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

 

Vultures Circling as Israel Goes to the Polls

 

Israelis will be casting their votes today but that is only the start of the process in forming the next coalition which will rule at most for four years. That is assuming this government makes it to the conclusion of its term, a real rarity in Israeli politics. Still, the results from today will be leered over with every morsel’s potential meanings gleaned and meticulously quantified with the unflinching attention of a vulture over an injured beast waiting for it to breathe its last signifying dinner is ready. Then it all starts tomorrow or even a few days down the road when President Reuven Rivlin has talked with the various heads of the respective parties to gather their input as to which particular leader they favor for the position of Prime Minister. Though it is not unheard of for some parties to initially place the name of their head as their choice for Prime Minister fully aware that such is next to impossible, though conceivable as President Rivlin is free to choose whomever he believes would be both the best choice and also capable of forming a ruling coalition exceeding sixty Ministers. Such a suggestion still mostly prolongs the process and may even work to produce a choice for the first attempt in forming a coalition to the candidate your party did not prefer, so it is best to not choose to make such a recommendation. That is particularly true this election cycle as whichever person between Benyamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Hertzog is given the go-ahead to form a coalition will likely succeed. Such is not an unprecedented situation but is not the most likely scenario but this election the citizens polling has depicted an evenly divided electorate between the two expected leaders to receive the nod to form a government. Once a choice has been made, it starts a clock of sorts which allows the candidate forty-two days (six weeks) to assemble sixty-one ministers by cobbling together sufficient parties by granting demands and negotiating alternatives. Should that leader fail, another leader is asked to try; he or she has up to twenty-eight days (three weeks) to attempt to achieve a coalition. Once the President believes there is little or no hope for any leader to forge a coalition, the elections are held again hoping for a different result, almost like Einstein’s definition of insanity, trying the same thing over and over expecting a different result. I guess one might look at the Israeli government forging mechanism and determine as such it is, it could qualify as insanity in action.

 

Meanwhile, there is a world out there with some just interested in seeing which side wins the opportunity to forge a coalition and succeeds so that they know with who they will be dealing, who will be Foreign Minister, Finance Minister and any other Ministerial position which may determine how they interact with Israel on any number of fronts. What is different about this election is the number of interested parties who have a definite preference to the point that there have been interferences in this election campaign of varying degrees which were mostly beyond acceptable levels. Where editorials in the foreign media are to be expected but daily editorials demanding that the Israeli public choose the leader of the opposition from the previous sitting government in the place of reelecting the current Prime Minister is perhaps attempting to have an influence on the electorate is a bit over the top. But writing editorials and holding frequent interviews with people antagonistic to the current Prime Minister and even holding repeated interviews with influential people, leaders of political parties, heads of NGOs and reporting intended sanctions which will be levied against Israel all demanding that one of the two leading candidates not be granted a chance to form the next government even should their party win by a decent or sizable margin is carrying things way too far into the influence peddling. A foreign government making threats against one of the leading heads of parties from being given the opportunity to form a coalition regardless of the votes cast and doing so for weeks even months or even immediately after elections were called is meddling beyond the acceptable level. But even this was not the limit of the interference.

 

There were efforts by NGOs within Israel who received much of their, if not all, funding from foreign entities or even foreign government and the European Union all of which were very direct in what was expected as far as attempts to influence the outcome of the Israeli election and there was a group V15 (aka V2015) which is allied with OneVoice, a tax exempt entity which recently received a $200,000 grant of funds from the United States State Department and who was headed by political strategist Jeremy Bird leading five Democratic consultants all directly ordered to work for the defeat of Netanyahu as directed from both the State Department and the White House and probably by President Obama personally. Bird and his team are working with a group known as V15 which is a politically allied partnership with OneVoice which describes itself as utilizing grassroots canvassing and door-to-door politicking tasked to amplify the voice of Israelis and Palestinians to empower the election of, as they candidly have stated, “anybody but Bibi” allowing those more favorable to the two-state solution to defeat Netanyahu removing what President Obama identifies as the greatest threat blocking his forging a lasting peace. This interference in the Israeli elections if legal is only by depending on what the meaning of is is as well as the definition of interference is. Had Israel done similar against the reelection of President Obama during the 2012 elections the group and its entire staffing would have been arrested and charged with spying and working for a foreign government interfering in the election process of the United States and probably a dozen more charges and brought to trial and likely the top organizers and any of the people holding Israeli citizenship being imprisoned for an exceedingly long time. Such would not have been tolerated, let alone continued to act impervious to election laws about foreign interference.

 

Meanwhile, in almost unanimous agreement the media and anybody who could get themselves before a microphone or quoted in print or in pixels on the Internet were given such attentions providing they were speaking to removing Netanyahu from power and promoting Yitzhak Hertzog directly or simply pressing for any candidate from the opposition who would keep Netanyahu from holding any influence or power in the coming Israeli government. There were even demonstrations and organized rallies which though couched in innocuous to misleadingly tame to even inane terminology though any inspection of their mission or political support were all aligned across the globe to defeat Bibi Netanyahu. One example we recently found related to in an editorial titled A “Peace” Party where the events were describe as the global, “Dance for Peace,” in which parties are being held around the world in the name of electing an Israeli government that according to the organizers, will “bring peace” and “transform the Middle East” One does not need to look too much further before realizing the aim is to defeat Netanyahu and elect Hertzog as by doing so the impediment to peace, a strong and Zionist Israeli government will be replaced with a weaker and more pliable Israeli Prime Minister who can be pressured into making the necessary sacrifices to allow for the formation of a Palestinian Arab state carved out of land that belongs to Israel by any and every legality which can be derived from International Law. We discussed the particular treaties, conference, League of Nations ratifications, and inclusion carrying all forward within the charter of the United Nations in yesterday’s article titled, Israel Elections are Upon Us Tomorrow found within the final paragraph for those interested. This global Dance for Peace goes beyond the obvious assembling people who desire removing Netanyahu from leading the Israeli government and are willing to attempt to influence the Israeli electorate by staging these events throughout the globe which would also include positive coverage of their actions and thus accommodating their view and amplifying its effects, especially if it received such coverage internationally as was also an obvious goal.

 

As also stated in the editorial, this “peace” movement which is attempting to influence the Israeli election has some glaring assumptions at its base and also makes an oblique accusation against Israel, the supportive Israeli public and anybody who supports Netanyahu over Hertzog casting them as anti-peace, or even worse, as pro-war or warmongers. Prime Minister Netanyahu has made tremendous efforts to forge a peace with Mahmoud Abbas and has taken steps presumably beyond the sight of the average Israeli in order to facilitate the efforts by President Obama meeting even his demand for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to extend the building freeze well past its initial nine months making it virtually permanent, a dispensation which may be crucial in this election removing him from power as it caused a housing shortage and increased pricing, a likelihood very much desired by United States President Obama. The implied accusations of all the efforts to remove Prime Minister Netanyahu are predicated on erroneous assumptions that first-off Prime Minister Netanyahu does not desire peace, is unwilling to make the territorial sacrifices required for peace, desires to inflame tension to a breaking point forcing another war and finally that the Israeli people are equally guilty of these supposed crimes and would foolishly and blindly reelect Netanyahu if the entire world does not save them from themselves. These suppose that the Israelis alone are to blame for the lack of peace and the making of the Palestinian Arab state and that the Palestinians have already sacrificed for peace and are ready to jump at the chance for peace if only Israel would sacrifice even more if the Israelis even came close to making a fair peace settlement. These suppositions ignore reality to an unfathomable extent. The United Nations extended in the General Assembly Resolution 181 passed on November 29, 1947, offered the Arab League a petition plan where the Jews and Arabs would have divided the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea evenly and somewhat unfairly as close to half of the lands granted the Jews consisted of the Negev Desert while the Arabs would have received the prime farming lands and despite the Jews accepting this partition the Arab League refused to accept this initiative thus rendering it null and void in that process and opted instead to wage war a few months later on May 15, 1948 immediately the morning after Israel declared their independence. Israel had declared their independence on May 14, 1948 at sundown which in Jewish law was the actual beginning of the next day, May 15, 1948, the Israeli Independence Day.

 

Since then Israel offered what has been considered to be the acceptable over ninety-five percent of Judea and Samaria (West Bank), all of Gaza and to share Jerusalem, even dividing Jerusalem instead of internationalizing the city in a manner, and made this offer repeatedly since when Prime Minister Ehud Barak did so during the Camp David Accords under President William Jefferson Clinton during 2000 and January 2001 as a favor to President William Jefferson Clinton and both were refused by Yasser Arafat with his initial refusal coming in Paris where after being presented with Prime Minister Barak’s offering which included everything Arafat had demanded from President Clinton included in the offer by Arafat abruptly rising and stalking from the room without even making a subsequent demand or comment charging to his awaiting vehicle which was running which leads one to believe this was a planned exit though unexpected by President William Jefferson Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak or United State Secretary of State Madeline Albright who attempted to request for Arafat to return to the negotiations strangely running as best she was able calling Yasser Arafat who simply ignored her and drove away returning to the disputed territories and initiating the deadly Second Intifada as had been planned from even before the negotiations began. The offer was given again by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008 at the very end of George W. Bush Presidency which was refused out of hand by Mahmoud Abbas who demanded a complete right of return for five million plus Arab refugees within the boundary of Israel instead of mostly to the areas to be declared as the Palestinian State and refusing to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish People. Mahmoud Abbas has made numerous references to what he considers to be a fair offer of making the entirety of the lands between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea into an Arab state where the Jews will be initially permitted to reside and expected to accept their status as Dhimmis with the rule of the new state being under an Arab Muslim all powerful leader, presumably Mahmoud Abbas until Hamas replaces him, and with the Jews receiving no political rights and limited religious, social, legal, entrepreneurial or ownership rights. Such statements can be located on MEMRI using their search as we did using the search term Mahmoud Abbas and received a plethora of results. Making claims that the Israelis are solely to blame for the lack of peace or the formation of an Arab state and addressing the refugee problem simply aggravated intentionally with malice aforethought by the Arab states surrounding Israel border on or fall under anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and are definitively anti-Israeli. They are also as false as any statement which nullifies and abrogates any Palestinian culpability for the lack of peace. Perhaps such lack of actions against the Palestinians is due to the small fact that there has been no Palestinian election since 2006 and even longer for Mahmoud Abbas’s position as the leader of the Palestinian Authority while Israel holds elections regularly and often. That would be a nice thought and would pass muster except that worldwide demonstrations consistently target Israel and seldom if ever the Palestinians plus all diplomatic and economic pressures, threats, proclamations, sanctions, boycotts, arraignments and punishments almost without fail are used against Israel while the Palestinians simply receive the majority of aid monies in the entire world through NGOs, UNRWA, funding from individual governments especially from the United States, Europe and the European Union as well as from numerous other United Nations Agencies. The funding of the Arab Palestinian entities is measurable in the billions per month and likely trillions per year should all of their monies including clandestine funding by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other secretive sources. Such inequities have unfortunately become so commonplace and almost to the point of being mundane that they no longer raise even a question from any corner of the world and the Palestinian Arabs are held guiltless while the Israelis and held culpable for every sin and transgression real or imagined and such should deserve far more even scrutiny than any appear willing to grant. With the measurable rise in anti-Semitism worldwide, these disparities of intentions, actions and accusations will only increase even more until they become an all against the one, the one and only Jewish State and possibly only place on the earth where a Jew is permitted the freedom to worship as they please. On that day Israel will be the sole nation with universal freedom of religion, the last and only.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Election Madness

 

Never in my short little life have I seen, read about or otherwise been knowledgeable of an election which has gathered so many influences from outside its borders as the current election in Israel. The entire brouhaha over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech before the United States Congress was simply over the top and over exactly what President Obama claimed it was about, the Israeli elections. There is not now nor ever was any such rule of not meeting or allowing a head of state to address Congress and/or meet with representatives of the White House even the day before an election in their home nation, let alone weeks ahead of the election. The polls are biased towards the “Zionist Camp” so as to provide them cover to claim election fraud if they do not perform at near to or better than the nationalist camps. Even allowing Livni and Hertzog to refer to their alliance as the Zionist Camp would be akin to a Likud-Jewish Home alliance as the Christian Coalition. There could not be more misdirection and untruths allowed in an election as has occurred here and the level of lies and misrepresentations promises to hit even higher levels in the remaining week and a half.

 

There is another side to the international interference in the Israeli elections and that is money. There has been set-up a nongovernmental campaign fund which is circumventing Israeli election laws and is being permitted to do so as it supports the politically correct side, the leftist internationalists, or in other worlds, the “Zionist Camp” of Livni and Hertzog (Hatnua and Labor). The theme is loosely corralled around a familiar theme, “Change” and it comes without any real Hope. The unspoken name of the group is “anybody but Bibi” Netanyahu but is about so much more. The foreign money and electioneering assistance is being provided all but directly from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. The leader of this advisory effort is the grass roots organizer from the reelection campaign in the form of Jeremy Bird and the V15 group. Newsmax specified the group is made up of five Democrats, under the leadership of Bird. And the Washington Free Beacon, meanwhile, reported that the V15 group was actually working with the U.S. based OneVoice, an activist organization which was funded to the tune of $200,000 from the United States State Department. The relationship between V15, originally called V2015, and OneVoice is solid enough for the V15 community organizing campaign to write IOUs and have them accepted with the full knowledge that a day or two before the election the connection will be announced and the cash will be transferred and all bills thus paid in full, and if not, well, it was all for a good cause, the promotion of the “righteous” people in power in Israel such that President Obama can finally get his peace plan enacted.

 

That last sentence might cause some to query what peace plan. The problem has been with Mahmoud Abbas, not Prime Minister Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu has refused to force every Jewish resident in the contested territories, living beyond the Green Line in Area C which the original Oslo Accord plans delineated as becoming part of Israel when peace was finalized and only due to a long propaganda campaign from the Arabs and supported by extreme leftist anti-Semites has those lines and concepts been replaced and finalized by President Obama where Israel will surrender all contested land in its entirety. With that as the White House demands there need not be any agreement from Mahmoud Abbas, Israel can be forced to remove all Jews, IDF forces, checkpoints and anything else vacating the areas thus gifting Mahmoud Abbas the entirety of what he has demanded while refusing to agree to make peace once received thus blocking any peace proposals. President Obama has a new plan which requires somebody nice and weak and pliable as Prime Minister of Israel, somebody who believes as he does that the problem making peace impossible is the intransigence of Israel and that if only Israel would vacate all of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem would peace come on gilded wings. Such thinking in not only excessively dangerous and potentially ruinous for Israel but will do nothing more than signal the buildup to the next Arab-Israeli War which except for the grace of G0d A1mighty would signal the death of Israel or at the very least horrific loss of civilian life on the Israeli side of such a war as about the only border which would not be backed by Arab armies would be the border with the Sinai Peninsula where instead of Egyptian forces there would be ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas and potentially IRGC forces bringing the final surrounding border under attack.

 

One might be pressed to ask why any sane individual would desire to put Israel in such peril? The answer is as strange as it is borderline demonic. The reason would be to gain an additional argument to convince the Iranians that they do not need a nuclear weapon in order to destroy Israel. Such inevitability would be set up for conventional forces being used to such an end. One might then point out that Iran also desires the destruction of the United States, of the Great Satan and the destruction of the Little Satan would simply whet their lips for the bringing on of the other. That is the problem with sacrificing Israel on the Iranian altar to Baal, it would just convince Iran that they are that much of an irresistible force in the world that they might then move on to the big target, the Great Satan. Of course there is also the possibility that despite the horrific loss of civilian life from tens of thousands , if not hundreds of thousands of rockets raining down on Israel from within Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (West Bank) Gaza, Sinai Peninsula and even potentially Jordan who would join the fight if for no other reason than self-preservation as Jordan would come under threat from ISIS or either permit them to pass through into Judea and Samaria and aid the Palestinians or face conquest by ISIS and Jordan might see such as an opportunity to sufficiently weaken ISIS by allowing them to fight against the IDF. All of this scenario would be a possible outcome of forcing Israel back to within the 1949 Armistice Lines which are also known as the Green Line or the 67 Lines which President Obama demanded Israel use as the basis for a border with the Arab forces with land swaps which were to be laid to the Arab leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas to approve otherwise the Green Line would become the border. Does anybody honestly believe that Abbas and company would allow any land swaps when instead they could set Israel into one really messy bind having to resettle hundreds of thousands or even more than a million civilians forced from their homes and potentially their jobs as Abbas would receive all this treasures without having to make peace or even the slightest gesture gifted via fiat by President Obama and an overtly compliant Israeli Prime Minister, either Tzipi Livni or Yitzhak Hertzog. One need look no further than their campaigning to see their intentions to restore relations with President Obama and doing what is necessary to obtain a just peace which President Obama need only have them in power in order to fashion a lasting peace.

Equally frightening is that President Reuven Rivlin has just stated that if neither side gains a sizeable or clear majority, then he would call in the two main parties and demand a unity government with some version of power sharing. He further iterated that he would call Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu and Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog to a joint meeting and spell out his plans for finding a solution through changing the election system. President Reuven Rivlin’s feelings are that there need be a wholesale overhaul of the elections system to prevent Israel from suffering the fate of other divided nations where elections result every year to year and a half because the coalitions are so fragmented that a stable governance is next to impossible. The last Knesset took the initial steps towards such a solution by upping the threshold a party must attain to be included in the next Knesset. This may have been circumvented this election by the partnering of even opposing parties simply to gain eligibility of their combined lists after which they plan on splitting again into the smaller groups which one, the other or both would not have attained the mandates to be included in the government. The solution need not be a complete overhaul of the government but simply a new manner for choosing the Prime Minister might be in order. Even such a change would be difficult as how would one decide which party leaders would be permitted to attempt to run for the office or Prime Minister? Such criteria would need addressing before any such deal might be even discussed and satisfy all of the main parties. Any set system would need to have sufficient flexibility to permit changes in representation to permit a candidate for attempting to be elected Prime Minister should they feel they had the support over the two otherwise favored party leaders. A new plan should not simply keep Labor and Likud as determined to be the only candidates.

 

First we must get to the fateful Election Day when everything may prove to be unnecessary and a coalition be obvious and easily assembled though such never seems to be the case. May it be that President Reuven Rivlin will have an easy choice before him and there not be any threats or arm twisting to force a unity government when such is not necessary. May President Reuven Rivlin have the clear and true sight in choosing the Party around which a lasting coalition can be formed. One would probably be right to fear that President Reuven Rivlin may look at the election and even if one camp would easily be able to form a coalition, choose to attempt his unity government in order to enact whatever is his plan to make elections capable of forming stable governance in the future. If Israel was to change the means of voting for a government and its leadership, may it be performed in such a manner as to also derive an actual Constitution which could use the current Basic Laws as its base and add in the rest around that core. Such may also alter how we choose the Knesset and may even form a second representative body and further decide on some manner of stepped electioneering where there are a series of votes where those missing the required percentage they do not move to the next level until one receives a majority. Such a system could do with no more than three elections to get to such an end. Perhaps it will prove best to have such performed by the Knesset itself. First Israel needs to get past the outside influences and choose their next Knesset and choose, as they are told, between Livni and Hertzog or Netanyahu. It may be important to know that between Hertzog and Livni that they have agreed upon allowing Livni be Prime Minister first. More on the election as we approach that fateful day of choice, Election Day.

 

Beyond the Cusp