Category: Israel

I Did Not Think that This Would Happen

No Comments

I know that the deal had been made, and Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) 12 year long reign as Israeli PM supposed to end, but I did not want to comment about this, because I was afraid that Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) would find some way to pull a rabbit from the hat and stay in power, and out of jail.

Thankfully, I was wrong.  The Knesset has successfully had a vote of confidence in a new government that does not include Binyaman Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו).

So he is out, and there is no way that the current parliament will grant him immunity.

In fact, I rather expect that this government, with it’s “eclectic” group of ideologies and one vote majority, won’t survive more than a month beyond Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו) conviction and jailing.

Still that corrupt demagogue is out, and he is very likely going to jail:

The long and divisive reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of the past generation, officially ended on Sunday night, at least for the time being, as the country’s Parliament gave its vote of confidence to a precarious coalition government stitched together by widely disparate anti-Netanyahu forces.

Naftali Bennett, a 49-year-old former aide to Mr. Netanyahu who opposes a Palestinian state and is considered to the right of his old ally, replaced him as prime minister after winning by just a single vote. Yair Lapid, a centrist leader and the new foreign minister, is set to take Mr. Bennett’s place after two years, if their government can hold together that long.

It won’t.  Bennett is a real horror show on his own, but he lacks the political acumen and native cunnint of Binyamin Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו), is a better alternative.

There is no one and nothing that Binyamin Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו) would not sacrifice to his own power and impunity, as he has proved over the years.

………

Members of the bloc agree on little but a desire to oust Mr. Netanyahu, the longest-serving leader in the country’s history, and the need to end a lengthy political gridlock that produced four elections in two years; left Israel without a stable government or a state budget; and formed the backdrop to a surge in interethnic mob violence between Jewish and Arab citizens during the recent 11-day conflict with Hamas.

Violence which was aggressively fomented and encouraged by Binyamin Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו) to further his political aims.

………

During 15 years in power, the last 12 of them uninterrupted, Mr. Netanyahu helped shift Israel further to the right and presided over the dwindling of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, collapsing hopes of a two-state resolution to the conflict. He was also accused of undermining the rule of law by staying in office while standing trial for corruption. It was a decision that divided the Israeli right and contributed to Mr. Bennett’s decision to side with Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents.

Mr. Netanyahu, 71, simultaneously scored several diplomatic triumphs, including agreements with four Arab countries that upended assumptions that Israel would only normalize relations with the Arab world after it sealed peace with the Palestinians.

………

Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, approved the new government by the slimmest of margins — the vote was 60 to 59. In a sign of challenges to come, one lawmaker who had originally agreed to support the coalition balked at the 11th hour, deciding to abstain instead of voting in its favor. To ensure the coalition’s victory, a second lawmaker left a hospital to vote — and then returned to her hospital bed.

………

One celebrant, Shoval Sadde, expressed relief that the coalition had come together after weeks of uncertainty.

“Today is final,” she said. “There are no secret magics anymore that Bibi can pull out of a hat. It’s final.”

My feelings exactly.

I’m glad that I was wrong about my misgivings.

Your Mouth to God’s Ear

No Comments

It appears that Israeli opposition parties may have cut a deal to replace Benjamin Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) as Prime Minister.  Your mouth to God’s ears.

Netanyahu has been awful for Israelis, the Palestinians, and pretty much everyone else involved in Israel and the Middle East except for Benjamin Netanyahu.

Given Netanyahu’s extreme cunning on matters political, particularly in Israel’s extremely dysfunctional proportional representation system, I’m not going to declare that he has been vanquished until he takes up residence in a prison cell for his egregious corruption:

The far-right Israeli politician Naftali Bennett and opposition leader Yair Lapid have agreed to forge a coalition government that would oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his 12 straight years in power.

“It’s my intention to do my utmost in order to form a national unity government along with my friend Yair Lapid, so that, God willing, together we can save the country from a tailspin and return Israel to its course,” said Bennett, a former settler leader and religious nationalist, in a televised address.

While further political negotiations are expected, the move by Bennett served a massive blow to Israel’s longest-serving leader, who is famed for his political wizardry and has survived repeated attempts to end his career.

Minutes after the speech ended, a stern-looking Netanyahu went on air to rail against Bennett. “He’s committed the scam of the century,” Netanyahu said of his former ally and senior aide, accusing him of abandoning rightwing voters.

Bennet is a complete horror-show, but he is less so than Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו).

Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) is completely a completely amoral individual who would sacrifice anything and anyone to his own personal desire for power.

Here’s Hoping that Israeli Politicians Hate Bibi Enough to Work Together

No Comments

After the 4th election in 2 years, and a failed attempt by Benyamin Netanyahu to form a government

Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid will get a chance to try and form a government.

It won’t be easy, because when all is said and done, his best sales pitch to get a coalition, he would need to add 44 MK to his party’s 17, is, “If we can keep a government together long enough, Bibi goes to jail.”

That’s enough for me, but in the batsh%$ insane world of Israeli politics, who knows:

Israel’s president has handed centrist politician Yair Lapid a shot at forming a government after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to do so, stirring anticipation that Israel’s longest-serving leader could soon be out of power after 15 years in office.

The outcome is uncertain, however. Mr. Lapid faces a difficult task in stitching together a government from a group of rivals across the political spectrum over the next four weeks. Some are united only in their desire to replace Mr. Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption. He denies any wrongdoing.

Mr. Netanyahu faced similar problems after March’s national election. He had hoped to win back defectors or persuade right-wing partners to form a government with the support of an Islamist party before his mandate expired at midnight on Tuesday.

If Mr. Lapid also fails, then President Reuven Rivlin would hand responsibility for selecting a new prime minister back to Israel’s parliament before a new election is called, which would be the country’s fifth since 2019.

 I run the numbers of the usual suspects, and Yesh Atid (17) + Blue and White (8) + Labor (7) + Meretz (6) only takes them to 38 seats.

This would mean that they would need to get coalition members from some combination of Arab Parties (10), religious parties (22), and right wing parties not named Likud (20) to get to 61 seats.

I do hope that they manage it though, because Netanyahu in jail would be good for Israel and the world.

I’m Calling Bullsh%$

No Comments

Al-Masdar news is reporting that the Panama Papers reveal that King Salman of the House of Saud laundered money which was donated to the Netanyahu campaign:

Isaac Herzog, member of the Knesset and Chairman of the Israeli Labor party, revealed that Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz financed the election campaign of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

There are no other sources for this.

The only other reports on the internet all link back to this source, and I have no information at all about tits reliability.

I am not citing this to suggest that it is true. I am citing this because my initial reaction was credulous, for about 45 seconds.

This post is not about the report, but about my initial reaction.

I wondered why my initial response was to believe.

I believe that this is because what the Middle East is, a bag full of cats that you can smell crazy on, to paraphrase a popular movie from a few years back.

Some Good that Comes from Donald Trump

No Comments

It appears that Donald Trump’s shenanigans have blown up Netanyahu’s alliance with Republicans:

In their Super Tuesday speeches, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio tried to use an Israel hammer to bash Donald Trump. Cruz sneeringly lambasted him for saying he would remain “neutral” while Rubio trounced Trump for trying to stay “impartial”, as his audience booed accordingly. And Trump? Trump was racking up victories, amassing delegates and laughing all the way to the top of the Republican presidential field.

In this way, the New York billionaire is decimating the conventional wisdom, one of many, that in 2016, total and unconditional support for Israel is a prerequisite for any aspiring GOP candidate wishing to run for president; that such a pledge of allegiance to Israel, in general, and to Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular, is a threshold requirement for gaining the support of Evangelicals, who set the tone during primary season; and that the flow of sympathy for Israel from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans is inevitable, perhaps even desirable, and in any case unstoppable.

But exactly a year after Netanyahu took this logic to its extreme and stood on the podium of Congress as Leader of the Republican opposition to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the conception is falling apart. The notion that the Republican Party is a monolithic bastion of support that will withstand the test of time is evaporating. The belief that any Republican president who will follow Obama will be better for Israel is eroding with each passing day. Faced with the Trump phenomenon, Netanyahu’s Fortress GOP strategy is collapsing like a house of cards. 

………

Trump not only diverts the Republican leadership from uniform automatic support for Netanyahu, he is destroying the internal coalition that was the lynchpin of the party’s strong pro-Israel stance. Evangelical support for Trump has already sparked an internal rupture, which has some experts declaring the death of America’s Religious Right. Evangelical leaders and many of their supporters in the media are heartbroken that so many Believers are flocking after the thrice married, dirty-talking reality star. They are less perturbed by his deviation from the strict pro-Israel party line, however, and more by the sinful ways for which he has not asked forgiveness.

If Trump becomes their candidate, the GOP will lose its most hawkish, most neoconservative and most pro-Israel secular elements as well. They are repelled not only by his indecipherable positions on Israel but also by his harsh criticism of George Bush and the Iraq War, his undisguised adulation of dictators for Vladimir Putin to Bashar Assad, his all round belligerence and his neo-isolationist vision of making America great again within its hermetically sealed walls. “As president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world” according to public letter signed by 50 GOP national security stalwarts, many of them known for their pro-Israel positions. “We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.”

Sometimes, I worry about the future of Israel.

The two things that worry me the most is Netanyahu, who sees no further than the next election, and the Necons whose every action for at least the past two decades has served to diminish the safety and security of Israel, notwithstanding their declared support for the Jewish state.

Iraq, and Yemen, and Libya, and Syria, etc. have all been foreign policy disasters that have been created or worsened by Neocons, and all of these have been disasters for Israel.

This is Some Seriously Sick Sh%$

No Comments

A left wing Israeli activist, Ezra Nawi, was caught on tape boasting that he turned information about Arabs who were looking to sell land to Jews over to the Palestinian security services, and boasted that these people were tortured and killed:

A prominent Israeli campaigner for Palestinian rights was recorded saying that he helps Palestinian authorities find and kill Palestinians who sell land to Jews.

 The recording was aired Thursday by the television program Uvda of Israel’s Channel 2. In it, Ezra Nawi, a Jewish far-left activist from the Ta’ayush group, is heard speaking about four Palestinian real-estate sellers, whom Nawi said mistook him for a Jew interested in buying their property.

 “Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”

 In the Palestinian Authority, the penal code reserves capital punishment for anyone convicted of selling land to Jews. This law, which Palestinian officials defended as designed to prevent takeovers by settlers, has not been implemented in Palestinian courts, where sellers of land to Jews are usually sentenced to several years in prison. However, in recent years several Palestinian have been murdered for selling land. Their murders have remained unsolved.

He has since been arrested on evidence that he was attempting to lure an Israeli Arab realtor to a village near Hebrone where he would be taken into custody by PA state security forces:

Many in Israel’s left have been trying to disassociate themselves from Ezra Nawi, the activist who was secretly taped on a Channel 2 news program Uvda bragging about sending Arab land brokers to certain torture if not death in the hands of the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security service (selling land to Jews is an act of treason under PA law). Those who defended him quickly became the new pariahs of Israel’s mass and social media. Then came a follow-up report Monday night showing Nawi was on the payroll of Breaking the Silence and Rabbis for Human Rights.

 ………

 Meanwhile, right-wing journalist Shai Glick, who filed a police complaint regarding Ezra Nawi’s activities, reported a conversation with an investigating police officer who told him the Arab land broker Nawi was conspiring to hand over to the PA is an Israeli citizen. Nawi and several other activists were attempting to invite this Israeli citizen to the Arab village of Yatta, south of Hebron, where PA police would be waiting to arrest him.

 This last revelation probably explains why Nawi hightailed it to Ben Gurion International, to catch a flight to anywhere else, when police caught him and took him in for questioning. It’s starting to sound like conspiracy to commit murder, which Israel frowns on, regardless of one’s political conviction.

Nawi’s lawyer is claiming that he was leaving the country to visit friends in Europe,  and that he had checked with law enforcement before booking the flight, and given the sh%$ storm that has blown up around him, I could see he wants to get out.

I understand that Ezra Nawi he feels passionately about Palestinians and their demands for a homeland, but this is a classic case for quoting Freidrich Nietsche, “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

If you want to lead a consistently ethical life, it’s generally a good idea to avoid behavior that might invoke a Nietsche quote.

It’s pretty much an indicator that you have lost your way.

Syria is Confusing

No Comments

And now it appears that Russia and Israel will be expanding military coordination in Syria:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday praised bilateral efforts to prevent unintended clashes of their air forces operating in Syria and pledged to broaden so-called deconfliction measures to include forces operating from the ground as well.

Meeting in Paris less than a week after the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian fighter that had allegedly entered Turkish airspace for a brief period of time, Putin characterized measures first proposed by Netanyahu as efficient and said both leaders were “satisfied with the progress of bilateral” ties.

“The mechanism … [that] presupposes contacts between the militaries to prevent incidents due to the dramatic developments in the region has been efficient,” Putin told Netanyahu.

Referencing Ankara’s downing of the Russian fighter, Netanyahu said to Putin: “The events of recent days prove the importance of our coordination, our deconfliction mechanisms, our attempts to cooperate with each other to prevent unnecessary accidents and tragedies, and I believe that we’ve been successful. It’s important.

“I hope that Israel and Russia can see eye to eye on all the strategic matter, but I want to assure you that we believe that it’s within our powers to have very good coordination on the ground and in the air so that we do not create the kind of problems that we’ve been experiencing,” Netanyahu said.

The policy makes good sense, but I cannot but conclude that its public announcement was intended as an enormous f%$# you to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Middle East is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

No Comments

It appears that ISIS is threatening to make war on Hamas in Gaza.

While it is clear that this is a bad thing for the ordinary folks, the complexity of the situation leaves me profoundly puzzled:

One bomb hit a Hamas security checkpoint in northern Gaza. A few days later, another exploded in a trash can. Another blew up next to a Gaza City high-rise, and a small one targeted a chicken store owned by a Hamas intelligence official, Saber Siyam.

The four attacks in May — among at least a dozen this year, documented by a local human rights group — were aimed not at infidels, collaborators or criminals but at the ruling Islamist group, Hamas. The suspected perpetrators were Hamas’s emerging rivals: extremist Islamist groups that see Hamas as insufficiently pious, and that vow loyalty to the Islamic State.

While the extremists are unlikely to challenge Hamas’s firm grip on the Gaza Strip in the foreseeable future, they complicate matters by occasionally shooting rockets into Israel that could touch off a wider conflagration, if the rockets kill or maim Israeli citizens.

They could also seek to join forces with the far more dangerous, deadly branch of the Islamic State in neighboring Egypt’s Sinai Desert, possibly derailing the slowly improving relations between Hamas and Egyptian authorities that have recently led to the Egypt-Gaza border crossing’s being opened for brief moments for the first time in years.

“We will stay like a thorn in the throat of Hamas, and a thorn in the throat of Israel,” said Abu al-Ayna al-Ansari, the spokesman for the groups supporting the Islamic State, using a nom de guerre for security reasons.

Gaza has always had pockets of Islamists considered extreme even by the deeply conservative version of Islam practiced in much of the coastal enclave. Those extremists — known regionally as salafi-jihadis — have sparred with Hamas in the past, most notably in 2009 when a militant preacher declared an Islamic state from his mosque. More than 20 people were killed in the ensuing confrontation.

As near as I can figure, the net result of these developments is that Hamas and Iran are likely to join forces with Israel to fight ISIS.

This is so screwed up.

The Middle East Is F%$#ed up and Sh%$

No Comments

A year after the war that devastated the Gaza Strip, Israel is apparently helping Qatar — which does not have official diplomatic relations with Israel — partner with the Islamist movement and longstanding enemy Hamas to rebuild the the territory.

“Life is full of contradictions and strange things,” Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of research for Israel’s military intelligence, told NPR when commenting on Israel’s recent move to allow Qatar to channel its reconstruction aid through Hamas, which is a US-designated terrorist group.

Israel has always tried to isolate Hamas and has accused Qatar of financing the Islamist movement. Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, rejects all agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and calls for Israel’s violent destruction in its founding charter.

………

But there are other reasons why Israel is suddenly more open to cooperation with Qatar. Israel’s deputy minister for regional cooperation, Ayub Carra, mentioned that Qatar, along with other Gulf countries, shares Israel’s concerns about Iran, NPR reported. Kuperwasser also mentioned that Israel has long wanted improved relations with the region’s Sunni Muslim countries because of the threat the country faces from Shi’ite Iran and its various militant proxies.

“So we have a chance, now, to make the relationship better,” said Carra.

My head hurts.

The Middle East is a Truly F%$#ed Up Place

No Comments

You may recall that Palestinian terrorists abducted and killed three Israeli Jewish students, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah a while back.

It was a part of the ostensible justification for the latest military operation against Gaza.

A day after they were buried, Israeli terrorists kidnapped and burnt to death Palestinian teen Mohammed Khudair.

Well, it just got more screwed up, because after the Israeli government placed Khudair’s name on a memorial to terrorist attacks, both Israelis and Palestinians flipped out:

Israel has added the name of a Palestinian teen to its “Monument to the Memory of the Victims of Terrorism”, upsetting the youth’s parents and a group representing families of slain Israelis with both demanding his name be removed.

………

The Almagor Terror Victims Organisation, a group founded in 1986 and representing the families of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks, demanded the government remove the plaque honoring Khudair.

“(Khudair’s) name on the memorial debases the memory of all the other fallen people,” Yossi Tzur, an Almagor member whose 17-year-old son was killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing in 2003, told Israel Radio.

“He is not part of the Israeli ethos. He is not part of the sacrifice our children made at the altar for the sake of Israel’s establishment and existence,” Tzur said.

Khudair’s parents told Reuters they had not been consulted by Israel about adding their son’s name to the memorial, which lists more than 4,000 people.

“We can’t accept that his name be included among soldiers who killed his relatives in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank,” said Khudair’s father, Hussein.

His mother, Suha, said her son was “a Palestinian martyr, and not Israeli”, and their family felt shamed.

This is incredibly depressing.

This kid is a victim of terrorism, and neither side can move themselves to move past a tribal inability to feel any smidgen empathy for the other.

It’s all degenerated into a contest over whose suffering is more righteous.

This Guy is Going to Destroy Israel

No Comments

I am, of course, referring to Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who penchant for considering nothing but his own prospects for political power are a clear and present danger for the State of Israel.

The latest case of this is Netanyahu’s willingness to use the most polarizing issue in Israeli politics to help build a coalition, at least if reports that he will kill conversion reform in order to placate right wing parties: (This is Arutz Sheva, so a grain of salt is recommended)

Sources in Shas and United Torah Jewry said Sunday that they had reached an agreement with the Likud on rolling back recently approved rules on conversion. The changes had been designed to remove some of the power over the conversion process from the Chief Rabbinate and install it in the local authorities, where some jurisdictions would presumably be more liberal in their acceptance of converts.

With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu counting on them to join his new government, MKs from Shas and UTJ are insisting on rolling back the laws on conversion to what they were before Netanyahu’s last government – with the Chief Rabbinate solely responsible for the conversion process, overseeing the entire process without government interference.

In the November change, the government voted to allow municipal rabbis to establish conversion courts, which were to receive administrative and budgetary backing from the state. A rabbinical committee whose makeup is specified in the decision was to oversee the courts, which would exercise their own judgment regarding each conversion.

With several cities already appointing very liberal rabbis as the heads of their committees, the government”s intent was to provide venues for converts to receive approval from authorities more easily than they would have from the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, which until then had sole jurisdiction over conversion. The newest deal restores that situation.

This is arguably the most contentious issue in Jewish Israeli society, and, after years of tumult, they made these baby steps toward sanity.

And now Netanyahu is going to douse this issue with gasoline, and light a match because he is worried about forming a coalition government.

As a secular Zionist, I find this extremely self destructive, but I am not surprised:  Netanyahu ran an explicitly racist campaign.

From the perspective of normative Jewish theology, it was this kind of short sighted bullsh%$ like this that got both temples destroyed.

H/T Failed Messiah.

In Addition to Everything Else, Benjaman Netanyahu Could Not find his Ass with both Hands

No Comments

Netanyahu decided on some political meddling on the judging panel for the Israel prize for Literature, and in response, the judging panel resigned en mass:

The Education Ministry fears the Israel Prize in literature may not be granted this year, after the entire judges panel resigned this week to protest efforts by the Prime Minister’s Office to intervene in its composition.

Now literary lions are likely to shun the panel, making it hard to establish a replacement, ministry sources warned.

In an unusual move, the Prime Minister’s Office vetoed two people originally nominated as judges for the prize – professors Avner Holtzman and Ariel Hirschfeld. After Haaretz reported this on Sunday, all five of the people ultimately appointed to the panel resigned, to protest “the clear politicization of the prize and the vote of no confidence in the professionals’ professional judgment,” as one of the five, Prof. Nissim Calderon, put it.

Moreover, Prof. Yigal Schwartz, who was one of the candidates for the prize in the field of literary research, announced Tuesday night that he is withdrawing his candidacy in protest.

“This is an unparalleled scandal,” said Schwartz, a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and editor-in-chief of the Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir publishing house. “I’m withdrawing my candidacy and urge other candidates to do the same. This isn’t a mistake; it’s a continuation of Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s deliberate policy of undermining Israel’s elites to gain votes from other groups. This is sabotage that it’s impossible not to oppose. Even this institution, the Israel Prize, which had remained untainted, they have sabotaged.”

“No such thing has ever happened before,” Calderon agreed.

Tuesday, it emerged that Netanyahu’s office had also vetoed a nominee to the judges’ panel for the Israel Prize in film – producer Chayim Sharir. Another member of that panel, producer Ram Loevy, has also resigned in protest.

Over the past few weeks, Education Ministry staffers had repeatedly warned Netanyahu’s aides against intervening in the panel’s composition, but the bureau dismissed these warnings, they said.

Now, the ministry is awaiting “instructions from the prime minister’s bureau” on how to fill the judges’ panel, they said.

Aside from Calderon, the other judges who resigned were Prof. Nurith Gertz, Prof. Ziva Ben-Porat, Prof. Ephraim Hazan and Dr. Uri Hollander. Author Gail Hareven had resigned earlier, after learning independently of the veto imposed on Hirschfeld and Holtzman.

In their resignation letter, the five scholars said the intervention by Netanyahu’s bureau constituted “politicization of Israel’s most important prize, which is supposed to be granted solely on the basis of professional and artistic considerations,” and raised fear that extraneous considerations would taint the award.

At first, the bureau declined to say why it suddenly decided to veto Hirschfeld and Holtzman after the two had already begun work. Tuesday, it said in a statement that it “decided to review the panel’s composition” after discovering that Hirschfeld supported refusal to do army service. The statement did not say why Holtzman was nixed.

Note that Bibi is minister of education in addition to being PM.

He took the portfolio when the previous minister, and his party, left the coalition government.

Netanyahu is claiming that the panel contains, “Too many anti-Zionist extremists.”

I call bullsh%$ on this.

If Netanyahu really had issues, they could have been presented 2-3 months ago, at the start of the process.

This is not a firm stand on his principles (as if he had any), this is yet another case of him fomenting conflict for political gain:   He is going for the Nixonian option of campaigning against academics to create the illusion that he cares for the ordinary Israeli.

Or, to quote Spiro Agnew, he is playing the, “Effete intellectual snob,” card.

Anonymous Source Says that Netanyahu Speech is Just to F%$# with Obama

2 Comments

You know an evil plan is starting to go pear shaped when the rats start leaving the sinking ship insiders start talking to the press.

Case in point, an Israeli source is telling the press that Boehner and Netanyahu actively conspired just f%$# with Obama and the Iran nuclear negotiations:

Retribution is some form of punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong, whether the wrong is perceived or real. For the past four years, Speaker of the House John A. Boehner (R-OH) has likely perceived that President Barack Obama has inflicted all manner of wrongs on him due to the ease the President is able to thwart Republican efforts to rule America according to their masters the Koch brothers. Obviously Boehner is frustrated that he has been outplayed and out-maneuvered at every turn by the President, and lacking the wherewithal to take on the President himself, he marshaled support and conspired with a foreigner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to “defy and humiliate President Obama.”

Many political observers, the White House, and Democrats were rightly incensed when Boehner invited the foreigner to address a joint session of Congress without going through normal State Department protocols, and their supposition that Boehner deliberately went around the normal diplomatic channels as an act of defiance against the Executive Branch seemed more than credible. Now it is official; Boehner’s illegal invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress represents a coordinated attack on President Barack Obama by the radical Republican right-wing and all its bad actors. This official reiteration of what many Democrats suspected all along is according to the Israeli consul general.

As reported [Paid subscription] in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yaron Sideman said that Speaker of the House John Boehner, congressional Republicans, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Zionist Organization of America, and radical Christian leaders’ only purpose “in inviting and supporting Netanyahu’s speech is to defy and humiliate President Barack Obama by addressing the Iranian issue.” In most people’s minds, Boehner and Netanyahu’s conspiracy was more than just to defy and humiliate the President on Iran; it was an attempt to subvert America’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions to start another Middle East war at the behest of Israel. In fact, according to Boehner, his illegal conspiracy was specifically to allow Netanyahu “send a clear message to the White House” that in matters regarding America’s Middle East policy, Republicans are committed to Israel.

This has turned into a disaster for both Boehner and Netanyahu.

It’s probably worse for Bibi, because it’s just a few weeks until parliamentary elections.

The two big issues for any party leader in Israel are security and managing their relationship with the United States, and Netanyahu has completely botched the latter.

I disagree with the author as to Boehner’s motivations: I don’t think that this was driven by a desire for vengeance by he speaker.  I think that was driven by the precarious nature of his speakership.

He is the least competent House Speaker in recent memory, having demonstrated that he can neither count nor control his caucus, and the only way that he can hold onto his position is by appealing to the basest instincts of the House Republicans.

It ain’t a lust for vengeance, it’s, it’s incompetence, fear, and a complete lack of any deeply held beliefs.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

It Really Sucks to be Bibi Right Now

1 Comment

And now, the head of the ADL has called for Netanyahu to cancel his speech before Congress.

It really does not get any more mainstream in Jewish American politics than the Anti-Defamation League:

As the controversy surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu speech to Congress reaches new heights, one of the Jewish community’s top leaders is calling on the Israeli prime minister to stay home.

 Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League said that the political uproar ignited by Netanyahu’s invitation to speak to a joint meeting of Congress makes such a move unhelpful and therefore it should be scrapped.

 “It’s a tragedy of unintended consequences,” Foxman told the Forward, describing how the idea of presenting Israel’s view on Iran spiraled out of control, reaching even the Jon Stewart show, a step, Foxman said, that “turned the whole thing into a circus.”

 “One needs to restart, and it needs a mature adult statement that this was not what we intended,” Foxman told the Forward. He said that going ahead as planned with the speech would be counter-productive, with all attention given to the political controversy rather than to the issue at stake. “It has been hijacked by politics,” Foxman said. “Now is a time to recalibrate, restart and find a new platform and new timing to take away the distractions.”

 Foxman noted that he does not dispute the seriousness of the Iranian nuclear issue and that he agrees with Netanyahu on the need to strengthen sanctions against Tehran, but he argued that recent events have derailed the initial intention of Netanyahu’s address to Congress.

 Among the potential alternatives mentioned by Foxman for Netanyahu’s congressional speech were coming to Washington only for the AIPAC conference, postponing his address until after the March 17 elections in Israel, or expressing his concerns over the emerging Iran deal in direct conversations.

This is a polite way of telling Netanyahu to STFU, and I don’t recall the ADL EVER rebuking an Israeli PM so strongly.

Boehner saw it as a way of embarrassing Obama, and Netanyahu saw it as a way of boosting his own electoral prospects, and it looks like they are 0 for 2.
It is so good to see this blowing up in the faces of those weasels (Boehner and Netanyahu).

How Bibi Pulled Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

No Comments

So, John Boehner invites Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress without consulting Obama, and what’s more, he does it a few weeks before Israeli elections.

I’m sure that he expected to jack Democrats up over this, and force them to choose between rebuking what is a clear violation of protocol or demonstrating support for the Jewish state.

It turns out that the choice for Democrats was not difficult, and they chose to make the House Speaker look like a complete prat:

Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein rushed to meetings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday trying to calm a furor created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress next month and quell a Democratic revolt that has dozens threatening a boycott.

 It didn’t work.

 If anything, Democrats finished the day more frustrated. According to a source in the room, one Jewish Democratic member of Congress even accused Dermer of being insincere when he claimed not to have anticipated the partisan uproar he’d ignite when he skirted protocol and went around the White House and scheduled the speech only with House Speaker John Boehner.

 White House press secretary Josh Earnest, meanwhile, dangled the possibility that the White House would have Vice President Joe Biden skip the speech in what the West Wing acknowledges would be a serious snub.

Actually, the possibility is now a certainty.

Biden has officially announced that he will not attend the speech, and at least a dozen other Dems who appear to be busy washing their hair at that time as well.

It’s gotten so bad that Netanyahu is trying to walk back his diss of Obama:

A senior Israeli official suggested on Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been misled into thinking an invitation to address the U.S. Congress on Iran next month was fully supported by the Democrats.

Netanyahu was invited by the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, to address Congress on March 3, an invitation Boehner originally described as bipartisan.

The move angered the White House, which is upset about the event coming two weeks before Israeli elections and that Netanyahu, who has a testy relationship with Democratic President Barack Obama, is expected to be critical of U.S. policy on Iran.

“It appears that the speaker of Congress made a move, in which we trusted, but which it ultimately became clear was a one sided move and not a move by both sides,” Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told 102 FM Tel Aviv Radio on Friday.

The interviewer asked if that meant Netanyahu had been “misled” into believing Boehner’s invitation was bipartisan, a characterization Hanegbi did not contest.

Asked whether the prime minister should cancel or postpone the speech, Hanegbi said: “What would the outcome be then? The outcome would be that we forsake an arena in which there is a going to be a very dramatic decision (on Iran).”

To be fair, Bibi is not just dissing the President, he is also trying to sabotage the Iranian nuclear negotiations, and he is also trying to make political hay of this just before elections for the Knesset.

It now looks like both Boehner and Netanyahu will both look like intemperate fools, and if anything this controversy will hurt the chances of the Likud in the upcoming elections.

First Woman Appointed Halakhic Decisor in Israel

No Comments

About bloody time.

Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld has been appointed the chief religious authority West Bank settlement of Efrat:

The moderate West Bank settlement of Efrat has appointed a woman to serve as a religious leader, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Efrat’s Chief Rabbi Shlomo Riskin appointed Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld to the position, which includes the responsibility to answer questions on halakha (Jewish law).

Rosenfeld is a student in the Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halakhic Leadership (WIHL ), which is part of Midreshet Lindenbaum, a liberal Modern Orthodox women’s seminary. The five-year program ordains women, allowing them to issue halakhic rulings and give spiritual advice. The ordination is similar to what Orthodox rabbis have, but the graduates are not called rabbi.

Rosenfeld’s appointment is the first time a woman has been appointed to an official position of Orthodox communal leadership in Israel, Rabbi Shmuel Klitsner, director of the WIHL, told the Post.

Even so, Efrat’s state religious council, which would normally pay the salary of a community’s religious leader, is not paying Rosenfeld. Instead, Riskin is paying her salary privately through charitable donations.

So, she’s not getting paid by the community.

Well, it’s a start.

(On Edit)

My preferred status would be that there is no government funding of religion, but I am very American that way.

Israel’s Right Wing Christian “Allies” are a Bigger Threat to them than Hamas

No Comments

Case in point, one Adam Everett Livvix,* who was indicted for plotting to blow up Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem:

The Israel Police and Shin Bet Security Service released information on Tuesday regarding a Christian American citizen arrested on suspicion of planning a terror attack on Muslim holy sites in Israel.

According to Shin Bet and Israel Police reports, the suspect is Adam Everett Livvix, a 30-year-old from Texas. Livvix has previously been wanted in the U.S. on drug charges. He was arrested in Israel on November 19, on suspicion of possession of illegal weapons and planning a terror attack.

According to the Shin Bet, Livvix, while residing in the Palestinian territories prior to his arrest, was approached about assassinating U.S. President Barack Obama while the latter was visiting Israel, though the suspect refused to take part in the plan.

Livvix came to Israel in 2013 and lived in the Palestinian cities of Hebron and Bethlehem. It was while living in Bethlehem that Livvix was approached by a Palestinian about assassinating Obama the with a sniper rifle. Livvix refused. After leaving Palestinian Authority territory, Livvix entered Israel illegally, and remained in the country illegally for roughly a year and a half.

Livvix became acquainted with Israelis and presented himself as a former U.S. Navy SEAL. During questioning, Livvix admitted to being involved in various fraud schemes, as well as the initial stages of planning terror attacks on sites holy to Islam in Israel.

He was apprehended in possession of various weapons and explosives that were stolen from the Israel Defense Forces. In October of this year Livvix asked his roommate, an IDF soldier, to procure weapons for him in exchange for money. His roommate managed to bring him a 1.4 kilogram explosive device, for which Livvix paid part of the agreed upon sum.

The American Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified of the investigation by Israeli security services, and the Central District Prosecutor filed an indictment against Livix in the Netanya Magistrate’s Court. On Monday, the court ordered that Livvix be held until the end of legal proceedings, and that he undergo psychiatric evaluation as per the request of his defense attorney.

The Israel Police and the Justice Ministry stated that the suspect attempted to flee when he was apprehended by police, by jumping out of his seventh-floor window onto a sixth-floor balcony.

Livvix’s indictment comes at a time of rising tensions in Jerusalem, mostly over a disputed holy site that is holy both to Muslims and Jews.

You know, the Rapture Ready™ crowd literally expects the Jews of the world to burn in hellfire so that they can float up to heaven like a bunch of helium filled sex dolls.

That’s why they do sh%$ like this.  They literally want to hasten the end of the world.

Can you imagine the sh%$-storm that would have come down if he had succeeded in blowing up a bomb on the Temple Mount?

He wouldn’t care.  Anything bad that happens to people in Israel is just collateral camage to their warped theology.

BTW, in addition to everything else, it appears that this guy is a seriously bent piece of work.

*Why do all these guys always go by three names from anyway?