Hamas/Gaza War Musings #47: Bibi, The Worst of Menachem Begin

This is related to War Musings #46, so if you haven't read it, I recommend that you do so. Both of these posts show how we're suffering from the mistakes made and never corrected decades ago. Here I concentrate more on one of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin made. No, I don't get into Begin's Sinai withdrawal and destruction of numerous Israeli communities in the Sinai, aka the Camp David Accords.

What concerns me the most is how Begin's, and more recently, Bibi's avoiding cleaning the bureaucracy of those who obviously want to sabotage their government policies. In Begin's time, the Foreign Ministry, stocked with Leftist Labor supporters, didn't advise him according to his supporters' and voters' policies. People didn't vote him in to withdraw from the Sinai and destroy Jewish communities. It's very probable that Begin's depression towards the end of his rule, wasn't just because of the death of his beloved wife, but because his policies had alienated his closest friends and supporters.

When Begin's party got the most seats in the 1977 elections, it was a surprise for all. As I remember, none of the polls predicted such a political upheaval. Begin didn't have an "army" of followers to take over the bureaucracy. I don't think he had a real plan for an eventual win. For nineteen years, Herut and Liberals felt that they'd be permanent Opposition.

Upon establishing his government, instead of doing what was technically legal, replace government workers involved with policy. Instead he tried to make "friends" with them, called it being "noble," by not firing the Labor followers and Histadrut members. So political appointees became permanent policy makers, and they made sure the "right" people succeeded them, "a friend brings a friend." That's how the Judicial, the IDF, Foreign Ministry and the Shabak etc still follow Leftist Labor policies, even though the Labor party hasn't had a Prime Minister for decades. The only real ideological success/change was that Begin's Liberal-- meaning non-socialist--political partners did what they were elected to do by breaking the power and monopoly of the Histadrut in economics.

Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu continued the path Menachem Begin. That's why Judicial Reform never got done, nor did he put his own people in important security positions, so on October 7, 2023, he wasn't informed about the signs of Hamas Gazan preparation for war against us. Shabak head Ronen Bar has made it clear that he considers himself over the government and refused to recognize that he had been fired. My big question is why did it take so long for Bibi to even try to fire him...

Here we are a year and a half after that murderous invasion, no closer to #TotalVictory #ניצחוןמוחלט than we were on October 8th. Despite Bibi's brave bombastic speeches, his policies are weak and failing. Our soldiers are being killed, maimed, wounded and are exhausted. We don't act like victors. We haven't returned to Gush Katif. Bibi thinks we can just be policemen aka targets. Bibi doesn't have a vision for a greater future. I predicted this when I heard him speak in 2008.

Israel is at war for its very survival. We must achieve victory. Victory must be combined with Israeli SOVEREIGNTY over all the land we administer, otherwise we'll be at war again and again until we collapse, Gd forbid. Along with sovereignty, we must allow settlement all over. Illegal Arab building must be destroyed. Minimally, don't allow Arabs to build where the Oslo Accords forbade them. More about the Oslo Accords... another time. That's another story.

Pray for strong leadership which is needed for VICTORY, the only way we'll ever see peace and the return of the remaining hostages.

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

The Divisive Legacy of Yitzchak Rabin

There's so much more behind the story of Yitzchak Rabin's assassination that the authorities and mainstream media are hiding. From the minute it was announced, innocent people like myself, who live in Shiloh and other communities in YESHA have been implicated.

Just this past week, the Jerusalem Post had a long feature article in its magazine Trying to understand Yigal Amir 21 years on by NATAN ODENHEIMER, which can only be accessed by people who pay for it.

I went over that article twice, once on Shabbat and just now to check out something very crucial in the story. All sorts of people are blamed with "inspiring" Yigal Amir to his extremism, but the one most important name of the most suspicious of them all was left out, Shabak agent provocateur Avishai Raviv, who had been assigned to work with youth, high school and university for about ten years. Yes, I know for a fact that he had been working with high school youth trying to activate them years before his job in Bar Ilan University. All during that time he used the same cover. He claimed that his army injuries gave him free university tuition plus living expenses and he was "volunteering" for idealistic reasons.

Please try to read it. If someone has a link to the actual article, I'd appreciate it in the comments, thanks.

Is Raviv mentioned? Nope!

If you do a check on what happened that night. Avishai Raviv was there and played a role, and it's no secret that he was also involved in all sorts of activist/anti-Oslo Accord groups, even directing a fake one for Israeli Television.

For the past twenty-one 21 years, the Left, the pro-Oslo and Shimon Peres worshipers have  been using the assignation, which is clothed in questions, as a tool to defame the Right and split the country. NRP Education Minister Naftali Bennett is correct in his complaints here:

Bennett: Stop using Rabin murder to silence the right

Something stinks for sure. This whole anti-Right atmosphere smells too much like the Left's response to the Arlosoroff murder decades ago. What? Aren't you familiar with the story? Most Israelis today aren't, which is why the Left needed a new cause/scandal they could pin on the Right. Food for thought...

In All Honesty...

To be perfectly honest, I just don't believe that the security forces have any proof that the Jewish suspects that have been tortured and are still being tortured to extract confessions are guilty of burning that house in Duma. And I will not believe it until and unless I see real proof. I'm disgusted that so many people including rabbis support Shabak and take for granted that the boys are guilty.

There is one very simple test that can prove it. Check handwriting, including spray-painting and see if  any of them write in such a distinctive way. Today at the Shabbat women's class I've been participating in every week (for the past 34 years,) if they know of any young Jewish men who have handwriting like this or of any school that trains the students to form letters like this.

Graffiti reading 'revenge' found at the scene of the arson terror attack in Duma, July 31, 2015.AP read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.675422

Total silence greeted my question. Our group consists mostly of grandmothers and even a great-grandmother. We all know how boys of that generation write. So, why do the Shabak keep torturing the boys instead of simply checking their handwriting, especially with spraypoint which is much more difficult to control?