Thursday, January 17, 2013
How Israel should respond to the "Palestinian Declaration of Statehood"
1. How should Israel Respond to the "Palestinian Declaration of Statehood?
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/time-to-annex-judea-and-samaria-2/
Time to Annex Judea and Samaria
Posted By Steven Plaut On January 17, 2013
In a few months it will be the twentieth anniversary of the signing of
the "Oslo Accord" on the White House lawn. In that signing, Yassir
Arafat, on behalf of the so-called "Palestinian Liberation
Organization," committed himself and his "people" to conduct
negotiations with Israel that would lead to a peaceful resolution of
the Middle East Arab-Israeli conflict. He forswore unilateral actions
and decisions.
Since then, the "Palestinian Authority," which was set up by the PLO,
has violated every single clause in that and the subsequent Oslo
Accords. Twenty years hence, the "Palestinians" as represented by the
"Authority" have yet to comply with a single one of their obligations.
Arafat and his gangsters simply used the Accord as a cover to gain
control over part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They then
converted all the territory they controlled into bases for launching
terrorist aggression against Israel. The Palestinian terrorist groups
have murdered at least 1700 Israeli civilians since signing that first
"peace accord." Thousands of Palestinian rockets have been launched
into Israel aimed at Israeli civilians, and not just by the Hamas.
"Palestinian leaders" repeat several times each day before breakfast
that their aim is the obliteration of Israel altogether and that they
will never recognize the legitimacy of Israel within any set of
borders.
The media controlled by the "Authority" and the terrorist
organizations have been thoroughly nazified; they broadcast
anti-Semitic filth that exceeds what the German Nazis broadcast in the
1930s. The Gaza Strip has been completely nazified. Very little
distinguishes the Islamofascism of the Hamas from the Islamofascism of
the PLO, and the "president" of the Palestinian Authority is a
certified Holocaust Denier.
And now to top it all off, the "Palestinian Authority" has
unilaterally declared itself to be a sovereign state and applied for
United Nations membership as such. This is just the latest and not
even the worst violation of "Palestinian" obligations under the Oslo
Accords.
There is growing debate about how Israel should respond to the
behavior of the "Palestinians." Indeed, there have already been calls
in Israel to implement part of the proposals that follow here. This
unilateral "declaration" of Palestinian statehood and bid for
international recognition is not just a wholesale repudiation of the
Oslo Accords by the "Palestinians." It is also as much a declaration
of war as was the secession of South Carolina. Any similar "secession"
would be casus belli in any other country on the planet and would be
suppressed with arms. And any country endorsing or supporting such
secession would be treated as an enemy belligerent.
Israel must make it crystal clear: the experimental Israeli
willingness to consider acquiescing in the creation of a separate
Palestinian state is over. The "Palestinians" never had a legitimate
claim to statehood in the first place, although in exchange for peace
Israel was in the past willing to overlook this. The "Palestinians"
forfeited any shaky claim they might have had to statehood because of
their behavior during the past two decades, indeed during the past
century, their nonstop barbarism and mass atrocities. This is much
like the East Prussians and Sudeten Germans forfeiting all THEIR
rights to self-determination and even to autonomy after World War II.
Israel must declare: The game of pretense and fiction is over. Israel
is no longer willing to pretend that there exists some sort of
"Palestinian people" entitled to statehood. The "Palestinians" are
Arabs, and Arabs already have 22 states. They will not get yet another
inside Israeli lands. Any Palestinian wishing to enjoy national
sovereignty is free to move to one of those 22 Arab states, but no
Arab sovereignty will exist in Israeli territory, meaning the lands
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The "Palestinian declaration of statehood" must be dealt with by means
of a unilateral Israeli settlement imposed on the West Bank and
de-nazification of the local population.
The principles upon which such a unilateral Israeli concordance and
resolution must be founded are these:
1. The West Bank belongs to Israel and is Israeli in all ways. No
non-Israeli sovereignty of any form will be permitted in the territory
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The West Bank is
part of the Jewish national homeland, always was, and always will be.
2. "Palestinian" Arabs living in the West Bank will not receive
Israeli citizenship and will not vote in Israeli national elections.
3. The land and resources in the West Bank will remain under Israeli
supervision, control, and regulation.
4. "Palestinians" who do not wish to live under Israeli sovereignty
will be free to leave. Israel may consider providing financial
support, property compensation, or incentives for those so wishing to
leave.
5. Most "Palestinians" choosing to remain in the West Bank will live
in reservations, in some ways resembling Native-American-Indian
territories that function inside the United States (possibly even
including casinos), although in some ways they will differ.
Reservations will be operated in those parts of the West Bank that
have large concentrations of Arab population, meaning Jericho, Nablus,
Ramallah, Jenin, Tul Karem, and a few other areas. Reservations will
NOT have territorial contiguity. In each reservation, the
"Palestinians" will be permitted autonomy and limited self-rule to
manage their own local affairs as long as violence is completely
absent from the reservation. Where violence is present, they will be
denied autonomy. Reservations from which terrorism arises may be shut
down and their populations dispersed. Arabs engaging in or supporting
terrorism in any way will be deported.
6. "Palestinians" in the West Bank will be considered to be resident
aliens within the Jewish state. Many still have Jordanian passports
and citizenship and will be considered resident Jordanians.
"Palestinians" who do not have Jordanian citizenship will be stateless
unless they obtain citizenship from some other country.
7. Jews will have the right to live anywhere they wish in the West
Bank outside the reservations assigned to the "Palestinian" Arabs. The
territory in the West Bank in which Arabs do not live or live
sparsely, and this includes the Jordan Valley and the sparse areas in
between the reservations, will be opened to unlimited Jewish
settlement.
The villages and towns with the Arab reservations will be assigned to
two lists, a white list and a black list. Those in the white list will
manage their own affairs without interference from the Israeli central
authorities. Residents of white-list towns may hold commuter jobs in
Israeli cities and industrial parks. The local authorities in the
white areas will manage their schools and other local institutions.
They will collect their own taxes and may benefit from revenue sharing
arrangements with the Israeli fiscal authorities, like other Israeli
towns. They might be allowed to operate their own local police forces.
Residents in white-listed areas will be fully and freely mobile, able
to move freely within and among all white-list areas. They will be
allowed to develop local industry and tourist services. Their
residents will have access to Israel universities, health facilities,
and other services.
Those towns and villages in the black list will enjoy none of the
above. Their residents will be denied the opportunity to hold day jobs
in Israeli cities and industrial parks. They will have no access to
Israeli services. They will have control over nothing. Their residents
will be prevented from moving freely outside their reservation, except
in cases where they wish to leave the country altogether. They will
receive no shared revenues, no fiscal incentives.
Villages and towns will be assigned to the two lists based entirely on
one single factor: violence. Areas in which violence occurs, and this
includes rock throwing, will be assigned to the black list. Areas in
which violence is absent will be assigned to the white list. Towns and
villages will be reassigned to the black list from the white list when
terrorism, sniping, mortars, rockets, or other forms of violence occur
there. Towns and villages in the black list will be assigned to the
white list only when the local population cooperates fully with Israel
in apprehending and arresting the terrorists and those engaged in
violence, and takes other effective actions to end the violence.
Otherwise they will remain on the black list indefinitely. Entry into
black list areas will be denied to foreigners, journalists, and
especially to the "International Solidarity" anarchists and their ilk.
Any such anarchist infiltrating the areas of the black list will be
denied permission to leave them and will remain there indefinitely, or
else will be imprisoned by Israel.
This of course leaves the dilemma of the Gaza Strip. As noted, because
of the Israeli folly of withdrawing from and abandoning its control
over the Gaza Strip, the area is now nothing more than a large
rocket-launching terrorist base. I happen to believe that, in the long
run, Israel will have no choice but to re-impose its complete control
over the Gaza Strip.
But for the immediate future, an Israeli unilateral set of moves will
be necessary here as well. Basically these must consist of a
three-pronged assault against Gaza the very first time that a rocket
is launched into Israel from that territory. In this assault, Israel
will seize a strip of land several kilometers wide that will divide
the Gaza Strip from Egypt and this will end the massive smuggling of
weapons, explosives, drugs and other materials into Gaza. The other
two prongs will split Gaza into three smaller segments. Israel will
control movement of people and materials among these segments. It will
arrest and shoot terrorists on the spot. And eventually it may impose
the system of reservations and the white-black lists upon Gaza as
well.
This is how Israel should respond to the declaration of war by the
"Palestinians" in their unilateral declaration of statehood.
***
2. As we have been noting here, the most dramatic development in the
current Israeli election is the rise of Naftali Bennett's Bayit Yehudi
(Jewish Home) party. The polls are giving him between 14 and 18
Knesset seats and I am hoping he will do even better. He has a
serious chance of pushing aside the Menshevik Party of Shelly
Yachimovich (a.k.a. the Israeli Labor Party) to become the Number Two
party in the next Knesset.
Bennett's rise is so dramatic that the Obama White House has been
issuing statements about the "danger" to the world from the success of
Bennett and his party. I cannot think of a more persuasive reason to
vote for them.
The bulk of the Likud's campaign these past weeks and the lion's share
of Likud election ads have been devoted to trying to discredit Bennett
and his people. The Likud continues to hammer away at the supposed
"anti-women" position of some of Bennett's people, a blatant lie by
the Likud, and never mind that Bennett's slate has three times as many
women on it as the Likud's. The Likud dug up an old alleged statement
(I am not sure he really said it) by one of the people on Bennett's
slate in which he supposedly said that the murdered murderer Baruch
Goldstein (who shot up the Hebron Mosque 19 years ago) was a victim.
(Goldstein was lynched after he had been disarmed after committing his
atrocity; had an Arab terrorist been killed after being disarmed, you
can bet he would have become the martyr saint of the Israeli Left!)
And the Likud keeps insisting that Bennett and his party will be
considered untouchables and will not be part of any Likud led
government coalition after the election. Netanyahu has the advantage
though of ever being believed by anyone so it will be easy for him to
backslide after the election.
Bennett has responded not with ad hominem anti-Netanyahu ads but
rather by running new ads showing Bennett and Netanyahu side by side
smiling and cooperating in the next government. Moreover, Bennett is
consistently refusing to wash any Likud dirty laundry in public.
Bennett had once been the director of Netanyahu's Prime Minister's
Office until resigning under somewhat mysterious circumstances, but
widely believed to be because Netanyahu's wife was interfering with
and harassing Bennett. However, Bennett has simply refused to comment
on that matter at all, saving Netanyahu embarrassment, and similarly
has refused to engage in any other Lashon Ha-Ra regarding other
head-to-head conflicts he has experienced over the years with other
people. In short, Bennett is an Old School Gentleman and that is one
more reason why he deserves to win.
The Likud's attempt to bash Bennett over "women" is amusing to say the
least. It should be noted that women in current Israeli politics tend
to be extremely incompetent and incapable, probably because competent
women do more productive things than politics. Golda Meir of course
made it without any affirmative action, but just take a gander at the
women currently in positions of political leadership. There is Shelly
Yachimovish, whom I call Little Bo Peep (because she has lost so many
of her Menshevik sheep). There is the arrogant and vulgar Zehava
Gal-On, the Madam DeFarge of the Meretz bolsheviks. (Now would be a
good time to remind readers that when Stalin died, the party newspaper
of MAPAM, which is today one of the central factions comprising
Meretz, ran a banner headline reading, "The Sun of the Nations has
Set.") Many of Israel's worst tenured anti-Zionists are strongly
backing Meretz. And then there is Tzipi Livni. Every time she opens
her mouth I am tempted to run over, pat her on her shoulder and say
NOW NOW, and offer her my handkerchief.
Not exactly a great set of figures to persuade us to endorse the
feminist demands for quotas in political representation!
Livni is now the head of one of three centrist Seinfeldian parties
running in the election. You recall that Seinfeld boasted that his
was a show about nothing. Well, these are parties about nothing.
Quite a few Israelis tend to vote for Seinfeldian parties, because
they dislike the parties that actually stand for something. Little
White Bird (that is what Tzipi Livni's Hebrew name means) heads just
one of these. Her erstwhile sidekick Mofaz heads a second party, but
support for him is so low that he is not expected to make it past the
cutoff into the next Knesset. Then there is Yair Lapid, a
good-looking airhead whose political agenda is nothing more than his
being a good-looking airhead. He is a TV host, not a very good one,
and that seems to be his entire novelty.
Shelly Bo Peep's party is also becoming increasingly Seinfeldian. Her
remaining support seems to be coming from the sorts of people who sat
in the protest tents in Tel Aviv last year demanding government
handouts and price controls. (Almost no one believes in the Labor
Party's Peresian delusions about the New Middle East and Palestinian
peace partners.) Shelly promises the adolescents cheap housing in
central Tel Aviv, but refuses to explain just how she plans to provide
any. She appeals to young pampered middle class kids who do not want
to work hard or pay market prices for anything.
The Radical anti-Israel Left is also hysterical about the rise of
Bennett and his party. Haaretz devotes part of the front page every
day to bashing and discrediting them. (As an example of how detached
from reality Haaretz has gotten, take a look at this:
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/there-has-never-been-an-israeli-left.premium-1.494471
. Haaretz believes that treason is the most effective method for
attracting votes for the parties of the Far Left. )
In today's Bash-Bennett smear, Haaretz publishes a grand scoop: the
brother of Yigal Amir, the assassin who murdered Yitzhak Rabin,
published on his Facebook page the claim that his brother Yigal plans
to vote for Bennett.
Well, I have my own scoop. The favorite newspaper of Iran's Holocaust
Denying president Mahmous Ahmadinejad is Haaretz, and the heads of the
Hamas are all supporting the political parties of which Haaretz
approves: BALAD (as in terrorist Hanin Zoabi), the Stalinist HADASH
party, and - when Haaretz is forced to compromise and moderate itself
- Meretz/MAPAM.
3. On many an occasion we have commented on the Literary Left in
Israel. But there also operates in Israel the Cinematic Left, which
is at least as extremist and anti-Israel as the Literary Left.
Propped up by subsidies from the government, far-leftist film-makers
churn out bash-Israel films. The foreign anti-Semites love them. The
leftist-run "Jewish film festivals" in bastions of civilization like
Berkeley all feature them. Especially when they paint Israel as the
New Nazi Germany. Not every single director of Israeli films is an
anti-Israel loon, and not every single Israeli film is atrocious, and
"The Footnote" from last year and its director were unusual
exceptions.
There are two films right now by Israeli directors that are so
anti-Israel that the Hollywood Left has them down as candidates for an
Oscar. Please take a look at this expose of the Cinematic Left:
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/58170/oscar-nominated-israeli-director-rabbis-are-biggest-threat-israel-doesnt-want-peace-settlements-illegal/.
See also http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4332078,00.html
and this: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12729
and http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164084 .
4. Here is a remarkable piece, even more remarkable because it ran on
the Haaretz web site (but not in the print version of the paper):
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/debate-the-flaws-of-the-left-not-just-the-right.premium-1.494404
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/time-to-annex-judea-and-samaria-2/
Time to Annex Judea and Samaria
Posted By Steven Plaut On January 17, 2013
In a few months it will be the twentieth anniversary of the signing of
the "Oslo Accord" on the White House lawn. In that signing, Yassir
Arafat, on behalf of the so-called "Palestinian Liberation
Organization," committed himself and his "people" to conduct
negotiations with Israel that would lead to a peaceful resolution of
the Middle East Arab-Israeli conflict. He forswore unilateral actions
and decisions.
Since then, the "Palestinian Authority," which was set up by the PLO,
has violated every single clause in that and the subsequent Oslo
Accords. Twenty years hence, the "Palestinians" as represented by the
"Authority" have yet to comply with a single one of their obligations.
Arafat and his gangsters simply used the Accord as a cover to gain
control over part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They then
converted all the territory they controlled into bases for launching
terrorist aggression against Israel. The Palestinian terrorist groups
have murdered at least 1700 Israeli civilians since signing that first
"peace accord." Thousands of Palestinian rockets have been launched
into Israel aimed at Israeli civilians, and not just by the Hamas.
"Palestinian leaders" repeat several times each day before breakfast
that their aim is the obliteration of Israel altogether and that they
will never recognize the legitimacy of Israel within any set of
borders.
The media controlled by the "Authority" and the terrorist
organizations have been thoroughly nazified; they broadcast
anti-Semitic filth that exceeds what the German Nazis broadcast in the
1930s. The Gaza Strip has been completely nazified. Very little
distinguishes the Islamofascism of the Hamas from the Islamofascism of
the PLO, and the "president" of the Palestinian Authority is a
certified Holocaust Denier.
And now to top it all off, the "Palestinian Authority" has
unilaterally declared itself to be a sovereign state and applied for
United Nations membership as such. This is just the latest and not
even the worst violation of "Palestinian" obligations under the Oslo
Accords.
There is growing debate about how Israel should respond to the
behavior of the "Palestinians." Indeed, there have already been calls
in Israel to implement part of the proposals that follow here. This
unilateral "declaration" of Palestinian statehood and bid for
international recognition is not just a wholesale repudiation of the
Oslo Accords by the "Palestinians." It is also as much a declaration
of war as was the secession of South Carolina. Any similar "secession"
would be casus belli in any other country on the planet and would be
suppressed with arms. And any country endorsing or supporting such
secession would be treated as an enemy belligerent.
Israel must make it crystal clear: the experimental Israeli
willingness to consider acquiescing in the creation of a separate
Palestinian state is over. The "Palestinians" never had a legitimate
claim to statehood in the first place, although in exchange for peace
Israel was in the past willing to overlook this. The "Palestinians"
forfeited any shaky claim they might have had to statehood because of
their behavior during the past two decades, indeed during the past
century, their nonstop barbarism and mass atrocities. This is much
like the East Prussians and Sudeten Germans forfeiting all THEIR
rights to self-determination and even to autonomy after World War II.
Israel must declare: The game of pretense and fiction is over. Israel
is no longer willing to pretend that there exists some sort of
"Palestinian people" entitled to statehood. The "Palestinians" are
Arabs, and Arabs already have 22 states. They will not get yet another
inside Israeli lands. Any Palestinian wishing to enjoy national
sovereignty is free to move to one of those 22 Arab states, but no
Arab sovereignty will exist in Israeli territory, meaning the lands
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The "Palestinian declaration of statehood" must be dealt with by means
of a unilateral Israeli settlement imposed on the West Bank and
de-nazification of the local population.
The principles upon which such a unilateral Israeli concordance and
resolution must be founded are these:
1. The West Bank belongs to Israel and is Israeli in all ways. No
non-Israeli sovereignty of any form will be permitted in the territory
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The West Bank is
part of the Jewish national homeland, always was, and always will be.
2. "Palestinian" Arabs living in the West Bank will not receive
Israeli citizenship and will not vote in Israeli national elections.
3. The land and resources in the West Bank will remain under Israeli
supervision, control, and regulation.
4. "Palestinians" who do not wish to live under Israeli sovereignty
will be free to leave. Israel may consider providing financial
support, property compensation, or incentives for those so wishing to
leave.
5. Most "Palestinians" choosing to remain in the West Bank will live
in reservations, in some ways resembling Native-American-Indian
territories that function inside the United States (possibly even
including casinos), although in some ways they will differ.
Reservations will be operated in those parts of the West Bank that
have large concentrations of Arab population, meaning Jericho, Nablus,
Ramallah, Jenin, Tul Karem, and a few other areas. Reservations will
NOT have territorial contiguity. In each reservation, the
"Palestinians" will be permitted autonomy and limited self-rule to
manage their own local affairs as long as violence is completely
absent from the reservation. Where violence is present, they will be
denied autonomy. Reservations from which terrorism arises may be shut
down and their populations dispersed. Arabs engaging in or supporting
terrorism in any way will be deported.
6. "Palestinians" in the West Bank will be considered to be resident
aliens within the Jewish state. Many still have Jordanian passports
and citizenship and will be considered resident Jordanians.
"Palestinians" who do not have Jordanian citizenship will be stateless
unless they obtain citizenship from some other country.
7. Jews will have the right to live anywhere they wish in the West
Bank outside the reservations assigned to the "Palestinian" Arabs. The
territory in the West Bank in which Arabs do not live or live
sparsely, and this includes the Jordan Valley and the sparse areas in
between the reservations, will be opened to unlimited Jewish
settlement.
The villages and towns with the Arab reservations will be assigned to
two lists, a white list and a black list. Those in the white list will
manage their own affairs without interference from the Israeli central
authorities. Residents of white-list towns may hold commuter jobs in
Israeli cities and industrial parks. The local authorities in the
white areas will manage their schools and other local institutions.
They will collect their own taxes and may benefit from revenue sharing
arrangements with the Israeli fiscal authorities, like other Israeli
towns. They might be allowed to operate their own local police forces.
Residents in white-listed areas will be fully and freely mobile, able
to move freely within and among all white-list areas. They will be
allowed to develop local industry and tourist services. Their
residents will have access to Israel universities, health facilities,
and other services.
Those towns and villages in the black list will enjoy none of the
above. Their residents will be denied the opportunity to hold day jobs
in Israeli cities and industrial parks. They will have no access to
Israeli services. They will have control over nothing. Their residents
will be prevented from moving freely outside their reservation, except
in cases where they wish to leave the country altogether. They will
receive no shared revenues, no fiscal incentives.
Villages and towns will be assigned to the two lists based entirely on
one single factor: violence. Areas in which violence occurs, and this
includes rock throwing, will be assigned to the black list. Areas in
which violence is absent will be assigned to the white list. Towns and
villages will be reassigned to the black list from the white list when
terrorism, sniping, mortars, rockets, or other forms of violence occur
there. Towns and villages in the black list will be assigned to the
white list only when the local population cooperates fully with Israel
in apprehending and arresting the terrorists and those engaged in
violence, and takes other effective actions to end the violence.
Otherwise they will remain on the black list indefinitely. Entry into
black list areas will be denied to foreigners, journalists, and
especially to the "International Solidarity" anarchists and their ilk.
Any such anarchist infiltrating the areas of the black list will be
denied permission to leave them and will remain there indefinitely, or
else will be imprisoned by Israel.
This of course leaves the dilemma of the Gaza Strip. As noted, because
of the Israeli folly of withdrawing from and abandoning its control
over the Gaza Strip, the area is now nothing more than a large
rocket-launching terrorist base. I happen to believe that, in the long
run, Israel will have no choice but to re-impose its complete control
over the Gaza Strip.
But for the immediate future, an Israeli unilateral set of moves will
be necessary here as well. Basically these must consist of a
three-pronged assault against Gaza the very first time that a rocket
is launched into Israel from that territory. In this assault, Israel
will seize a strip of land several kilometers wide that will divide
the Gaza Strip from Egypt and this will end the massive smuggling of
weapons, explosives, drugs and other materials into Gaza. The other
two prongs will split Gaza into three smaller segments. Israel will
control movement of people and materials among these segments. It will
arrest and shoot terrorists on the spot. And eventually it may impose
the system of reservations and the white-black lists upon Gaza as
well.
This is how Israel should respond to the declaration of war by the
"Palestinians" in their unilateral declaration of statehood.
***
2. As we have been noting here, the most dramatic development in the
current Israeli election is the rise of Naftali Bennett's Bayit Yehudi
(Jewish Home) party. The polls are giving him between 14 and 18
Knesset seats and I am hoping he will do even better. He has a
serious chance of pushing aside the Menshevik Party of Shelly
Yachimovich (a.k.a. the Israeli Labor Party) to become the Number Two
party in the next Knesset.
Bennett's rise is so dramatic that the Obama White House has been
issuing statements about the "danger" to the world from the success of
Bennett and his party. I cannot think of a more persuasive reason to
vote for them.
The bulk of the Likud's campaign these past weeks and the lion's share
of Likud election ads have been devoted to trying to discredit Bennett
and his people. The Likud continues to hammer away at the supposed
"anti-women" position of some of Bennett's people, a blatant lie by
the Likud, and never mind that Bennett's slate has three times as many
women on it as the Likud's. The Likud dug up an old alleged statement
(I am not sure he really said it) by one of the people on Bennett's
slate in which he supposedly said that the murdered murderer Baruch
Goldstein (who shot up the Hebron Mosque 19 years ago) was a victim.
(Goldstein was lynched after he had been disarmed after committing his
atrocity; had an Arab terrorist been killed after being disarmed, you
can bet he would have become the martyr saint of the Israeli Left!)
And the Likud keeps insisting that Bennett and his party will be
considered untouchables and will not be part of any Likud led
government coalition after the election. Netanyahu has the advantage
though of ever being believed by anyone so it will be easy for him to
backslide after the election.
Bennett has responded not with ad hominem anti-Netanyahu ads but
rather by running new ads showing Bennett and Netanyahu side by side
smiling and cooperating in the next government. Moreover, Bennett is
consistently refusing to wash any Likud dirty laundry in public.
Bennett had once been the director of Netanyahu's Prime Minister's
Office until resigning under somewhat mysterious circumstances, but
widely believed to be because Netanyahu's wife was interfering with
and harassing Bennett. However, Bennett has simply refused to comment
on that matter at all, saving Netanyahu embarrassment, and similarly
has refused to engage in any other Lashon Ha-Ra regarding other
head-to-head conflicts he has experienced over the years with other
people. In short, Bennett is an Old School Gentleman and that is one
more reason why he deserves to win.
The Likud's attempt to bash Bennett over "women" is amusing to say the
least. It should be noted that women in current Israeli politics tend
to be extremely incompetent and incapable, probably because competent
women do more productive things than politics. Golda Meir of course
made it without any affirmative action, but just take a gander at the
women currently in positions of political leadership. There is Shelly
Yachimovish, whom I call Little Bo Peep (because she has lost so many
of her Menshevik sheep). There is the arrogant and vulgar Zehava
Gal-On, the Madam DeFarge of the Meretz bolsheviks. (Now would be a
good time to remind readers that when Stalin died, the party newspaper
of MAPAM, which is today one of the central factions comprising
Meretz, ran a banner headline reading, "The Sun of the Nations has
Set.") Many of Israel's worst tenured anti-Zionists are strongly
backing Meretz. And then there is Tzipi Livni. Every time she opens
her mouth I am tempted to run over, pat her on her shoulder and say
NOW NOW, and offer her my handkerchief.
Not exactly a great set of figures to persuade us to endorse the
feminist demands for quotas in political representation!
Livni is now the head of one of three centrist Seinfeldian parties
running in the election. You recall that Seinfeld boasted that his
was a show about nothing. Well, these are parties about nothing.
Quite a few Israelis tend to vote for Seinfeldian parties, because
they dislike the parties that actually stand for something. Little
White Bird (that is what Tzipi Livni's Hebrew name means) heads just
one of these. Her erstwhile sidekick Mofaz heads a second party, but
support for him is so low that he is not expected to make it past the
cutoff into the next Knesset. Then there is Yair Lapid, a
good-looking airhead whose political agenda is nothing more than his
being a good-looking airhead. He is a TV host, not a very good one,
and that seems to be his entire novelty.
Shelly Bo Peep's party is also becoming increasingly Seinfeldian. Her
remaining support seems to be coming from the sorts of people who sat
in the protest tents in Tel Aviv last year demanding government
handouts and price controls. (Almost no one believes in the Labor
Party's Peresian delusions about the New Middle East and Palestinian
peace partners.) Shelly promises the adolescents cheap housing in
central Tel Aviv, but refuses to explain just how she plans to provide
any. She appeals to young pampered middle class kids who do not want
to work hard or pay market prices for anything.
The Radical anti-Israel Left is also hysterical about the rise of
Bennett and his party. Haaretz devotes part of the front page every
day to bashing and discrediting them. (As an example of how detached
from reality Haaretz has gotten, take a look at this:
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/there-has-never-been-an-israeli-left.premium-1.494471
. Haaretz believes that treason is the most effective method for
attracting votes for the parties of the Far Left. )
In today's Bash-Bennett smear, Haaretz publishes a grand scoop: the
brother of Yigal Amir, the assassin who murdered Yitzhak Rabin,
published on his Facebook page the claim that his brother Yigal plans
to vote for Bennett.
Well, I have my own scoop. The favorite newspaper of Iran's Holocaust
Denying president Mahmous Ahmadinejad is Haaretz, and the heads of the
Hamas are all supporting the political parties of which Haaretz
approves: BALAD (as in terrorist Hanin Zoabi), the Stalinist HADASH
party, and - when Haaretz is forced to compromise and moderate itself
- Meretz/MAPAM.
3. On many an occasion we have commented on the Literary Left in
Israel. But there also operates in Israel the Cinematic Left, which
is at least as extremist and anti-Israel as the Literary Left.
Propped up by subsidies from the government, far-leftist film-makers
churn out bash-Israel films. The foreign anti-Semites love them. The
leftist-run "Jewish film festivals" in bastions of civilization like
Berkeley all feature them. Especially when they paint Israel as the
New Nazi Germany. Not every single director of Israeli films is an
anti-Israel loon, and not every single Israeli film is atrocious, and
"The Footnote" from last year and its director were unusual
exceptions.
There are two films right now by Israeli directors that are so
anti-Israel that the Hollywood Left has them down as candidates for an
Oscar. Please take a look at this expose of the Cinematic Left:
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/58170/oscar-nominated-israeli-director-rabbis-are-biggest-threat-israel-doesnt-want-peace-settlements-illegal/.
See also http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4332078,00.html
and this: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12729
and http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164084 .
4. Here is a remarkable piece, even more remarkable because it ran on
the Haaretz web site (but not in the print version of the paper):
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/debate-the-flaws-of-the-left-not-just-the-right.premium-1.494404