Hamas/Gaza War Musings #46: Deja Vu, Labor vs Revisionists

I try not to listen or read much news, just enough so that I have an idea of what's going on. As you may know, I don't think that Bibi has done a good job. It's pretty obvious considering the wars going on here. The Buck Stops Here...

There's the "war" between various sectors and ideologies here in Israel. Some of this is connected to the old Labor socialists vs Revisionist capitalist Israelis. The imaginary and trumped up charges against hilltop youth and those to the Right of the Likud remind me of the Saison and Palmach attack of the Altalena way back when...

That's an earlier example of how the Israeli Left, which still controls many of the government departments, like the "justice department," which also causes the military glass ceiling, media distortions, Shabak's investigating "hilltop youth" rather than Arab terrorists, etc, etc, etc.

And of course there's the war that started October 7, 2023... and the fact that Ronen Bar, Director of the Israeli Security Agency knew something was "going to happen" but refrained from informing the Prime Minister and sending the IDF to protect the southern front. It's pretty clear to me that he were hoping that Bibi would have a breakdown like Yitzchak Rabin did during the 1967 Six Day War and resign/retire.

Now Bar is refusing to leave his position. I guess he's burning his papers...

But my big question is:

Why did it take Bibi a year and a half to go after him?

Yup, lots of questions, and the answers aren't pretty.

Unfortunately, when I searched in English news about Ronen Bar, the Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post had similar headlines to the unabashedly pro-terror anti-Israel Al Jazeera. The only honest, reliable article and youtube I could find was from JNS, Netanyahu refutes Shin Bet chief’s claims he broke law. So if you haven't yet begun to read and watch JNS- join now.

Now in all honesty, I do find JNS too worshipful of Bibi at times, but there's nothing better, more accurate. Unfortunately, that's one of the results of not having a term limit for Prime Minister here in Israel, but that's another problem. Searching this blog for a post about limiting the number of years for Prime Minister, I found this Israel Post-Coalition Crisis: Back to Usual #$!#! Idiocy. from nine 9 years ago.

I'll end here and await your comments. Please share, too, thanks.

Unpublished Letters to The Jerusalem Post Re: David Bar-Illan Z"L, Yaakov Katz and David Hazony

Sometimes it seems that everything I write gets into the paper, and then... there are times like this. Last week I wrote two letters to the editor, and neither got published. If you're wondering why I don't try for op-eds, the answer is simple. Way back when, I did try, but I was told that I wouldn't get paid, and I couldn't use the articles in any other format, like my blog. Also, it could take a couple of weeks until they'd decide. Once years before that it took them a couple of months until I discovered my op-ed published. Of course, by the time I'd realize that it was buried, it would be irrelevant, out-of-date. That's when I decided that I'm better of just blogging my thoughts and opinions.

I don't think these two are "irrelevant, out-of-date," so here goes...  What do you think? Please say in the comments and share if you like them, thanks.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-759989

What a thrill it was for me to open up the Jerusalem Post Magazine and be greeted by the legendary David Bar-Illan and the familiar and long lamented EYE ON THE MEDIA, although by Gil Hoffman.

I'll never forget hysterically barging into David Bar-Illan's office in the week before Purim, 1996, a time when horrific Arab terror attacks -mostly suicidal bus explosions- were frequently daily, shouting:

"The police are lying!! It wasn't an accident! It was a terror attack!! Either send a reporter to interview me, or give me a computer, and I'll write it up myself."

David quickly ended his phone call, led me to the couch in his office and asked for the story. 

I had been waiting at the bus stop across from Givat Hamivtar, which is now under the lightrail train tracks, to get home to Shiloh, when an Arab terrorist made a sharp right onto the sidewalk, turning left on my foot knocking me down and then mowed down a number of other innocent civilians, murdering one and seriously injuring others. Soldiers suddenly appeared and ordered all who could to run far away, since they suspected that the terrorist's car would be exploding any second.

My foot wasn't yet seriously swollen, so I ran with a neighbor across the street and around the corner to Eshkol Blvd, where I caught a bus towards the Central Bus Station and Terem First Aid. On the bus I heard the radio report in which the police claimed that there had been an "accident" at our bus stop. After being x-rayed at Terem and told that nothing was broken, a friend picked me up and took me to the Jerusalem Post building, where I noticed that David Bar-Illan's office was right by the entrance.

Bar-Illan first made sure I was comfortable with my injured foot properly propped up and then sent a reporter to get my story, which appeared on the next day's front page. Within the next couple of days, I was asked to write it up myself as an op-ed, and he (according to the information Gil Hoffman gives in his article) wrote a full length editorial using the information I had given.

Before ending this reminiscence of David Bar-Illan, I must add that he had another profession and didn't need the stress and aggravation of top Israeli journalism. He was an accomplished concert pianist. That's how I had originally met him, at a salon performance in London.

Batya Medad, Shiloh

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-760063

Yaakov Katz

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-760000

David Hazony

I hope my mixing of two articles from different parts of the Friday newspaper isn't like mixing meat and milk in a kosher kitchen, but there are similarities in both Yaakov Katz's and David Hazony's articles. They both start out very well, bringing up good points, but then unfortunately both come to the wrong conclusions. 

I'll start with Katz who reminds or informs those who may be ignorant of the fact that even Menachem Begin during his three decades as head of the opposition never lambasted the Government of Israel when abroad, no matter how much he protested their policies while in Israel and no matter how badly he was treated, including during the pre-state period. Begin was well-known for his dignified and patriotic behavior. This was even after Begin's supporters had been attacked by the Palmach when the Altalena was approaching port with arms to be used for the defense of the nascent State of Israel. Begin reacted in tears; he didn't call for a reprisal attack. Such a total difference between Menachem Begin and Israel's opposition, which is calling for rebellion, for blood --I trust you've heard what Ehud Barak and others have been saying. There is no excuse for the outrageous anti-Israel/Netanyahu protests and media campaign even abroad. They are playing into the hands of our most dangerous enemies. I don't understand how Katz doesn't totally condemn them.

Now for David Hazony... He really starts off well, very well in describing his participation in anti-Oslo protests. Hazony mentions something which really caught my attention. 

I was active in opposing Oslo. I attended the infamous Zion Square rally in 1995 in which posters I never saw apparently depicted Rabin in an SS uniform. This became a big scandal after the fact, one that didn’t diminish when the posters were retroactively downgraded to leaflets. Nor was the rally a platform of incitement, the way it has been depicted in the official history. Did anyone call Rabin a “traitor”? Yes; a small group of hyperventilating youths shouted it out – and were then immediately told off by the speakers on the balcony, including Netanyahu. But if one should judge a protest by the stupidest words of its fringe, today’s movement is no better.

The notorious "Rabin poster" was neither central to the demonstrations nor noticeable. Just to remind people that Avishai Raviv, the Shabak agent who had been involved with Right wing youth during that time, may very well had been involved.

I relate to and agree with Hazony's article until he starts "If today’s protest movement turns tragic –"

For some inexplicable reason, he coats today's  anti-government protests with Teflon when they have crossed every single red line in a true democracy. The anti-government protests aren't simply anti-Judicial Reform. Don't be naive. Read the slogans. Listen to their leaders. It's not the young powerless "fringe"  calling for blood. It's the adult leaders, those you'd expect to be responsible for reigning in the extremists.

They want to undo/override the legal elections and veto democracy. Democracy is about numbers. If you can't pull together a coalition of more than half, minimally 61 Knesset Members, then you've lost the election. 

The leaders of this protest movement have lots of money to fund their protests, but they don't have the votes. Democracy is about votes. So the truth is that they are anti-democracy, contrary to their slogans. They've attempted to redefine democracy to make it a synonym of "progressive" political ideology.

Yaakov, David, you both disappoint me. Spit out the Kool Aid and look at the facts.

Batya Medad, Shiloh בתי'ה

Opening Old Wounds, Disengagement, Part 1

On Friday as part of the program I participated in with the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, we visited Nitzan, where there is a visitor's center which attempts to explain Disengagement. I wasn't the only English language blogger there. Click to read what Ilana wrote.

Notice that I wrote "which attempts to explain Disengagement." That's because that entire chapter of Israeli History is so awful and so inexplicable and can't be logically explained, certainly not in a nice way.

The area marked in Green is Gush Katif

One of the younger participants in the tour, which was for Begin Center employees, volunteers, retirees and their families, asked the perfect question. I can't remember her exact wording, but this is the gist of it:

"What was the reason for Disengagement?"

Our guide couldn't give an answer, so I just had to raise my hand. I prefaced my answer by saying that I'm probably the oldest person present, which wasn't countered by anyone. My husband, who is older than me, had decided to stay in the hotel and not join us.

With few exceptions, the other participants were a generation or two younger than me, so I began with a bit of history. After the 1967 Six Days War, besides Jerusalem, the only parts of the Land liberated which were settled by government decree were the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley and Northern Sinai, which actually included what was later called Gush Katif. All of those areas/communities were for agriculture, not for Biblical, historic sentiment.

And in those days, when the Labor Party ruled, the business end of agriculture was a monopoly. Exports were only via Agrexco, which was closely entwined with the Labor Party. The big attraction of Northern Sinai and the Jordan Valley was their climates. Summer fruits and vegetables can grow there in the winter, a potentially very big money maker, especially since Israel is much closer to Europe than the competing agricultural countries in the Southern Hemisphere.

After the surprise 1977 change in the party ruling the government, when Menachem Begin's Likud took over, there were many economic changes. One of them the was end of the monopoly. Agrexco had competition, and the Left/Labor Party was not happy about it at all. The agricultural communities in Gush Katif were doing very well. As our guide told us, 10% of Israel's exports were from Gush Katif, and the numbers were growing.

That was the gist of my theory, and the guide listened and said she hadn't thought about it quite like that.

To continue with what happened here in Israel:

Apparently, the Left had something over Prime Minister Arik Sharon, and like the famous line in The Godfather, it was an offer he "couldn't refuse."

Sharon, the Bulldozer, announced that his government would destroy Gush Katif and hand the land over to the Arabs ruling Gaza. The campaign the residents and Moetzet YESHA organized was totally ineffective. 

Anti-Disengagement protests

Sharon even left the Likud with most of his ministers when the Likud's members voted against Disengagement in a referendum, which he had promised to obey.

The scars of the גירוש Girush, Uprooting, banishment, displacement, exile or whatever you want to use as a translation, are still very painful, even though most of the families have done their best to establish new lives and homes.

Most of the families, if I'm not mistaken, are now living in communities  with their former neighbors. I considered this a mistake then and haven't changed my mind.

Disengagement is in the same awful category of Israeli self-made tragedies, when the government pitted Jew against Jew, Israeli against Israeli as the horrendous Altalena Affair.

I have more to write about this, including a new idea that hit me when I was at Nitzan.

In the meantime, I'd like your reactions to this article. Please feel free to tell me in the comments, thanks.

Thank Gd, Amona Compromise Approved!

Amona, Flash90

Honestly, it will still hurt the good people of Amona, but they did the right thing by approving the latest offer, and Bibi, too, did the right thing by agreeing.

Government approves Amona deal
The government unanimously approved on Sunday a compromise deal hammered out between Jewish Home leader and Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that would relocate more than half of the Samarian town of Amona to nearby plots......According to the outline of the deal, 24 of the town’s 42 families will be relocated to undeveloped plots on the same hill where Amona is currently located. The government will take control of the unclaimed land under the Absentee Property Law, making the plots state land. (Arutz 7)

There are times when one must find a way to get on without harming the greater good.

Nobody really wanted another terribly violent confrontation, like the one which had happened ten years ago on Amona. The iconic pictures of teenagers confronting stormtroopers, riot police on horses, haunt all of us, on both sides till this day.

http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/

As I began trying to plan this article, the image of Menachem Begin, traumatized after Ben-Gurion's ordered attack on the Altalena kept going through my mind. Begin could have very easily, and justifiably, declared war on the Palmach and Haganah, but he refused to fight them in a civil war which the entire Jewish People would lose.

Now, we must take advantage of the new law and the fact that Ayelet Shaked is Minister of Justice to build us a new Israeli Justice that will be truly Just for the Jewish People and the State of Israel.

Rabin Conspiracy Theories, Realistic?

photo credit:
MARC ISRAEL SELLEM

From the very first news reports of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, many knowledgeable people felt that something was "off" in the reported story. Too many people to be ignored consider that the fact that Shabak agent Avishai Raviv's leadership in the Bar Ilan University student group of which Yigal Amir was a member strongly tainted the official story. I am among those who feel that there was some sort of Shabak led conspiracy during the Oslo period, which is being ignored by the mainstream media and public figures.

Avishai Raviv, credit

Avishai Raviv was an attractive, charismatic and well-financed figure who worked with Jewish high school youth, yishuvim and university students over a period of about ten years, from the mid-1980's to the Rabin assassination in 1995. Only after he left the field did the Bar Ilan students in the group realize that all their expenses had been completely covered and supported by Raviv.

It's a known fact that Rabin had been pushed or duped into accepting the Oslo Accords, an agreement of sorts, which had been negotiated by private individuals who had no legal right to commit as representatives of the State of Israel.

The process began in January 1993 in a meeting with two Israelis, Dr. Yair Hirschfeld and Dr. Ron Pundak, and Palestinian representatives headed by Ahmed Qurei, aka Abu Alaa. The contact between the groups was made through Norwegian mediators, who contacted Dr. MK Yossi Beilin. A short time later, Beilin was appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he officially acknowledged these talks, while depicting them as unofficial. Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres was updated by Beilin after the first meeting took place in January, and Peres informed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in early February. (Knesset site)

If anything, those who initiated contact and committed Israel to these conditions should have had been charged with treason. But inexplicably, they were fully backed by Israel's Leftist leadership most prominently by Shimon Peres. By all reports Rabin hadn't a clue as to what had been taking place.

Yitzchak Rabin was a team player and didn't get to high office by shaking the boat. And talking about boats, it's a fact that he followed Ben-Gurion's orders to attack the Altalena soon after the Declaration of Independence.

Those who know the truth about the Rabin assassination have kept their silence. There are many questions that need answers, and I wonder if we will ever get them.

One of the worst results of the assassination, is that it has been used as justification to condemn, blame Israel's Right, the pro-Jewish Life in all of the Land of Israel. The hateful and untrue statements made annually and more frequently against the most patriotic of Israeli citizens is how Yitzchak Rabin's followers wish to promote his legacy. This lack of unity is the greatest tragedy of all for the State of Israel and the Jewish People.

Important Article by Caroline Glick about Disengagement

I read this article, The irony of the expulsions from Gaza by Caroline Glick, on Shabbat and consider it very suitable reading for the Tisha (9th of) Av Fast. Among the sins and tragedies that has happened to the Jewish People over the millennia on the 9th and 10th of Av have been sins of bad relations between Jews, which most recently culminated in Disengagement, when the Israeli Government expelled over 8,000 law-abiding Jews from their homes for no reason at all. Glick brings up a point here that I had never realized. She sees the IDF officer in charge, Brig.-Gen. Gershon Hacohen, as a hero. Please read the article, and no doubt you will agree that he definitely did some good in an impossible situation.  I don't completely agree with her last line, but I do agree that with a different sort of IDF officer in charge there would have had been another Altalena. 

Disengagement, Reuters

07/23/2015
The settlements of Gaza were destroyed 10 years ago. Israel has been paying the physical price of the strategic lunacy of the withdrawal ever since. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza 10 years ago was a strategic disaster. But it could have been much more devastating if the ideologues behind it had had their way.
Formally, the withdrawal was supposed to do two things. It was supposed to strengthen Israel’s diplomatic position vis-à-vis the US and Europe by demonstrating Israel’s commitment to Palestinian statehood, and it was supposed to enhance Israel’s security by redeploying the IDF along more defensible lines.
Neither argument for the withdrawal was particularly plausible. But due to the media’s lockstep support for it, neither was seriously challenged.
The truth is, these justifications were never anything more than a smoke screen to hide the true purpose of the withdrawal from the public. The real purpose of the withdrawal from Gaza was to deal a strategic blow to Zionism and the Jewish character of the state.
The destruction of those communities – and the expulsion of the 350,000 Jews who live in them – was also not an end unto itself. For the leftist ideologues who invented the idea of unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, destroying the settlement enterprise is a necessary precondition for destroying religious Zionism.
And religious Zionism has to be destroyed in order to destroy Zionism.
This true purpose of the Gaza withdrawal was made clear by leftist ideologues in the months that preceded the withdrawal.
For instance, Haaretz published an editorial a month before the withdrawal explaining, “The real question is not how many mortar shells will fall, or who will guard the Philadelphi Route [between Gaza and Egypt], or whether the Palestinians will dance on the roofs of [the destroyed communities].
“The real question is who sets the national agenda. The disengagement of Israeli policy from its religious fuel is the real disengagement currently on the agenda. On the day after the disengagement, religious Zionism’s status will be different.”
As the leftist ideologues perceived things, it wasn’t enough to simply kick the settlers out of their homes and destroy their communities. They had to be humiliated and made to suffer in order to ensure that no one would dare to identify with them.
As a consequence, when the idea of building a new settlement for the evacuees in southern Israel was floated a few months before the withdrawal, the Left firmly opposed it.
Haaretz columnist Avirama Golan explained that doing so would empty the expulsions of political significance.
In her words, “Transferring the evacuees from Gush Katif to a brand new neighborhood built especially for them along the beautiful strip of Nitzanim transmits a problematic implicit message. This is a message that says to the Jewish settlers in the territories: ‘You are a chosen group. You will not be like all the other Israelis.’ If this is what the government does in the evacuation of Gush Katif, the main sting of the evacuation of the settlements will be neutralized. It will be as though nothing has been done.”
The goal of the Left in destroying the Jewish communities, and indeed the goal of the so-called peace movement was laid out explicitly in November 2013 by Ron Pundak, Yossi Beilin’s partner in negotiating the Oslo Accords with the PLO in 1993.
In an interview with the International Crisis Group Pundak explained, “Peace is not an objective by itself. It is a way to transition Israel from one era to another: to an era of what I consider is a normal state. Israelization of society rather than its judaization.”
Demonization and disenfranchisement were key components of the Left’s campaign against Jewish Israel. For the withdrawal from Gaza to serve as a stepping stone toward a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, the public needed to become fully alienated from its fellow Israelis whose lives were being shattered.
Opinion-makers from Dan Margalit and Ari Shavit to Yair Lapid jumped on the anti-religious bandwagon and sought to outdo one another in stirring up irrational hatred for the 8,500 Jews of Gaza and their supporters.
Margalit called for the institution of a numerus clausus against religious Zionists serving in the IDF. Strict limits, he said, should be placed on the number of religious Israelis permitted to serve as officers.
Lapid insisted that the settlers were not his brothers and he wouldn’t have a problem going to war against them.
Shavit wrote that the settlers deserved no protection from the IDF, because as far as he was concerned, they weren’t Israelis.
Day after day the media machine spewed out hatred and derision against the Jews of Gaza. Day after day the public was told that religious Zionists were fanatics and potential terrorists.
The police, public prosecution and Supreme Court all joined the action. The civil rights of opponents of the withdrawal were trampled. Organizers of lawful protests were subjected to warrantless pre-dawn raids on their homes. Protesters, including children, were arrested without charge and often held in custody for months.
Police interdicted licensed buses en route to lawful demonstrations to prevent law-abiding citizens from protesting the planned expulsions.
Given the atmosphere of hatred that blanketed the country, as the expulsions approached, the Left had every reason to believe that it was on track to destroy its harshest ideological opponents and so remake Israel in its post-Zionist image.
Perhaps the most promising aspect of the expulsions, from the Left’s perspective, was that the IDF was tasked with carrying them out. Having the most beloved and revered institution in the country carry out the Left’s dirty work meant that any attempt by the settlers to defy the expulsion orders would be viewed by the public as an assault not on the Left, but on the army. And that would finish off whatever residual public sympathy for the settlers that the pre-expulsion demonization hadn’t successfully expunged.
But then someone gummed up the works.
Five months before the expulsions, then-IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya’alon appointed Brig.-Gen. Gershon Hacohen to command the expulsions from Gush Katif.
Hacohen was a tank division commander appointed to the Northern Command. He was appointed because he was a prince of the national-religious community.
Hacohen’s grandfather had been one of the founders of Mizrahi, the religious-Zionist movement.
His father was one of the founders of the Gush Emunim settlement movement.
After Ya’alon appointed him to command the expulsions, Hacohen came under massive pressure from the Right to resign his commission. If you quit in protest, he was told, then the expulsions will be canceled.
But Hacohen felt differently. As he saw it, the minute the Knesset approved the plan, there was no turning back. The expulsions would happen. And if he resigned his commission, the Left would have wrecked his reputation in a heartbeat. As the son of settler leaders, his action would have been immediately explained away as the act of a settler fanatic and as proof that religious soldiers shouldn’t be promoted.
Hacohen understood the Left. He knew that it meant it when it said that its goal was not only to destroy the settlements in Gaza but to discredit religious Zionism in order to de-link Israel from Judaism.
Because Hacohen recognized the Left’s purpose in conducting the expulsions, he understood that it wasn’t simply the fate of Gush Katif that hung in the balance, but the future of Israel itself.
And so, when he set about preparing the expulsions, Hacohen conceived an operation that would prevent the expulsions from serving any larger destructive purpose.
For the Left’s plan to succeed, the expulsions had to be perceived by the public as a physical and ideological clash between the settlers and the soldiers.
Hacohen worked to prevent the public from receiving that impression. Rather than prepare the soldiers for a clash with the settlers, Hacohen set up the expulsions as a national tragedy which the soldiers and the settlers would experience together.
To this end, in the weeks before the expulsions, Hacohen ordered his officers and soldiers to mingle inside the communities of Gush Katif they were set to evacuate. Rather than treat the villages as hostile zones, soldiers and officers were given the opportunity to see that the settlers were no different from them.
By the time the expulsions were carried out, the soldiers felt little alienation from the settlers. Consequently, the clash the Left anticipated never happened.
Instead, Israelis glued to their television sets watched as soldiers and settlers prayed and mourned together at the soon-to-be-abandoned synagogues of Gush Katif. They watched as the commander of the Golani Brigade embraced the youth of Moshav Gadid and cried with them.
Far from destroying the Jewish character of the state, let alone destroying the bond between religious Zionism and the state, the expulsions strengthened both.
Weeks after the withdrawal was completed, Haaretz’s Orit Shochat lamented, “Soldiers who experienced the evacuation won’t travel to an ashram in India because they discovered that there is an ashram next door. The same Jewish religion that they hadn’t seen up close for a long time embraces them into its fold with song and a tear and a common fate.
“They have now sat arm-in-arm at the synagogues in Gush Katif, they have now felt the holiness mixed with sweat, they have now moved rhythmically and sung songs, they have stood in line to kiss the Torah scrolls, they are now half-inside.”
Shochat was a lone voice on the Left. Most of her comrades didn’t understand what had just happened.
Ehud Olmert for one didn’t get it at all. When the next year Olmert ordered the police to forcibly evacuate Amona, a neighborhood in Ofra, he expected that it would be easy. He assumed the public would support the move, just as it supported the withdrawal from Gush Katif. In the weeks leading up to the evacuation, the media conducted the same demonization of the settlers in Ofra that they had of their brethren in the Gush Katif.
But the public wouldn’t stand for it. When the police attacked the youth holed up in the homes set for destruction, the public sided with the settlers, not with the police.
Far from preparing the psychological foundation for further expulsions, the IDF’s conduct of the withdrawal from Gush Katif destroyed that foundation.
The public was no longer willing to accept the lie of settler fanaticism.
The settlements of Gaza were destroyed 10 years ago. Israel has been paying the physical price of the strategic lunacy of the withdrawal ever since. But due to a significant degree to Hacohen’s leadership, ironically, Israeli society emerged stronger, more Zionist and prouder of its Jewishness than ever before.
www.CarolineGlick.com

Countdown to Israeli Independence Day!

In one more week we'll all be celebrating Israeli Independence Day!  Sixty-six 66 years since David Ben-Gurion took on the world and declared that enough was enough.  The Jewish State, aka the State of Israel was declared!

The odds were completely against us, and the world sat by watching, expecting to see a simple bloody rout. There was no way that a bunch of poor Jewish farmers, beggars and undernourished survivors of Hitler's concentration camps could defeat the Arabs who had the de facto backing of Great Britain and other countries.

Juara Haganah Museum

Ben-Gurion didn't even have a united Jewish army to fight with him. Actually, that was mostly his fault. He was so against the Etzel and Lechi during the latter years of the British Mandate that he even cooperated with the British by informing against them in a period known as the sezon, The Hunting Season.  He continued with his extreme hatred of those Jews who didn't support him politically by tricking the Etzel, led by Menachem Begin, and attacking the Altalena which resulting in the death of Jewish patriots and the destruction of valuable weapons which had been brought to liberate Jerusalem from the Arabs.

Altalena on fire

It wasn't only the Revisionists, Jabotinsky followers, members of Etzel and Lechi that Ben-Gurion tried to defeat, he also did everything he could to brainwash, deprogram religious North-African Jews from strictly observing Judaism. Children were sent to secular boarding schools to be "educated" and turned into Leftist, secular Israelis aka modern Jews.

Honestly, when I began this post, I didn't plan on rehashing the terrible side of early Israeli history. But in order to understand today's State of Israel we must remember the awful, disgraceful side, too.

When we wonder why the Israeli Left, and even Center, are so rabidly anti-Jewish Life in Judea and Samaria, and we wonder why Shabbak, Israel's "secret police" can be so cruel to fellow Jews instead of concentrating on our real enemies, and we wonder how the Israeli Judicial System can judge Patriotic Jews so unfairly, we just have to think of David Ben-Gurion.

They are the spiritual, political, immoral heirs of David Ben-Gurion.

What's the great irony here in Israel sixty-six years later? The descendants of Ben-Gurion and his followers are less interested in Israel than the descendants of those he tried so hard to destroy.

Considering all of the civil war, a battle for Jewish souls going on during the War for Israeli Independence and the early years of the state, it's even more amazing that G-d allowed the state to survive and thrive.

We wouldn't have a State of Israel if G-d hadn't supported us. There's no rational way to describe our victories in 1948, 1967 and 1973.

That's why it is so important to thank G-d with Prayers including the Hallel on Israeli Independence Day!

Israeli Independence Day Prayers in the Mishkan Tabernacle Synagogue, Shiloh

Yes, we still have a long way to go, but we won't succeed without the Help of the Almighty!

Yitzchak Rabin's Legacy, The Altalena

The Israeli media is now full of 1984-style programs and statements in memory of their idol, Yitzchak Rabin.  In contrast, many of us remember a different Rabin and a different Israeli History.

Yitzchak Rabin was a David Ben Gurion loyalist, a Palmach officer, an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Chief of Staff, twice Israel's Prime Minister, who was murdered (assassinated) after a public appearance at a Left wing rally, fourteen years ago.  Since then Israel's Left, media, politicians, academics etc have used it as the springboard, justification for massive character assassination against anyone who dares to disagree with their opinions and ideology.

If this was literature, instead of history, it would be written as a classic case of poetic justice, "...a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished, and often in modern literature by an ironic twist of fate intimately related to the character's own conduct."

That brings us to the Altalena, a tragedy caused by vile hatred of Jew against Jew.  It dwarfs the despicable sezon, when Ben Gurion's followers gave names of fellow Jews to the British to have them arrested and worse.

In 1948, Menachem Begin's Irgun had managed to buy much-needed arms for the battle for Israel's Independence.  An agreement had been reached with the new provisional government concerning how they were to be used and distributed, with a priority for freeing Jerusalem's Old City.  But David Ben Gurion tricked him and ended up sending his soldiers, including Yitzchak Rabin, to attack the ship, sink the weapons and murder Jews.

"Begin had meanwhile boarded the Altalena, which was now heading for Tel Aviv. He hoped that it would be possible to enter into a dialogue with the Provisional Government and to unload the remaining weapons peacefully. But this was not the case. Ben-Gurion ordered Yigael Yadin (acting Chief of Staff) to concentrate large forces on the Tel Aviv beach and to take the ship by force. Heavy guns were transferred to the area and at four in the afternoon, Ben-Gurion ordered the shelling of the Altalena. One of the shells hit the ship, which began to burn. There was danger that the fire would spread to the holds which contained explosives, and the captain ordered all aboard to abandon ship. People jumped into the water, whilst their comrades on shore set out to meet them on rafts. Although the captain flew the white flag of surrender, automatic fire continued to be directed at the unarmed survivors. Begin, who was on deck, agreed to leave the ship only after the last of the wounded had been evacuated."

The late Shmuel Katz, told me that he had always believed that the main goal of the attack was to assassinate Menachem Begin, whom Ben Gurion considered his strongest rival.  Menachem Begin, always the noble gentleman, in his naive innocence could never accept such a theory, nor would he demand apologies and cheshbon nefesh, accounting of the soul, from those who attacked him and his followers.

In Psychology there's a principle called projection, "Projection also appears where we see our own traits in other people..."  That explains why Menachem Begin and Israel's pro-Jews in the Land of Israel Right wing do not constantly verbalize character assassination and incitement against the Left, but the Left always does it against the Right. 

The Israeli Left has a documented history of discrimination and violence, for example the Altalena and Amona, against the Right, though they have no problems constantly proclaiming us as violent and guilty of attacking fellow Jews.

Israeli society is still suffering from pre-State hatreds and the Yitzchak Rabin murder is being utilized as a tool against a large and growing segment of the Israeli public.  I don't know if we'll ever really know who was behind that assassination.  I just know that the Left has enthusiastically adopted it as their mantra, their weapon of choice against loyal and innocent Jewish citizens.

We Didn't Murder Rabin!

I'm sick and tired of the perpetual mantra, "...the extremists in the settler movement who justify political murder." And when it comes out of the mouth of Nissan Slomiansky, an NRP Knesset Member, I'm less inclined to vote for any party list he's on.

Naively, I was hoping that this Jerusalem Post article, A lonely kippa backstage: Rabin Rally is too divisive, would be more balanced. Instead it was worse.

At least the article "admitted" that it was a "celebration," rather than a sad memorial.

"During the celebration, a former Meretz MK approached him..."

The theme, as usual, is blame the settler, and make "peace" by giving the Arabs Judea and Samaria. This time, they (look at the signs) demanded that US President-Elect Obama use his influence to push an agreement through.

And just to remind you, that (even if you ignore all the questions re: the official account) Rabin was killed by a young man raised in Herzliya, an upperclass Tel Aviv suburb. And one should never forget that Rabin was the officer in charge of attacking/murdering innocent Jews on the Altalena. Let the Left do their "cheshbon nefesh," accounting of the soul, first. They must first attone not only for the Altalena attack, but also the sezon and other immoral acts over the decades against Jews who don't agree with their ideology.

Chasing Tails

It looks pretty dumb, doesn't it?

Actually, when I googled for a picture of a cat catching his tail, I was hoping to see something more "active."

Israeli politicians are like cats trying to catch their tails. They are the antithesis, the exact opposite of what true leaders really are.

Last night's hate-filled TV eulogies of Yitzchak Rabin revealed more of his underlying rationale for Oslo. Believe me, Olmert's not the first tired Israeli politician. Yitzchak Rabin was also tired. One of his confidants, sorry, but I forget who was talking, explained that during the Gulf War of US President Bush The First, Rabin was depressed by the sight of cars streaming out of Tel Aviv. He looked at those Israelis fleeing their homes and knew that they were his kind of people, the ones whose votes he wanted. That's why he liked the Oslo Accords. It suited Israelis who had no problem fleeing their homes. Even better, those Israelis got to keep their homes, while the patriotic Land of Israel loving Israelis would, G-d forbid, be exiled from theirs.

Yes, instead of offering leadership and encouragement to the Israeli citizens, Rabin packaged a plan based on the worst and weakest of the Israeli psyche.

True to form, Rabin never apologized for his violence against fellow Jews during the Israeli War of Independence. He was a dedicated follower of Ben Gurion who feared competition for leadership and ordered Menachem Begin to be killed when the Altalena tried to dock to deliver fighters and arms to free the Old City of Jerusalem. Yitzchak Rabin was the commander of the Palmach unit which attacked the Altalena and killed their fellow Jews, Hashem Yikom Damom, May G-d Avenge Their Deaths.

Know Your Enemy

There's great confusion in Israeli society, and it's not new. During Oslo times, 14 years ago, an old friend came up to me at a Bar Mitzvah and greeted me with:

"It's nice to see you, even though you're the enemy."

I was so shocked, that I couldn't reply. Yes, imagine me at a loss for words. Rabin, who had commanded the unit that shot to kill Jews on the Altalena, scored great success during Oslo in fostering the idea that innocent, patriotic Zionist Jews like myself were a danger to the State of Israel. His Yartzeit is coming up, and that's the best I can say about him.

Olmert is even stranger, since he wasn't raised to be Left-wing. As a "convert" to that philosophy, his enthusiasm is tinged with "green," envy, greenbacks...

Now it has been revealed that the security forces of his Arab terrorist partners were planning to assassinate Olmert. Considering his release of terrorists who haven't yet succeeded in murdering Jews, I hope he gives the same additional opportunities to these failed assassins. Otherwise, it just wouldn't be fair.

The Sin of the Attack on the Altalena Continues

Just a few days ago, the Jewish People fasted and prayed to G-d, begging forgiveness for their sins. At least some Jews did.

Others, davka, those who fly the flag of "superior morality" have never admitted the grave sins they still perpetuate against fellow Jews.

Over a generation ago, Ben Gurion, Yitzchak Rabin and other leaders of the emerging State Of Israel not only attacked to kill fellow Jews on the Altalena, enthusiastic patriotic Jews who only wanted to fight for the good of the state, but their political inheritors are continuing in their war against the most loyal Israelis.

We embarked on our voyage
To suffer and fight for you.
We brought you revolutionary courage
And an arms-ship to liberate you.

For years in Europe
We toiled without pause
To bring you Altalena,
The fruit of our labors.

And how you received us!
God,
We'll never forget!
Of brothers-in-arms we dreamt,
But encountered the cannon blast.

And although they sank Altalena,
Raise your heads high, soldiers.
To the whole of Eretz Yisrael,
We remain forever loyal.

A poem by Rafael Khirs, who was on the Altalena. It was translated in an excellent, must-read article by Sarah Honig in the Jerusalem Post.

The Israeli Government, now led by Ehud Olmert is perpetuating the sin. At the same time that he is promising the bulk of historical, Biblical Israel to our enemies, those whose entire aim is to destroy us, G-d forbid, and at the same time that he is freeing convicted Arab terrorists, Jewish dissidents are being kept in jail.

"Nothing's new," as King Solomon repeated in Kohelet, Ecclesiastes. We're in "the time of" King Saul, who wasted his energies persecuting David, instead of destroying Amalek, the true enemy of the Jewish People. Finally, G-d ordered Samuel the Prophet to depose him and make David the King.

Yes, since "nothing's new," we will rule in the end, and that is what frightens the Left the most. Someday, they will have to pay for their sins.

Chag Succot Sameach

Have a Joyous Succot

Harachaman Hu Yakim et Sukat David Hanofalet

May The Merciful One Raise Up David's Fallen Kingdom

Sinat Chinam, Baseless Hatred, The Longest War

Disengagement was just another battle in a long war.

It's an internal Jewish war, brother against brother, Sinat Chinam, Baseless Hatred. Long before the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist organizations fought for supremacy, or more accurately, the Labor-led Zionist establishment used every weapon in its arsenal to stay in power.

They branded the Jabotinsky followers as "revisionists," and made it almost impossible for "revisionists" and religious Zionists to get official permits from Great Britain, the Mandate rulers, to enter the Land.

They accused Revisionists of murdering Arloseroff, even though facts show a very different scenario. During the struggle for independence, they had no problems turning over other Jews to the British during the notorious Sezon. Soon after that, just after the Declaration of Statehood, Labor Zionist hatred against fellow Jews "justified" murder, as Ben Gurion ordered the elite Palmach to shoot the Altalena, a ship filled with immigrants and arms bought to liberate the Old City of Jerusalem by the nascent Israeli Army. That resulted in Israel losing control of the Old City. During the 19 years of Jordanian rule, Jews were forbidden to enter it and visit the Kotel. The Jordanians also destroyed synagogues and Jewish cemeteries.

In 1967, Egypt, Jordan and Syria allied to destroy Israel, but miraculously, Israel was victorious, and the Israeli establishment has been trying to erase that victory ever since.

Disengagement was the largest battle in that war. Two years ago, Israel sent soldiers into peaceful Jewish communities. These soldiers were effectively brainwashed so they wouldn't "feel." They were trained in techniques so they could perform like robots to accomplish "a national mission of such importance;" though nobody can justify or, explain just what the importance actually was.

"We worked mostly as robots because of the volume of work that had to be done. From lack of sleep, your body works on automatic pilot. You don't know what you're going to do the next hour. The lack of knowledge about what's next contributes to your robotic mode."

This was relatively easy to accomplish, since the soldiers were of the generation raised to believe that "the settlers killed Rabin," another lie. I have no doubt that mindset made it easier to convince the soldiers to destroy the Jewish communities of Gush Katif and northern Shomron.

Instead of seeing us as the continuation of the Zionist enterprise, Israeli media and politicians portray us as racist parasites, taking over Arab land and living in government build homes. The government line lie is that there's no more need for Zionism once the State of Israel came into being. The small amount of land included in the 1949 ceasefire is all the land we need. I don't know if that was ever verbalized, but, as we English teachers say: "That's the main idea." That's "post-Zionism."

The ruling Labor "Zionists" gave up the dream and feel threatened by those who are inspired by our history, from the time of the Bible to today. Ironically, Labor Zionists replaced the Jewish Religion with the Land. And then within a generation of the Establishment of the State, the Land, unrooted, unanchored in religion, lost its value to them.

Your "elite" Israelis, unfettered by both religion and land, are looking to be "international," which means that they believe in nothing, stand for nothing and don't think that anything is worth dying for.

That's why Olmert and his "chassidim" can claim that last summer's war was a success, because foreign troops are protecting us.

Yes, we're in big trouble. Olmert's support is still in single-digits, but he's a master politician and still ruling.

The real war is the internal war, Jew against Jew. We can't give up, and we won't.

Shavua Tov, Chodesh Tov
Have A Good Week and A Good Month.

This week begins the month of Ellul, the Month of Repentance before Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, Shannah Tovah!

Olmert's taking a page from Rabin

I know that it's not "pc" to tell the truth about Yitzchak Rabin. The media likes to think that his being assassinated wiped out his sins, such as the fact that he was the officer responsible for the Palmach unit which shot up the Jews on the Altelena and sank the arms which were bought and shipped to liberate the Old City of Jerusalem from the Arab forces. They want us to forget that his reaction to the massive hundreds of thousands of Jews demonstrating against his Oslo plan, when he said:

Let them spin like propellers.
and
I'm prime minister of 98%* of the people.

*I may be wrong about the exact number, but he made it clear that he represented the people who supported him and the rest of us could just "get lost." That's about the most polite way to put it.

Yes, that was the real Yitzchak Rabin.

And that's the attitude of Olmert.
PM aides downplay 'irrelevant' TA rally

Let the people be damned. I'll just go on and show I'm tougher.

That's a pretty accurate way of paraphrasing the policy.

Israeli politicians consider themselves elected dictators. That's why Sharon had no trouble firing any cabinet minister who disagreed about Disengagement.

Neither Rabin nor Sharon had such a wide spectrum of opposition. Last week's demonstration didn't have the buses coming in great numbers from YESHA. The organizers wanted to show that you don't need a kippah to be against the government.

But Olmert doesn't care. He has been holding the reins since Sharon's stroke, and he'll need to be lassoed real tight to give them up.