Jewish Leadership and Other Crazy Israel Stuff

Haredi-Supreme Court Showdown

2010-06-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

The following is what I posted on World of Judaica Jewish News.

Also see the post right below this one, Israel Supreme Court v Haredim - I'm with the Haredim for a more editorialized version.

World of Judaica Jewish News exclusive: In what is turning out to be one of the biggest challenges to Supreme Court authority in Israel’s history, tens of thousands of Haredim, Ultra Orthodox Jews, are planning to take to the streets in Israel and cities in the Diaspora in an effort to show massive support for the parents of schoolchildren in Emanuel, Israel.

Yesterday, June 15, the Israeli Supreme court handed down its ruling that all parents of Beis Yaakov schoolchildren in Emanuel who refuse to implement the court’s previous ruling that education tracks separating Ashkenazi and Sephardi students must be unified, will serve a two week jail sentence. The parents, and particularly the mothers—many of which are pregnant and/or nursing—have refused to give in to the court’s demands, and have said that they would rather go to jail.

Supporters of the Supreme Court’s ruling claim that the separation between Ashkenazi and Sephardi students is racist and ethnically based and therefore illegal. The defendants claim that it is religiously based, and that even if it were ethnically based and illegal, the court has no authority to put them in prison, but only to take away government funding for the school. At the end of the hearing, the crowd broke into chants of Shema Yisrael, and Utzu Etza VeTufar ki Emanu-el, meaning, “All evil decrees will vanish, for God is with us,” being a pun on their Samaria town, Emanuel.

One of the representatives of the parents was quoted as saying, “All red lines have been crossed. There is no going back now. We will march with our head held high to prison. We will don holiday attire befitting those who merit sanctifying the Name of God in throngs. We are not against the State,” he added, “but it is no secret that we are more attentive to the Torah ruling than to the opinion of judges, as honorable as they are.”

As the parents quickly scramble for foster families to take care of their children while carrying out their sentence, tens of thousands of Haredim from Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, and Ashdod are expected to march with and escort them to prison in a massive show of force against the High Court.

The ruling comes just one day after the court forbade the guaranteeing of stipends for fulltime Yeshiva students, a ruling that has already riled the Haredi community. Haredim from outside Israel are also planning on rallying in New York and Montreal in support of Emanuel parents, and even many non Haredim in the Religious Zionist sector are preparing to march with them in a show of support against the High Court.

The High Court has been under attack in recent months, its President Dorit Beinisch even being the victim of a shoe throwing attack four months ago.

The Israeli Supreme Court is the only court in the Western world that essentially elects itself, its own judges deciding who gets to fill in vacancies on the bench. This method of selection has greatly angered those population sectors in Israel who do not feel their values are being represented in the court, and feel that under the current system, the chances that they ever will be are slim to none.

Israel Supreme Court v Haredim - I'm with the Haredim

2010-06-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

Another crack in the dam. Bagatz, Israel's Supreme Court, is fighting hard. Like a baby with a temper tantrum yelling and screaming on the floor because she's not getting her daily chocolate. She's not used to someone challenging her dictatorial power. But tomorrow will see the biggest challenge to their authority in the history of the State of Israel.

The story goes like this, and it ain't pretty. There's a school not far from where I live in a place called Emanuel in Samaria. It is a Haredi town. They have a school there. The school has separate tracks for Ashkenazim and Sephardim, the Ashkenazi parents for whatever reason not wanting their kids to learn with Sephardi children. Fine. Admittedly, this is elitist, racist, and I personally wouldn't send my kids to such a school. I also don't support public funding of such a school. In fact, I don't support public funding for any school. They should all be private businesses, the best ones attracting the students and the bad ones going out of business.

Instead of taking everyone's money to publicly fund education worth crap, the government should drastically lower taxes and provide education vouchers for every citizen to send their kids wherever they want to. So even though I don't support racist schools, I certainly support anyone's right to run a privately funded racist school if they so choose to, and I support any parent's right to send their kids to a racist school if they want to.

The High Court gave an ultimatum to the Ashkenazi parents yesterday. The ultimatum was not either you unite the tracks or you lose your funding. No, no. The ultimatum, as dictatorships often demand, was either unite the tracks, or go to jail. They chose jail. And God bless them.

Tomorrow there will be a massive demonstration against the Israeli High Court by Haredim across the country and even in New York and Montreal. Tens of thousands will march with them to prison. And I wish I had the time to march with them.

Bagatz is losing their authority simply because they do not represent the nation. As I've stated before on this blog, they literally elect themselves. Supreme Court justices choose who gets to be on their own court. It's ludicrous. They are the only Western High Court that runs this way. This obviously cannot go on forever, because they don't represent the nation, and they have been breaking the social contract for decades.

When the Supreme Court got rid of internal elections in the Likud in order to prevent Moshe Feiglin from gaining power in the party, they signed their own death warrant. (NO, NOT LITERALLY. I DO NOT ADVOCATE KILLING JUDGES.) The truth is, they signed it either way, because if they had allowed elections, Feiglin would have eventually won and changed the law to force judges to be elected and confirmed by representatives of the nation rather than themselves. We cannot have a Supreme Court that does not represent the nation. They have no legitimacy because of this and it's their own fault, and they must be overthrown. No, not by violence - by nonviolent civil disobedience - by a peaceful march to prison. A march to prison of pregnant and nursing mothers, of struggling fathers, accompanied by their children who will now have to be in foster care for the duration of their parents' sentences.

Send them to jail. You won't break them. And what's going to happen after their two week sentence and they still refuse to obey you? What then? Hopefully, there will be a catharsis where the country will finally understand that these dictators are not all powerful and the floodgates will open, and finally, the judicial selection law will be changed.

חזק ואמץ, and may this lead to a real change in how our High Court operates, and may we, the Jewish nation, finally be able to install a court that believes in a Jewish State rather than in a Western State of All its Citizens.

A Different Take on Helen Thomas

2010-06-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

On this blog you'll find perspectives you wouldn't find on most others. This goes for the last post on the Gaza Flotilla Farce and will continue to the Helen Thomas Debacle. Farce, debacle, you always have to pick interesting words for these sorts of things. Otherwise, people don't think you did well on you SAT's and the sky falls. Luckily, the sky doesn't weigh anything, so you end up fine either way. It's just the nature of things.

To quote Dennis Miller, there is one positive thing we can say about Helen Thomas, and that is, she did not sleep her way to the top. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she's been at the top of the White House Press Corp since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950's. This sounds like an excruciatingly boring career, being that nobody ever says anything of any consequence during a White House press conference.

Anyway, Thomas was recently asked if she had any comments on Israel. She said sure. She said that the Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go back to where they came from, which is Germany, Poland, those types of places.

I'm sure you've seen the video by now. I have a recurring problem of not posting these things fast enough.

We must understand why she said this, rather than simply be angry with her and demand her firing. We don't have the luxury to simply start yelling like the ADL and call for blood. It's too juvenile. It has to click why she said what she said, and the answer that she simply hates Jews is not enough.

Beyond all the decrepit imagery of what she said and the genocidal undertones of it, she said one thing that the Israeli government, at least, can agree with. "It's not their land," she said. And she's right. At least we don't act like it is.

Why should anyone accept the fact that Jews want to go back to some plot of real estate in the Middle East just because their great great grandparents used to live there thousands of years ago? So what?

People like Helen Thomas don't hate Jews intrinsically. They just hate when they try to act like non-Jews, and insofar as that's true, people like Helen Thomas are very helpful. They simply can't stand that Jews are still around today at all if they don't really do anything qualitatively special, and why they claim to be the chosen people if they're simply trying to be like everyone else. What Helen Thomas means when she says "Get the hell out of Palestine," is "If you want to be like everyone else, don't pretend you have any special rights to someone else's land." And, essentially, she's right.

Here's my response to you, Helen Thomas.

Helen, my dear,

I sincerely thank you for your comments concerning the Jews going back to Poland and Germany. Even though your comments are offensive and smack of supporting the Holocaust, in some strange way I agree with you. In their current state of mind, the Jews don't understand that they actually have not a right, but a Divine obligation towards their God-given land, which you call Palestine, and they think that they simply have a right to be there because their grandparents lived there a long time ago. That being so, they won't claim ownership of the land, and they'll whine to the world something about historical rights. You can even see that claim at the end of this video that ended your career. It's pathetic, I know I know. Until they understand that the land is only theirs and that they have a job to do in it assigned to them by God, then you have a point.

But what you don't understand is that this weakness, this dilly-dallying, this resorting to historical arguments and doing anything they can to keep God out of the picture, it is only temporary. Thanks to people like you, the pressure will keep building on them to the point that they will understand that they have absolutely no one to turn to but their God who did indeed choose them 3,000 years ago. And once you put the Jewish people under enough pressure, they will turn around, as they have always done throughout their history.

Don't be fooled by our current weakness. Soon, we will take our place as the moral leaders of the world. I hope and pray that you will be alive to see that day. In the meantime, I say to you this:

Bring it on.

Sincerely,

Rafi Farber

The Gaza Flotilla: Why the Blockade?

2010-06-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted at the World of Judaica

For Moshe Feiglin's must read on the flotilla fiasco, see his article here.

There is a war going on. It is fierce. But the battle is not on Facebook, it is not on YouTube, and it's not even on the Gaza coast. Obama is not involved, Turkey is not involved, nor is Iran involved. The war is between the Jews and themselves. The Jews want to be like everyone else. But then the Jews want to be uniquely Jewish.

The Jews want to be world leaders. But the Jews want to go unnoticed and be left alone.

The Jews want to connect with their God. But the Jews aren't even sure if they even believe in their God.

Meanwhile, as this battle rages on between the Jews and themselves, some mosquito rides a boat into Gaza. The mosquito bites. The Jews swat at it, and everyone goes ape.

The hasbara, or PR battle looks grim. It seems like there’s no way we can win, no way to convince anybody that we were acting in self defense, no way to show that they started it, no way to come out of this situation with the upper hand. The truth is, there is one way we can win this fight and come out on top, but it will require one heck of a paradigm shift that the current Israeli leadership is not willing to execute. Neither are the people of Israel ready for such a shift, but I present it here as the only option Israel will eventually have no choice but to turn to when things get really, really tight.

The truth of the matter is that those Turks, or whoever the heck they were, had every right to sail to Gaza. They had every right to arm themselves, and they had every right to fight the IDF. Why? Because the Jews, in a fit of confusion about who they are, decided it would be a good idea to kick themselves out of Gaza five years ago and declare to everyone that Gaza is not part of Israel. Instead of having a mosquito bite her foot, she decided to simply amputate the foot and hobble around on a stump, expecting people not to challenge her or try to push over her stumbling, lame body. They had every right to fight our soldiers because our soldiers are blockading a limb that they themselves amputated five years ago.

Look people - hack off your own foot, and expect to get a serious, life threatening infection. Don't blame the bacteria. They're just doing their job.

But enough of the grim reality. How do we win this fight? Despite what was just written, it is very winnable. First, we must understand the other side. In order to do that, we must first ask ourselves a simple question. Why are we blockading Gaza? Why not just let the ships in? People answer weapons, rockets, whatnots. But if that’s true, why not blockade Lebanon? Well, we could, but we retreated from there 10 years ago. I mean, we could prevent Hizballah from rearming with weapons we definitely will have to deal with whenever the Third Lebanon War breaks out, and we all know it will sooner or later.

The answer is simple. We’re not blockading Lebanon because Lebanon is a sovereign state, it is not our territory, and we are not currently at war with it. Then why blockade Gaza? It isn’t our territory either, it’s pretty much a sovereign state with a Hamas government. They haven't shot many rockets since Cast Lead. So what if they are dedicated to our destruction? That means we have to blockade them? And Lebanon and Syria aren't dedicated to our destruction? Give me a break.

And now we can understand the other side. The other side understands that Gaza is not our territory. What the other side doesn’t like is that we are blockading a territory that is not ours. How do you think the world would respond if we suddenly blockaded Lebanon because we don’t want them to have weapons? Just because our soldiers responded in self defense does not mean that they suddenly have a right to mess with someone else's land.

The self defense argument is irrelevant, even if true, and of course it is. American Jews - I know you're doing your best with Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and all that, but you're wasting your time, you're barking up the wrong tree. You're propellers. No offense. You're on my side, but you're broadcasting the wrong message. We have to face it. We're the bad guys. Self defense doesn't change that.

The only relevant question is to whom does Gaza belong? If it belongs to Hamas, then let them do what they want with it. If they fire at you, fire back and conquer until the other side surrenders unconditionally. But doing that of course will not win the hasbara fight, nor alleviate the political situation. You can’t conquer a land that isn’t yours for long. The allies left Europe shortly after World War II because Europe is not American land.

The only thing that will win the PR fight and will solve the political situation is simply declaring that the Gaza Strip is an inseparable part of Israel, rebuilding Gush Katif and settling it one thousandfold, and paying the Arabs there to leave using the military budget we are currently spending on rocket-proofing the entire Southwestern Negev like a bunch of idiots building a hospital under a hole in a highway bridge.

So, American Jews - I call upon you to protest the Israeli government who is responsible for us being the bad guys, and tell them that the Gaza Strip is Jewish land, and as such should be annexed and the Arabs paid to leave. Tell them to expel the Turkish ambassador and break all ties with Turkey. Otherwise, the Israeli government should stop telling Muslims they can't sail to their own land with whatever metal bats they want to bring for some good Muslim teething.

Understand that the world doesn’t care if you’re acting in self-defense. They care about whether you are a freedom fighter or a terrorist, and even terrorists have the right to self defense. The difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is simply this: A freedom fighter is fighting for his own land. A terrorist is fighting for somebody else’s.

Israel must declare to the world what her land is and fight for it with a sense of Jewish Justice fighting in the name of the God of Israel, not in the name of the God of Christian self defense. Until she does that, she is destined to lose not only the Hasbara fight, but the legitimacy of her own existence as the only Jewish State on the face of the globe.

Eventually, we will all understand that. In the meantime, the seas are going to get quite rough. Hold on to your oars and know that every bump we pass is a bump closer to when we will wake the heck up as a 3,000 year old nation and turn everything around.

I'll see you guys on the calm shores, and I anxiously anticipate smooth sailing with us at the head of the Armada of the world.

The Next Step for Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit

2010-05-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

I see almost everything from a pan-Jewish historical perspective. The vote that happened on Thursday is no different. Yesterday, the true meaning of the results suddenly occurred to me, and though the immediate consequences are dark, the overall depth of it will, hopefully, allow us all to look up with our heads held high in hope and anticipation.

If we take a big look at the history of the Jewish people, a victory in Thursday's vote would not have made any sense. What you had was a vote on a very murky proposal, confusing to everybody, and participating were only 2,100 people. The technical question was, should internal elections be postponed? Yes or no. What it really meant was, should elections be canceled forever? But what it really, truly meant was should Jerusalem be divided? Central Committee members didn't even recognize the reality of the second question, let alone the third. They had no idea that elections will never happen again now. All the more so did they have no idea that this had anything to do with Jerusalem. But even if they did, the Jewish people as a whole certainly did not. Most were probably not even aware that a vote even took place among some obscure committee that most people don't even know exists in the first place.

Let's say Feiglin won. That would have meant that a third of the committee, about 600 or so people, voted against postponing elections, for various reasons. Some because they hate Netanyahu for some personal issue. Some, because they want democracy in the Likud. Others because they don't want Netanyahu to go "left". They would have voted with Feiglin for every petty narrow political reason except for the real one: That we are the chosen people of God and must rise up and lead the world by moral example.

If Feiglin won, Jerusalem would have been saved, but the Likud Central Committee, and a fortiori the nation as a whole, wouldn't have realized what it was they almost lost. This would not have made any sense. We would have saved the nation from much hardship without anybody noticing how or why. The Jewish people would not have been required to take a good look at themselves in the eye and come to serious conclusions about their Jewish identity and where it must lead them. In a wide sense, national teshuva would not have taken place.

Nobody, not even a potential faith-based leader like Moshe Feiglin, can inspire this people to embark on national repentance. We can only do that ourselves - not as a "Likud Central Committee," or a third of it or whatever. Only as a nation can we do such a thing. In order for that to happen, we have to be aware of what we are, meaning we have to be aware of what we have, meaning we have to be aware of what we are about to lose.

Moshe Feiglin is not here to inspire national repentance. He is here, God-willing, to be the vessel the nation uses once it comes to its own conclusions about its destiny and repents on its own. We will come to that conclusion when we realize that there is no other choice, when it is literally do or die, when our holiest sites are about to be taken away from us and we feel an incredible sense of emptiness and suddenly remember that there was one man who predicted it all, last Thursday, April 29, 2010.

When we are on the verge of despair, closed on in all sides and illegitimate in the eyes of the entire world, we will then see the light. The Jewish people will realize that they have no other choice but to come to terms with their own national existence as a nation that dwells alone that must lead the world by example.

On that day, Netanyahu and the normalcy dream will fade away like tissue paper, and the Jewish Nation will seek a new leader. We will be there for them, to catch them, to hold them at the last minute before they fall, for we are the only alternative.

God willing it will happen soon, when Netanyahu makes his attempt and God willing his government falls. A new leader will have to be chosen for the Likud. And Moshe Feiglin will be there--not for the Likud Central Committee, or for a third of it, but for us all.

Conclusion from Yesterday

2010-04-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a fateful day for the Jewish people. I will try to explain exactly what happened and what it means from a narrow political, as well as a more global/Jewish perspective. I will give my general predictions for the near future (though I am not a prophet) and sum up with what me must do to prepare.

Personally, yesterday was touching, even incredible. Shmuel Sackett, the movement's fundraiser, and I sat at the entrance to the polling station all day. We spoke to our opponents the whole time about Jewish issues and we really became friends with them. There were no scuffles or name-calling, (except one incident where one guy called Shmuel a "behema") and the people that feared us for being bearded "right wing extremists" by the end of the day became our friends.

All in all, I am not depressed. I feel so privileged to be part of this fight, and I feel so happy to have met the people I have met along the way. It has really been the greatest experience of my life.

I am aware that you may not understand everything I will write in this email. I cannot explain everything perfectly and bring you directly inside my head. I will try my best though, and through it all, understand that I am not preaching doom. The Jewish people are never doomed. I am simply advising you all to be mentally prepared for a difficult period in our continuing history. How difficult, I cannot exactly say. In the end we will get through it. I just don't know when.

To get a more direct experience of what I am talking about, watch this video. Even if you don't understand Hebrew, watch the man's face at the end.

Political Analysis

As for the administration of it, the vote itself was conducted without observers from both sides, and for the first time in the history of Democracy, with actual moving polling stations on cars, driving up to people's houses, so Netanyahu's people could actually drive a polling station to a member they knew supported them, while avoiding the house of an opponent. But that aside, let's move on.

Yesterday's vote, from a narrow political perspective, means the death of the Likud party as a major political force in Israel. The Likud Central Committee, which sets Likud policy, voted to postpone internal elections for the party's institutions. The vote was technically over an amendment to the party constitution to require elections 3 years after general elections, instead of 1 year after them. Due to the fact that since 1973 there has never been a period of three years between general elections, the practical meaning is that the existing heads of the Likud Party's institutions are now holding their seats permanently, literally, until death do they part.

This means no one can get elected to anything within the party and the institutions become meaningless, people stop joining the party, chapters stop running, and the entire party infrastructure collapses. The Likud Party is no longer a group of Israelis trying to determine their destiny, because elections will no longer happen. Likud is now one thing: Benjamin Netanyahu. Since Netanyahu is not a very likeable or strong person, the Likud will cease to be a serious political party whenever the next elections take place.

But none of this really matters. The Likud Party is not "holy." It is simply a vessel with which to determine one's political destiny. Now that that vessel is dead, either someone else will have to lead it and rebuild it and reintroduce democracy within it, or otherwise a new vessel will have to arise in the vacuum that has now been created. All in all, these matters are only technical. They are ephemeral and unimportant. What really matters is what it will cause.

Global Analysis
Now that Netanyahu has absolute power within his party, there is nothing stopping him from pursuing his dream. His dream is not evil or sinister, and Netanyahu is not an evil person. His dream is simply for Israel to be a normal country, accepted and legitimate in the eyes of the Nations of the world. The problem is, this dream is unattainable and unrealistic, because since the founding of the Jewish people, they have never in their history been ordinary and accepted. Only once in their history were they accepted, and that was when they were extraordinary and accepted, in the time of King Solomon, when the nations of the world came to hear of his wisdom and real, true alliances were built and the nations of the world gathered at the Temple Mount to marvel at the social wonder that was the nation of Israel.

Netanyahu's dream can never be realized, and it doesn't take a history buff to figure that out. What we must understand though, is that this dream is the root cause of anti Semitism throughout history. Anti semitism, as a global phenomenon, is not simply your standard hatred for minorities. In isolated cases it may be. But in a pan-historical perspective, a Jew trying to be normal drives the nations maddeningly crazy, manifesting itself in varying degrees of violence throughout the centuries. It drives them crazy simply because they know as well as we know that we are an eternal people that testifies to the existence of God. The fact that we are God's people doesn't in itself engender jealousy and hatred. What does, though, is when God's people try to be just like everyone else.

Netanyahu is of course conflicted between his Jewish identity and his desire to be normal. This translates into an enormous sense of confusion and dilly-dallying. On the one hand, he does contain within him the dream of being extraordinary and accepted - the dream I call the classical Jewish "messianic" dream - and therefore deep down he wants Israel to be a moral powerhouse and technological wonder and all that, which will serve as a testimony to the world of...of...

And that is where Netanyahu gets stuck just like every single other Prime Minister of Israel got stuck, because he's not sure of what, since he does not believe in God. At least not enough to use his belief in God as a justification for anything he does as the leader of the Jews. That's why he turns to his second, more tepid dream of just being normal.

This conflict translates on the ground into Netanyahu's "political maneuvering" for time and "foot dragging" on the "peace process". He wants to be proud and Jewish and does not want to disconnect from the land of his ancestors, but since there's nothing substantive to back up this desire of his except for some vague emotion he can't quite place, in the end he will have to, because America wants him to give it up, and Netanyahu, first and foremost, wants to be normal and accepted. That dream, he can pin to something concrete: physical reality, which he, of course, does indeed believe in.

What is going to happen now is Netanyahu is going to try as hard as he can to do absolutely nothing, until such a point in time as he can no longer do nothing without risking the loss of international legitimacy, i.e. normalcy and acceptance. This point in time will be September, when the building freeze is up and he has to decide what to do. The pressure to give it all up in return for international legitimacy will be relentless, and since he, practically speaking, has no God, he will give in, just like every other Israeli leader has done since 1967.

When he does, he will frame it as if he is saving Israel. He'll say something like, "The Iranian threat is too serious, and we must come to a peace deal now in order to build an international coalition that will deal with the nuclear threat." He will thereby justify the move to himself as well, and genuinely believe he is doing the best for his people.

If he is successful in fooling Israel into believing this, it will happen. There will be no political force to stop him, since no such force exists anymore. If he succeeds, Netanyahu will have achieved the exact opposite of his dream. The world, seeing that the Jews are willing to leave their holiest sites under international supervision (which, of course, will be part of any deal) will interpret subconsciously from this that the Jews don't really believe that they are God's people. This will cause ravenous amounts of global anti-Semitism, international delegitimization the likes of which will make what's going on today look like a joke, hundreds will die in terrorist attacks, and the world will abandon Israel to Iran anyway.

The only force that can stop Netanyahu now is not political. The Jewish people as a whole also have the same internal battle as Netanyahu. Namely, between their Jewish identities connecting them to God and their desire to shed them and be normal. If we wake up as a people and refuse to be fooled, perhaps the situation can be reversed, if that national waking-up translates to a rebellion in the Knesset and a refusal to carry out Netanyahu's will.

I fear, though, that I was naive in thinking that anything short of losing Jerusalem and seeing the consequences of this would wake up the nation, that we could just save everything before anything disastrous that would deeply shake the nation would happen, that we could spare Israel a serious existential debate. Though, either way, in the end we will wake up, for we are a nation that must always dwell alone.

That being so, Israel has a very dark period ahead, and diaspora Jewry will feel it as well. I do not know how long it will last. I can only pray that we will weather the storm quickly and rise from the darkness that is now gathering ahead.

God bless you all, and good shabbos,

Rafi

Feiglin Breaks Down. Jerusalem Will be Divided.

2010-04-30T04:19:00.001-07:00

Mayor of Netanyahu Loses Control of Herself and Screams at Feiglin!

2010-04-27T11:41:00.001-07:00

Feiglin Takes on the Knesset Channel on Likud Central Committee

2010-04-27T11:39:00.001-07:00

Netanyahu is Forbidding Poll Obvservers at the Voting Stations!!!

2010-04-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

Protestant Health Care Reformation

2010-04-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

Finally, a humor column.Originally posted at WorldofJudaica

As we all know, the Federal Government is drowning in a big ocean of debt, and they need about $12 trillion dollars or so to swim out of it. This, when you think about numbers, isn’t so much when compared to, say, a mere 12 Milky Way Galaxies stacked back to back and stretched over the very fabric of spacetime itself, which is why it’s important to keep things in perspective. Luckily, the Federal Government owns the Mint, so everything should be fine.

The danger, of course, is that the Mint may break down and/or violently explode over the enormous strain of printing up $12 trillion new dollars over the course of right now, because that’s when they need the money to fund the newly passed Health Care Overhaul Bill, which is several thousand pages long, pages that could have more appropriately gone to the Mint to print the money needed to fund it.

Various sources are now reporting a severe paper shortage at the Mint due to the 1,070 copies of the several thousand page bill sent to each member of both the House and the Senate, twice, due to a printer glitch. (Lawmakers will have to wait for the Back to School season in order to purchase binders big enough to fit the text of the Bill.) Senators and Congresspersons who have already read and memorized the bill and/or don’t know what the Bill is about and don’t care, are being encouraged to donate their copies to the Mint immediately.

Due to the sharp dive in the value of the US dollar following the massive printing operations at the Mint combined with the spike in the price of paper consequent of the recent surge in Congressional demand, it is estimated that the $12 trillion money-printing initiative, nicknamed Operation Get Rich Really Really Really Really Quick, will cost the Federal Government approximately $14.5 bagillion-shmillion, a new number just recently discovered by economists, which will be borrowed from China in the form of negotiable currency shipped on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald McDonald, formerly the USS Ronald Reagan until the fast food franchise rented the rights to the carrier for some much-needed government capital that was immediately spent on funding operation Get Rich Really Really Really Really Quick.

In an attempt to save the economy from collapse, Jewish accountants from all over the country were rushed to the capital in an attempt to come up with a carefully planned strategy to pay off the national debt. The conclusion of the summit was, “Maybe we should pay in chanukkah dreidels or Monopoly money.”

Upon the announcement, stock in Parker Brothers Game Company quintupled.

The Health Care Overall is estimated to save the government flabillions of dollars a second by putting an end to federally-funded Medicare and Medicaid waste by expanding government control over the entire system and federally-funding everything so nobody can cheat anymore. The idea being that if all health care requiring people are busy filling out forms all day about their great aunt’s gall bladder history, actual money-costing health-care-related operations will drop so rapidly that everyone will become rich overnight from the surpluses.

President Obama had this to say about the prospective savings: “We believe that a two-state solution is good for the region, and could you please loan us some paper.”

Uri Tuval the Fascist on Unauthorized Outposts in Judea and Samaria

2010-04-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Meet Uri Tuval, on the left here. He is the assistant editor of Haaretz newspaper's supplemental section. He is 36, successful, and single, according to his Facebook profile.

Meet Eliraz Peretz (right, top) and Roi Klein (right, bottom). They are fallen IDF Majors who built their homes in the unauthorized outpost of Givat HaYovel just outside the town of Eli. Eliraz Peretz was killed in battle barely two weeks ago with those who, if they could, would go on a mass-murder binge against any Jewish person within weapons range. Roi Klein was killed in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War as he jumped on a grenade thrown by the enemy while screaming Shema Yisrael, saving the lives of his fellow soldiers. Peretz left behind a widow and three children. Klein, a widow plus two.

Uri Tuval had this to say about Eliraz Peretz:

“I don’t want to live in the country of Captain Eliraz Peretz or his mother. My consolations to the family…a family of Jihadist Fascists, and don’t dare let anyone say he was killed for my sake.”

Suprising to say, but I am not really offended by this. I am not offended because it is simply rambling nonsense blurted glibly in a moment of emotional instability. Jihadists are those who believe that all who do not follow the tenets of the religion they practice should be murdered. Peretz and Klein were religious Jews, but they didn't believe that non-Jews should be murdered, and I suspect Uri Tuval knows this. Fascists are those who believe that the State is above all else, and as mentioned before, Peretz and Klein built their homes in an outpost unauthorized by the State. Uri Tuval knows this, too. In fact, he uses this fact as his justification for his outburst.

“I can’t bear that "People of Israel- Land of Israel- Defense Forces of Israel-Israel’s children-Sanctification of G-d’s name" mantra. The officer who was killed had built his home in an illegal outpost. Is that rational? The religious Zionists have turned the IDF into a tool for their political goals, they endanger all of us, and also cause more of their group to be killed. And when they are killed, they talk about it. When they do that, we are allowed to think about it and respond.”

That is what offends me. It offends me because unlike rambling insanity that is easily rejected, this is much more insidious. It's a predictable shame that all the hype is being focused on his "jihadist-fascist" remark, and not on his overall worldview, which causes these outbursts.

Tuval, as he writes, cannot stand the sanctification of God's name. He doesn't like that "mantra". And he believes that the fact that he built his home in an unauthorized outpost shows that he turned the IDF into a tool for his political goals.

Live in an unauthorized outpost, die for your country, "sanctify God's name," and then perpetuate your evil scheme of living in unauthorized outposts by inspiring others who will then go and die for the same evil scheme.

This is Tuval's argument. Let's break it down for a minute. The evil scheme he accuses Peretz and Klein of perpetuating is living in an area unauthorized by the state. Unauthorized by whom, exactly? The answer is, Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Since none of Judea and Samaria has been annexed by the State, the political head of the army, the defense minister, must sign the final permit for building on any given piece of land in that territory.

One could extrapolate from here that if Ehud Barak just signs the permit, Eliraz Peretz and Roi Klein are no longer evildoers, and that's why Tuval hates the mantra "sanctify God's name," since it's not God's name that matters. It's Ehud Barak's name that really counts. For Uri Tuval, Ehud Barak is God. That offends me as a Jew.

And what is Ehud Barak? He is the State. And for Tuval, the State is above all else.

Who's the Fascist now?

And one more thing: Tuval accuses God-fearing Jews of turning the IDF into a political tool. I agree with him. God-fearing Jews turn the IDF into the political tool that sanctifies the name of God to the world and makes the Jewish people into a proud political unit.

My political goal is to fix the world in the Kingdom of God.

What's yours, Uri Tuval?

Manhigut Yehudit: Awakenings

2010-04-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

This is the video that was screened at the Manhigut Yehudit dinner. It will give you a good idea about how the movement is quickly uniting the country, as representatives from every sector of Israeli society are coming together to give themselves to the cause of Jewish leadership for Israel.

Watch it, and make sure your friends do as well.

Israel Supreme Court Gives Netanyahu one Month, and that's it

2010-03-26T03:05:00.000-07:00

We are finally in the home stretch of this Likud Central Committee elections debacle. Yesterday, March 25, the High Court granted Netanyahu his request to allow the Likud Central Committee to vote on retroactively changing the Likud constitution to postpone its own elections for another two years. This request was turned down by Judge Yehuda Zaft in the Tel Aviv District Court. But the Supreme Court overturned that ruling and granted him one month to organize the vote.

The change Netanyahu wants to make is from mandating elections one year after general elections, as it is now, to three years after general elections. This means that, by the current Likud Constitution, elections had to be held already two months ago, by February 10. And so, a good analogy to this vote, in the words of Michael Fuah, is, say the Knesset overran its term by two months. Then they got together and voted on a proposal to extend their term by another two years by retroactively changing the law that elections have to be held every four years, to six years. (Heck! Why not 20?)

However, this vote is even worse than that. Since Netanyahu wants the constitution changed to require elections three years after the last general elections, being that general elections in this country are generally never three years apart in the first place, this change practically makes internal Likud elections a thing of the past, obsolete.

In order to pass the change, Netanyahu needs a two thirds majority of Likud Central Committee members to vote yes. If he does not get two thirds, the following will happen:

1) Netanyahu will be embarrassed within his party, and his status in the party will be greatly damaged.
2) Elections will be held in late May, amid a wave of "kick him while he's down" anti-Netanyahu sentiment within the Likud.
3) The new Central Committee will be so stacked with Land of Israel Faithful that he will not be able to function within the party, and he will leave, and Likud will be left to the true nationalists.

The poetic beauty of it all is this: The High Court knows this, too. But if they do, why not just let it happen, from their perspective? If the Likud becomes "Extreme Right" as they term it, wouldn't that "scare voters away"? Then the Left would make a comeback, and the court would be all happy. So why is the Supreme Court trying to keep Likud under Netanyahu's control? Are they suddenly latent Likudniks?

No, they are not. WE are the Likudniks, and they know as well as we do that if elections are held now, the Likud will go to the real Likudniks, and Moshe Feiglin will take the party. And if that happens, the Supreme Court will soon be unable to continue appointing itself to the Supreme Bench. They will have to be...elected. By the Jewish people. For the Jewish people.

This, they really REALLY do not want.

The Supreme Court is not fighting for Benjamin Netanyahu. They are fighting for their own survival. The survival of their oligarchy, their regime, and their dictatorship. They just gave themselves a one month extension to their rule. But the clock is ticking, Dorit Beinisch. You are running out of time. We are coming, and we cannot be stopped.

One more question though. Why didn't the Supreme Court just say that Netanyahu could just postpone the elections no questions asked? Forget about this "vote to change the constitution" nonsense. Because, as Moshe Feiglin writes, "A petty criminal sins against the law. A big criminal sins using the law."

They can't just violate a constitution. They have to pretend to grant legal legitimacy to their injustice. Hence, they will allow a retroactive change in a law. And this is the essence of the court. They cannot rule going forward. The nation is not with them. They know their time is up, so they have to use a time machine. Rule retroactively. Going forward, they will fall. But like all true Leftists, they can only go backward, retroactively, in fear.

The funniest thing, though? When this Central Committee vote was originally supposed to happen, Moshe Feiglin and Shmuel Sackett, both Likud Central Committee members, were out of the country raising funds. That vote was canceled due to the Tel Aviv District Court.

But this time...

Guess who's in town to cast a ballot?

That's two more votes against you, Bibi.

Tick tock, Bagatz. Tick tock.

On Joe Biden and the Building Bungle

2010-03-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

When I first heard about this yesterday I thought of one thing: God is toying with history. He's having fun, too.

The "Arab League" gets together and grants four months for indirect talks. The US even has a cute little term for them. They're called "proximity talks." They're designed to nurture "proximity," to cozy us up together, to make us see the humanity in each other's eyes, to wring out the love in our hearts, to get us crying on our knees apologizing to each other for years of bloodshed and cycles of violence and etcetera. Ah...proximity.

Well, I'm not sure what the heck the "Arab League" has to do with the man on the moon here, but whatever. If they want to say something and pretend they're relevant, then go for it. Knock your socks off. Just keep them out of my laundry.

All of the political pundits, even the leftist ones, were saying this was a joke. It was just a tactic to get something done about Iran. But still, there's that fear...that even though Abbas's term actually ran out in February and he is no longer a "Democratically elected leader" anymore so to speak, and the Arabs of Judea and Samaria are split into so many warring gangs that their hatred for Jews has actually been diluted slightly...there's still that slight fear that someone will start talking and then Netanyahu will, I don't know, do something stupid and give away the Kinneret. Then you have to brace for a wave of Arab violence that always accompanies true Peace Talks. This is why I had a rock thrown at my head two days ago on my way home. Thank God I was on a bulletproof bus.

Then Joe Biden gets here and the proximity talks are about to start...and...OH...1,600 housing units and it's all shot to Gehenom.

I cracked up. I see the pattern. It's a beautiful pattern. And I think this is the last stitch. Here's the pattern. Every peace round we make lasts shorter than the previous one. Oslo the longest, Road Map, Annapolis, Olmert's little offer, they just keep failing quicker and quicker. And now there's the Proximity Talks. The Arabs can't even bear to talk to the Jews directly. Anyway, those lasted less than 24 hours, and they didn't even get started.

And then the Arab League had a long talk with the man on the moon and gathered for an "emergency session" and ended up saying that they're very very mad and Israel is very very bad and they don't like Israel anymore and I want my lolly pop. Then they shook the man on the moon's hand and went to bed all self righteous and angry about Jewish housing in Jerusalem.

Have you ever been in a car that ran out of gas? I have, once. Let me explain how it moves. You're driving, everything's fine, and then your engine sputters. Momentum keeps you going, so you're still moving forward. The engine stops, but there are still some fumes and drops of fuel left, so it starts up again, and sputters. Turns off, turns back on. Then the car runs out of momentum and stops. So you start it again. It drives for a few seconds, and then sputters again, stops. Momentum starts slowing...slowing...slowing. Then your car stops. Again. So you start your car one more time at a standstill, you have some "Proximity Talks" with your car. It starts, and then immediately it stops again. You try to start it, and this time it just doesn't do anything. You're not going anywhere - at least not in the direction you were going before.

But here's the fun part. You were driving uphill the whole time. You don't even realize that your home is the other way. All you have to do is release the parking brake and you'll roll down faster and faster and get there in no time at all. It's just that your driver doesn't want to release the brake and roll down. He doesn't know what's down there. He doesn't like the incline.

Right now, Israel's not moving anywhere. She's out of gas. There's a huge gravitational pull of Jewish identity pulling her in the opposite direction, but the driver won't release the break and let her roll.

But the new driver is coming. The old one is scared. He won't leave the driver's seat even though the car won't move and he's out of fuel. But his time is up. The new driver is knocking on the window. Bibi locks the doors.

The passengers are getting annoyed. All the cars are honking at them as they pass, brighting them and yelling slurrs. "GET OFF THE ROAD!" they scream. "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE HERE!" It's no longer legitimate that they're on the road. They may cause an accident, just sitting there with no fuel. The passengers are getting scared and they see the new driver knocking. He's got a sign on his shirt that says "Jewish Leadership." The passengers are about to throw the driver out of the car and let the new one step inside and release the break.

And like a loaded spring, let the car fly faster and faster in the right direction home.

Will we Take the Party? Once Again, High Court will Decide

2010-03-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

Remember that vote that the Likud Central Committee was about to have last week? Well, after marathon talks with Likud Central Committee chairman Moshe Kahlon, a sinking feeling that he could not muster the 70% needed to change the Likud Constitution, and a court order implying that even if he did, the vote would be invalidated as illegal, Netanyahu canceled the vote 24 hours before it took place.

Likud elections are scheduled for April 28th. That's 51 days from now. If they happen, then Manhigut Yehudit will more than likely take the party. The reasons are as follows:

1) The faction is expected to more than double their current numbers from 122 to 250, if not triple or even quadruple.
2) If that pans out, we may even take the Likud internal court and law committee.
3) If we do, then there's no way Netanyahu can maintain any semblance of control over his party and he will proceed to form a giant political garbage dump consisting of Likudniks that want nothing to do with Moshe Feiglin, Ehud Barak whose party wants nothing to do with him either, some runaways from Kadima, and...why the hell not - let's just throw Meretz in there or something.
4) The garbage dump, Kadima II: Achora will at first poll very high, which is why he will form it. But then a sudden thought will hit the average Israeli. That thought is: Haven't we seen this before?
5) Likud will be left to those faithful to the land of Israel and their Jewish identity.

That is, if the Supreme Court lets the elections actually happen. What is it they call themselves? The "Guard dogs of democracy" or something like that? So you'd think they'd allow democratic elections to take place. But don't be too sure about that.

Netanyahu has requested a staying order from the High Court to stop the elections. The case is set to be heard on the 25th. That will be the final hurdle for this round of the fight.

Likud Identity Crisis, Magic Number 667

2010-02-28T02:11:00.000-08:00

This Friday I picked up a weekend edition of ישראל היום, that free daily printed by Sheldon Anderson that's brewing up a storm in news circles because they're eating into the mainstream media and running away with the prom queen of a huge readership.

The newspaper is just as yellow and slanted as any other news source in Israel, and I didn't expect to see anything out of the ordinary. One article was about the tension in חברון that would be blown up by the "rightist celebration of the anniversary of the Baruch Goldstein massacre" or something outrageous like that. Try telling them that they're just going to mourn his death without condoning what he did and they'll laugh at you.

In the appendix, there was this article about Alon Pinkas, that Hasbara guy you often see whenever there's a terrorist attack yacking about Israel's "right to defend herself" and "desire for peace" to a CNN or Fox News anchor with a bunch of itchy questions who then turns to the "Spokesman for Human Rights in Palestine" who then goes on about how she condemns violence on both sides and the cycle of violence must end and then Alon Pinkas sits there like a polite nincompoop until he gets another turn to say something about self-defense.

The article, by way of returning to present subject matter, was about how Alon Pinkas embarrassed himself by giving a really boring speech about Tel Aviv several months ago that was apparently so excruciatingly dull that he lost his chance to become Israel's UN representative because of it.

I wasn't going to read the article because I care as much about Alon Pinkas' boring Tel Aviv speeches as I do about Mahmoud Abbas' favorite TV show. But as I flipped through the pages, a bolded subtitle caught me. I still don't understand what the heck it's doing in the article.

For the Hebraically challenged, this is what it says:

"Battle for the Future of the Likud"

The Pinkas affair still hasn't cooled off, but now another matter is frightening the upper echelon of the Likud. One of the things that Netanyahu is busy with these days with full intensity is what's happening within the Likud. According to the court's ruling, the Likud must hold elections for its party institutions within two months. Netanyahu wants the elections only in another year and a half. Why are procedural matters such as these disturbing Netanyahu's sleep and due to which he is already meeting with hundreds of Likud Central Committe members and activists these past weeks?

The reason is that the Prime Minister thinks that the battle is over nothing less than the future of the Likud. According to him, if elections were held on time, extremist types (note: that's us!) would flood the party's Central Committee that will prevent the government from moving on any political front. (Read: Will prevent him from moving left.) "These people have nothing whatsoever to do with the Likud Movement," he says. (That's what we say about him.)

On Monday, Netanyahu met with activists in the Knesset. (Read: Egotistical power hungry job-seeking sycophants.) Central Committee members left the room with the feeling that a National Mission rests on their shoulders. And so, this week, it was decided that in the beginning of March a secret ballot vote would be held in the Likud Central Committee on Netanyahu's proposal to push off the elections. According to the constitution, there needs to be a two-thirds majority of committee members to approve the move.

Among Netanyahu's people, a dark feeling is brewing that the count of the votes will see a loss. "There are those surrounding Netanyahu that are even talking about
leaving the Likud if the central committee turns into an extreme body," said one confidant of the Prime Minister. "Netanyahu very much hopes that there will be no need for such a thing."

Let that dark feeling linger, you sad, frightened people. At most, 2,000 central committee members will actually vote. Divide that by three and here's your answer: If 667 Likud Central Committee members vote against postponing the elections, the party is ours, and Moshe Feiglin moves to the next stage.

Watch out world. Things are going to get very interesting very soon in the Middle East.

Likud - Is it Just a Tactic?

2010-02-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I was sitting in the back of Moshe Feiglin's car, on the way back from a little shindig I had helped organize for Manhigut at a charming home in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Katemon. A few minutes into the ride, I decided to ask him the following question. "Moshe, how many people do you think really understand the depth of what you're trying to do?"

"It's hard to tell," he answered me. "Even within Manhigut Yehudit, not everyone really gets it."

Given that, I will try to explain, to the best of my own incomplete understanding, the depth behind the movement.

There are many that see the phenomenon of Manhigut Yehudit in Likud as an interesting tactic. Some faithful Jews love the idea of joining the major party in the National Camp and see it as ingenious. Other faithful Jews see it in the opposite light, namely a waste of energy and resources, divisive, and pulling away much needed support for sectorial parties like National Union. When someone from the former camp tries to convince someone from the latter to become a member of the Likud Party, he might say, "Join! It's the only way we can win!" The other responds with a tactical answer, as in, "That won't work. You're dreaming. If Feiglin takes over Likud, it will disintegrate."

If you look closer at this exchange, you'll notice that there is no ideological debate going on. There is no difference of opinion, principle, or outlook. No - not because both of them are right on the money ideologically. In fact, both of them are completely missing the point.

To understand why, let's look at it from the opposite perspective - the Left Wing.

When whatever politician is leading the country tries his best to come to a "Peace Agreement" with the Arabs, his brain no doubt goes through flips as he surrounds himself with an arsenal of advisers and consultants, thinking, meditating, obsessing over how, exactly, is he going to make this Peace Agreement work. He tries Oslo, oops. The problem with that one was X. He backtracks a bit and thinks about Wye. Oh well, the problem there was Y. We can fix that. Let's go for a Road Map. Oh fiddlesticks, problem Z - but we're getting closer now, running out of letters in the alphabet and all. How about Disengagement? That should definitely work. What?! No - no, the answer is we have to have a demilitarized...agree on the final status first...maybe Geneva...

The problem with the Leftist, from Beilin to Peres to Sharon to Bibi, is that he's all about tactics. Which combination of giving away land, what exact steps are required, how PRECISELY do we have to do it to make it work? All of his tactics will fail, because there is no ideology behind what he is trying to do. All there is...is fear. Fear of a "demographic problem," fear of starting a war, fear of international condemnation, fear of this and that. But nothing drives him forward in the positive sense. Only backward.

If we, the faithful public replete with Jewish identity, are to descend into solely tactical arguments about what steps, precisely, we have to make in order for "our side" to "win," then we are no better than the Left.

But then, isn't joining the Likud Party a tactic? How else can one explain it?

In my opinion, though joining the Likud party superficially can be termed a tactic, it is so much deeper than that. To win this war, we need not tactics, but belief in ourselves and in God. We have to understand that this is not about "our side" finally "winning." It is about the Jewish People as a whole. We must internalize that we, the believing public, are not second class citizens, that we can no longer leave the country to the faithless elite, and that we have a God-given responsibility to lead the Jewish People, because no one else will. To believe that, we have to accept, on faith, one crucial thing, and that is this:

When, God willing, Moshe Feiglin, or another man like him, sits at the head of the National Camp, whether that party's name is Likud or not, the people of Israel will follow him.

When a faithful Jew makes the claim that if one of us actually heads the party of the National Camp, that party will disintegrate, he is essentially saying this: No one will ever follow our lead. Nobody believes in us.

Joining the party of the National Camp is not just a tactic. It's a statement. A statement that we, the believing public who knows where this country must go, not only believe in God. We believe in His people. We believe in ourselves, that we must lead, and that we are no longer second class citizens.

I leave you with one last question. Can it actually work?

The answer: If we, as a People, believe that we are ready to take the torch of leadership, if we say it, loud and clear to the rest of the Nation, "We're ready for this, and we can do it," then not only can it work. It must. For if we are ready, God will give us our chance to prove it. That's how Jewish history, as a metaphysical reality, works.

But there's only one way to tell the Nation that we are, indeed, ready. We must join them. In this particular historical reality, that means we must sign up for Likud.

If we lead, they will follow. And if we build it, they will come. Bimehera beyamenu. Mamash.

How and Why I shifted from Disengagement Supporter to Feiglinite Overnight

2010-02-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

It was simple, really. All it was, was a matter of shifting of dreams.

When the second Intifada, or Oslo War, broke out late in 2000, I was 17 years old and living in America. From that year until the waning of the terrorist onslaught four years later, I was on constant defense-mode for Israel. When I went to college I even participated in a few of those "pro Israel rallies" and every so often would run into a group of "pro Palestinian rallies" and fume and pace and rip my hair out in frustration.

Every time the UN would do whatever it does, every time the world would say STOP when Jews picked up their weapons to defend themselves, my skin would crawl. When Arafat's helicopter was bombed when I was in 11th grade, it was so satisfying, and I only wished that Israel would do more, but knew that she wouldn't. A Hamas terrorist would be blown up by an F16 and I would breathe a sigh of relief. I knew that Israel could end the war if the world would just let her crush the murderers, or better yet, if she'd just ignore "the world". But I knew that it would never happen. It was maddening.

Yet, despite all that, and probably even because of it, when Ehud Olmert first threw out the phrase "Disengagement from Gaza," my eyes lit up. I thought it was a great idea. I became an immediate enthusiastic supporter of the concept and couldn't wait for it to go through. The critical point I want you to understand right now is why.

I was never a supporter of Oslo. I never liked the idea of dialogue with a group of people who obviously want to kill us all. Yet, I didn't see anyone capable of annexing Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank. Talking with the Arabs was a waste of time, dangerous, and a show of weakness. The Oslo War proved that well enough. So what to do?

It was all a question of tactics for me. Israel was caught directionless. Either annex the territories or let them go. Pick one. I was begging for some sort of direction for the country. Just enough of the stalemate. But what could actually work? What was "messianic nonsense" and dangerous thinking, and what was "pragmatic"? To me, hanging on to our Biblical homeland was nice, but impossible. What we had to do was simple. Cut off all contact with the Arabs there, take as much land as we possibly could, build a giant fence, let go of the rest, and every time they shot a rocket off to our side of the fence, warn them to leave a certain area, bomb it, clear it, and annex it to Israel. Disengagement was the only way to get this started.

That was my peace plan. It required no dialogue, and very little risk as I saw it.

Then the disengagement actually happened. Kadima was formed. I loved Kadima. It seemed like such a uniting force. Had Sharon survived until the next election, they would have won 50 seats.

But Israel didn't have the leaders necessary to make the "disengagement dream" work. Disengagement was my dream because it signified a direction, SOME direction, of some sort. The plan after that was to hunker down behind our side of the fence, watch the Arabs rot in civil war, munch some popcorn while Fatah and Hamas inevitably stabbed each other to death, and wait for the Messiah to come and finish the Redemption process.

Then Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and we lost the Second Lebanon War. The Second Disengagement was taken off the table in a flash. We were back, directionless. What the heck were we supposed to do now?

Then I saw an article in the Jerusalem Post about some guy named Feiglin who, said Bibi, "may get a high Knesset slot and there may be nothing we can do about it." I'd heard of this guy before. I remember reading about him in the American Jewish newspaper The Forward, seeing a picture of this guy wearing a kippah, who won 3% of the vote for the Likud leadership. My impression of him was, "This guy is a weirdo. What kind of stupid name is "Jewish Leadership"? It sounds like a support group for disgruntled unemployed Rabbis."

That was about it.

Then I see he might actually be elected to the Knesset. So I look him up. Maybe he's not just a weirdo. That's when my soul, pretty much, caught fire, and it remains raging to this day.

I will go into this more deeply in a later post. This one is getting too long. Yet let me quickly explain what happened to me that night. I spent the rest of it, until about 3:00 in the morning, poring through articles, videos, audio clips, past news, anything I could possibly get my hands on.

What happened, basically, was that I suddenly understood that there is a leader out there who wants to unite everything. Religious and secular, Left and Right, every single Jewish party into one huge force. A man who believes in God who actually wants to lead the Jewish people. If that could happen, the possibilities are blown open exponentially.

I suddenly realized why the Disengagement failed. It failed not because it was handled incorrectly or because Sharon had a stroke or any other reason other than that it was destined to fail. The Disengagement proved to the world that none of this is our land. It's all theirs. We have no more justice. This statement went against the progression of history. We are here not to duck behind a fence and wait. We are here to finish the process of redemption through justice. I thought that was impossible because there was no one to take responsibility for leading the process. The religious politicians were just interested in subsidies for their yeshivas or building another neighborhood in Ariel or some paltry thing. But now there is a movement that wants to lead the entire country, the entire people, in the name of God.

Now, every time the UN does something ugly, or the world tells us to do something suicidal, or there's another "Pro Palestinian" rally at some campus, I just laugh. Anti semitism has become somewhat comforting instead of infuriating. It's infuriating when you don't know how it will end. It's comforting when you know that the Jewish people are finally starting to take responsibility for their destiny.

The second dream was possible. We don't have to hide behind fences. We can actually win it all. We can, must, and will fulfill our destiny here. No more cutting and running. We are here to inspire the world. That we must do, or we have no right to be here. All we are asked to do is sign a paper that says "I am part of the Jewish majority, religious or secular, Haredi, Dati, or Hiloni, we're all coming together in the same party."

Just like my soul caught fire, the rest of the Jews' will, too. For me, all it took was to see that there was a potential leader. For them, all it will take is a Likud primary race victory. After that, the unity you will see will be unprecedented. Just join by clicking the link in the subtitle of this blog. It takes 45 seconds. That's all.

How Shoes, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Likud Central Committee are All Connected

2010-01-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a brief of the wacky stuff that's been going on behind the scenes these past two days. The mainstream media has been blarging on about how some guy who's already been Prime Minister before and was voted out, spoke about very bad people at Auschwitz (Bibi Netanyahu), and some other guy who's lost more elections than any Israeli politician in history (Shimon Peres) talked about some other thing in the German parliament about Nazis or something. I don't really know. I wasn't paying attention. (See previous post on Israeli Hasbara.)

But what they forgot to mention was that none of that is the least bit important. What's really important is what the media isn't paying attention to at all, and news of which you can only find on some three-line newsflash on Arutz Sheva, or the Likudnik.co.il website. That news is this: The Tel Aviv district court has ruled against Netanyahu on postponing the elections for the Likud Central Committee. In its ruling, the court ordered that elections must be held by April 30th, and by the way Bibi has to pay 20,000 shekels in legal fees out of the Likud's pocket.

Before we go into detail a little bit more about the case, we must understand why Bibi wants to postpone, at all costs, internal Likud elections. Follow the number line:

1) Likud, right now, has 89,000 members with enough seniority (16 months of membership) to vote.
2) 10 to 15,000 of those are Feiglin supporters.
3) There are 2,500 seats in the Likud Central Committee, and 122 of them are Feiglin supporters.
4) If elections for the Likud Central Committee are held soon, then Feiglin's support in the Central Committee will at least double, if not triple or even quadruple.

Netanyahu knows this very well, which is why, first, he tried getting rid of the 16 month seniority clause and allow anyone to vote immediately upon joining the party. Then all he'd have to do is hand out papers and promise jobs or something saintly of the sort. He couldn't do that, so he tried to put off elections for 20 months. 20 months would have given him 4 months to sign up as many of his allies as he can and then wait 16 months for them to cook and be able to vote.

The court just shot down that little doosey as well, since a democratically elected committee lengthening its own tenure seems a bit...off.

Anyway, 'tis interesting to note that, first, Feiglin himself had nothing to do with this case. A few miffed and selfless Central Committee members filed the suit, not him. Second, the judge who oversaw the case is none other than Yehuda Zaft, the same guy that reversed the decision against pushing Feiglin down to slot 36. This is the second time he's done some seriously good judicial work. Bibi then cried to the Supreme Court and they "fixed" Zaft's "error".

However, the difference between then and now is that back then, the media played it up as a big Feiglin v Bibi thing, and the Supreme couldn't bring themselves to help a man who vows to, when elected, enable the citizens of Israel to actually pick their own judges, because that would be bad for their dictatorship in that currently, the Israeli Supreme Court picks its OWN judges. This is great for them, but not so good for the people, who are starting to lose touch with, and respect for, their own Supreme Court.

Evidence of this just took form yesterday when some guy named Pinchas Cohen took off his shoe at court and flung it at Supreme Court Judge and President Dorit Beinish. The shoe, upon exiting his hand, soared gracefully through the Supreme Court open air and hit Beinish square in the face. She then proceeded to gracefully fall from her chair plop onto the floor.

There is no video of the impact, but this was taken shortly after. The guy who threw the shoe can be heard screaming "מושחתת" which means "corrupt!"

(It's too bad this guy has a history of violent behavior and wasn't a true ideologue. A true protester wouldn't have thrown a shoe, but would have simply shouted until he got arrested. If only a group of 20 or so people were to plan to disrupt court proceedings 20 days in succession by simply screaming "Stop electing yourselves!" one person each day, the country would really wake up. All that's needed are 20 people willing to spend a few nights in jail and have a small criminal record. Anyone interested? Leave a comment.)

Anyway, the mainstream media cast this shoe incident, of course, as the effect of a "society gone wild" in anarchy that has to be controlled. No one dared look at the possibility that a tyrannical court that chooses its own members could be behind the unrest. When people have no say in who has power over them, they start throwing things. Like shoes. At their faces. I am not condoning this. I'm simply saying that's what happens.

To continue, as said before, this selfsame court overruled Judge Yehuda Zaft last year and shot Feiglin down to 36 again.

Now history is repeating itself one year later. Zaft rules in favor again. And guess who Bibi is going to now? Yup, that Supreme Court. Except this time they're a little dazed. They don't even know that this is a Feiglin/Bibi dual again. They're still trying to clear their heads after that shoe. And the media is still stuck in the German parliament.

They'll rule in favor, or else refuse to take the case at all, elections will take place in April, Netanyahu will lose power in his own party, and who knows? He may even bolt it and form "Kadima II: Coming to a Knesset Near You." Then guess who takes the Likud cake?

Feiglin said something interesting a while back in an interview on Walla, the second most popular internet news source in Israel. He was asked why he doesn't protest anymore. He answered that he's busy trying to take over the country in the meantime, but in any case, there is one instance where he would bring the people to the streets once more. That is, if, upon winning the Likud Chairmanship and becoming its Prime Ministerial candidate, the Supreme Court shoots him down and says he can't run. Then he will bring the public to the streets. To the gates of the Supreme Court. And boy will they come.

And they'll be armed with their shoes. But they won't use them. All they'll need will be their voices.

How Israeli Hasbara Increases World Anti Semitism

2010-01-25T12:35:00.001-08:00

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is just around the corner. This day is one of the most dangerous days of the year for Jews. It is a day when our faithless and Judaismless leaders who justify our very existence in Israel on anti Semitism, go out on a field day for a hasbara binge fest. Hasbara Israeli style is when you put together a staff of, say, ten sanctioned government representatives who, by happenstance, also justify their living in Israel on anti Semitism, and you have them go out and try to explain "facts" to the Nations of the World that they really don't care about or pay attention to. Then, after that's done, you warn them about anti Semitism, pass out a few fliers, show a film or two about Sederot and Kassam rockets or something, bill the government for your Hasbara material, go home, put your feet up on your Ottoman, sip a frap, eat some hummus and congratulate yourself on a hasbara well done.

Then, next year, you find out that things just got worse. So your trusty faithless Judaismless leaders get together again, bash their heads together, and come up with the following solution: We need more hasbara people. So they up the staff to twenty, give them twice as many fliers, and add some well-earned cushioning to their Ottomans in anticipation of their upcoming smashing success warning the Nations of the World about anti Semitism and throwing facts at them that they still don't care about or pay attention to.

The media notices that it still isn't working, and they hint that there may be a problem with our hasbara strategy. They just don't know what the heck it might be. (Note to The Media: I'll tell you what it is later in this post.)

This year, our Leaders burst out of the phone booth with their blue and white capes and have decided to go overdrive, stationing themselves around the world in a hasbara megablitz where they will accuse the Goldstone Report of anti Semitism. Here's the quote from Ynet:

The world will mark International Holocaust Day on Wednesday. Monday will see President Shimon Peres fly to Berlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leave for a visit to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. They will be joined by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in Budapest and Information Minister Yuli Edelstein in New York.

Before meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Edelstein referred to the report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, calling it "anti-Semitic".

Israel's political echelon plans to slam the distortions in the Goldstone Report on International Holocaust Day of all days, in order to point to an anti-Semitic trend which blames the victims of Palestinian rockets.

Well, yeah...this will probably work. Good thinking guys. No wonder, a few hours after that little ditty came out, some polish Catholic Church bishop guy named Tadeusz Pieronek went on to say this:

While it is undeniable that most of those who died in the concentration camps were Jews, there were also gypsies, Poles, Italians and Catholics on the list. So it is not permissible to appropriate this tragedy for propaganda. There were lots of Poles, but this truth is often ignored today. The Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention and is used as a propaganda weapon and to obtain advantages that are often unjustified. You could speak just as forcefully and establish a day of remembrance for the many victims of communism, persecuted Catholics and Christians and so on.

Listen carefully to what this man is saying.

And now listen carefully to what I'm saying. If your Judaismless leaders justify their existence in Israel as a bastion against world anti Semitism, then they justify all our individual existences in Israel as a bastion against world anti Semitism.

And if anti Semitism is what they need to justify themselves, then anti Semitism is what they, and we are going to get. It's what we're all going to get. Until, that is, we tweak one little tiny thing in our Hasbara strategy.

We station ourselves around the world and, instead of warning people against anti Semitism, we say this: We're here because this is our land, and God gave it to us.

Of course, in order for that to happen, they'll either have to start believing in God, or we'll have to elect someone who does. In order for that to happen, we'll need to join the Likud right now and vote Netanyahu OUT of the chairmanship of the party.

For now, there will be plenty of anti Semitism.

Happy International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Go hasbara team. Enjoy your hummus.

Tzipi Hotoveli and the Invisible Elephant

2010-01-22T04:26:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to a cute little event featuring MK Tzipi Hotoveli. She is one of three prominent Likud MKs who are in the Knesset thanks to the support of Manhigut Yehudit Likud party members. This was my first time meeting her, and my impression was mostly positive, though not without frustration. I will begin with the positive.

Tzipi is a straight politician who is in no way corrupt. That says a lot already. She is also not afraid to stand up for her conscience and principles. After all, let's give Bibi credit where credit is due. He supported her joining the Likud, and without his help she wouldn't have been able to compete. (Tzipi is, strangely enough, pretty much the only product of Bibi and Feiglin working together. They both supported her candidacy.) Now, as Bibi has been straying from the Likud path almost entirely, Tzipi is one of three vocal opponents against him. The three are Yariv Levine, Danny Danon, and herself. This, despite the fact that she has him to thank for her Knesset seat. That takes courage, as well as some political gambling. She knows full well that Bibi won't support her next time. But we all know who will, so she can feel safe.

That being said, I must admit that though I was glad to meet her, I left feeling rather frustrated and unfulfilled. This may be due to my being saturated with Feiglin's material which is generally so deep and all-encompassing that one cannot but applaud at almost everything he writes. He takes a problem and over and over again he illustrates so fully how it is a symptom of an underlying disease - and that disease is always the same: The Zionist need to escape his Jewish isolation and be "normal".

Tzipi, on the other hand, talked about the problems facing the country, but did not go down to the bare roots of the issues. She spoke of tactics and strategies, possibilities of coping, what are we going to do with the Arabs, what are we going to do with this, how can we deal with the academic elite who feel no attachment to the land of Israel...stuff I've all heard before and am no longer interested in. She spoke from a right wing perspective which generally does not make me cringe as much, but it bores and is terribly frustrating, agonizing even.

Sure, it wasn't as bad as Bogey Ya'alon talking about how Oslo was a failure and the ever so popular catch phrase, "Peace Now is a Virus" to a room full of Feiglinites a few months ago, and then explaining that the sky is blue, gravity pulls you down, and Elvis isn't coming back. Again, I agree with all that, but I really don't care. I want a revolution. I want the entire consciousness and raison detre of this country and this people to change. Gravity will continue to do its part, I promise.

Another thing I noticed is that she suffers from the same disease that every other Religious Zionist political thinker has suffered from since the founding of the state, and even before. That is, she does not aspire to lead. There's a block there, somewhere in her mind. It was obvious when she said this sentence, and I am paraphrasing because I don't remember it word for word, "Our aspiration should not be simply the Knesset. Our goal should be to become an influential government minister."

Uhh...alright. And what about Prime Minister? Somebody there asked that question. He happened to be a Manhigut supporter. She answered something like, "You can't just come out of nowhere, and become Prime Minister. I mean, maybe the Moshiach will arrive that way but you can't just do that."

Then something funny happened. I whispered to the guy next to me,

"אתה יודע, יש פיל ענק בחדר הזה."

Meaning, "You know, there's a huge elephant in this room." Little did I know that the saying is not translatable.

He had no idea what I was talking about
"An elephant?" he asked me.
"Yes, an elephant," I responded.
"What do you mean there's an elephant?"

At that point Tzipi got distracted and politely shushed me. I was being rude, I realize, and shouldn't have tried to translate culture-specific sayings.

Before I had to leave, she spoke about her solution to the 1.5 million Arabs living in Judea and Samaria. Her solution, as she coins it, is "gradual citizenship". We are to annex the territories, and when the Arabs calm down and stop wanting to massacre us, gradually, we are to grant them citizenship. And, to top it all off, in order to prevent them from taking over, we preempt it with a basic law defining Israel as a Jewish State so they can't turn into a Muslim dictatorship.

Pulling no punches, I will say that this solution is bonafide nuts. You can say that Israel is a Jewish State and put it into law as hard and fast as you want, but law means nothing if the people really don't give an elephant about what you say or do.

The deeper question is, why did Tzipi insist on preserving the invisible status of the Elephant in the Room? Is she unaware of the change in leadership happening under the surface? Does she not see it? Or is it simply her trying to be independent and not quote Moshe Feiglin or identify too closely with him?

Either way, it doesn't really matter. Though her fundamental political ideas are little skewed and cliche, she is, and will be a good soldier, but not a leader. Once a true Jewish leader is in place, she will be the first to back him fully, that I have no doubt. But you can't expect someone without leadership mentality to come out with any great ideas about the fundamental direction the Jewish people are taking.

All in all, she will have my vote for anything but the party leadership.

Video Summary of the Manhigut Dinner

2010-01-21T02:57:00.001-08:00

It's in Hebrew. Can you handle it?

Manhigut Yehudit Dinner, 5770

2010-01-19T12:12:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to my second Manhigut Yehudit annual dinner. Lucky for me, they've only had two. I can sum it up in two sentences. From there I will expand.

Two-Sentence Sum-Up: Last year, the Manhigut dinner was charming. This year, it was magnificent.

Last year's dinner came on the heels of a seeming political defeat. Feiglin had just walloped Netanyahu in the primaries and the Likud Knesset list was looking dazzling. And then Team Bibi and his Ultimate Justice Squadron decided to stand up for Legal Fictive Truth and cry foul that Feiglin is not a woman, and sadly the spot he won could, indeed, only go to said gender. The internal Likud court agreed with this, and proceeded to push Feiglin down to spot 36, a safe zone, thank goodness, for the other gender. (As well as pushing away some of Feiglin's allies while he was at it.) And what happened with slot 20, ladies only? It went to a person named Ze'ev Elkin. Discuss amongst yourselves.

The dinner that year also came on the heels of a big rainstorm as this year's did, and it was nice, friendly, heartwarming. The food was alright, the people - I didn't know them so well because I had just joined up. Most memorable, in fact, was that during Feiglin's speech I couldn't help but notice that the podium had a large chunk missing from one of the corners. I looked at it, and I smiled. In my mind I was having these flashes of muti-million dollar political fundraisers full of affluent Manhattan Democrats in silk tuxedos yakking at each other at $500 a plate affairs where money is just leaking out onto the floor and the waiters are slipping on it and spraining their ankles. And whatever doesn't leak out onto the floor gets stuffed in the pocket of some senator so he can do a large business-like favor to one of the Manhattan dinner elite. Then everybody sings the National Anthem and eats lots of protein.

Back to Dinner 5769, Feiglin gets up and starts speaking from a podium with a large chunk missing from the corner. And I thought, smiling, "You know, this is the real elite. We, and not those tuxedo guys, are going to change the world." I went home all warm and fuzzy.

That was last year. This year, the feeling was much different. This year, I was blown away.

The hall was spectacular. Smack in the middle of Ramat Gan. The food was high end, complete with sushi and those chef guys with the hats and the big sharp knives with two-pronged barbecue forks. This time there was an open bar, though wanting to stay sober and being of small size, I had a glass of wine and called it a night.

And of course, as per any Manhigut event, there were secular, religious, Haredi, all chatting, munching, sipping, admiring the chef guy with the big sharp knife etc...

We all went inside, and I counted 41 tables .That means 410 people, the room packed. The first course was already set up, and I couldn't help but notice the caviar on the plate. The statement was, "We're not some cute little group anymore. Now we're serious. We're in the middle of Ramat Gan. And we're just getting started."

But enough about that. Here's the heart of the matter.

We watched a video called "Awakening," a film featuring several Manhigut supporters from different backgrounds from Haredi to secular to former radical leftist. There was one part I will never forget, and that is when Likud Central Committee member Emmanuel Gertel spoke candidly about how he began as an unbelieving Jew, but now his faith has been rekindled. That - he doesn't understand why - but he feels a deep need to build the Holy Temple, the Beit Hamikdash. He was crying as he said it.

I started tearing, too. But not just because of the raw emotion of the film. I hear it all the time - we should build the Temple, yada yada, במהרה בימינו אמן, it doesn't move me, because I know it's just lip service. But last night, tears welled up because I knew that not only does Emmanuel want to build it. He, a man who does not wear a kippah, is actually doing the work required to get it done. We all were. That, you rarely see these days.

Feiglin got up and spoke. In the middle, he invited all those in the video to come up with him. Moshe Feiglin in the center, surrounded by representatives of every sector of Jewish Israel. Somewhere in his speech, he said this sentence:

"We, in this room right here, right now, are building the new leadership that will lead this country."

He brought together the Haredi guy and one of the secular guys from the video. "Do you see what's happening here?" he asked us. "Do you see what Manhigut Yehudit has accomplished?" he asked again. This is true Jewish unity.

Now that's charisma, something which Moshe Feiglin usually lacks. On the blogosphere, you may see Feiglin attacked for "having the personality of an anchovy." But hearing those two questions, my mind jumped immediately to a recent speech of the all-too-charismatic Bibi Netanyahu, who, like a charisma-infested buffoon, waved around the Auschwitz architectural plans at the UN General Assembly and whined these two quite distinct questions:

1) "Is this a lie?"
2) "Is this a LIE??"

What he really meant was, "The Holocaust happened I tell you! Don't you remember why we have a right to live in Israel? *cougholocaust*"

Anyway, we, on the other hand were moving forward. And we are the Jewish future. And I felt pretty good in the present.

But the funniest thing is, the media is stuck yapping about Sarah Netanyahu's legal problems with her housekeeper. They don't even notice what's happening. The depth of it is beyond them. When we take over and change the course of Jewish history forever, when the country has its first leader that believes in the God of Israel and speaks from the Temple Mount, and instead of waving Auschwitz in the face of the world, he explains, politely, that we are the chosen people and this is our God given land, the world won't even know what hit it.

It's better this way. God's salvation may be like the blink of an eye, as they say, but I think that's only true for those whose eyes are in permanent blink mode. Those of us at the dinner, those of us who see what's happening, our eyes are open, we know exactly what's going on, and we all know that there is nothing that can stop us now. We are too big. We are too diverse. We are too Jewish. We are too proud. It is only a matter of time.

No longer will we wait around hunkering in a bunker for our "sector" to demographically take over the country, or for the Messiah to come and save us and tell us that we were right and the other side was wrong. The work that needs to get done - we're getting it done. We've taken responsibility for the winds of history by putting up our sails.

Finally worth mentioning, there was a raffle at the dinner. My wife, at my side the whole time, told me insistently how good she is at raffles. She wins every time, she tells me. Well, OK then. I know how much skill raffles require, so I can't really argue with that. We bought ten tickets. Sure enough, the first number called is hers. It's a necklace of the Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple.

We're not so much into jewelry, don't really understand it, but what she said next hit me deeply. "I'm going to wear it on the Temple Mount at Moshe's victory speech."

I believe her.

Heh...women's intuition. I'll never get it. Maybe I should ask Ze'ev Elkin.

Until next year's dinner...which, judging by the way things are going, may be by invitation only. I plan on being there, and earning it by signing up as many faithful to the Likud as I can. Want to be part of Jewish history? Sign up to the Likud right now.

From Revolutionary Leftist to Feiglinite

2009-10-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

This piece was originally published in the Hebrew Maariv newspaper, Shabbat appendix, October 16, 2009. The author can be reached at Shalom@maariv.co.il.

Moshe Feiglin finished saying his words. The 200 guests in Rabbi Uri Sharki’s sukkah in Givat Shaul, all activists in the Jewish Leadership faction of the Likud (Manhigut Yehudit), grinned and applauded. David Ish Shalom sat very close to Feiglin at the head table. One time he would have flipped the table on him. At one time the activists would have thrown him out of the sukkah. He is generally known as a prominent leftist who never missed a “Gush Shalom” or “Yesh Gvul” demonstration, a stubborn fighter against the settlers and a supporter of the Palestinians, who also sat in jail after he got friendly with Yasser Arafat and broke the law forbidding meeting with the PLO.

Even Ish Shalom’s personal profile seemed out of place in Feiglin’s sukkah. He’s not religious, he’s not bearded, he lives in Ein Kerem and not in Yitzhar or Itamar, and he’s even an expert on Hindu philosophy—quite far from the world of the Bible. And in spite of all this, Feiglin invited him to speak immediately after him as befits the guest of honor, and he was not disappointed. Ish Shalom lambasted the Left in a tone that not even Feiglin and his friends have dared adopt. “The Left is a deadly virus,” he said, “just as Bogie Ya’alon explained. The Left is a danger to our existence, a Judenrein that supports ethnic cleansing. It controls the elite, the media, a treasonous bastard that strategically endangers the very physical existence of Israel.”

“You’re like all the rest of the converts,” I told him this week. “You have to prove that you’re more extreme than they are so they’ll accept you.”

“No, it’s the truth,” he answered. “The left reminds me of King Montezuma of Mexico, who, with money and jewels, happily greeted the Spanish conquistadors who came to destroy him. So the Left rejects transfer for the Arabs and accepts their claims, and in the same breath they suggest transfer for the Jews.”

The Jews live in occupied territory.

“That’s your own twisted imagination. What’s the difference between Sheikh Baadar in West Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarah in the east of the city? The entire thing is occupied territory. The Arabs want all of Palestine, from the River to the Sea.”

Netanyahu specifically offered the Palestinians a state.

“It’s all tactical. He also wants to protect the Land of Israel. He knows that the Palestinians don’t want a state on half of the territory and won’t give up the right of return. He’s just rolling the ball back to them.”

Will you support Feiglin for Prime Minister?

“I hope and pray that Netanyahu will succeed at the job. If he fails, God forbid, Feiglin will be there to lead the faith-based ideology.”

He’s good for the job?

“Absolutely.”

BECAUSE OF THAT WAR

Ish Shalom, 60, has been on a long, stormy path until now. He was born in Tel Aviv to the affluent De Boton family, studied at the Herzeliya Gymnasium, but spent most of his time on the beach by his home in the Mahlul neighborhood, becoming known throughout the city as an outstanding swimmer and surfer who would swim for kilometers at a time and climb on top of boats in the middle of the sea. In the army he served as a medic, and studied psychology and sociology at the Hebrew University, but the trauma that transformed him into a militant and uncompromising peace activist came during nine months of reserve duty he spent in Sinai during the Yom Kippur War.

“My unit evacuated tens of dead and wounded in the Sinai operation,” he recalled. “There, I was exposed to the horrors of war and the horrible failure of the politicians. I came back from the war with a sort of new consciousness, and I immediately joined the organizations of the protest movements. At that time I had arrived at the home of Professor Isaiah Leibowitz in Jerusalem. I sat with him for hours. He talked about the occupation, claimed it was a disaster for the Jewish people who should have returned the territories on day 7, including the Temple Mount. Uri Avinery was also my Shulchan Aruch of politics."

In the late 70’s, Ish Shalom wrote his only book, “The Fear and the Hope,” an impressive and articulate book, according to which, without a peace arrangement, the entire region will become nuclearized when atomic weapons will be transferred to terror organizations. 34 years before Netanyahu dared utter the term “demilitarized Palestinian state,” Ish Shalom proffered an independent , demilitarized Palestinian entity in his book, and wanted to leave the larger settlement blocs be, under Israeli sovereignty. In the book, Ish Shalom advocated an historic reconciliation with the national Palestinian movement led by the PLO, an idea that was considered revolutionary in the eyes of the Left, and absolutely unthinkable on the Right.

The political arrangements being discussed today are all along these lines, but Ish Shalom has chosen to confront what he wrote in the past. “The Arab world’s raison d’être, from the Persian gulf to the ocean, is the destruction of Israel. We are the pioneering soldier of the West in the midst of the Islamic world. Believe me I want peace. I’ve proven in my resume that there’s no bigger fighter for peace than me. I was ready to die for it. In the 80’s I was a Palestinian. During the first Intifada I participated in demonstrations right next to Faisal Husseini. I attacked border patrol buses that came to arrest Arabs during the first Intifada."

Today you would definitely call that treason.

"Absolutely. I acted out of blindness. From a naïve belief that the Arabs are like us, they also want to live in peace in a state of their own. I thought that if both sides understood that peace was the aim of everyone why should there be a problem?"

THE PEACE THAT NEVER WAS

In November of 1977, the day that President Sadat landed in Israel, Ish Shalom changed his name. David De Boton—a man of a respected family from Thessaloniki, a name widely known thanks to the work “Lechem Mishneh,” a commentary on Maimonides by Rabbi De Boton—became David Ish Shalom. “I decided to dedicate my life for the sake of peace,” he explained. “It was my work, my full time job for years. In my defense I can say that today I have fully repented, and the Left stayed in the era of sin."

During the first Lebanon War, peace activists got a ringing slap in the face. The Begin government, which got a lot of credit from the Left from the peace with Egypt, the evacuation of the Sinai and the destruction of the settlements there, turned into a bitter enemy of the left. “That was a jump up in my political activism. I refused to enlist for the war, and I got a suspended prison sentence.”

In 1984, Ish Shalom came to Jerusalem and continued his peace activism. He went around the city with a cart, distributed flyers, and argued with passersby. Every new settlement found him standing on the its main road with a group of demonstrators. He wandered around the West Bank and traveled to meetings with Fatah leaders, among them Faisal Husseini, Salah Zuhaikeh, Sari Nusseibeh, Ziad abu Ziad, Raymondah Tawil, and Pa’iz abu Rahma, one of the prominent leaders in Gaza. “They agreed that a new state needs to build infrastructure, an economy and education, and not deal with weapons,” he recounted. “I thought that the dream was meeting up with reality.”

In the beginning of 1987, Ish Shalom left with delegations of the Left to Europe in order to meet with the PLO, who came back then from Tunisia to Romania, Bulgaria, Switzerland, and France. These meetings brought politicians on the Right to pass laws against meetings with the PLO. Precisely at this time is when Ish Shalom decided to force his way through the ranks of the Likud and met with Moshe Amirav, a well-known party activist and close associate of Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir, who was appointed head of the government press office. The two, together with Nusseibeh, wrote a draft of mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. “Amirav was working with Shamir’s knowledge, and Nusseibeh with Arafat’s and Fiasal Husseini’s,” he recalls. “Arafat already came to Geneva to sit at a historic meeting with Amirav. But Amirav never came. I know today that Shamir himself torpedoed the process.“

Ish Shalom didn’t slow his activities because of the initiative’s failure. Quite the contrary. He traveled around the country and around the world and caught the attention of the authorities. In 1989 he went with senior PLO officials and Israeli peace activists to Cypress in order to get on the return ship, which was supposed to embark from Larnaka to Israel, and strengthen the Intifada that broke out in the territories from the outside. The ship sank before his eyes, but Ish Shalom picked up his head. After he returned from Larnaka, he was stopped for investigation for the first time, together with associates from the Left. They all denied that they met with the PLO, but he confessed proudly, and even published an article entitled “To Oppose an Unjust Law.” “I thought that it was an anti democratic law that infringed on the right to freedom of assembly,” he says, “and it was all for the sake of peace.” In June 1990, an indictment was served against Ish Shalom. He was convicted and sentenced to seven months in prison.

THE DREAM AND ITS SHATTERING

In November 1993, Yitzchak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Arafat signed the Oslo Accords. All of the Palestinian leaders in the territories together with leftist activists came to the party at Orient House. Ish Shalom felt like a bridegroom at his wedding. A few months passed, and doubts began to gnaw at him. “I was amazed to see that they were giving them guns,” he said. “I spoke about a demilitarized state, not an armed one. I took one of the “Don’t Give Them Guns” flyers of the Right that I found on the street and waved it in the middle of a Gush Shalom demonstration. I remember Uri Avinery and some other activists attacking me angrily, tearing up the flyer and throwing me out of the demonstration.”

At the start of 1995, the serious terrorist attacks began. Ish Shalom stopped his political activities and sat on the fence. Then Barak came to power, and after a year went to Camp David. “The moment of crisis was when Arafat refused to sign the agreement that Barak offered him,” he recalls, “and then the Al Aqsa Intifada was just breaking out , which was more murderous than anything before it.” Ish Shalom decided to leave the country, and in 2002 went to India, broken and full of disappointment. He buried himself in the study of Hindu philosophy and future technologies, and three and a half years ago he came back.

The total dedication he committed to the Left, he decided to commit to the Right. He sought out a new leader. Benjamin Netanyahu was the first. He read all his writings, sent him memos, picketed by his house with signs of support, but didn’t get to the point of a relationship with him. From there he went to Lieberman, tried to join up with Yisrael Beiteinu, and even went to the Foreign Minister’s house in Nokdim, but he was pushed away there, too. Today he is a fervent Feiglinite who doesn’t miss a Manhigut Yehudit event, enlists tens of people to its ranks, and spreads Feiglin’s philosophy throughout the country.

“Moshe Feiglin is not your routine politician,” Ish Shalom says in praise. “Straight, a man with a compass and conscience that analyzes the Israeli reality with a razor-sharp edge and leads you to clear answers on every subject.”

They’re not suspicious of you in Manhigut Yehudit?

“They have every reason to be suspicious of me. My biography is appalling. Nevertheless, they are doing me a kindness and allowing me to bask in their shade.”

Moti Karpel, the ideologue of Manhigut Yehudit, writes that we need to erase peace from our political lexicon.

“Definitely. This peace is leading us to self-annihilation. What do you need more than the 16 years we went through in order to understand that? Only Feiglin can bring peace. Why? Because when the People of Israel will know that the land is hers and there is no negotiating over it, then you can start speaking seriously.”

Calls to Join the Likud Gain Major Steam: Rabbi Miki Yosefi Signs On

2009-09-01T09:49:00.000-07:00

With the launching of the Tnu'ah LeHa'atzamat HaMachaneh HaLeumi, or "Movement for the Strengthening of the National Camp," the campaign to get nationalist voters to sign up to join the Likud Party en masse is picking up some major steam.

The movement is an initiative of the right flank of the Likud, including MK's Danny Danon, Tzipi Hotoveli, Yariv Levine, and Minister of Galilee Development Ayoub Kara. And, of course, cheering on in the background is Moshe Feiglin. Using the site, you can easily sign up for the Likud securely and instantly for only 64 shekels (96 for a couple), which will give you the ability to vote in internal Likud elections. It is the only time in Israeli politics that you can actually vote for a living, breathing person. But if you don't sign up, you have no say, and complaining that the Likud isn't true to nationalist Jewish values will be your own problem, so don't complain.

Included on Haleumi.org are articles by prominent leaders urging the nationalist public to join Likud as soon as possible, which, given that it takes about 20 seconds, should probably be in the next minute. One article featured is by the editor-in-chief of the Arutz Sheva newspaper בשבע, Emanuel Shiloh. Another, which was just published today, I have translated and posted here. It is a call from Rabbi Miki Yosefi for all those concerned about the future of the country to quickly sign up and have the right to vote.

On to the article, the original of which can be found here.

Rabbi Miki Yosefi: Sign up for the Likud
Rabbi Miki Yosefi has signed on to a campaign encouraging joining the Likud party. "It stems from an understanding that we are part of the nation," he said.

11 Elul 5769 - Yishai Friedman

Rabbi Miki Yosefi is calling upon the public to join politics and the ruling party, 'the Likud'. In a public call that was put out last week by 'The Movement for the Strengthening of the National Camp' endorsed by Likud Knesset members Tzipi Hotoveli, Yariv Levine, Ayoub Kara, and Danny Danon; and Rabbis Uri Amos Sharki, Mordecai Rabinovitch and Dudi Schpitz, Rabbi Miki Yosefi's name is now aboard. It is the first time that Yosefi has formally announced his support for any political party whatsoever.

Rabbi Yosefi enjoys much adoration among the Religious Zionist public and his classes are very popular with the youth. Yosefi also heads 'Yishuv HaDa'at,' a "center for the renewal of the body and soul in the spirit of the Torah and the ancient Hebrew tradition," based in Shiloh in the southern Shomron.

In the call he wrote that "The nation of Israel is today subject to tremendous pressures from the outside. International pressure is joining together with the most hostile positions against the State of Israel. This pressure expresses itself not only on the practical level, but it is also attempting to undermine the Jewish Nation's right to dwell in its most significant of birthplaces with regard to its national identity: Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem.

He continues to write that "At this crucial time, political involvement is demanded of the nationalist public so that it can place itself at the truly pivotal and influential positions for the State of Israel." And the conclusion: "There is no reason to despair from politics. We simply need to understand the most effective and influential pressure points of the political system. Today, the ruling party is the place where the critical decisions are being made for the State of Israel, and it is our duty to be there, to influence, and to lead. Now is the time to join the Likud. Now is the time to sign up and be counted.

Rabbi Yosefi: Why politics all of the sudden?

"I think it's appropriate, a valuable thing. It's a very effective platform."

Specifically the Likud?

To my understanding, yes. But that doesn't negate other people's opinions.

In your opinion, small parties have no influence? Only the Likud can?

Not only that. [The Likud] is our natural community. We belong to it. It stems from an understanding that we are part of a nation and not part of a Shtetl. The question is, What group are we considering? Is it the narrow community or the Shteibel, or is it the entire National Camp, meaning everyone who cares and loves the country?

This is the first time that you are calling for political action. Why now?

I still aspire to be apolitical, but I think this is appropriate, as I said, but I will continue with my work independent of politics. That is to say, it's possible to make the statement and continue with your everyday routine.

Intelligent Beavers, Apartment Searches, and Kidney-Trading Hubs

2009-08-31T08:58:00.000-07:00

Before you begin reading, see this post on bloggersbase and vote for me if you wish to do so. Or if you hate clicking on underlined blue words, just read it here.

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If you've ever gone on an apartment search before, then I’m willing to bet you probably have some sort of pulse, and require, among other things, shelter. But you likely do not know what it's like to respond to a suspicious ad on Homeless claiming to be renting out a private house with a front yard in a neighborhood that, according to the map, consists exclusively of large apartment complexes, let alone to actually visit this sort of place. I do, and here’s the lowdown: It was a genetically mutated freak of urban planning that resembles something like an architectural miscarriage that is hands down the most bloodcurdlingly disturbing nightmarish excuse for a shelter all five of my senses have ever come into contact with simultaneously.

But according to the guy renting it out, it was, in his words, “Nechmad.”

Normally, upon seeing an ad renting out a "house" for the suspicious sum of 2000 shekels a month, a consumer with the brain capacity of at least a very intelligent beaver would scratch his head, flap his tail and say, "What's a private house doing sandwiched between large apartment buildings only costing 2000 shekels a month? Could it be a primordial scar protruding from the depths of the Earth’s crust that some guy is trying to rent out as part of some sadistic bet?" Then he’d go build a dam. But not me, because I'm arguably denser than the surrounding zoning plan and beavers have been known to best me in chess matches. Also I can’t build dams.

So, properly seduced by the low price, I called the guy on the ad, and he forwards me to a friend of his named "Avram" who is supposedly showing this thing to prospective beavers like myself. Avram offers to pick us up in his "car" and bring us over to the "house" that only costs "2000 shekels a month" and is happily and suspiciously sandwiched on all sides between buildings 500 times its size. I say, "OK," and I call my wife and say something like this really fast: "I called a guy about this house in Kiryat Ono and its 2000 a month and he says he'll pick us up tomorrow afternoon in his car and he also offered-us-candy-and-wanted-to-know-if-we-had-any-kidney-problems-that-we-know-of-and-what-our-blood-types-were doyouwanttogoseeit?"

So she says to me, as if I didn't know, "Rafi, you know how much I love you, but you're going to get us kidnapped and sold into slavery."
"No, I have a contingency plan in case that happens."
"And what is that?" she says.
"It's a really really good one.” You have to know how to calm down females. It's an art. Like fingerpainting.

Being the adventurous woman that she is, she decides to trust my bluntly-honed masculine intuition and get in the car of a stranger to a house that may or may not be a black market organ-trading hub.

Anyway, after a few minutes a small white car pulls up and I say, "Avram?" and he says, "Yes," and we get in, I shielding my kidneys as I bend over to get in the front seat. He drives us about 5 minutes south, and we pass several apartment complexes and pull into this empty dirt field at the end of which is a 10-foot-deep ditch. At the bottom of this ditch I can see the top of a roof-looking thing consisting of boards sticking out of the broken-off slab graffitied with the words "Bialik 17" on the hacked off section, the sight of which reminds me immediately of Mila 18, the house where the rebels of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising made their headquarters and last stand against the Nazis. I tried to think a little more positively, but the best I could come up with was Mila 19.

In a last ditch (pun intended) effort not to go near the site, I started walking in the other direction, but Avram was insistent on actually showing me Bialik 17. Avram leads, and she and I follow. The first thing I say to her, out of hearing range of Avram, is, "Try your hardest not to cry until we get out of here." As we get closer to the front door, it is dawning upon me that if we actually rented this place, we would have to lie to our friends about where we lived because if they actually came over for a Shabbat meal, they'd think we were the administrators of a modern leper colony.

Now I'm all for administrating leper colonies, but as he unlocks the chain to the door and it starts creaking and we step into this thing, I realize that I wouldn't live here if he PAID me 2000 shekels a month AND let me have first dibs on the kidney stockpile. The door opens, and I half expect the schizoid cat lady who's been squatting here for the past 15 years to come screeching out of the front door and fling multicolored inbred rabies-infested pregnant cats at my face.

We go in, and the smell reeks of abandonment and ghosts of dead pets, but it was probably just old kidneys. I suddenly realize that if there is indeed a portal to North Korea, this must be it. We want to ask him if he's joking about renting the place and that I'd rather live at the 125th street subway station at Harlem and drink the leaking train radiator water.

We leave, he drives us back, we get out of the car, and seriously contemplate burning all of our clothing and being disinfected by one of those remote controlled robots that inspect suspicious objects left on Ben Yehuda.

But all ended well. We found a place, and it’s nice. And the best thing is that between the two of us, there consists, at present, at least three kidneys.

Nechmad.

Answer to the argument: Feiglin! Form your own party if you're so popular

2009-04-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

I'm assuming, as I do, that you want Israel to stand up to the world--FOR the world even--in the name of Jewish morality and say, "This is my land," instead of "I have a right to defend myself." That being the case, you agree with Moshe Feiglin's philosophy. But, deep down, you are uncomfortable joining the Likud, which under Sharon spearheaded the Disengagement, under Netanyahu signed Wye, and under Begin got rid of the oil-rich Sinai peninsula for a shiny piece of paper that essentially says, "Give us Sinai and I'll promise not to try to kill you directly for however long it is my regime stays in power. Good luck!"

Joining Likud eeks you out, kind of like eating a cookie that fell on the floor for 10 seconds, but you are a strict follower of the 5-second rule, and the Likud floor is splattered with the muck of betrayal and bad-tasting waffles with flippy positions that the average alcoholic cannot even grasp.

Here's why you should break the 5 second rule, take the plunge, and yes, eat off that floor even though it eeks you out.

Let's agree that National Union will never, ever, lead the country. Neither will Mafdal's bastard child Bayit HaYehudi. Let's also agree that Feiglin was 100% right when he said that National Union would never be included in the government, so "controlling Bibi from the outside" was and is a complete farce.

That's the negative side. The other side of the Don't Join the Likud argument is, "Voters aren't stupid. If Feiglin's such a great leader, they'll vote for him outside of Likud. And even if he takes over Likud, he'll lose most of the party anyway." My answer to that is, no, people won't vote for him outside of Likud to the point of him being Prime Minister. And no, Likud will not split if he takes it over.

Why? Good question. Here's the answer. It is absolutely true that voters are not stupid. Voters will only vote for someone who has fought, and fought like a pitbull. Fought his way up, doggedly, unabashedly, and relentlessly. Feilgin can decide to jump ship and start his own party, maybe win 10 seats, but then he has lost the fight. He has stepped out of the ring.

Though, if he wins, voters will look at him again. They will say, "How did this guy with a beard and a Kippah who speaks for Torah ever take over the leading party of the nationalist camp of a secular country? Something must be going on here. This man is a fighter. Let's take a real look at what he wants for the country." Voters want to see a good fight. They love underdogs. And when this underdog wins, the media is with it every step of the way. That's why everyone went crazy with Netanyahu's fight against Feiglin.

If you don't fight for it, you won't get it.
And if you don't STEP IN THE RING (MEANING THE LIKUD) YOU CAN'T FIGHT.
And if you can't fight, you'll get four seats in the Knesset. And you'll be out of the government, but you can still bark it Tibi. That's always fun.

You can yell about entitlement, about how you should lead the country, about how you're the only hope, you're the conscience, but if you ain't in the RING, you're speaking from the fringe, from the wacko "Settler" side, specializing in club fighting and maybe the occasional monkey knife dual. You get laughed at. Bibi wrings your neck and joins Labor. And meanwhile, the 200,000 plus votes you got are worthless. If even a tenth of that had joined Likud 3 years ago, Feiglin would be Prime Minister, today, right now, as I'm typing these words.

אל תפרוש מן הצבור. Get in the ring. The floor is mucked up. It smells bad. It's covered in pain and broken promises. But it's the only ring we've got. If you don't go in, you can't clean it up, and meanwhile our country, our people, our light to the nations, rots, dims, and shatters.

But thank goodness Ketzaleh got 4 seats, eh?