Netanyahu May Have Finally Decided on Government

 

None of us are ever likely to be on the inside and be privileged, or should I say cursed, to know exactly what outside pressures Prime Minister Netanyahu has had to face while deciding what kind of government to form. To most of us it appeared so simple, gather over sixty seats with right leaning to far right wing parties and include a minimal number of parties who might go weak under pressure. That is the sad part, that if Israel chooses the governance best for her that we are assured that the world will come down on us heavy and hard demanding that we bend this way and that until we make a Philadelphia pretzel look like a piece of straight bread. But it is easy to suspect that things were somewhat different this time as one of the few friends Israel has depended upon has turned into her greatest threat in far too many ways. We can all assume that President Obama made it very clear that if Prime Minister Netanyahu went ahead and formed that sixty-one or sixty-seven or whatever number right-leaning government that he would face an adversarial Washington which would not guarantee support in all the usual places. We all know what that threat means and what usual place that President Obama references, the United Nations Security Council. What is left out of that formula is that thus far the United States has not faced the need to exercise their veto purely to protect Israel as the usual Arab state demands either never reached the Security Council or failed to attain the necessary nine votes in favor despite their belief that had it in spades when they presented their petition. We heard some of the caterwauling over the past week if we listened to the wind which carried with it demands that Netanyahu make a demonstrative demonstration of his dedications and whole-hearted support for the two state solution which the Europeans and President Obama and company hold so dear. What may have escaped us was the real meaning of those threats and demands emanating from Secretary of State Kerry, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, State Department spokespersons such as Jennifer Psaki, and President Obama who may have even pressured Netanyahu directly in a personal phone call made necessary due to the reason that it is within weeks, months, years, centuries or millennia to the Iran Agreement, Israeli elections, solar eclipse, arrival of Halley’s Comet or convergence of the planets with the center of the galaxy so President Obama must not appear to permit any public meetings between he and Bibi though he can call and berate him endlessly to toe the line and support the two-state-solution. All this pressure was around one single, but likely unspoken demand, as speaking its name would be uncomely, though why that might matter now is beyond me. That demand was for Prime Minister Netanyahu form a broad coalition and a unity government with Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni and reward these coequal partners with top cabinet spots such as Justice for Livni as she was so effective in carrying out the Obama principles in the last government, and Herzog to get Foreign Minister and their other highest members to get the Defense Minister and be granted complete control over any building to be approved for Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria. The people placed in that last position need only have one requirement, the ability to say ‘לא’ or ‘no’ in English. This was the real reason Prime Minister Netanyahu kept vacillating and putting off the natural right leaning parties and particularly Jewish Home as I can guarantee you that Naftali Bennett’s name figured prominently in President Obama’s demands for people he refused to find comfort should they be included in any coalition.

 

Even by American standards the interference by President Obama and his Administration in Israeli politics, at levels even exceeds those of President Clinton or anybody before him. The interference by providing election assistance had been done previously most notably by President Clinton and Democrat Party assistance for the Labor Party in Israel has gotten to the point I’m waiting for them to have joint conventions in the future, especially if an Israeli election can be scheduled to fit in relative close proximity to an American elections cycle, preferably a Presidential election. I can see it now, the newly nominated Democrat President with the newly chosen Vice Presidential candidate to his right and the selected Labor Party leader on his left with all three with their hands held together raised in a sign of might and unity of purpose. Why not, is that any sillier than an election group in Israel using the slogan ‘Change the Government’ and ‘Anybody but Bibi’? The only thing they were missing was the Hope for the Future so that could be abbreviated and they would have the proven formula, ‘Hope and Change’. Some slogans are too good to let die. First President Obama launched the campaign to unseat Bibi and the Israelis chose Netanyahu despite being informed what was good for them if they understood what the President of the United States demanded of them. Apparently President Obama missed the parts in the Bible when he learned all about Christianity from the Pastor Reverend Wright whose sermons he never heard, probably had snuck out for a smoke break and missed every last sermon, but he missed the part where the Jewish people were defined by their greatest of leaders, Moses, as well as the all-powerful One when they would discuss the difficulties and presented the main excuse that these were a stiff necked and stubborn people. If Moses and the L0rd found the Jews at their most timid to be frustratingly stubborn and stiff-necked, what did they expect of us today? Demand we vote as instructed by our what? Betters, was that the word? No, I don’t think so, we have our own ideas and will decide what is best for us and not somebody who had appeared all too ready to throw us under the bus for any reason and especially if it would grant him a second Nobel Peace Prize, as that is the only thing President Obama sees Israel as being good for, permitting herself to be splayed out before her enemies and lain low for easy conquest just so before the Middle East explodes into a thousand shards as everything is broken being cut by the jagged and sharp edges of the stone known as Jerusalem and the people who hold her as their only capital city for the last three thousand years and then some. The lesson President Obama missed was on Zechariah 12:2-3 where it is said, “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.” What might this have told President Obama about trying to influence the Israelis through word or threat? Oh, most likely that we as a people have been threatened by the worst and the best of them and somehow we always seemed to find our own path and walked merrily listening to our own drummer and dancing to our own beat come what consequences may come.

 

Apparently Bibi has finally chosen to fear the threats of the people of Israel above the threats from the ditherer in Washington who has grown so infatuated with his own voice that he still believes it can move mountains and control the minds of the weak and weary. For far too long the leadership of Israel has been too weary and acted too weak when facing this menace when the best route was to stand firm and let it rip and give as good as you got. The funny thing is despite the demands and pressures; President Obama only respects one thing, strength. As a community organizer he knows how to argue from a position of strength which has always meant his position when it was backed by a group ready to fight for what they desired. President Obama, as an effective community organizer would only take on the causes for which he had a ready and willing populace group which he could call out to do whatever was required to gain those demands which had been presented in their name. This is what was behind his threat that he “has a pen and a phone and knows how to use both.” The pen was the obvious reference to Executive Orders and the phone was presumably connected to a group in the society which he knew supported everything he does and would gladly show up wherever needed and provide the agitation required to put the correct measure of force behind the cause, whatever that cause might be. The pen does not work in Israel and who could President Obama call out to protest beyond those who are already out there protesting, thus his two biggest weapons are nullified. That leaves the only single threat which might appear to hold water and be a meaningful threat, the threat to no longer protect Israel before resolutions brought before the Security Council, so exactly how vulnerable and what are the probabilities and realities about the threat itself?

 

The first thing we must ascertain is exactly how far might President Obama go in leaving Israel vulnerable to United Nations whims and fancies? Whatever is going to happen in the General Assembly is going to happen and usually against Israel and there is little anybody is willing or even could do even if willing, that is a dead zone for Israel. Then there is the Human Rights Commission which as part of its own laws and procedures is required to denounce Israel at the start of every session whether there is anything Israel related even to review, it does not matter as the bylaws require the denunciation of Israel before the session is permitted to continue. To point out that the Human Rights Commission is probably the only place outside of UNRWA where Israel is held in such unpopular esteem, makes it another lost cause. The rest of the commissions, agencies and organizations attached or circulating the United Nations all have their preconceived levels of disdain for Israel and her people and the reverse is surprisingly not necessarily a given, most Israelis have little care about the numerous appendages of the United Nations. So, thus far the threat by the United States President to stop support for Israel has absolutely no effective change as these areas are already universally against Israel by a large majority. That leaves the Security Council which is the one place where the veto power of the United States matters just as do the veto powers of Great Britain, France, Russia and China. So, it is possible that Israel might find another benefactor to provide the veto coverage needed. But would that be necessary? It would if Israel was concerned with everything the Security Council produced. There are basically three classes of resolution which the Security Council can issue, the Chapter Seven binding resolutions, the Chapter Six nonbinding resolutions and referential resolution which carry advisory weight and will likely receive more weight once should the General Assembly also validate it but still it would not be binding. The nonbinding resolutions passed by the Security Council are still heavy weight resolution and often carry the threat of being voted on again as a Chapter Seven binding resolution, and that brings us to the crux of the matter, Chapter Seven Resolutions. We have to face it that even if the President instructs Ambassador Samantha Power not to veto everything else, Israel will survive even if we may suffer a slight rash. But would President Obama instruct Ambassador Power to not veto a Chapter Seven binding resolution? Such a move allowing such a resolution to take effect requiring Israel to comply or face potential military force from the United Nations, and do not weigh such lightly as it was just one such Chapter Seven resolution which led to the Korean War, would President Obama, the Ditherer in Chief, actually deploy United States military personnel against Israel in order to back a Chapter Seven edict? To quote President Obama, “I was elected to end wars, not to start them.” It is our contention that the threat of not protecting Israel from every vote in the United Nations Security Council will only apply to Chapter Six nonbinding resolutions and not Chapter Seven where the United States veto would be utilized as it would not be prudent to set up a situation where United States military would enter into a shooting war against Israel. So, once again we see that President Obama has made a threat which costs him nothing and in the instance where his words would also require action by the President and the armed services, then the likelihood is that he will crumble before the pressures. Yes, Bibi made the correct choice to call the President’s bluff and listen to the Israeli people and forge a right leaning coalition. Now let us hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu can muster the stomach for some real pushback and he can start actually building and not pretending to support additional residences in Judea and Samaria. Also, start every cabinet meeting with a reading of the San Remo Conference Treaty as it is fairly short and Israel needs to get the reality of how much land we have surrendered which the Sinai Peninsula was a coequal part compared with Jordan which was built on lands set aside for the State of the Jews. Below is a copy of the San Remo Conference Agreement. Read it and remember it as it is a great place to start in communicating to every corner of the world who claim that Israel and the land promised to the Jewish People after World War I which had nothing to do with the Holocaust which had yet to occur and had everything to do with reinstating the Jewish People in their homelands. The restitution of the Jewish homelands was seen as a good and necessary step to start to make amends for the evils perpetrated against the Jews throughout the world and it was reasoned that restoring them to their Biblical Lands would make a great start. Let us press for this start to be made good and end the perfidy perpetrated today by the same governments under presumably more civilized leadership than in all of history yet they will require great amounts of jolts from the past, a retelling of the worlds they themselves transcribed at San Remo and made a solemn oath which must be attended to before the past no longer has meaning as history is no longer a vestige within the curricula where history has been replaced with lessons in proper acceptance of the new tolerance and acceptance which has little time or regard for promises past. Those who care not for the past will soon find themselves in the midst of it as it has a way of sneaking up on us with great stealth followed by a roar as it swallows the present whole immersing all in the retelling of tales of history ignored.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

 

San Remo Conference Agreement

It was agreed –
(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.
(b) That the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:
The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The boundaries of the said States will be determined, and the selection of the Mandatories made, by the Principal Allied Powers.
The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Perhaps a Trial Separation is in Order

 

Many people believe falsely that Israel had been aided by the United States through thick and thin from her first perceptions by the World Zionist Congress right on up until the recent elections where Benyamin Netanyahu won against all odds and the extreme efforts by American organized, financed and manned opposition which many believe was ordered directly from the White House and financed directly from the United States State Department to the tune of somewhere between $200,000 to as much as $400,000. The groups were known as V15 and V2015 which was a fully financed subsidiary of OneVoice which is where the funding was funneled from the State Department to OneVoice and then passed through to V15 to cover their efforts. One of their main efforts was to find out early on Election Day who the people were living in predominantly Arab areas that had regularly not voted in elections. Then they went and provided these people with transportation to the voting places in order to facilitate there voting in this election. They also performed this service in other areas where the vast majority of the people were polled not to be supporting Bibi or any of the right wing, religious or Zionist parties. As Election Day was winding its way through the afternoon and into the evening hours these efforts were ramped up and all those in the targeted neighborhoods and cities who had yet to vote were driven en-masse to their respective polling locations. These efforts were what Prime Minister Netanyahu was referring to when he made the comment, “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are going en-masse to the polls. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them on buses.” There was no animus, hatred or racial slur in Netanyahu’s statement, merely a representation of actual votes intended to fire some enthusiasm for those voters who had yet to vote and were not among those being aided, one might even say coerced or even forced, to vote knowing almost for certain that their votes would not favor another Netanyahu coalition government in Israel if their efforts were sufficient and thus succeeded.

 

That is the reality of the electioneering and acts to influence the Israeli election which has all the signs of originating from the White House. Why would we believe that? First, there is the hostility shown by President Obama and the fact that he had taken efforts from his very first day in office to force a solution on Israel as he had initially attempted any number of changes in the world situations, both within the United States and around the world. There was his speech in Cairo which initiated the acts which were named the Arab Spring as hope springs eternal and these changes could only produce positive results, after all, he was the one who had also claimed, “We are the people we have been waiting for. We are the change that we seek,” during his Super Tuesday speech in Chicago as he took the lead and was now the obvious Democrat candidate for President with everything done but the crowning at the Democrat Convention in Colorado. That the Arab Spring could have been traced to President Obama’s Cairo speech or to Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi (محمد البوعزيزي‎), a vegetable vendor in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, who in protest of the official and her aids from the local government’s harassment and humiliation suffered as his wares and means of support were confiscated leaving him without any options or hope, self-immolated on December 17, 2010 spanning the Tunisian uprising which forced out the dictatorial government, can be debated but what was important to President Obama was that he was credited as the source in many news stories as the uprisings spread beyond Tunisia. The initial hopes for massive change and the lifting of oppressive governance replacing it with democratic principles and the human rights which accompany such governance continued apace with the overthrow, assisted by President Obama, of President Mubarak in Egypt. The Arab Spring and its accompanying hopes were quickly dashed as Syrian protests were violently opposed by Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad and Libya fell into tribal warfare with the central government not ruling beyond the Capital or even beyond the central government buildings and having to hold its positions through use of force making it even less a real governing body than the terrorist ruling in Benghazi or anywhere else in Libya. These two violent failures, which were commented in our article The Only Real Difference Between Libya and Syria, A Look Back, were the death of the Arab Spring and the birth of an Arab Winter, birthing a seemingly unending conflagration in both Syria and Libya. Of course President Obama only remembers those positive results of his active interferences with other nations, which of course are repeated and reinforced by his staff and closest advisors. This echo-chamber reinforcement set the stage for the interference in the Israeli elections which would also necessarily produce the best of results.

 

This was the point where the Israeli voters had their own definition of what would be the best of results, then believing them unattainable as other party leaders were never thought to be capable of replacing Benyamin Netanyahu, so they went forth to their polling stations, cast their votes and returned Netanyahu to power with numbers leaving absolutely nothing in doubt. Now that the efforts by President Obama to influence and change the Israeli government are apparently thought to have failed by White House standards, the next obvious step is to ridicule the Israeli elected leader and assign some form of scornful actions to Netanyahu which can be displayed as a disqualifying rap against him. There was this factual comment made by Netanyahu which in Israel was considered a revealing of the truth but in the White House it was surprise, surprise, racist. Imagine that, the White House uncovered racism in the Israeli voters and their Prime Minister. The fact that Yitzhak Hertzog and Tzipi Livni were not elected by a groundswell of support from the voters even after the numbers of Arab and other targeted groups were driven to the polls in an effort to have full representation of the Israeli electorate was all the proof necessary. Their transporting people to vote based this altruistic and honorable act as being performed in order to assure that the highest percentage of Arab voters voted in the elections. The effort and the forces from the White House would have extended this service to the voters in the rest of Israel and even the “settlements” (neighborhoods the world believe is occupied by Israel) but they ran out of time and there is only so much one can do with the mere hundreds of thousands of Dollars and Euros donated from the White House through Europe and even to some Arab nations. So the Israelis foolishly chose to elect Bibi and now the President of the United States is furious with their choice.

 

The question now is how much damage President Obama will inflict upon Israel and her people before his unseemly rage passes and he returns to his more normal state of white hot displeasure and raw anger with Israel. The initial threat which has appeared consists of forcing a solution on Israel and birthing into existence an Arab state carved out of Israel’s body shrinking Israel back to the Green Line which are considered by all as indefensible. Forcing Israel to concede to the Euro-Arab defined solution which grants the to be established Arab entity, at best it would be a dysfunctional state and at worst a terrorist haven with no accountable government, would place Ben Gurion Airport within shoulder launched MANPADS anti-aircraft missiles and also place the Tel Aviv coastal shores a mere nine miles away, laid out on a plane literally choking with targets including the central towers which makeup the heart of Tel Aviv, easily within the range of even the most primitive of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and potentially also Fatah and all in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the Grad and Katyusha rockets which have sufficient range to strike all of Tel Aviv. As the rockets could be fired from the higher grounds of the Judean ridge, the Judean hills, the rockets can be watched by the team launching them seeing exactly where it strikes and adjusting their aiming accordingly. Within a few shots the rockets could be effectively aimed producing a fire for effect scenario where the rockets are simply fired from their launchers as rapidly as is possible. A well-trained crew could easily fire four rockets each minute placing all of the projectiles exploding within close proximity causing multiple strikes on the largest of targets, the central Tel Aviv towers. Should five or six or potentially more than a dozen of the tallest structures in Tel Aviv at the height of a business day be struck down into a burning heap of twisted steel, shattered glass, shredded sheetrock and hundreds or thousands of bodies with many burned beyond recognition, what would Israeli response look like? Does anybody in their right mind believe that Israel would settle for a brokered ceasefire from the terrorist entities or the governing body and stand down accepting the losses because Europe, the United States and the United Nations demanded such? There would be no question what the Israeli response to such an assault would be; it would be an all-out war and potentially a genocidal war ending any dreams of an Arab state cut from the Biblical heart of Israel.

 

The prelude to the inevitable troubles and potential horrors would be the Palestinian state receiving hundreds of thousands if not millions of refugees as the neighboring Arab nations emptied their refugee camps and simply marched them en-masse across their borders and into the new entity carved from Israel upon its being founded. Any conflagration which may be placed into motion by the terrorist bombardment of Tel Aviv causing untold destruction, inestimable fatalities and serious grievance by the Israeli people and the IDF which would result in a systematic driving of the Palestinians across the Jordan River as they would be left only one other alternative, death. This is a reality that Israelis hope with all their might and souls will never come to be. Contrary to the belief that the Israelis refuse to allow their leaders to make the sacrifices necessary for peace, the Arabs have refused every offer always demanding one additional concession, that Israel accept into their borders and awarded citizenship on arrival the close to or over five million refugees from the refugee camps which have been holding Muslim Arabs since the initial Arab Israeli War in 1948 and have also condemned their children and their children in some instances to the fourth or fifth generation all so they can be returned into Israel making Israel a predominantly Arab and Muslim state, denying them any rights such as to own land, to hold any but the most degrading or manual work, absolutely no citizenship, limited education other than UNRWA provided education, and other demeaning limitations plus being kept in the camps in perpetuity as if they were lepers or criminals. These victims suffering a near hopeless state would be forced into even worse conditions as they would be forced into the nascent Palestinian state where the one comfort they had, a roof over their heads and meals for them to eat sending them to a state of victimization as there would be almost no manner or way for accepting such an influx of people. Even should every Palestinian family take a refugee family into their homes, even that would but give some form of normalcy for less than half, way less than half. Forcing such a solution would have numerous other problems such as the hundreds of thousands of settlers who would need assistance as they would also be forced from their homes.

 

The difference being that the Israelis have taken in refugees of a sort before when the people in the extremities, the definition of the areas outside of Tel Aviv metropolis, came under sustained rocker fire be it from Gaza and Hamas and others in the south or from Hezballah in the north and the people were taken in largely by these very same settlers, it would be ironically tragic. Any manner of looking at the long range results of forcing such a solution will result in an even more dire emergency situation of even greater magnitude and less options. Allowing the Arabs to form their state by threat of force and without a formal treaty would be taken as support for their further actions against Israel. One must remember that Abbas is just as much an insatiable terrorist bent on the destruction of the Jewish state by any means possible. That is why the aerial assault on Tel Aviv is as predictable as is the sun rising in the east. It is simply what many of the Arabs living under Abbas, and formerly Arafat, are, terrorists and nothing else in their entire life. As children they were taught to throw rocks at IDF soldiers whenever they saw them. Rocks became Molotov firebombs as they grew and eventually became rockets and bullets. What many do not realize, largely because they could not care less, is that being a terrorist pays quite well once you reach a certain level. At the very top it makes billionaires and lower down it still pays better than farming and is a far easier a job, and that is what terrorism has become, an industry. Until the Western world wakes to the reality that the Arab Palestinians are in reality simply a terrorist training camp, nothing more, and the more area and funding provided, the more terrorism will be produced. Perhaps the time has come to end this farcical cavalcade of terror.

 

Beyond the Cusp