Prime Minister the comfort of a seemingly stable coalition to oversee. In all honesty, no sane person could ever truly be ready to hold the office of Prime Minister and anybody saying different has not considered the challenges or the threats they would face when holding the position. The Prime Minister would have those detractors who would sit comfortably challenging every decision made by the Prime Minister simply playing devil’s advocate and that are just the media. Even from within his own party the Prime Minister would receive criticisms both from those further to the right and from those further to the left and would soon realize that a Prime Minister can find themselves truly alone even in a meeting of his inner cabinet. Facing these challenges and the other daunting difficulties which every Prime Minister is required to face would chill the nerves of even the best amongst us and would be such that no rational individual would desire such office, yet should the head of even the smallest party claim they are not willing to put their shoulder against the wheel and push it with all their might, then that party needs to choose a new leader who is composed of sterner material. Still, leading a party and potentially having to face the burdens of the office of the Prime Minister would be the challenge of one’s lifetime and truly exhausting taking every last morsel of energy you could give and then demand just that little bit more as the office will force you to give your best effort or it will overwhelm one; so yes Mr. Bennett, you are like every other person who would be facing this before you, but still whether the people desire you to take on that mantle is who decides whether you are ready for such position and you as a party leader do not have the right to take that choice from us, the electorate. That is how the system works and that is what we are left with currently and for the foreseeable future and it is up to us to make this system work and to make changes as we are able and prove to have been capable to meet the challenge just as the electorate chose, the electorate chose and not the party leadership necessarily making such a choice. May the electorate find that leader capable of withstanding the pressures and still stand ready and capable of staring down any external influences who will try to manipulate the leaders of the nation of Israel as, for reasons too perplexing to go into here, the whole rest of the world seems to believe that they are the deciders of what direction Israel must take, yet they are gathered around the Israeli leadership waiting with the patience of vultures desiring to feast on the last remnants of Israel after the world powers have chopped sufficient sections off to grant to any and every claimant against the Jewish nation and then waiting for the last bit to die a very unnatural death. This is why we must have a leader who will stand up and say, ‘no more’ and ‘never again’ and lastly, ‘that which was promised us by man and by a higher power will be ours to cherish and you with your axes desirous of cleaving piece after piece knowing that your angry actions will destroy would kill the victim Israel must know we will not go quietly into that darkness you wish to silence us with, we will not go into the night without a fight, we will win and retain our lands and the Zionist spirit which built her out of the swamps and rocks and boulders and against every challenge we did and will continue to prevail.’

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Long Night Births Hard Questions on Israeli Election Results

 

With virtually all the votes counted we have the preliminary picture but the lines are fuzzy and the results produce more questions than answers. Likud is leading the pact with 29 seats with the “Zionist Camp” of Labor and Hatnua following with 24 and the Joint Arab List has 14 seats, followed by Yesh Atid with 11, Kulanu with 10, Jewish Home has 8, the Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism tied at 7, Yisrael Beytenu has 6 and Meretz closes out the list with 4 seats and unfortunately Yachad party will be left out. The raw numbers would indicate a huge win for Netanyahu and loss for the “Zionist Camp” falling well behind due to Likud exceeding its lower polling and Labor-Hatnua equaling expectations. A closer look reveals where the Likud came by its higher numbers and it appears that Likud gains came at the expense of largely Jewish Home and potentially prevented Yachad from making threshold. The other obvious change has been that instead of preventing the fragmentation and reducing the number of minor parties the raising of the threshold only served to drive the smaller leftist, anti-Zionist Communist and Post=Modernist parties into a single block under the name of Arab Block and given them two to three additional mandates making Zoabi and Tibi appear all the stronger. These raw results are meaningless until the different parties, unions and blocks make their desires and support clear to President Rivlin producing a clearer picture who should be given first shot at forming a coalition.

 

The raw data would make Likud out to be the victor and to the victor go the spoils, but what spoils? The name of the game is coalition making and hopefully doing so with in kind minds and supporters of your positions. This means that any seats gained by Likud at the expense of Jewish Home makes the resultant total possessed by the two presumed to be allied parties no different and all the Likud gains from Jewish Home losses as simply rearranging the chairs on either a cruise ship or the Titanic. The truth is that Netanyahu does not really want the religious, Zionist, nationalist allied parties to be the base of his support when forming his coalition. Netanyahu wants to have as much political leeway allowing him to go in whatever direction provides him with the easiest path in the new government. By Netanyahu weakening the standing of Jewish Home, when forming any coalition now would make Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid and Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu parties more important and carrying a greater influence than Jewish Home and making Naftali Bennett’s voice virtually powerless and squelched while Yair Lapid and Moshe Kahlon will be the roaring lions in the government and also place them ahead of Jewish Home in choosing the Ministerial position of power in the cabinet. This will give Netanyahu the leftward freedom to ignore the demands of the Religious Zionists as he desired. Netanyahu’s ploy of assailing Jewish Home voters laying any loss he might face to Hertzog and Livni at their feet just as he had done previously except this time he did so with no apparent loss in voter totals that he faced in 2013.

 

So now we wait and see who will be chosen to form a coalition first and then suffer through six weeks of excruciatingly boring power plays which we already see Jewish Home and the Zionist and nationalists being mostly sidelined while the personal aggrandizing Yesh Atid and Kulanu parties empowering Yair Lapid and Moshe Kahlon loudly impressing their demands and thus control over the most critical areas in the next government. Lapid may demand Treasury Minister for himself and two other high position Ministerial position for his main people with Kahlon likely to demand Foreign Minister or Defense Minister and two other major Ministerial positions for his list leaving Jewish Home with second pickings of the scraps for the supporting members and a middle level leftover for Naftali Bennett. The one certainty is that the governing coalition will not be the nationalist, Zionist government that Netanyahu once again ran on but will once again claim he is prevented from pursuing due to the lack of support from, you guessed it, a weakened and ineffectual Jewish Home. As long as the religious Zionists fall for the Netanyahu cry after running a weak campaign making the certainty of his returning to the Prime Ministership a definitive possibility from the polls and then turning to the supporters of Jewish Home and the other ardent Zionist parties to vote Likud to stave off the leftist challenge then Jewish Home will be forever the bridesmaid and never the bride. Eventually the leader, be it Bennett or be it his successor or beyond down the road, assuming there is a down the road, decides to challenge and present Jewish Home as the new leadership for Israel, Netanyahu will continue to utilize this ploy of siphoning off the votes of those more Zionist than Netanyahu desires to govern with and neutering those Zionist parties from where Netanyahu glides to victory with the stolen support, then the real Zionist political power will remain neutered and voiceless in the future Likud Party led governments. For now we must wait and see what develops but be warned that the expectations of the ardent Zionists have once again been sacrificed to the Bibi and thus lower expectations are their feed in the coming government. The other reality is that it appears that Netanyahu will require Yair Lapid and his treasonous backstabbing to permit a coalition to be cobbled together, so expect new elections again in two or so years when Lapid again sees a wounded Netanyahu for his actions such as the silent building freeze or whatever other sacrifices made presumably in response to a powerful United States President Obama in order to salvage continued friendship from the White House. Anybody else notice that it is only Israel who needs to obey and bow to the will of Obama? Can bowing to golden calves or worse be far behind?

 

Beyond the Cusp