Reflections on the Latest Israeli Elections

 

Israel went to the polls again on September 17, and voted a near identical result to the April elections leading to a better than average chance that no government will be able to be formed. So many of the reviews we have come across have interpreted this completely wrong. Most are claiming that the Israeli democracy is illogical and defective. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who got it correct realized that the problem is that the population is relatively evenly divided. We already covered here the real reason why forming a coalition is so difficult, explaining that because of one group of parties which are outliers backing neither major party forces, any government needs to realize well over the fifty percent plus one usually required in any normative election in a parliamentary government. This is not a detractor of the Israeli parliamentary democracy and the vibrancy of our democracy. The elections were simply a realistic representation of a country divided almost evenly in their view of what the future of Israel should steer towards.

 

 

We agree that part of the problem is fatigue over Bibi Netanyahu leading to some simply supporting anybody who appears to have a better than even chance of replacing him. But the claims that the divide is between right-wing and left-wing is not a completely honest means of defining what is occurring. The first thing which needs to be addressed is what exactly is meant by right-wing and left-wing in Israeli politics. Yes, part of it is over economic outlooks and the separation between preferences for Capitalism against Socialism, but this is actually far from the central dividing issue. The real divides come from two separate but interdependent divides in the Israeli populace. The main divide is between religious and secular with the other main divide being nationalists and Zionists who are opposed by internationalists and those still holding onto the idea of a Palestinian Arab state and the two-state-solution. Then we have the political allies often referred to as the Joint Arab List which also includes Communists, Arab nationalists, secularism, Pan-Arabism, Eco-socialists, Islamists and other traditional left-wing causes. The mandates garnered by this list traditionally have not supported any candidate for Prime Minister or named one of the leaders from the group of parties making up this faction. This, more than anything else, is the exact reason that there has been no definitive result. This is also one of the most obvious reasons that the Israeli democracy is functioning in a representative fashion and is providing the exact result that represents her people, a deeply divided people.

 

There is the possibility that the Blue White Party and Likud could form a unity government completely free of requiring the support of any other party. This is the main reason why Avigdor Lieberman’s claim that he would join a unity government and be commanding one of the principle centers of power. He has claimed that without him there could not be a unity government. Apparently Avigdor Lieberman is incapable of doing simple mathematics such as adding together thirty-three and thirty-one and realizing that is more than sixty-one. Since those are the results for Blue-White and Likud, it should be obvious that those two together could form a government. So, what is the hang up preventing such, is it political, personal or simply ego?

 

Part of the reason is political as should Bibi actually agree to such an arrangement, the Likud Party would bleed voters in significant numbers to vote for parties which are either more religious, nationalist or Zionist than the Likud such as the parties which made up Yamina; Jewish Home, National Union–Tkuma and New Right. Such a change could prove to be seismic should Bibi ally with Gantz. This would represent a similar situation as when Ariel Sharon bolted Likud forming Kadima in order to allow him to agree to President Bush’s and Condoleezza Rice’s plan for the Gaza withdrawal. This caused a split in the Likud Party which Bibi has been able to reverse over the last two elections. Furthermore, Blue White leader, ‎Benny Gantz‎, has already declared that he would only agree to a unity government only if he was made Prime Minister as his party received the most mandates. This would be ignoring that the so-called right-wing parties received more mandates than the left-wing parties. Further, there is no way Bibi will join any coalition which he does not lead. Once more, egos are getting in the way of any feasible solution.

 

President Rivlin, who has the undesirable task of deciding who will be given the first opportunity to form a coalition, has intimated that he would fall just short of knocking heads together to force a government being formed and avoiding yet a third election in under one year. He is facing the problem that the right-wing parties are unable to form a government without Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu Party. The problem is if Bibi were to agree to Lieberman’s demands, he would lose the Haredi Parties and still be unable to form a coalition. Were Gantz given the nod, the only way he could form a coalition would be if the Joint Arab List were to agree to sit in with him. The problem is that Avigdor Lieberman has expressly stated he would not sit in a coalition with the Arab parties which would again prevent a coalition. Were Lieberman to change his mind and agree to sit in a government with the Arab parties, his Yisrael Beiteinu Party would splinter as it has a large number of nationalists who would not take well to joining a government with the Arab parties included. This would lead to either the end of Yisrael Beiteinu or their replacing Avigdor Lieberman as their leader. Either choice would be political suicide for Lieberman who is too crafty a politician to make such a blunder. So, without hammering Bibi and Benny into submission, it appears that there is not much that President Rivlin can do to force a government.

 

So, the vibrant Israeli democracy will very probably be heading for new elections once again. This will again be a reason to claim that the Israeli democracy has failed and could be considered dead. The reality is that the Israeli democracy is working exactly as it should and is representing the fractured Israeli populace quite accurately. Just because a ruling coalition appears to be escaping reality and becoming near an impossibility is no reason to claim that the democracy has failed, perhaps it is just very accurate in representing and displaying the point at which we find Israel today. If anything is broken, it is not our democracy or any of the other claims which you may have read elsewhere. What is actually broken are the complaints that democracy has failed Israel. Perhaps it is simply jealousy over the fact that the Israelis are being served well by their democracy as it represents the splits between the numerous factions which make up the various parties. One last note, nobody we have had conversations with has complained that their lives are being impacted by not having an actual government and are instead being ruled by a Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and a number of Likud Ministers who are in the cabinet plus Rafi Peretz from Jewish Home as Education Minister and Bezalel Smotrich from National Union–Tkuma as Transportation Minister, who are making any choices and will protect Israel should she be attacked. It may even be this combination making the decisions over any response to an attack upon Israel which will prevent such an eventuality from coming to fruition. Maybe not having a ruling coalition and a normal government by the world’s standards will prove to be the best thing which could happen to Israel in these turbulent times.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Abbas & Palestinians Kill Two State Solution

 

Abbas has once again slow-walked the Arab Palestinian Authority to the great chasm and threatened to throw the unity governance agreement Fatah made with Hamas unifying the Hamas run Gaza Strip with the Fatah run, taking the name of the Palestinian Authority, Judea and Samaria over Abbas being unable to press his vastly lacking political will, influence or any form of security or governance which remained dependent and controlled by Hamas and Islamic Jihad despite claims that the Hamas government had resigned. This information came from Amin Maqbul, the Secretary General Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, who reported to AFP that in the meeting of the Council, Mahmoud Abbas had threatened to dissolve, according to Amin Maqbul, “The government will resign in the next 24 hours because this one is weak and there is no chance that Hamas will allow it to work in Gaza.” Maqbul additionally stated, “After the government resigns, we will start consultations to form a new government.”

 

An official from the Palestinian Authority reported to the media that the overt action was going to be taken as a result of the Palestinian Authority’s, and particularly Chairman Abbas, being unable and likely to continue to face an “inability to act in Gaza.” This seemingly drastic action did not come out of the sky like a thunderbolt from the heavens; but rather had been discussed at length and according to this sources statement, “There have been discussions inside the government about resigning if they are unable to do anything for Gaza.” There had been numerous fundamental facets utterly failing such as the inability to impose their will such that there was too little governing authority to even set-up for elections which were promised to be held within the first six months and was a stipulation in the agreement which was enacted and signed by all the responsible parties about a year ago. This was made highly evident when the Arab Palestinian Authority reacting to complaints that many of the workers from the former government and who had continued to work to provide services to the people of Gaza but has not been officially added to the Palestinian Authority payroll and thus had not been paid since the signing of the agreement, Mahmoud Abbas sent a small committee to Gaza for a week to gather the names and make a register from which to start payments and take down and record other statistics which were required in order to remit to their salaries met with such hostility and violence that they never once left their hotel nor hold interviews nor even catch a single name rushing back to Ramallah exquisitely dejected and haplessly downcast from their experience.

 

Even if the reconciliation between Fatah and their opposition, Hamas, completely fails, there will still be some good to come from the efforts, a knowledge that there is definitely more than one head on this snake and with the addition to ISIS vying for power we can easily make the case for three heads if not four counting Islamic Jihad, or five as I am sure that al-Qaeda which operates in Gaza would be more than put out if they were neglected, or if we additionally include vying for control we would need 13 heads on the asp in order to include the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP ), Palestine Democratic Union (PDU), Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), Palestinian Arab Front (PAF), Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF), Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), and lastly the ever so alliterated Palestinian People’s Party (PPP). There may be even more because every so often a coalition, if that is what we can call such, of terror groups plan and cooperate in a kidnapping but they do not present their demands immediately, then, without any warning, one group we have never heard of announces they did the kidnapping and then another from the mists there is another group and then the known groups jump in and before you know it the Europeans and Israeli leftist start their pressuring the government to capitulate so that the kidnapped victim is returned without harm.

 

That brings us to what might just be the root of the problem with the peace process, neither side is anywhere near unified on what the result should look like. Adding to those woes are the expectations of the United Nations, the European Union and the United States along with the Arab League and I’m sure Reverend Tutu, just to pick a name out of the air, has an few suggestions, none of which are helpful or consider Israel’s safety. The easiest way to prove this point would be to start with the presumed main two Palestinian leaderships, Hamas and Fatah. Fatah is secular though they have been slowly sliding to the Islamist end of the spectrum while Hamas is and always has been Islamist though they tend to be confused as to whether they will serve Iran or the Sunnis and have attempted to play the two off each other in an absurd and morbid bidding game in which Israel is the largest loser, probably the motivation behind the whole affair. Then there are their stated goals where Fatah simply wants to displace Israel and make it free of Jews who do not know how to be Dhimmis which is pretty much all the Zionists and many middle of the spectrum Jews who are accustomed to Western society which comes with built in human rights, freedoms and few constraints beyond respect for others as you would desire to have your desires and actions respected while Islam demands that even its adherents completely surrender and have little to no freedom of action. Hamas not only wishes to destroy Israel but once that is completed and every Israeli Jew has been slaughtered move on to murdering every Jew across the globe and then while this is being accomplished conquering the entire world and converting or killing every person who does not observe Islam and are not exactly the kind of Muslim they define.

 

What is unsettling is that these pursuits are exactly the same as those of ISIS yet ISIS claims they are going to take over the Palestinian fight against Israel and has flat out stated they desire to replace Hamas first and go through the ranks of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and whomever else they find and pass judgment on which meet their standards for being Muslim and thus permitted to live for now. Then ISIS has pledged to do the same with Fatah and the rest of the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and finally, after all that exercise, they plan on not even taking a break before attacking Israel.

 

Even without ISIS the Palestinian case is ridiculous. They are already two states without a solution as they cannot even find sufficient grounds on which to agree and work together. From every last attempt at making a joined effort for the sake to forging ahead and gaining international recognition and thus moving their designs and demands forward we have witnessed a clash of monumental proportions and a compete inability to agree on even the simplest of terms. It is almost as if when one would say up, the other would demand down or even right, left, forwards or backwards but just anything but up. And should the other agree to that their opposite would simply change to a different definition as it seems required for them to act and be contrary in all matters. The sole thing they can agree upon is that both sides feel strongly that only through their leadership will any good results be produced and thus they must never allow the other even the slightest victory without them tuning around and toppling that victory. They would likely be unable to meet on the beaches of Gaza and work together long enough to build a decent sand castle and the world wants them to run a nation.

 

So, which side is Israel supposed to form two states for two peoples? As things stand it would be more like three nations for two people but one of them is so fractured they cannot even sit in the same room, let alone run a nation together. Wait, here’s an idea, as Gaza is already completely made Judenrein, how about they prove they can run just Gaza for three whole years without any outside charities, making a budget, actually running a functional society and without launching or permitting the launching of a single projectile at Israel. The world can assist by finding some way for the two to cooperate and work towards a common goal. It will not be easy and will probably take a team effort from mostly the Leftist Europeans, ones who are so sure that the Palestinians are the noblest rag-tag groups on planet Earth, and then see if they have the infinite patience and intestinal fortitude to make this all happen without them actually taking on the responsibilities themselves as the aim is to produce a group of Arabs out of the self-proclaimed Palestinians and have everyone at least appear to work together without any serious violence. The one thing that I can be assured of is that any such effort will fail. The people, especially the youths, have been fed so much hatred and to love violence and the kill for the sake of the kill, not even desiring a trophy to hang on the wall as relating the story, with added embellishment with every telling making it unrecognizable within a week of any telling. This is the society they have built in both Hamasistan and Fatahistan and there will be no such idea of peace with Israel as I am pretty sure most could not even bring themselves to say the word Israel as their minds would immediately translate it to Zionist colonial occupiers who have delusions of ethnic cleansing and are responsible for the coming genocide of the Palestinian people any minute now so they must be destroyed and all their kind removed; well, you get the idea, just asking them to say Israel would produce an ever escalating rant filled with references to violence, either theirs or perceived as Israeli. Then when anything would go wrong, other than attacks on Israel where both would try and grab the credit, but any governance failure such as the stealing of monies at unconceivable rates and amassing great wealth, then there would be the innocent why are you looking at me act.

 

Still, when the vast majority of the building supplies provided for the rebuilding of Gazan housing for the people whose homes were destroyed as they had been used as shields for rockets or other military uses and using the building materials to expand the underground terror tunnels and bunkers as well as rebuilding the tunnels destroyed by Israel before they could be utilized for their planned mass assault on Israeli towns and Kibbutzim closest to Gaza for the purpose of taking a half dozen or so hostages and murdering as many others as they would be able of achieving, that would be solved in a game of finger-pointing with flying denials and accusations. That is the kind of governing under Hamas and/or Islamic Jihad. One trait both sides have in common is the stealing and corruption which only grows becoming greater and of unbelievable levels of graft and outright stealing of funds. Abbas, believe it or not, is the pauper in this department only having achieved an estimated few hundreds of millions of dollars while both Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal are both multi-billionaires. Whoever claimed that terror does not pay did not understand the methods of Yasser Arafat who may have been the greatest artist of mishandled funds ending up in Swiss and Cayman banks in numbered accounts as his worth at the time of his death was known to be so unbelievably and ridiculously high that Fatah, the PLO and every other person or entity which could claim a tie to the money went to numerous European courts in efforts to pry even a small percentage, which would still represent a king’s ransom, away from Suha Arafat without any success.

 

That is an additional reason that there will never be any compromise or even outright solution reached, the top ranks of the leadership are nothing more than petty tyrants whose grasp on power includes severe cases of kleptomania, a mental disorder which overrides all forms of compassions, common sense, rationality, and self-preservation gets tossed aside as this level of theft eventually angers the masses to the point that they grab these grubbing malcontent poseurs and the result is their being given the Il Duce or Nicolae Ceaușescu treatment, and trust me, what happened to those two tyrants may have been what they deserved, but how driven to madness and anger had they driven the people they were presumed to care for. The same virus has infected much of the Palestinian leadership and to some extent this can be seen in their actions as they say things which are patently ridiculous, complete void of reality or truth and so completely lacking in logic that often even their most devoted leftist supporters are caught simply throwing up their hands and asking, ‘What was he thinking?’ That was the problem; these thieves are so intolerably lost from reality it is surprising they can even be coherent much of the time. Anyone remember Arafat towards the end of his life where many times one would have trouble even discerning the works, and if that were possible their relation to each other in what was passed as a sentence made no sense. Israel cannot make peace with these Palestinian leaders as they do not desire to rule over a country and have to provide for their people, they wish to lord over their domains taking whatever they desire and allowing the crumbs and drippings to flow to their unfortunate citizens.

 

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are so despised by the average Gazan with a family as their disregard of and threat to these people’s children is beyond any human’s imagination as they have witnessed an Islamic Jihad or Hamas terrorist grab the closest child, from their mother’s arms if need be, and hold the child to their chest as they cross a firefight to position themselves in a better vantage point with more secure defenses and a better angle to shoot and kill IDF soldiers with the assured knowledge that by taking the child he need not worry, the Israelis are too weak and beloved of life to shoot him carrying the terrified child stolen from a horrified mother. Imagine the mother’s conflicted thoughts as she knows the Israelis will even stop shooting entirely allowing the child to be released as the terrorist reached his desired position and fearing that the terrorist is partially concealed and the Israelis may not see the child until it is too late. Imagine the terrorist considerations as he can no longer fight while holding the child so he might well try to convince the child to sit beside him to assure only the finest Israeli sniper would even consider taking the shot on him with a child next to him.

 

The problem is the world’s leftist Israel and Jew haters do not ever open their eyes and see the terrorist holding the child as if it was a magical shield, which against the IDF it is exactly that, and only envisions the freedom fighter in a league of one of the underground forces against the Nazis. These demons in human form are not the Polish, Czech, Romanian, or French underground fighters from World War II; they are far more aligned with the likes of Che Guevara. I bet if somebody started selling Yasser Arafat t-shirts and sweatshirts they would make millions just placing it on the internet as Yasser Arafat Tees, $25.00. If you do I would like a mere 5% fee for the idea and then if you expand into Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin or other Palestinian faces of terror I would expect only a mere 3%, thank you. Making peace with leaders who have an unrestricted inflow of funding that they are able to steal over half the funding and still make salaries with only a scream or two every fourth month that they are cash-strapped and cannot pay the ‘government’ workers (or pay for more terrorists families stipends because they have a terror relative in prison where the stipend is determined by the number of Israeli civilians murdered) and the European government and European Union immediately pony-up sending billions or trillions of Euros yearly and it ever escalates. I have a radical idea, why don’t the European Union and all the European governments stop funding UNRWA, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority directly or through deceptive back channels and simply not even bother with the Israeli and Palestinian area of the Middle East and we can get on with finally making peace as they will then have an incentive to actually form a workable society or face instant democracy of the masses. You would be surprised how quickly such a policy adopted would show fantastic results and then there might even develop that Palestinian State you claim to want so badly, honest; come on, try it.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

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.