Ten Democrat Senators Send Warnings to Netanyahu

 

There were four Jews amongst the ten Senators from the United States who decided that it was their responsibility to instruct the Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, exactly what he is permitted and what he must never do. The ten Senators, beginning with the four Jews, were Senators Barbara Feinstein of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Al Franken of Minnesota, Brian Schatz of Hawaii along with Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tom Carper of Delaware, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Really, what is wrong, demeaning President Trump getting a little tiresome and boring so you’ve decided to run the world starting, where else, with Israel. Well, not much of a surprise all things considered. You probably believe that with President Obama out of office it has fallen to you to be the conscience of the world and the ultimate advisors of what will be acceptable and correct and that which will not. Allow me to thank you for your thoughtful, kingly and wonderful advice for Prime Minister Netanyahu as he has proven far too weak when facing American leftists when they decide to instruct Israelis on how they must act, what they must accept, those things they are required to accept, what the proper course of action is and of the things the world demands of Israel. Please understand that perhaps you should turn your attention to the small deficits of your own country which managed in the past decade to triple its national debt from a mere seven-trillion dollars to closing in on and soon to surpass twenty-one-trillion dollars. Perhaps you might desire working on the divisions in your society and let us address the divisions in ours. Considering the track record of the United States while under the ruinous control of your political party over most of the last decade, perhaps we would be best advised to take a diametrically opposite path to anyone you might recommend.

 

The audacity of you and the European Union in condemning the demolition of illegal Arab structures while also demanding we demolish legally built Jewish ones is beyond all measure of presumptuous pompousness. You are the Emperor dressed in his new sheer garments parading around proudly until the child points out the truth, that you are naked in your arguments and accusations and are like said Emperor giving others apparel advice. Your own mistreatment of those who make the near fatal mistake of disagreeing with your world-view makes your instructions to our Prime Minister for what they are, opinionated blowhard blustering containing nothing but accusations of crossing lines you draw at random simply to accuse others of daring to cross over and not dance to the piper whose tunes you write and we actually refuse to perform the dance you demand. Well, excuse us if we dance to the beat of a different drummer and ignore your piper and the sweet tune frosted with the leftist ideology which demands that everything resulting from Judeo-Christian ethics and history must now be destructed, torn down and replaced with the new barbarism which you expound. So sorry, but we will keep the tablets and the Ten Commandments written there by Hashem and while we are at it we will also keep the traditions of Torah and follow the commandment to live in all the lands that Hashem has given us. We understand that to you Torah is but equal to Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Chaucer’s tales, just more boring and even older and because they are old, they are no longer applicable in your brave new world. In your world everything from before that fateful year of 1984 must be discarded and the new definitions of gender, or lack thereof, new definitions of race and racism, the new definitions of everything which you and your ilk have devised for the perfect society, we must choose a different and far more tried and tested path which Hashem commanded of us.

 

Five beautiful, glorious and holy Torah Scrolls which carry near infinite wisdom and are the foundation of all Judaism and their culture and the Jewish civilization is built around the Torah and the teaching of Torah

 

You have your egalitarian society where all are created equal by acts of Congress because unless the laws of the land force people to love one another and treat everyone by the same rules, they will act as barbarians; well, we have a different way of instructing the interactions between people and they are far older than your nation and were commanded by a force far superior to your new world symphony which your piper plays and according to you the world must dance the proper dance as choreographed in your leftist confabs. We will dance to the source of freedom and liberty of the spirit and the basis upon which Western society was based before your redefining of the moral fibers of the world you envision. A gender neutral society where one may, if they are struck by such a whim, choose to be male, female or genderless, where one may marry whomever, or even whatever, they choose even to include a mannequin (see image below). You have invented names for so many new and varied genders that the Biblical simplicity of only two, well, we can understand that in your new definition world that two would simply be boring and not permit sufficient diversity. That is the driving force behind everything in this perfect world construct, the diversity quotient. The greater the diversity, the better, provided the diversity be defined by the exacting rules which you and your fellow Democrats and the rest of the leftist culture have derived for all of us. We understand that Israel must be simply the America under your terms in the Middle East because we must live and act as defined and instructed by our New Leftist masters. We understand that if we refuse to follow your wise council then we will be defined as deviants and possibly lumped in with the worst of the worst, conservatives, or even worse, Trump supporters. You are aware that he has gained a following here in Israel and we find him thusfar to be a welcome relief after President Obama and his ruinous policies in the Middle East.

 

Senji Nakajima and Mannequin Wife Saori

 

You made clear your demands of Israel while President Obama held the White House and we rejected it then; what makes you believe it would have any greater weight now? We understand that when we hold our next election you will send Democrat Party campaign managers, media experts, and a bevy of ground workers all in an effort to make Israel into what you demand of it by electing those who will obey your every demand. You attempted that last election and the one previous and it did not succeed. Granted, in 1999 you succeeded in electing Ehud Barak and defeating Bibi Netanyahu, well those days are done and if we may quote a famous saying, “Never Again.” Were we to actually follow your demands we would very rapidly find ourselves in just the situation which Never Again, as a driving force, is meant to prevent. We understand that as long as we do what you insist that you are willing to accept any result including a second Shoah and the death of Israel. Of course, you probably believe if only you destroy Israel that the Middle East will break out in flower power and have a summer of love. You are dead wrong and we do not wish to join you and end up dead wrong because if we are dead wrong we are dead. That is why we will not be listening to your demands or your advice. We will ignore the mean articles and editorials which will follow in your media. You have to understand that we are not trying to have a democracy which happens to have a Jewish flavor, we are building the Jewish Homeland which for now will have a democratic flavor. If having a democracy should preclude being the Jewish Homeland, then we will simply have to dump democracy and continue being the Jewish Homeland. You have misjudged that which is most important to us in Israel and until you understand Zionism as the dream and the answer, the solution, of three thousand years of Jewish homelessness, then you will continue to give us misguided advice which is of absolutely no use, so please be quiet until you actually understand Israel because thusfar you are proving how completely ignorant you are.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Negotiations Palestinian Style

According to all expectations, negotiations between Israel and the terrorist entities out of Gaza led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but reputed to also have elements from al-Qaeda, PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), PLFP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Fatah, ISIS and others; are scheduled to resume later this week. These negotiations have been delayed so as to have them coincide with the Jewish High Holidays starting the day before Rosh HaShana which starts that evening. They are also scheduled to begin within two days of the termination of the month-long cessation of hostilities which some Hamas spokespeople have promised that rockets will resume raining down on Israeli cities, towns, homes, shopping malls, houses of worship, actually virtually anywhere as these rockets are launched with the expressed accuracy of a blindfolded darts shooter. All hopes within Israel are that those threats were simply more of the bluster often emanating from Palestinian spokespersons. Perhaps one way of laying out the difficulties these negotiations will present is to simply reference some of the bandying of demands and rejections which have been reported in various media sources.

Israel has repeatedly stressed their demand for the demilitarization of Gaza and the Hamas and others have simply stated that such is not even a subject to be breached at the negotiations as their weapons are necessary to their ability and actions to resist and destroy the occupation and the occupiers. Hamas spokesman and political leader Khaled Mashaal gave the media the following. “The subject of the resistance’s weapons isn’t open for negotiations. Those weapons are for fighting the occupying enemy. They are not for internal affairs.” Furthermore, there is the demand reported in the Arabic daily Al-Hayat that Doha warned it would deport Mashaal if he approved the agreement for the ceasefire framework as put forth by Egypt without insisting that Hamas’s demands construction of a seaport and airport in the Gaza Strip be incorporated as part of the agreement. Additionally, Osama Hamdan said Saturday that Israel must either accept its demands including lifting of the security blockade on Gaza and allow the construction of an airport and seaport or face “a war of attrition.” But these are the official demands and maximalist positions put forth by both sides, Israel demanding the demilitarization of Gaza to prevent the continued aggressions as constantly threatened as seen above, and on the other side, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the others insisting the end to the United Nations validated embargo which is designed to prevent, or at least minimize, the import of heavy weapon systems, more terrorist fighters and provisions for the construction of infiltration tunnels and other military bulwarks, and permit, if not assist, the construction both of an international airport and a fully equipped seaport allowing for unfettered importation of any and all goods as desired by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other terror entities.

All of this aside, what are the attitudes of the people, the Palestinian street, towards Israel and the ending of the near constant levels of violence which has become so commonplace that the media does not even bother to cover such violence unless it results in fatalities, often multiple Israeli fatalities or any Palestinian fatalities or even injuries. Perhaps relating a recent series of events might shed some light on this situation. Sixteen year old Mohammed Abu Sankara was participating in one of the regular afternoon rioting in Jerusalem and was reported to have joined with others hurling rocks, some shot from slings and the throwing of Molotov cocktails. The Israeli police responded shooting sponge anti-riot shot aimed for the low at the rioters’ legs. Mohammed Abu Sankara was struck in the leg and while running, retreating, he stumbled and fell striking his head on the road surface. His injuries were of a sufficient severity that the police had him transported to a hospital. Mohammed Abu Sankara was conscious at the point of transport but subsequently fell into a coma and died two days later. What is telling was the response from his mother when approached by the press at his funeral as well as the celebratory mass parade adjoining the passage of his casket to the cemetery.

Below is a report gathered from Palestinian Authority official television by PMW (Palestinian Media Watch) but first a few comments and quotes. The one thing one needs to know is that the Palestinian Authority still grants the families of those imprisoned or who die in terror related activities, which includes those participating in their scheduled rioting and other violence, a generous stipend for life. I am not sure that any entity could give me sufficient cash rewards what would have me celebrate any of my children sacrificing themselves as they are more precious than any monetary rewards. She exclaimed to the cameras, “This is the first time I see joy in my heart. This is the first time I see such joy. Thank Allah for giving him martyrdom.” I pray for the sake of this woman’s soul that her actions were simply a rehearsed part played out for the cameras in order to provide fuel for the cause and that she had to be forced to play the part and it took many, many takes before they got the desired enthusiasm. If this was her actual emotions and pride, I feel for her and am unable to understand the motivation which could bring a mother to celebrate the tragic death of her son. I further noted in the short clip the celebratory mood of those participating in the march presumably from the remembrance ceremony to the cemetery. The exuberance and joy was the same as in numerous similar situations where a martyr was being taken to their resting place. Thusly, I realize that the majority of those participating are not friends or family but rent-a-mob participants which are readily available to the Palestinian Authority as well as to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and on and on and are able to be gathered for the cameras with only mere moments preparation. They know their role and they play their parts to perfection, or close enough for government work, which it actually is, as often these are people on the Palestinian Authority government rolls receiving a salary simply to demonstrate when needed. The unfortunate reality is this mother’s action before the cameras are indicative of other mothers from previous such celebrations for the martyrs when they are ceremoniously given their splendid and well-choreographed funerals.

The question is how can one reach an agreement for a lasting peace with a society which really does treasure death and seek death by martyrdom as their highest aspiration when you treasure life, all life including those who martyr themselves amongst your people in their public places such as the actions by Ahlam Tamimi who planned the suicide bombing on 9 August 2001 at one of Jerusalem’s Sbarro Pizza Parlors. In an interview posted on the Hamas website Ahlam Tamimi was quoted saying, “It was a calculated act, performed with conviction and faith in Allah. Jihad warriors are always ready to die as martyrs, to be arrested or to succeed. I managed to overcome the barrier of prison and was released. Why should I repent?” Speaking about those terrorists who remain in prison after the releases as part of the Gilad Shalit deal of which she was one, Ahlam Tamimi said, “We left with our heads held high. All attempts to keep us in prison, and those who remain, will soon be forsaken.” For peace there needs be some common ground between the two parties on which to construct any peace agreement, after all, it is called an agreement for a reason.

That is where the problem arises seeking a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The mistake the world makes is believing that the conflict is over territory, that is a lie and will perpetuate endless time wasting negotiations attempting to reach a border which will be honored by both sides. The Palestinian idea for making peace possible is for every last Jew to be eradicated from what they demand is their lands which include all of Israel, or as they state, from the river to the sea Palestine must be free. As recently stated by the Palestinian Authority ambassador to Iran, Salah Al-Zawawi stated, “All those people who have gathered to occupy our land must return to their countries of origin, leaving behind only the Palestinian Jews, with whom we had lived in love, respect, and fraternity. I would like to reiterate my gratitude to the Islamic Republic of Iran for the training, financing, and weapons it has provided us, as well as for its political and diplomatic positions regarding Palestine. Iran has helped us to attain our great victory. I am not saying that Palestine will be liberated tomorrow, but we have made real strides on the path to liberation. A missile with a 200 kilogram warhead will carry a warhead of 100 tons in the future, because weapons change as men change. We just need to cross the scientific threshold to get to our goal.” That makes their position amply clear except there is a small problem with his assertions, the Jews in Israel are finally home in their original country, it is the Jews dispersed around the world who needs to be brought home to Israel. Further, even if his intentions were accurate, would the Arab nations be acceptable reaccepting the descendants of the eight-hundred-fifty-thousand Jews who were dispossessed between 1945 and 1955? I honestly have my doubts. Further, there is a reason that the Jews who live in the many and various locations in the nations of the world other than Israel are referred to as the Diaspora; that is that they have not returned home and are still residing in where their wanderings have led them as a result of their families’ original dispersion to the far corners of the world, or at least the far corners of the Roman Empire, depriving them of the right to live in their homelands, the land that all the Jews originally came out from. So, sure, bring all the Jews to the one and only land which has ever been their home, bring them back to Eretz Yisroel.

Beyond the Cusp

Israel as the State of the Jewish People

One of the major hurdles that are causing an impasse in the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has been the demand for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the State for the Jewish People. Under Islamic law, Sharia, any land that was once under Muslim rule must never fall under other than Muslim rule and if it should then forcing a reversion back under Muslim rule becomes an imperative for the entirety of Islam. But this tenet of Islam is only the excuse behind the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish State; their real motivations are simply the destruction of Israel as being Jewish and that is the driving force behind their refusal. The refusal by the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish nature of Israel is actually a secondary problem facing those who insist that Israel be defined as a democratic Jewish state. Their major difficulty is the secular Jews who do not view Israel as Jewish but simply desire that Israel be defined as a multiethnic pluralistic democratic state and to simply ignore any reference to the Jewishness of the majority of the citizens of Israel. Many of these Jews are simply secularists who happen to have been born of Jewish parents but who do not follow the commandments and traditions of the Jewish faith to a greater degree.

                          

This situation is far more than just a bothersome and tedious argument between the religious and/or Zionist sectors of Israeli society with the secular, post-Zionist sector of Israeli society; it is a struggle for the heart and soul of Israel as to whether or not it will be justifiably defined as the Jewish State. This dispute over how to define the nation of Israel has become more heated over the last couple of decades as more and more Israeli Jews are returning to their faith and roots and the study of Torah has become more mainstream. The original large majority held by the secular and often socialist Zionists who held the controlling hand in the formation of the governance after Israel was founded in 1948 has seen their majority dwindle away until they are facing the fact that Israel has become increasingly religious and Zionist. This is taken as a direct threat to the comfort of those who purport that the government should be purely secular and that in order for Israel to be considered a partner in what they see as the civilized world, they hold dearly to the principle that there must be a separation of the state from any religious influences. Unfortunately, their belief that there should be no religious influence on the government does not hold in the other direction, they also hold the opinion that the state should have the final say and ability to overrule and control the functions of religion within the society. Needless to say, they see absolutely no discrepancies in holding these two opposing views as they view religious observance and religious influences on the nation and the society as a detrimental effect fraught with superstitions and antiquated ideas and ideals. Their actions reflect a trepidation that the growing influence of religious ideas and ideals into Israeli society might rub off on them and corrupt their pure core concepts of good governance and its need to be completely removed and independent of the evil influences of religious principles, especially Jewish religious principles, as their fear is that the society will favor Jews over non-Jewish citizens. Much of this unwarranted fear stems from their lack of understanding of Jewish laws, traditions and the importance it places on equal treatment with an emphasis on equality before the law.

 

Any competent and complete study of Jewish law, Torah, reveals commandments that Jewish society is required to treat the stranger no differently that it treats another Jew. The stranger amongst the Jewish People has the same rights and actually a few additional rights stemming from not having to fulfill certain religious duties which a Jew is expected to fulfill. The stranger has every secular right that a Jew is allowed and is to be treated fairly by the courts, allowed security in their possessions, respect given their religious practices providing such does not cause Jews to break any commandments or violate the Noahic Code, and generally see no difference in any legal pursuit or action. These secularists also refuse to acknowledge that it was from Jewish societal laws that much of modern western civilized laws are based. This is even more true when one refers to the founding basis of the United States and its laws of governance and rights granted the people. It is also the basis for why in the United States any legal immigrant has near equal rights and responsibilities as an American citizen enjoys or is obligated. The ideas and ideals of a limited government comes from Torah which insists that any King of the Jewish People is forbidden from acquiring great wealth, horses, cattle, lands or other trappings of advantage or benefit over the peoples that they rule. Needless to say, these laws worked as well as the United States Constitution has limited the rise and overpowering of the Federal Government trampling over the individual States’ rights and powers. Any ruler of the Jewish People is also directed to spend inordinate amounts of time studying Torah so that they will be familiar with its restrictions and follow the law in an exemplary manner as an example for the population to also act according to Torah and keep the commandments. The secularists by attempting to reduce, if not eliminate, any religious influence over Israeli governance and also impede those who have strong religious beliefs from attaining high office, especially in the judiciary, are actually going against Torah and its guidelines of equality and acceptance of others who have different beliefs.

 

There have been some notable instances recently which exemplify this struggle for the heart and soul of Israel. Not the least has been the arguments over how to include the Haredi in the mandatory induction of youth into the IDF or National Service. Despite his campaigning as a pro-Zionist, pro-settler and renunciation of his father’s animosity of the religious, Yair Lapid has recently made numerous statements of positions which are diametrically opposed to his campaign promises. Just as his father before him, Yair Lapid has shown contempt for the Haredi and spoken out against dedicated Torah study as an unnecessary and wasteful endeavor which has little place or service of the nation of Israel. His most recent rant declared that his Yesh Atid Party would leave the government, presumably forcing new elections, if any new enlistment law covering the Haredi youth did not include sentencing them to incarceration and not simply calling for a fine or loss of government benefits. Any law which called for a loss of government benefits on any Haredi refusing a lawful draft would actually be even worse than a jail term as it would preclude their ability to study Torah full-time, the argument at the core of this debate. The Supreme Court declared the Tal Law unconstitutional voiding it thus removing the automatic deferment for anybody who studied Torah full-time in a structured arrangement from IDF or National Service. The Tal Law had been in effect since the formation of the State of Israel in 1948 and had just recently been challenged by leftist organization on the grounds that it was discriminatory. I am unaware of any people other than Haredi who had attempted to utilize the Tal Law to gain deferment from service on the grounds of full-time Torah study but if such were permitted then the law was not discriminatory. The leftists claimed that the law discriminated against secular Jews and non-Jews unfairly but since nobody from either group ever attempted to have the Tal Law applied to them, there is no case of it being denied to any other than Haredi draft age youth. Perhaps there is the solution to drafting a replacement law for the Tal Law, simply pass a new Tal Law that is worded almost exactly the same but include specific guidelines which make the law applicable to anybody who desires to take up full time Torah study in a structured environment. By allowing such a deferment to go to any citizen of draft age would remove any discriminatory application. It might be necessitated that an additional allowance be included determining that Haredi Torah schools be opened to other than Haredi who desire to study Torah full time. I would hope that the Haredi would welcome the additional interest in Torah study and willingly allow such applications and look upon them favorably.

 

Israeli Minister of Finance Yair Lapid has also taken a pro-two state peace plan position which is diametrically opposed to his campaign statements of support for those communities east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, the Green Line. He has praised United States Secretary of State Kerry and Israeli Justice Minister and lead negotiator Tzipi Livni on their efforts to forge a solution which will be tailored such that Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership will approve and sign said agreement. Yair Lapid has made statements degrading and ridiculing Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party, the same man with whom an agreement was reached that either both or neither would join the coalition and also agreed to back the Jewish residents beyond the green line and fully support a Zionist agenda. I wish I could say that this contemptible reversal by Minister Lapid is surprising but he appears to be following and walking in the exact same footprints as his father, Tommy Lapid, walked in his brief political career. Just like Tommy Lapid and his Shinui Party, Yair Lapid is leading his party in a path that castigates the Haredi community and compromises a true Zionist view for the rights of the State and people of Israel. The polls have reflected this similarity as his father’s party entered the Knesset with six seats in its first election and failed ever after from returning and Lair’s party had an impressive nineteen seats in his first elections and polls have shown a steadily decreasing strength over time to where they are indicating that the Yesh Atid Party would only receive half that number if elections were held today. One can expect that number to continue to dwindle if Yair continues to fall away from his campaign promises and aligns further to the left and post-Zionist positions.

 

The erosion of support for Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid Party is further proof that the people of Israel are returning to their religious roots and supporting a Zionist settling of all the lands of Israel and departing the leftist, socialist roots that ruled supreme for over fifty years after the founding of Israel. Where this will eventually lead has yet to be made clear. The optimistic side tells me that we will not need wait too much longer before we witness a change in the direction and attitudes of those who decide the path that the governance of Israel will take. The “old guard” will soon be replaced by a younger generation who appear to be less restrained in their enthusiasm and display an enviable level of energy and vigor. The future appears promising providing Israel can survive the remaining years of trial by fire and onslaught of an orchestrated drive to eradicate the Jewishness of Israel. Much of this has been aided by the absence of the full and unbridled support from the administration in Washington.

 

Beyond the Cusp