How Democracy Dies in Israel

 

Though we had discussed thoughts of this nature we could only obliquely refer to our suspicions but thanks to Caroline B. Glick for her article which is the meat of our commentary and worth reading as her manner and ability to cut to the bone and serve the meat on any subject is particularly poignant and we would feel as if we had deprived our readers of every morsel and fact within her article The Fruits of Subversion which we read in Jewish World Review which is one of many places where Carolyn Glick can be found. The discussion we will attempt will be to delve into some of the ramifications; both the potential, and the other simply dread and hopefully never come to pass. Needless to point out, adding to a Caroline B. Glick article is not a task for the queasy and in this endeavor failure is not only an option but even a probability. I guess by now we can simply assume that Caroline B. Glick is a reporter and editorialist extraordinaire whom we hold in high esteem. Now let us proceed and try and tackle this not so simple task and hope for the best.

 

There has been a shadow government operating in concert with the administration of a foreign power, that of President Barack Obama and the United States Department of State. This government has taken upon itself the pursuit of an agenda which is completely the opposite of that of the elected government. These individuals have taken upon themselves to assist the aims of President Barack Obama and report to the State department, administration appointees and even the Secretary of State or the Director of Central Intelligence Agency any deviations from the presumptive and United States approved policy potentially taken or in the plans of the government in Israel. Examples from the article included reporting the plans for a strike on the Iranian nuclear sites and we might discern that other such treasonous revelations granted the United States and Obama Administration would include any objections or arguments which Prime Minister Netanyahu might have regarding any peace and concessions and any resistance to of President Obama’s carefully laid out agenda which he and his tools in Israel believed to be superior and a better path for Israel going into the future and against the will of the voters and their elected governance. The problem is that this infection had spread throughout much of the highest ranks including the general staff as well as the intelligence community. Caroline Glick mentioned some names but we suspect, as does she more than likely, that the disease is rotting through many institutions who see their job description to include preserving the democracy their politics support, the people be damned, as what do the people know about the realities of the world and the best of paths for the state of Israel. Another place where this rot had held sway since the beginning of the state of Israel and through the same process of self-appointing replacements and choosing those of identical political philosophies while punishing those who hold contrary opinions even to the point of demotions or forced retirement from serving the country is the Supreme Court and likely the entire legal and judicial system.

 

Perhaps this might be a good time to confess that we did not vote for Likud and much of the reasoning was a dislike and distrust of Prime Minister Netanyahu and wished that there was some way of either limiting the number of total years or terms a Prime Minister is permitted to serve and after that set period of time they would need to set aside their leadership of the nation and allow another to be the representative of their party as Prime Minister even if they continued to lead the party. Such an example might be that Prime Minister Netanyahu after serving, say, a decade holding the office of Prime Minister he would need appoint another from the party, or better yet, have the party choose the new Prime Minister designate to represent that position for example it might be Gilad Erdan, Yuli Edelstein, Yerael Kats or any other Likud member in good standing. Perhaps with such a limitation allowing for fresh leadership even if the same party remains as leading the government year after year after year which might prevent the self-appointed demi-gods from perverting the elective process and the choices of the people and destroying the democracy in order, in their minds, to preserve the democracy.

 

Part of the problem, as we estimate the situation, is that due to sclerotic and often paralytic political power structure which retains a small group of leadership holding all of the positions including Prime Minister and his Cabinet that stresses the top positions in the military, courts, intelligence and other political and security positions which are not elected directly or indirectly by the people into using their privileged positions and access to the decisions, plans and other intelligence including both external, internal and even secretive plans which only the very highest military position and heads of intelligence have privilege to acquire and who are trusted by the people not to overstep their boundaries and serve the people and its government. What is even more disturbing is the seeming support these paragons of perfect knowledge, or at least self-perceived as such, have abused their positions and forfeited the trust of the people and the government they are presumably serving have been celebrated and even granted privileged acceptance and praises from their political allies who are leaning on these people of rank to allow for their political goals and views to be implemented through abuse of force and forfeiting the votes of millions of their nation’s citizenry. The actions of the previous Director of the Mossad, Maj. Gen. Meir Dagan, and commanders such as Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Gola, compared Israeli society to the Nazis on Holocaust Remembrance Day; the General Staff’s vilification of Sgt. Elor Azaria, for killing a wounded terrorist in Hebron; and the drumming from his position as a commander of an Infantry Company of Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner for striking a European leftist instigator who had earlier broken a number of Eisner’s fingers and caused other equally painful injuries which required medical treatment.

 

Ya’alon and General Staff

 

The general policy being empowered by these paragons of democracy, well, at least in their own minds, and that of the extreme leftists, the defeatists, the leftist media which is to say the majority of the mainstream media, the European Union, United Nations, European government and media, and worst of all the anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli Administration of President Barack Obama is one duly leftist in its approach to all policies and completely placating and forgiving empowering the Arab Palestinians and the terror infrastructure and support systems all in the name of peace at any price even to include the complete compromise of the freedom and identity of Israel as the Jewish State. The obvious question is why these generals are not simply forced from service and replaced with other senior officers who hold more reasonable understandings of the power and responsibility of the military to serve the governance elected by the people. One reason is that it is very likely that the Supreme Court would intervene and return these general staff officers and likely find some choice names of officers who are approaching senior positions and blame them for attempting to overthrow the general staff and they themselves would find themselves drummed from service and potentially incarcerated, thus is the established leftist shadow governance. As far as removing such generals from the IDF, such a move would necessarily require the support of the Defense Minister and MK Ya’alon leans left himself and would likely defend these generals and may be partly the reason that Ya’alon was chosen for the position such as to have a person who could work with the generals the IDF offered and not one to shake things up and rock the boat. The entirety of the system of unelected policy experts who are pursuing their own agenda is an echo chamber which amplifies the problem which will take a brave and ready to fall on their political swords for the nation and its people.

 

The final item we will attempt to cover is why it may be time to find a new Prime Minister to replace Netanyahu, from Likud if necessary. The nation needs a bold leader who is willing to take whatever steps are required to enforce the will of the people. Such a person would be, by necessity, somebody with an almost careless outlook and one who does not prefer the limelight and instead simply desires sacrificing to serve the nation and its people. Unfortunately such a person is unlikely as a parliamentary system is not usually capable of taking dire steps even when many see it as necessary. A Parliamentary system most often places a party functionary who has the right pedigree often the result of years of steady service to the party as a dedicated soldier. This is how Ya’alon became Defense Minister as did the rest of the Prime Minister’s inner cabinet. One of the complaints we have often heard was that there was such a seeming dearth of politicians who would be worthy of being the next Prime Minister. Even when other parties are added to the discussion with their presumed additional candidates there are still very few if any additional candidates who might excite the people, or at least none of us here. We did have one we would have hoped would offer themselves as a challenger for the office of Prime Minister as the lead of their party but they made a couple of defeatist comments, one in particular which displayed a serious deficiency which displayed they were not ready for prime time, let alone Prime Minister. If anyone has any ideas on a viable challenger, please encourage them as Israel cannot long survive these closed systems and their ruinous effect acting against the will of the people. The leaders in the legal systems, military, intelligence and law enforcement systems are presumed and designed to serve the people and the government and to implement the desires and policies of same, not take it upon themselves to be gods and rule taking power upon themselves simply because they see themselves as superior to the elected governance. Such is a closed system free of outside forces for change thus not reflecting the will of the people as they serve and should not be placing themselves above the people and their welfare, which is also against Torah.

 

Thank you all,

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Terror Lawyer Released While Jonathan Pollard Rots

The lawyer who represented the Blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman who masterminded and organized the first World Trade Center bombing among other terror defendants, Lynne Stewart, was ordered released due to health problems. Doctors claimed she has less than eighteen months to live as she has been diagnosed with breast cancer that has metastasized to her lungs and bones as well as type-2 diabetes and numerous other health problems. She was originally sentenced to ten years for having passed sensitive information she had received due to her representing the Blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman as well as messages from the Sheik to terrorist leaders and representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Her actions compromised numerous methodologies the United States had in use to monitor and track terror operatives. Among the information she passed on to terrorist leadership in Egypt and the Middle East included actionable information which permitted the terrorists to alter their methods so as to avoid American detection and possibly revealed names of operatives who had given the Americans information thus placing their lives at risk. During her resentencing trial it was revealed that the three judge panel of the federal appeals court had noted specifically that Stewart exhibited a “stark inability to understand the seriousness of her crimes.”

 

Meanwhile, Jonathan Pollard has begun his twenty-ninth year of a life sentence after being convicted of passing intelligence information to an allied power, Israel. While I would not try to minimize his crime, the information he passed has been defined as information of Arab military capabilities and assets and none was concerning any American assets or personnel and the information could have been covered under an agreement between the United States and Israel on information sharing which was ordered ignored by the State Department directing the Department of Defense. Even comparing the sentencing of Jonathan Pollard and Lynne Stewart makes one see that at least one of these two sentences makes little sense. Either Pollard was sentenced way beyond his crimes or Stewart was treated with kid gloves for her crimes. When a person who gave information on enemy military capabilities, assets and locations of the allied nation to whom the intelligence was given is sentenced to life while another who revealed methods and names as well as passing instructions to commit terrorist acts within the United States compromising the nation in numerous ways is sentenced to merely ten years there is some serious inequality in sentencing which should be obvious to anybody. Additionally, Lynne Stewart has never apologized or stated she had any regrets over her actions and has gone so far as to claim she had done nothing wrong as she was simply serving her client and conscience while Jonathan Pollard has admitted his crimes and apologized and shown contrition. As far as the argument that Ms. Stewart is in failing health, so is Mr. Pollard. Where President Clinton had promised to release Pollard as part of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians but after the Israelis held up their half of the bargain President Clinton laughed in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s face and called him a sucker for having believed Pollard would actually be released. President George W. Bush likely asked his father, former President Bush, and his father’s advisors, the same advisors who had convinced the Judge in Pollard’s case to throw out the agreement of a plea bargain and throw Pollard in prison for life. I hold President George W. Bush responsible for not taking the effort to research Pollard’s case himself and instead relying on slanders from those who were responsible for the life sentence.

 

I know that there will be those who will claim that the people from the State department knew of other crimes and that Pollard had turned over to the Russians the names of twenty American agents from the CIA. There is one problem with claiming that Johnathan Pollard had revealed the names of American agents anywhere, let alone Russia. Pollard was a Naval photographic evaluator who studied spy plane and satellite photos and discerned rocket launching, air defense, and other military potential targets. His clearance was limited to the level necessary to complete those kinds of evaluations and interpretations. He had no clearance nor could he have ever had access to information such as the names of active agents or any other CIA information. His clearance was limited to Naval photographic files and the actual photographs, nothing more. He not only did not have any clearance for information on CIA spies, he had no access to any information from the CIA unless the CIA sent photographs to the Navy to be inspected and interpreted for information, an unlikely but possible scenario, but personnel information would have been far beyond any access that Pollard was cleared to receive. He worked at a Naval operations center and likely never even set foot in any CIA building anywhere or at any time. Perhaps if Johnathan Pollard had instead given information to the Muslim Brotherhood he would have been freed long ago, but he foolishly gave the information to the Israelis and did it without receiving the huge sums of money some have claimed. He has stated that what he had done was a bad error in judgment and he expressed remorse all to no avail. Yet without any contrition or remorse Lynne Stewart is going home and I am willing to bet she lives well past the eighteen months that she is claimed to have remaining to her. Where I feel sympathy for her illness, I still am suspect that soon we will hear of her remarkable turnaround and her cancer having gone into remission, meanwhile her serving of her sentence will also have gone into remission.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Time for American Support for Syrian Free Army has Passed

United States President Obama stalled straddling the fence on whether or not to supply weapons including heavy crew served weapons to the presumably secular Free Syria Army until quite recently. If President Obama aimed to not actually support the Free Syria Army he handled the situation perfectly but if his aim was to assist in the overthrow of Assad and replacing him with a secular democracy then his actions have produced utter failure. The beginning of the end of the Free Syria Army came in the form of the assassination of one of the leading Free Syria Army Officers, Kamal Hamami whose nom de guerre is Abu Bassel al-Ladkani, by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant with whom he was meeting to coordinate joint efforts. Qassem Saadeddine, a Free Syrian Army spokesman, gave the media a report on the incident stating, “The Islamic State phoned me saying that they killed Abu Bassel and that they will kill all of the Supreme Military Council.” This comes immediately after the beheading of a Catholic Priest, Franciscan Father Francois Murad, who was murdered with two other people in the countryside of Idlib in northern Syria on Sunday. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Islamist Sunnis have now declared Jihad against not only the Shiite and Alawite backers of Syrian Dictator Bashir al-Assad but also against the secular pro-democracy elements of the rebel forces.

 

One might seek to find out exactly what these developments will mean about the viability of the Free Syria Army and whether arming them at this point would end up indirectly but inevitably giving the arms to the al-Qaeda and other Islamist rebels. The truth is and has been almost since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War that the viability of the Free Syria Army had a limited use-by date. Unlike the Shiite and Sunni Islamist forces who are able to import reinforcements and replace those fighters who have fallen in battle, the Free Syria Army has no such luxury so as their numbers dwindled due to casualties they have been unable to replace these losses. This handicap is what made arming the Free Syria Army early in the Civil War an absolute necessity. The delay by United States President Obama in deciding to arm them was the death knell which has led to the point where their force strength has been so diluted that the Islamist forces no longer see them as a necessary force in the Civil War which is evidenced by the beheading of the Free Syria Army Officer Kamal Hamami. The efforts in Syria now have but two equally disastrous outcomes, either a Shiite run Syria with or without al-Assad but still completely under the control of and owing their allegiance to Iran or a Sunni controlled Syria under the leadership of either al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or some combination thereof.

 

This present unfavorable situation within Syria where the possibility for a democratic state to result from the Civil War is no longer a viable option makes one curious as to why President Obama has chosen to start arming the Free Syria Army now when they have no future nor possibility of having any influence going forward. With the Civil War in Syria now solely a contest between Sunni and Shiite Islamist forces with no possibility for the pro-democracy Free Syria Army to prevail, is President Obama being given obviously false intelligence about the situation in Syria or is he intending for any arms now sent to arm the Free Syria Army to end up in the arms of the Muslim Brotherhood and/or al-Qaeda? Such a result cannot be a desirable result yet since the announcement last week of the intent of the United States to start arming the vetted members of the Free Syria Army with armaments the only reason they have yet to be shipped is because the Congress is standing in the breach preventing their being deployed. It is known that the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has the arms stockpiled currently in Jordan in the ready to transfer across the border into Syria awaiting the ‘go’ signal in order to make the transfer. With any luck and the providence of fate the Congress, with the obvious exception of Senator John McCain who never found a battle he didn’t wish to send arms, will continue to prevent the United States making a serious tactical error by supplying arms into a situation where these very same arms will eventually become possessed by mujahidin forces currently fighting in Syria. Strike up one more for leading from behind for the Ditherer in Chief, President Obama who is once more too late to the party. The real tragedy is that had President Obama allowed American arms to be supplied to the Free Syrian Army at the onset of the pro-democracy struggle against Bashir al-Assad there may have been at least a slim possibility for a democratic result in Syria and there very well might have been far fewer innocent civilian casualties and have spared Syria from near complete destruction that has resulted in the years of the Civil War.

 

Beyond the Cusp