The Jewish Conservative

The Decline and Fall of the Israeli Left

2011-01-11T05:42:00.000-08:00

Today Labor Knesset member Daniel Ben-Simon announced his planned departure from the Labor party and the ruling government coalition. MK Ben-Simon intends to create a one-man faction in the opposition, citing the lack of diplomatic progress with the Palestinian Authority and “differences with the Likud government” as reasons for his departure. Only a few days ago Ben-Simon made headlines when he accused Sefardic Jewry of being the source of racism and religious radicalism Israel, referring to Sefardic Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari of the National Union party as a would-be Nazi (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4009123,00.html).

This is just the latest step in the degeneration of the Labor party, a party which once thrived as a bizarre mixture of socialist economic policies with Jewish nationalism and a deep attachment to the Land of Israel. Today Labor has become a carbon-copy of the fanatical anti-nationalist, anti-religious Meretz party, which as long served as the flag-bearer of the extreme left. While Labor rebels like Ben-Simon claim that they represent “the public”, who is frustrated with the allegedly right-wing government, Labor’s popularity has plummeted. The party which once held an absolute majority in the Knesset and for decades was the nation’s unquestioned ruling party, has in recent years plummeted to a mere 13 seats. And recent polls predict that the party will lose more in the next election, falling to 6 or 7 seats. Kadima has taken the mantle of Israel’s leftwing; Labor has nothing left but to struggle for scraps of the far-left with Meretz, another party which has fallen to an all-time low of just 3 seats (compared to 12 in its heyday). Ben-Simon’s departure from the party is just another indication of the party’s coming demise. Without the fierce dedication to Jewish nationalism that marked the Ben-Gurion era, the party has nothing to offer the vast majority of Israelis. Today the party survives off of the votes of Kibbutz members, Arabs, and the national labor union mafia.

In one sense the demise of Labor is sad; it is a shame that the party which in its infancy promoted “Jewish Labor” now finds that very slogan to be “racist”, as if Judaism is a race. It is likely that the Labor of today would have accused the Labor of yesteryear of racism when the latter passed the Law of Return, a law that applies only to Jews.

On the other hand its hard to pity a group of people so detached from their own roots that they call others Nazis for supporting policies once endorsed by their own movement. The time has come to put this puppy to sleep, for its own sake and for Israel’s.

Perfidious Albion Strikes Again: UK Agency Declares "West. Wall Not Israel"

2010-04-14T02:05:00.000-07:00

Ordinarily, when a person wrongs another person in clearly immoral way, they try their best to forget what happened, to ignore the guilt. All the more so with countries, who try to glaze over atrocities and do their best to show how they are buddy-buddy with nations they formerly abused.

Germany went out of its way to show how it had turned a new leaf after the Holocaust by offering some compensation to Jewish survivors, while at the same time doing its best to ignore its embarrassing past. Turkey to this day pretends that the massacres of Armenians in World War I never happened, and that relations between the two were never genocidal. Certainly neither would persecute their respective victims again; nor would Japan want even the slightest claim of abuse from China following its war crimes there in the 1930s and 40s.

But Britain is different. Today the UK is a bastion of anti-Semitism. Not only have criminal acts of anti-Semitism grown tremendously over the last few years, but also anti-Israel [read anti-Jewish] boycotts, bans on Israeli citizens [!] in private establishments and businesses, government funding for anti-Israel militant groups inside Israel to encourage them to break our laws, and now the most chutzpadik thing of all: telling us the Western Wall isn’t Israel!

After the UK’s shameful and illegal acts before and during World War 2; preventing hundreds of thousands of Jews from escaping Europe to the Palestine Mandate (which Britain was allowed to manage in order to ENABLE and encourage Jewish immigration!) and even foiling attempts to barter Jews-for-trucks from the Nazis, lest the inflow of Jews into Palestine upset Britain’s Arab allies.

After all this, the UK now has the wretched gall to claim that the Western Wall isn’t part of Israel! The Advertising Standards Authority, a public British agency, has dictated to the Israeli Tourism Ministry that it needs to remove the Western Wall from its advertisements, claiming that the Wall isn’t part of Israel

Some people, and countries, never change.

Eisenhower and Obama

2010-03-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

America demands Israeli concessions for peace, Israel stubbornly refuses to relent under the pressure. The President tells Israel to withdraw from the lands it occupied in the war; the Prime Minister doggedly attempts to deflect the pressure and hold onto as much as possible. The Israeli public backs the PM; coalition members and opposition parties castigate American interference and lopsided behavior against Israel.

The American administration threatens economic punishment should Israel not fall into line. The administration faces significant criticism for this not only from Jewish groups like the Bnai Brith, but scathing attacks for its conduct by congress.

The President, of course, is Dwight Eisenhower, and the year is 1956. The war was the 1956 Suez-Sinai War between Israel and Egypt, and the concessions referred to are the Sinai and Gaza Strip, to be vacated with no preconditions. The Israeli PM is David Ben-Gurion.

The similarities to today’s Israeli-American feud are striking. Obama demands; Netanyahu, bolstered by his hawkish government, refuses to give in to all his demands. No doubt the circumstances of the 1956-1957 crisis, as well as the 1975 diplomatic scuffle over the Sinai between Kissinger and Yitzhak Rabin both weigh heavily in the heart and mind of Bibi Netanyahu. Direct confrontation with an American president is the last thing he wants.

But a lot has changed since 1956 and 1975. Israel today is far larger, more developed, and less dependent on America. Bibi’s anxiety is misplaced. Israel in 1956 had just under 2 million citizens, in 1975 less than 3.5 million, but today well over 7 million. While American aid made up nearly 20% of the Israeli government’s budget in as late as the 1980’s, today it makes up only about 4-5%.

While Israel used to be heavily debt-ridden, today its net debt (about $30 billion) is smaller than what is owed to it (about $60 billion), and most of the money owed to Israel is from the US federal government. US loan guarantees, which were used as a means to coerce Israel not only in 1956 and 1975 but also during the Bush-Shamir spat in the late 80s/early 90s, now are essentially meaningless. Israel has a massive surplus of foreign currency and already owns nearly $60 billion of America’s debt.

In 1956 David Ben-Gurion refused to capitulate to Eisenhower’s demands for half a year, until a compromise was reached in which Israel ceded the Sinai and Gaza in exchange for UN forces in both areas and explicit US promises regarding Israeli access to the Gulf of Aqaba. Though the decision was certainly a far cry from Ben-Gurion’s November 1956 speech pledging to retain both the Sinai and Gaza, it marked the first time that an Israeli Premier would stand toe-to-toe with an antagonistic American administration and not be the first to blink.

Eisenhower’s administration led the UN in condemning Israel and threatened to orchestrate international economic sanctions against Israel. Israel, it was estimated, could survive for 12 months in such a scenario, before collapsing in the face of sanctions. Ben-Gurion was certainly aware of the intense pressure Eisenhower faced from congress, which refused to support his legislation as long as the specter of sanctions loomed over Israel.

If Ben-Gurion could stand up against Eisenhower for at least a compromise, Netanyahu is in a far better position to stand up and give Obama nothing. With his coalition partners Lieberman and Eli Yishai giving him full support and Likud MKs demanding no concessions, the only question is, will Netanyahu have the prescience to not only remember 1956, but see the advantages Israel now has.

The Baron and the Serf

2010-03-14T05:31:00.000-07:00

If extraterrestrials were to ever visit our planet, they would have a devil of a time understanding it. Most befuddling would be this strange little misshapen political entity known as “Israel”.

Carved out of the heart of the Middle East through blood and sweat by hundreds of thousands of Jews seeking to end the millennia-old oppression they suffered at the hands of gentiles, the state was meant to once and for all terminate the insidious baron-serf relationship through which Jews were always dominated by gentiles in every country both Muslim and Christian; politically, economically, and socially.

This movement to make a state, known contemporarily as Zionism, came about largely as a reaction to the failure of the gentile-initiated Emancipation in Europe, which freed Jews as individuals but not as a collective from age-old oppression.
What then would an outsider, uninitiated in the finer points of contemporary politics, make of this state, Israel groveling to Biden and Hillary Clinton in a pitiful attempt to apologize over the construction of homes in its capital???

Sadly, this is nothing new. From the get-go the Jewish establishment in Israel related to the US as the new Baron for the Jewish collective. The Zionist movement, originally meant to terminate the master-slave relationship now merely sought to replace the old European and Arab masters with a new American one.

American demands on Israel are always the same: give up land to your sworn enemies who seek your destruction. The territories demanded change with time, but only because Israel’s borders miraculously expand faster than American efforts to reduce them. From 1948 onward the demand was that Israel surrender the Negev (about half of the state of Israel). After 1967 the demand shifted to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan, and Sinai.

One of the most pernicious actions of the US, however, has been its refusal since 1948, to recognize Israeli control over WEST Jerusalem as well as its status as the capital of Israel from 1950 on. The issue of relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem did not begin after the 1967 War, it began in 1953 when the Israeli Foreign Ministry relocated to Jerusalem, following the earlier relocation of the Knesset. The US State Dept. to this day will not recognize any part of Jerusalem as Israeli territory, and all passports listing Jerusalem as place of birth have “Israel” removed.

The message is clear and astounding: it is not the “unsettled borders” of east Jerusalem that prevent American recognition of Israeli control, but Israeli control per se of any part of Jerusalem, east or west, that is not recognized. America, the alleged ally of Israel, doesn’t even recognize its control of its capital!
How then could one explain to the uninformed observer the Prime Minister of the allegedly free state of Israel groveling to an ally which doesn’t recognize the most basic right of a free state – the building of homes in its territory?

Israeli Leftists: The New Terrorism

2010-03-06T11:32:00.001-08:00

As tiny Israel confronts ongoing and growing hatred by Arabs both within and outside of the state, another enemy rises up to challenge the Jewish state. This foe has openly allied itself with anti-Semitic Arab rioters and terrorists, and has even at times explicitly promoted terrorism and murder of Jews.

Sadly, this new anti-Semitic threat is from Jews themselves. A small but noisy group of far-left Israelis of Jewish origin has taken the state of Israel – and the Jewish people – into its sights.

Represented by organizations hiding behind pluralistic-sounding slogans and titles such as “Peace Now” and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, these inciters to violence are little more than fascistic hooligans aping the Brown Shirts of the Nazi party in Germany before Hitler came to power.

Denied the right to expel Jews from their legally owned property in east Jerusalem by even the generally leftist Israeli court system, these vandals and thugs of the fascist-left now use harassment, riots, and violence to try and ethnically cleanse the Shimon HaTzaddik/Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jews.

Recently a mixed group of Arabs and leftists assaulted one Jewish home in the area, even going so far as to fire bullets at the house. When the perpetrator of the crime was arrested, the leftists of Peace Now and the ACRI actually protested the arrest.

Now, this Saturday night these same leftists have formed a mass rally outside of the Jewish homes with thousands of Arabs, in a demonstration of at least 3,000 people.
Such events do not occur in a vacuum however, and incitement from prominent figures like Zev Sternhell has thrown gas on the fire of leftwing fascism. Sternhell, a researcher of the roots of fascism is himself a practitioner of fascistic anti-Semitism and a bona fide Judeo-Nazi. He has openly praised the murder of Jews living outside of the Green Line and encouraged Arab terrorism there against Jews.

Given this background, it’s hard to condemn the 2008 attack on Mr. Sternhell with a pipe bomb which left the professor lightly injured.

Israel has, since its inception, struggled against Arab hatred. Perhaps it’s time to address the growing hatred on the part of Judeo-Nazis and leftwing fascists like Sternhell, the ACRI, and Peace Now.

Israel is Not the 51st State

2010-03-04T04:21:00.000-08:00

It almost defies comprehension. Recently Israel announced its “Heritage Plan” to preserve sites central to Judaism and Jewish history and to ensure that young Israelis learn about their importance to the Jewish people. Amazingly, insultingly, President Obama’s freak-on-a-lease Hillary Clinton actually attacked this, a rather outrageous step even for this decidedly anti-Israel administration.

Why does America think that it owns Israel? More to the point, why does it think that it owns Jews and Judaism, that it can dictate terms on everything small and large regarding Israel and the Jewish people.

The plan approved by the Israeli government provides funding to maintain historical Jewish sites and to integrate them in the education of young Israeli Jews. This clearly has nothing to do with “deepening the Israeli hold over the West Bank”, as some of the plan’s opponents claim (though there wouldn’t be a thing wrong if it did).

The criticism from the West, including from Hillary, is really targeted at Judaism and Jewish history with the aim at severing it from its origins. Orthodoxy, Jewish history, and Jewish nationalism are all negations of the interests of the Neo-Marxist bunch in DC.

True cultural uniqueness, whether it be Jewish or from some other ethnic or religious group, per se cannot be tolerated by people who want to portray all peoples as agreeing with their “progressive” post-modernist values.
That is the true nature of Hillary’s objection to the Heritage Plan: Jewish heritage per se bothers Hillary, all the more so heritage which defies her efforts to force a two-state solution on Israel.

Obama and His One Sided Freeze: The New Arab West Bank Settlement

2010-03-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

While US president Barak Obama and his Secretary of State Clinton lean heavily on Israel to ensure that not even a single new building be permitted for Jews lest facts be created on the ground, the Palestinian authority has begun work on an entire new Arab settlement.

Called Rawabi, the town is planned to house tens of thousands in its initial stages and hundreds of thousands when completed. The new Arab settlement will be built in close proximity to the Jewish town of Ateret, and will require a new Arab-only highway to be constructed.

Part of this highway will be built illegally on Israeli controlled land – referred to as Area C – and may result in the removal of the current roads which service the already existing Jewish towns in the area.

So can anyone actually be surprised that Obama has a single digit approval rating among Israeli Jews? Obama is openly biased in favor of the Arabs, a fact made abundantly clear by his disgusting anti-Semitic speech in Cairo where he actually compared Israel to South Africa and the segregation-era American South. Though Americans, especially Jewish ones, let these slanderous comparisons slide, Israelis were listening.

We knew exactly what Obama was in 2008; that feeling was confirmed in 2009, and in 2010 we are already feeling the weight of this anti-Israel goon’s dictatorial demands.

State to Yeshiva Student: Leave the Country or Sit in Prison

2010-02-25T02:19:00.000-08:00

This week a young Israeli Jewish citizen, an immigrant from the United States, was forced out of the country. The man, Efraim Khantsis, a 22 year old graduate of Stony Brook University, recently immigrated to Israel. He was enrolled in the Machon Meir yeshiva in Jerusalem.

All seemed well for Efraim, who was beginning to live out his dream of putting his roots down in the Jewish state. Several months ago, however, he was suddenly detained by the Israeli Secret Police (or “Shabak” in Hebrew), on suspicion that he had made statements praising Baruch Goldstein and the recently arrested Yaakov Teitel, who is a leading suspect in the killing of two Arabs.

For this alleged crime Efraim received an administrative restraining order. The order, which was given without any trial for allegations against which he was not permitted to defend himself, barred Efraim from entry into the West Bank, including his home in Kfar Tapuah.

When Efraim violated this wholly undemocratic and baseless order to visit his home in Tapuah, he was arrested and detained for several days. Now the Shabak has a new administrative order, again obtained in secret without a trial, but this time it sentenced Efraim to 3 months in prison. Unable to defend himself in court or even hear the charges against him, Efraim was offered one way to avoid his prison term: get out of Israel.

This tactic of administrative arrests, that is, prison terms doled out by the Defense Ministry without giving the accused a benefit of a trial or even to hear the accusations against them, is not new. Neither is this the first time its been used to deport Jews. In 2005 when 4 Jews were given administrative arrest and sent to prison, one of them, Saadiah Hershkof, was ultimately sent to America.

It is high time to reveal and repeal this wholly undemocratic and fascistic tool – administrative orders – which is used by the fundamentally undemocratic Secret Police. How can a supposedly democratic country like Israel have a secret police that can imprison and deport citizens without trial? Maybe it’s time to rethink that moniker of “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

Civil Rights? Not for Jews in Israel

2010-02-14T06:24:00.000-08:00

One of the leading abusers of Jewish civil rights and propagators of injustice in Israel has struck again. The deceptively named Association of Civil Rights in Israel is now leading a campaign against Jews wishing to build homes in the Land of Israel.

But this time it’s not what you think. The villains at the ACRI aren’t fighting some building project in “the illegal settlements” in the West Bank, but the construction of an apartment building inside the State of Israel, in the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo no less.

That’s right. The ACRI is actually fighting the construction of an Israeli project
IN ISRAEL, IN TEL AVIV. They argue that the neighborhood, which is largely Arab, should not have Jews moving in.

What about Arabs living in Jewish areas? The ACRI has fought over the years (and won) legal battles enabling Arabs to live in Jewish communities. So what we see here cannot possibly have anything to do with equality or civil rights.

Let’s be honest and call them out for what they really are. The ACRI is a fascistic anti-Semitic organization which is against the Jewish state per se. This is beyond any leftwing-rightwing argument over the future of the West Bank, or legal arguments over its ownership. This goes beyond any reasonable argument and places these dangerous characters in the same category as the terrorists who seek Israel’s demise.

The anarchists in the ACRI, while posing as protectors of civil rights, have time and time again taken actions which violate Jewish civil rights and safety, including the opening of the Israeli 443 highway to Palestinian Authority Arabs despite the danger to every person who uses the road; the violence against Jews living in homes they recovered from Arab squatters in east Jerusalem; and now by struggling to prevent Jews from living on their own legally purchased property in Tel Aviv.

If these people lived anywhere else but Israel and were of any other nationality besides Jewish, we could call them anti-Semites and Nazis. It is outrageous that such an organization is allowed to exist in our country.

Murder From Beyond the Grave: Rabin’s Legacy Lives On

2010-02-10T06:52:00.000-08:00

Today a once common event happened: an Israeli was murdered by an Arab terrorist in Israel. The terrorist, Mohammed Hattib, was a “security” officer in the Palestinian Authority’s “police” force, a force created by none other than Yitzhak Rabin in 1993 when he signed the Oslo Accords with the arch-murderer Yasser Arafat.

Of course this shouldn’t surprise us. There have been many incidents over the years of Palestinian Authority “security” officials turning their guns (most of which were provided by Israel of course) on Jews. Dozens if not hundreds of people have been murdered, and many more injured, by such “security” men.

How could it be that Israel was so foolish as to create and arm a terrorist group, you might ask? If you remember the early 1990s well, you might answer that then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin thought that the PLO would abstain from terror, that they had abandoned their evil ways and could be useful in relieving the security burden off of Israel by helping to contain Hamas.

But wait, how did Hamas get to Israel? In 1976 then-Prime Minister Rabin (in his first term), allowed the Islamic Brotherhood movement to establish a Gaza branch. Too bad no one told him that the movement is a fanatical terror group. In 1987 it renamed itself Hamas and has constantly grown in strength and audacity. Thanks Rabin.

So Rabin brings in Hamas to deal with the PLO, then the PLO to deal with Hamas, not to mention arming the PLO. Did this guy have a lobotomy? No one could possibly be this stupid. Go back a little farther in history. What was twinkle-toes doing in 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence when the tiny new Jewish state was invaded by 7 Arab armies? He was taking pot-shots at Menachem Begin, murdering 16 Jews in the process and sinking their ship, the Altalena, which was carrying badly needed supplies and weapons to the besieged Jewish state.

Now we have a complete picture. Rabin was not only a drunken bungler, he was a chronic murderer and terrorist. Today his legacy of murder (sometimes direct in the case of the Altalena, sometimes indirect as in the case of the PLO) continues with fresh killings.

Today at 2PM a soldier was gutted by a “security” officer in the “police” force Rabin created and armed. No one should forget who is responsible. Rabin, Israel’s arch-terrorist and murderer has a large share in all of these murders. His legacy of political violence and terror has killed again from beyond the grave.

The Death of the Israeli Left

2010-02-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

Ever since the historic defeat of the Labor party in 1977 and the rise of Menachem Begin’s Likud party, the Israeli left has been on the decline.

Now, however, it is more pronounced than ever. The far-left Meretz party, which once held 12 seats in the 120 member Knesset is now the smallest part with only 3; while once dominant Labor has sunk to fourth place with a mere 13 seats.

A telling sign of the trend to the right in Israel is a Dialogue poll conducted for Haaretz last week. According to the poll, Likud would rise from 27 seats to 35, while Labor and Kadima would drop from 13 to 9 and 28 to 25 respectively. The left-wing/Arab bloc as a whole would decline from its present 55 seats to 48, while the right-wing/religious parties would increase from 65 to 72.

More important in the poll, however, was the DISAPPROVAL of Netanyahu despite his party’s growing support. The primary reason given? His freezing of settlement construction in the West Bank.

Since his turn to the left, his numbers, which had stayed comfortably in the high-50s to low-60s, have for the first time sunk below 50% and are lower than his disapproval rating. This is a clear smack at the leftist policies of Netanyahu, who despite his party affiliation, is feeling the burn of his actions.

More importantly, however, is the coalition’s confirmation today that it will permit voting overseas. This seemingly innocuous bill, which was first proposed by Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party and fixed as a basis of their coalition agreement, augurs major change for Israeli politics.

Israel, unlike the US, has hitherto prohibited all voting outside of the state, except for consular workers and other government positions overseas. This was a natural outgrowth of the feeling in the early days of the state that Israelis who leave the country were abandoning it and the Jewish people. Today, however, Lieberman and Netanyahu see it as an untapped source of electoral strength.

It is estimated that close to 1 million Israeli citizens live overseas, the overwhelming majority of them Jewish. These expatriates, who usually left for economic reasons, tend towards the right politically, and represent a potential voting bloc for Likud and Yisrael Beitenu.

Their inclusion in Israeli elections would go along way in nullifying the electoral power of Israeli Arabs, who constitute about 22% of the country but only a tiny percent of Israeli expatriates. Currently their vote is split roughly 50-50 between Arab parties and the left.

If and when this bill will pass, it will likely be the final death-null for the already battered Israeli left. Meretz, the furthest to the left, will probably be the first to go, and may not survive the next election cycle.

Israstine: Whose Land Is It?

2010-01-31T00:48:00.000-08:00

To whom does the land rightfully belong (and if you didn’t get it, this is referring to the country formerly known as Judea, later renamed Palestine, and now called Israel)? Ever since the Romans expelled the majority of Jews from Judea, people the world round knew the answer: the Jews.

Who else could claim ownership of a land named Judea? Muslims; who did not exist at the time of the expulsion, 1940 years ago? Christians; who had yet to form into a religion and laid no claims on the land? Buddhists? Hindus? Eskimos? The question of ownership, had it been asked before the 20th century would have seemed absurd.

Since the 1967 war, however, popular perception outside of Israel has opened up to the myth of ancient Palestinian nationhood. That insidious myth has in recent years begun to penetrate even into the Israeli consciousness. “It is our land, indeed, but they also have legitimate rights” is the common refrain. Do they?

Let’s examine land ownership on a national level, and how it is transferred from one group to another. From time immemorial the ‘Right of Conquest’ was a legitimate means of gaining legal ownership of territory. That is to say, if country A and country B go to war, and country B loses, country A is the legal owner of whatever territory of B that it comes to control by the end of the war.

The 4th Geneva Convention and the UN Charter, however, banned such practices and refused to recognize the legality of the Right of Conquest. A “territorial integrity” clause was added to the Charter to prevent ipso facto claims that would open the door for virtually every nation’s right to existence to be disputed. Any already existing state which is a member to the Geneva Convention and a UN member is protected from prior claims under this clause.

As far as the land of Judea is concerned, on both a moral and legal basis, the right of ownership is clear. If the right of conquest is morally viable, so while the Jewish people lost their land in 70 CE, they were within their rights to regain it by conquest in 1948 and 1967. The Geneva Convention and UN Charter are irrelevant because Palestine did not exist in either 1948 or 1967 as a country and certainly was not a UN member state. Jordan and Egypt, the occupiers of Gaza and the West Bank, were not legal possessors of the land they occupied from 1948-1967.

If conquest is not a moral means of attaining and losing ownership, so the Jews never ‘lost’ Judea, and its merely been stolen from one group after another, though legal possession always remained with the Jewish people.

In either case Judea, the whole of Judea, which certainly includes the West Bank and Gaza Strip, clearly belong only to the Jewish people.

Do They Still Have It?

2010-01-20T02:46:00.000-08:00

It’s been 16 years since the Republican takeover of congress in 1994. Hitherto the minority party in both chambers of congress, the Republicans surged to take over both; going from 44 Senators and 176 Reps to 52 and 230 respectively.

The Republicans capitalized on anxiety over President Clinton, then in the middle of his first term. More importantly the GOP mobilized its conservative base of support and pledge loyalty to the spirit of the Constitution with its Contract with America. Voters who had been frustrated over George Bush’s tax hike and failure to stick to conservative principles saw a newer, wiser GOP emerge in 1994.

Since then, however, the party has gone back to its old ways, like a dog returning to its vomit. George W. Bush was as much a failure as a president as his father; spending more than Clinton and racking up a massive debt while paying only lip-service to the voters who put him in office.

Obama’s 2008 election was a wake-up call, reminding us what is at stake if the GOP strays from its values. The election upset last night in Massachusetts by Scott Brown over his Democratic opponent shows the potential for a great rebound to the conservative values that put the GOP in power in 1994. The question is does the Republican leadership have what it takes? Can the GOP outgrow the Iraq War, support for big-business, and the daunting image of W. Bush’s failure?

The mid-term elections this November are, more than a critique of Obama’s disastrous presidency, a test for the Republican party. Last night’s upset in far-left Massachusetts shows that if they are true to their roots, they can reshape America’s political map in a big way. If not, it will be politics as usual.

Jewish Skinheads

2010-01-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

As reported here http://jewservative.blogspot.com/2009/12/special-place-in-hell.html at the end of December, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, or ACRI, is an unabashedly leftist organization which uses the guise of “civil rights” to pursue a rabidly anti-Israel agenda. In December it was their case in the Israeli Supreme Court to open up the Israeli-built 443 highway back up to Palestinian Authority traffic, despite the enormous security risk to Jewish drivers.

Lately the ACRI has worked on other projects, such as attempting to oust Jews who have come to reclaim property in historically-Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem that were stolen by Arabs. Following the invasion of Israel by 7 Arab nations, Jordan illegally seized control of east Jerusalem and expelled the Jewish inhabitants, a phenomenon which also occurred across the West Bank in places like Hebron, Neve Yaakov (now part of Jerusalem), Kaliya, and Gush Etzion, whose inhabitants were massacred in 1948.

Backed up by ownership papers and supported by the Israeli courts, Jews have begun to recover property stolen by Arabs in the Shimon HaTzaddik (or Sheikh Jarrah) neighborhood near the Old City.

The ACRI has helped squatting Arabs fight this historical justice tooth-and-nail both in the courts and now on the streets in the form of angry and often violent protests. The Jewish residents of the neighborhood have been forced to hire private security guards as police protection is often inadequate to protect them from the angry mobs incited by ACRI’s goons.

Given this, it was a very pleasant surprise Saturday night when I heard on the news that ACRI’s director, Haggai Elad, was arrested along with 14 other far-left activists and anarchists during an illegal protest outside of Jewish homes in Shimon HaTzaddik.

While the Israeli security apparatus is very eager to arrest Jews on the right of the political spectrum, it has given tremendous leeway to all but the most outrageous behavior of leftists. But I guess somewhere in the chain of command someone realized that this group is nothing but a gang of Judeo-Nazis, harassing Jewish civilians and using violence to prevent justice. Here is a visual example of their handiwork in front of a Jewish home:

From Der Sturmer to CNN: Media Fascism

2010-01-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

Lies, falsehood, and half-truths are always frustrating. But they are especially galling when are used to portray the victim as the aggressor, to warp justice in the fullest way possible. Some in the media have, unfortunately, refined this form of abuse to an art.

In 1942 it was Der Sturmer, the German weekly newspaper which portrayed the Jews, then being systematically destroyed by Germany, as oppressive and malignant. Der Sturmer was, however, only one paper, and a Nazi one at that. In contrast, today there is nary a media outlet that doesn’t warp reality in a gross fashion, turning Jewish victims into Jewish criminals and oppressors.

Today it is virtually impossible to read one article or hear one news story on the “Mideast Conflict” without finding reference to refugees; refugees for whom we are meant to feel sympathy for and antipathy towards those who caused their flight; refugees whose miserable plight is one of the core issues of the conflict.
Of course the refugees mentioned are the Arab refugees who fled Israel in 1948 – some compelled by Israel and others answering the call of the 7 invading Arab armies to vacate – and the Arab refugees alone. This is, however, a double spit in the face of both justice and the Jewish people.

First, it should be made absolutely clear who the were victims in the war that began in 1947 and did not end until 1949. When the UK declared its intention to leave the country in May 1948, the Arab community exploded with violence against their Jewish neighbors.

Those who would later become hapless refugees had spent the 1920s and 1930s massacring Jews and rioting against the British in an effort to close the country off to Jewish immigration, just as their fellow Arabs poured in from Jordan and Syria.

They were, of course, successful at convincing the British, who closed the country to Jewish immigration in 1939 on the eve of World War II and the Holocaust, locking millions of Jews out from their one possible avenue of escape.

History will never erase the terrible crime of Israel’s Arab civilians who guaranteed that Europe’s Jews would have no escape from Hitler; civilians who took it upon themselves to carry out bloody pogroms against Jews long before there was a Hamas or PLO or “occupied territories of 1967” or even a State of Israel. Let it be known that the Arabs of Israel were the allies of the Nazis during WWII, with a song welcoming the Fuhrer’s armies to the country: “No more monsuier, no more mister/In heaven Allah, and on Earth Hitler”.

When these same Arabs rose up unified against the Jewish people beginning in 1947, not one village in the entire country except for Abu Ghosh refrained from joining the battle to annihilate Israel before it even existed. Thus it is no surprise that Israel’s fledgling army forces, under Yitzhak Rabin, expelled hundreds of thousands of these Arabs, with many more fleeing of their own accord. We should have no pity on these people who rose up to destroy Israel and, in their failure to do so, were cast into exile. To feel sympathy for them is to spit in the graves of the more than 7,000 Jews they killed from December 1947 to the signing of the Armistice in 1949; 7,000 out of a mere 600,000 Jews who then lived in Israel.

To add insult to injury the one refugee group we should truly feel pity for is utterly ignored in the media. While only 450,000 Arabs left Israel as refugees, more than 900,000 Jews were forced to flee the Muslim world. Israel alone supported these refugees who came after virtually all of their property had been confiscated by the nations they fled. Yet the media continues to emphasize the importance of the “refugee issue” in ending the Mideast crisis. The fact is that Israel solved its end of the issue, and if there is any refugee problem today it is the fault of the Arab world.

Israel on the rise, America on the decline?

2010-01-11T14:55:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell made a thinly veiled threat to Israel. Should Israel not immediately resume direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, America, it was implied, would with hold loan guarantees for the Jewish state.

The Israeli response was pleasantly surprising. “We can live without US money” replied Danny Danon, a member of the ruling Likud party. Ignore the fact that Israel HAS been bending over backwards to tempt the PA back into negotiations. This is a welcome change for Israeli leaders who have traditionally heeled to American administrations, particularly when the threat of withholding money is sounded.
This is yet another sign of the waning influence of America in Israeli politics. This is rooted in two developments; 1) the gradual strengthening (and capitalization) of the Israeli economy, and 2) the trend towards a more right-wing and independent mindset in Israel.

Compare the reaction in the early 1990s when James Baker, Secretary of State for then President George HW Bush, threatened Israel in exactly the same manner. The Bush Administration threatened then attempted to block loans to Israel to pressure it to end the expansion of settlements in the liberated territories of 1967. Though the move was ultimately blocked by Congress, it sent shock waves through Israeli politics, and aided in the 1992 takeover by Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor party.

After nearly two decades of suicide bombings and a total failure of the negotiating process, sentiments in Israel have changed, shifting to the right and away from dependence on foreign countries.

This highlights a change in Israel to the right; fiscally, socially, and foreign policy-wise; which mirrors the exact opposite movement in America.

America has, since Reagan left office in January 1989, lacked a truly conservative proactive leadership. At best there were watered down Neocons like George W, weak kneed leaders like his father who caved into every demand of the Democratic Congress, or Congressional leaders during Clinton’s Administration who merely reacted to Democratic initiatives. Today’s Republican party is even worse; capable of nothing more than symbolic resistance to Obama’s programs.

And Americans have, lacking a real alternative, really turned to the left. America and Israel truly are moving in opposite directions: America towards a more liberal, socialist, debt-ridden future (the debt is already 13 trillion dollars, or 100% of the annual GDP), while Israel grows more conservative and capitalist, with a booming economy and now a negative total debt (they owe 28 billion dollars and are owed 60 billion, mostly by the US incidently).

GOP Chairman: “Bushes Derailed Party, Need Return to Values”

2010-01-05T09:38:00.001-08:00

In his new book, GOP head Michael Steele offered some candid and much needed advice to a party that has spent the last few years on the ropes.

The Republican party, he argued, lost its way after Reagan and has managed to frustrate both base supporters and moderate independents. Much of this is due to the political ineptitude of the two Bush presidents, who allowed and at times even aided Democratic excess in big government spending.

Steele cited George H.W. Bush’s early 1990s tax hike, his son George W. Bush’s refusal to veto a single Democratic spending bill in 5 years of presidency, and the wasteful pork-barrel spending of the latter Bush’s TARP fund, which he likened to a massive government kickback.

By caving into Democratic policy, Steele, argued, not only did the GOP frustrate its base of conservative support but gave independents little reason to vote Republican.
The fact is Steele is 100% right, and a biting critique is just what the party needs. Over the last 20 years the party has strayed from its ideological roots, leaving it nothing more than a watered-down version of the Democratic party. This is the reason for the GOPs decline, and this is reason for the country’s left turn in 2008, electing its most grossly socialist president ever.

The Republican party needs to return to its conservative roots if it wants to survive. The neo-conservatism (which is nothing more than a fancy term for a fiscal liberal in Republican’s clothing) of GW Bush needs to be replaced with the classical and honest conservative ideology of William Buckley, the builder of the modern Republican party.

The Arabs In Israel: Laws and the Leftists Who Distort Them

2010-01-03T09:50:00.000-08:00

Leftists and Israel-haters (or PC anti-Semites as they are more accurately known), both inside Israel and out, both Mosaic in origin and not, have long decried Israel’s construction of Jewish housing in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as being “clearly illegal”, citing the 4th Geneva Convention as their source. They claim, as leftists will, that the text bans what they hold to be an immoral act of an occupying entity in occupied territory; that it is illegal for the occupier to build communities in the occupied territory. But is this really banned by the Geneva Convention?

First, it’s important, since this is the JEWISH Conservative and not the Atheist-Postmodernist-Moral relativist Conservative Blog, to point out what Judaism says about the situation. The Book of Numbers (33:52-53) clearly commands: “then ye shall drive out ALL the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places. And ye shall drive out the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein; for unto you have I given the land to possess it.”

Unlike other references throughout the 5 Books of Moses to the conquest of the Land of Israel, the command given here does not mention the 7 Canaanite nations which dwelled there at the time. That is because, as the classical biblical commentator Ohr HaChaim pointed out that these verses refer to any foreign elements inhabiting the land, not merely Canaanites. The Land of Israel, as stated repeatedly throughout the Bible, belongs to the Jewish people and to no one else. Occupying the whole of the country is not only not problematic in Judaism it is a commandment, just as it is a commandment to “drive out ALL the inhabitants of the land”.

That is because those foreigners who occupy the Land prior to the establishment of Jewish sovereignty will never accept Jewish control over what they consider to be their land. Thus, the verses after the commandment to conquer Israel warn: “But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that ye let remain of them be as thorns in your eyes, and as pricks in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land wherein ye dwell”.

But for those who worry about a Geneva Convention that Israel signed in good faith, it’s relevant to point out what it actually states. The section in question, Article 49 of the 4th Convention, states as follows: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. The implication is clear. An occupying power cannot force its own citizens out of the country into occupied territory, as Germany did to its Jewish citizens in World War II. But this says nothing about building homes and allowing citizens to buy them, and it is typical liberal dishonesty to say that it does.
Another point of equal importance; there is almost no basis for claiming that the West Bank is even occupied territory, since the only inheritor of the previous legitimate possessor (the British Mandate) is the State of Israel. Palestine never existed as a country and is not a claimant, and Jordan, from whom Israel captured the land, was an illegal occupier.

That is the sheer depth of the lie: not only is Israel not occupying the West Bank, even if it were, the construction of settlements would not be illegal. Not only that but the same Article (49) quoted by the anti-Israel crowd against the settlements states that occupying powers may legally evacuate or remove all occupied peoples for security or military needs. This even applies to “Protected Persons”, that is people who are protected by the Geneva Convention by virtue of their nation’s signing the agreement. But the residents of the West Bank are, by and large, not nationals of any such state and therefore do not even fall into this category, giving them no protection whatsoever.

This is just one more example of the outrageous lies and distortions of the leftist anti-Israel clique, who turn truth completely on its head.

The Year of Obama: 2009 in Review

2009-12-31T13:45:00.000-08:00

As the calendar year comes to a close, it’s important to reflect on the challenges and opportunities laid out since Obama took office in January; the critical points of 2009 that will define 2010.

First let’s look at the bad. The two truly dangerous failures of the Obama administration thus far are:

1) The economy: Obama pledged to implement a recovery plan that would yield immediate results. Nearly 12 months later the unprecedented $3 trillion deficit has yet to create new jobs or stabilize the still perilous housing market. Besides being another failed government spending program, the recovery plan has left America with a $13 trillion national debt, which now exceeds the annual GDP. That means America is living on borrowed money more than ever.

The addiction of debt-based spending is a downward spiral that results in more and more American currency going to foreign bond holders, thus devaluing the dollar. Not only does this make all imported goods more expensive (which alone hurts the economy), it forces an increase in interest rates on bonds to make them more attractive to foreign investors.

The debt is fast becoming a existential problem for a government which cannot “outgrow” the problem, and rather than tighten its belt, is planning a new huge spending program for health care. Keep your eye on this as Obama spends even more in 2010.

2) Foreign Policy : By speaking softly and carrying no stick, Obama has essentially jettisoned America’s deterrence vis a vis hostile countries the world over. North Korea thumbed its nose at the US as it test fired its long range missiles, with no American response. Instead, the US was forced to station defensive surface-to-air missiles in Hawaii for its own defense.

Iran continues to build its nuclear-holocaust weapon unabated as the Jimmy Carter of our day also manages to allow a much needed insurrection opportunity following the rigged Iranian elections go wasted.

Even in less hostile waters Obama has shown himself to be a total failure as a diplomat. His much touted visit to China accomplished nothing, and his one-sided approach to the Arab-Israeli has not even yielded the limited goals he hoped for. Instead he has managed only to damage American-Israeli relations and raise Arab hopes - only to be dashed – leaving a sense of heightened frustration.

Afghanistan too, has seen a deterioration over the last 11 and a half months, despite Obama’s build up – a build up which deepens America’s commitment to a conflict that increasing numbers of American’s no longer see the benefit of.

But no, all is not lost, for Year of Obama has also given us hope for the future. Because of Obama’s failures and radical policies, American’s have made an about-face on the president, one going beyond the typical mid-term decline in ratings. A poll conducted by Rasmussen 12/24/09 gave Obama a disapproval rating of 56%, with 44% of respondents “strongly disapproving” of his administration. Compare that to his 65% approval rating with only 16% strongly disapproving when he took office January 20th. Hopefully voters will remember 2009 when they enter the voting booths in November 2010.

The second important development of 2009 was the emergence of the so-called “Tea Parties”. Its been long in coming that average Americans do what the far-left thrived off of during the Iraq War under Bush; make their opinions known. The armchair democracy of relying solely on voting to affect change isn’t enough. To maintain a healthy democracy, the people must be ready, willing, and able to make the kind of demonstrations that gain attention and remind politicians who really is in charge. This is equally true for Republican administrations and lawmakers. They too have been guilty over the last few years of ignoring their constituents. Hopefully this phenomenon will affect real change in coming year.

A Special Place in Hell

2009-12-29T13:12:00.000-08:00

I like to believe that there is a special place in hell for murderers and rapists.
I like to believe there is also one for people like Bernie Madoff who destroy lives and even charitable organizations to fund their lavish lifestyles. And I really, truly believe there is an extra special place in hell for a certain kind of liberal.

I definitely don’t mean all liberals; I don’t think that naïve ones who believe a welfare state is simply more likely to produce a stable economy are evil and I don’t think that liberals who were upset by the war in Iraq are bad. We have our differences, but that’s a far cry from believing them to be deeply sick, evil people.

There is, however, a certain strain of malevolent liberalism today that can be best termed “Exploitative Liberalism”. Exploitative Liberals are those leftists who have a pathological need to give to others, but do so at someone else’s expense. They are the ones who think it’s a moral imperative to spend YOUR tax dollars on education for illegal immigrants and sex-changes for employees of the City of San Fran-Sicko. They are the ones who want Affirmative Action to give minorities a leg-up in education and employment opportunities; leaving other more qualified students and job-seekers out in the cold. But they aren’t the liberals’ problem, and it doesn’t bother them so long as they help out whomever they feel deserves it.
What truly outraged me today, however, was a news item that hit closer to home, here in Israel. “The High Court on Tuesday ordered the opening of Road 443, the Modiin-Jerusalem road, to vehicles from the Palestinian Authority. The government was instructed to remove roadblocks preventing traffic from Arab villages along the road.”

For those of you outside of Israel, the 443 is the 2nd large traffic artery between the Tel Aviv area and Jerusalem, running through the Modiin bloc. It provides the 150,000 residents of the bloc with route into the two large Israeli metropolitan centers. From 2000, with the rise in Arab terror, the 443 became a shooting gallery for Palestinian Authority terrorists, leading the Israeli military to close the road to non-Israeli Arabs in 2002. Since then the freeway has been virtually terror-free and Israeli drivers, who literally travelled every day under the gun, could feel secure.

That was until today, however. Today the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in a split decision to open the road to Palestinian Authority traffic. The ruling was in response to a petition brought by Arabs in the region, and brought to court on their behalf by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The decision will force, in 5 months time, the army to abandon its safety precautions which brought security to the tens of thousands of Israelis who daily use the road to commute, myself included.
This is a classic, and dangerous, example of people who feel a need to help others, and do so at the expense of people they take for granted. People like the ACRI, which cares nothing about the fact that there are many more roads – built by Israel with Israeli taxes- that are Arab only, where Jews are banned from driving, despite the inconvenience caused by this separation, are selective about their help; help which comes at the price of danger and possible death for others. The ruling for the ACRI today came in the wake of the rejection by the Supreme Court of a similar request by Israelis to be allowed access to Arab roads, showing the bias of not only the ACRI but of the Supreme Court.

Such Exploitative Liberals most definitely deserve their own special residence in Gehinom.

With or Without You: Iran's Ongoing Upheaval

2009-12-27T07:15:00.000-08:00

AP: Witnesses: Iran police fire on protesters; 4 dead (27-12-2009)

“demonstrators fought back furiously against security forces, hurling stones at them and setting their motorcycles, cars and vans ablaze”

“In Tehran, protesters tried to cut off roads with burning barricades that filled the sky with billowing black smoke. One police officer was photographed with blood streaming down his face after he was set upon by the crowd in a blazing street.”

“he protests began with thousands of opposition supporters chanting "Death to the dictator"

These are just a few scenes of the ongoing insurrection underway in Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard has been working overtime since the allegedly rigged elections of the past summer to quell the growing movement of rebellion.

Frustrated over the corruption of the present regime and its stifling adherence to Islam’s Sharia Law and facing severe economic troubles in the wake of Teheran’s vehemently anti-Western stance, hundreds of thousands of Iran’s secular young urbanites have begun to undo what their parents did 30 years ago, when Iran’s pro-Western Shah was dethroned, forced into exile, and replaced with Ayatollah Khomeni’s Islamic regime.

Like then, the United States suffers from an inept and indecisive Democratic President who fails to appreciate the urgency of the situation. In 1978 Jimmy Carter failed to provide the backing to the Shah necessary to stave off the infant revolutionary movement and the reassure middle class Iranians of the stability of the government. In so doing he allowed one of America’s principle allies in the region and a major supplier of oil to turn into one of its worst enemies.

Today Barak Obama makes the same mistake by offering little support to the growing revolution against Ahmadinejad, despite the latter’s plans for constructing nuclear arms and wiping Israel off the face of the Earth; not to mention his support of Islamic terror groups the world over. Obama made no demands of Iran vis a vis the election and continues to refuse to apply pressure, either economic or military, to Iran with regards to its nuclear program.

One can only hope that this time the pro-Western elements will win out despite the utter failure of America’s Democrat president to support them.

Remembering the Victims of the Oslo Agreement

2009-12-23T04:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the 5th of Tevet in the Hebrew calendar, was the 9th anniversary of the assassination of Rabbi Benjamin Zev Kahane and his wife Taliya at the hands of Arab terrorists as the couple drove home north of Jerusalem. They are two of the most famous victims of the Oslo Process, which has claimed thousands of Israeli lives since the much-heralded 1993 Rabin-Arafat handshake (choreographed by none other than current Obama Chief of Staff and perennial detractor of the settlement movement, Rahm Emanuel). It is perhaps the most fitting time to reflect on the Oslo Agreements and the negotiating process from 1993 to the present.

After the left-wing/Arab bloc narrowly won the 1992 Knesset elections in Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, who ran a campaign promoting security and zero tolerance for terrorism, became Prime Minister, the second time in his career. Rabin immediately set about building a governing coalition of the far-left and entered into negotiations with Israel’s sworn enemy, the PLO, and its murderous leader Yasser Arafat. An agreement reached, colloquially known as the Oslo Accords, strongly divided the Israeli public along both the right – left and religious - secular lines.

The agreement established an Arab autonomous entity in almost all of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, with more areas in the latter to be handed over in the years to come. The PLO was legalized and its leadership allowed to return from their Tunisian exile. A paramilitary force under PLO control was created and armed with tens of thousands of firearms by the Israeli government. And what was the excuse for arming a terrorist group and arch enemy of Israel? It was said that they could deal with the Islamic terror group Hamas, and would no longer threaten Israelis. That’s right, an Arab terror group whose raison detre was the destruction of Israel would, if legalized and armed, suddenly ally itself with its hated enemy and take up arms against its Arab brothers.

If this wasn’t ridiculous enough, keep in mind how HAMAS itself reached Israel. In 1976, during Rabin’s first term as Prime Minister, Hamas was imported from Egypt into the Gaza Strip by none other than – yep, you guessed it- Yitzhak Rabin. The excuse? The same one he would use to justify importing PLO murderers and arming them in 1993. Hamas could undermine the PLO and provide a less antagonistic alternative leadership for the Arabs.

Given this background, is it any wonder that things are so screwed up in Israel today and that they generally have gotten worse in the last 30 years?

Regarding Healthcare

2009-12-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

As the embattled minority party feebly tries to convince enough Democrats to oppose the Universal Healthcare plans proposed in the House and Senate, much attention has been focused to the details of the plans in order to shore up opposition. The so-called “public option,” which would offer a wholly governmental healthcare provider and thus likely kill all competition because unlike private businesses, the federal government won’t go bankrupt no matter how inefficiently it operates; subsidized abortions; broadening the ability to “buy into” Medicare and so on.

The most important issue, however, isn’t in the details of any of the plans. The real $64,000 is, is universal federal healthcare a good idea at all? Is it within the purview of the federal government? Of course HAVING universal health care is wonderful. But PAYING for it isn’t.

Now many people have recently pointed to Israel as an example of a quality universal healthcare system. First, its important to note that Israel doesn’t have a public option. More important however, is the cost. Israelis pay enormous taxes, with one of the biggest burdens being the healthcare system. Income taxes on someone who earns a mere $23,000 a year are 49%. Compare that to the 15% a person earning that same wage would pay in America (and let’s not forget the deductions and tax credits that reduce low income earners tax burden even further). Even Israel’s Social Security tax (called National Insurance) is higher, with a total rate of 15% compared to 12.4% in America (or 13.8% if Medicare Tax is included). In addition, Israelis pay 16% nation-wide sales tax, a special tax on cars of nearly 100% (thus doubling the price of cars); not to mention the luxury taxes and tariffs that raise prices on other items. Recent studies estimate that the average Israeli loses half of his money to taxes, an astounding considering the relatively high level of poverty in Israel.

Considering America’s already massive deficit and $13 trillion debt (which is equal to the annual US GDP), is adding another massive expense really such a great idea? Will the new healthcare system have provisions to prevent the millions of illegal immigrants from exploiting it and burdening tax payers? Considering the abuse of the present system in states like California, where illegals benefit from free state provided care at the expense of the tax payer, I doubt the federal system will be much better. But hey, it’s your money.

Morally vs Ideologically Bankrupt

2009-12-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Since Netanyahu’s election as Prime Minister in February of 2009, Obama and his cronies have delivered a constant pressure upon Israel to agree to a total freeze on construction of settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Netanyahu, always the spineless one tried to compromise on the issue: a partial building freeze in the West Bank (allowing for natural growth, which was never clearly defined or explained) and the completion of projects already underway. The result was last week’s building freeze declaration, which, in theory, was to ban only those projects which were not yet begun and were not part of the 500 units approved recently for construction.

Let’s count the charges against the Netanyahu gov’t:
1) Nixing approval for new units in both the West Bank and Jerusalem even before the 10 month freeze, aggravating one of the worst housing crises in Israeli history.

2) Violating its own restrictions on the extent of the building freeze, banning even the recently approved units and even illegally confiscating (read: stealing) building equipment.

3) Proceeding with the freeze despite the fact that it will cost the economy an estimated 500 million dollars, further deteriorate the already difficult housing situation, and get in return absolutely nothing.

Netanyahu spinelessly uses the freeze – and the damage it does to Israel, especially to struggling young families – so he can feel more at ease talking to Obama. But the settlement movement is just as bankrupt as Netanyahu. Since the founding of Gush Emunim, the core of the settlement movement, in 1974 the settlers and their allies inside the Green Line have been unable to formulate a comprehensive plan which would ensure the survival of their enterprise. Their answer to every problem or crisis is to build more; more houses and more settlements. When the demographic threat to the State of Israel crystallized in the 1980s they offered no solution (like some form of population transfer to encourage Arab emigration), and so eventually were subjected to the disastrous Oslo process in the 1990’s and the 2005 Gaza Disengagement. The mainstream settlement movement and the Israeli government are two heads of the same bankrupt coin: one morally lacking, the other, ideologically.

Mike Huckabee: A Jewish Perspective

2009-12-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

Former Arkansas Governor and potential Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has been, until recently, the apparent frontrunner for the 2012 Republican nomination. True, it’s quite early to be placing bets, but he has been basically the only notable besides the uniquely divisive Sarah Palin, whom American’s seem either to love or despise (more often the latter than the former). He stunned observers with his early wins in the 2008 primaries and came in second to John McCain. He stood out as an electable conservative; a jovial, easy going, and down to Earth guy who plays bass guitar in a rock band and gave anecdotes about how he managed to lose more weight than entire Jenny Craig Centers. He could speak at the most liberal college campuses delivering his message of middle-American conservatism without the compromising his beliefs or dodging pies. For many he seemed like a great way to evict Obama from office in the 2012 elections.

For Jewish conservatives, Huckabee earned a special interest. He was – and is- the only potential candidate for the presidency who openly assailed the destructive Two-State Solution for the Israeli-Arab conflict. Instead, Huckabee suggested that the Arab inhabitants of Judea-Samaria ( in CNN-speak that means the West Bank) and East Jerusalem transfer themselves out of the country and seek self-determination outside of Israel’s historic homeland. After 42 years of American presidents butting into Israeli affairs with insistence that Israel surrender land – either to create a Palestine – or to hand over territory to its Arab neighbors, the idea of an American administration receptive to trying a new idea sounds better than matza-ball soup on Shabbes, especially after having suffered through almost a year of Obama’s obscene bullying of Israel.

Yes, Huckabee sounded like a winner, for conservatives and especially for Jews. That was until the unfortunate incident involving Maurice Clemmons, a violent repeat offender to whom Huckabee granted clemency during his term as governor. Huckabee, like other governors, felt the pressure of far-left space-cadets like the ACLU, and folded. Who would have thought that one of the recipients of clemency would go on to murder four cops?

The truth is the incident with Clemmons is, of course, regrettable and reveals a character flaw in Huckabee. He felt pressure, and gave in. But he is and was a politician, and such behavior from a politician is hardly remarkable. In fact it’s virtually impossible to find one who lacks this trait in some measure. I definitely can’t imagine either Palin or Romney being much better in this regard. And certainly neither have had the ‘beitzim’ to speak on Israel in the way that Huckabee has. In the end of the day, as bad as the situation may seem, Huckabee is still the best choice at this point, on both a Jewish and conservative level. No other candidate is as electable (assuming this whole mess is forgotten by 2012) and frankly, no other candidate has shown him/herself to be anything more than a Xerox copy of every other ideologically barren Republican in high office.

Obama's Afghan Surge and Our Republican Losers

2009-12-03T13:07:00.000-08:00

Obama's recent decision to commit an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, mirroring Bush's 2007 Iraq troop surge, was applauded by some Republican pundits and politicians Thursday, including former Congressman Newt Gingrich. On the other hand, Obama faced criticism from within his own party by liberals including Russ Feingold, who argued that the war had lost its direction.

What does this news item say? It sums up, more clearly than anything yet, that the Republican party, nay, the conservative movement in America, has lost its way. Once upon a time the Republican Party was the party of restraint. They were labeled "isolationists", and it was the Democrats who were the "warmongers".

Democrats led America into two inconclusive large-scale conflicts in east Asia where a total of nearly 100,000 American troops were killed, with hundreds of thousands more permanently maimed. Republicans, going back to the beginning of the 20th Century, were always cautious about committing troops to combat. They were CONSERVATIVE about war, not just about spending and taxation. Not that they were doves, but they carefully weighed the circumstances to see if war was a CRITICAL NECESSITY for ensuring American freedom and welfare because nothing else justifies risking the lives of soldiers, not to mention the tremendous financial burden of modern war.

So what does it tell us when Newt Gingrich, the architect of the stunning 1994 midterm Republican takeover of Congress, gives B.O. a big pat on the back? What does it tell us when the Republican leaderships, including John McCain, criticize the deployment plan not for foolishly dragging America deeper into a failed war that its taken almost 9 years to lose, but rather to slam Obama's suggested exit date from the Afghani quagmire.

Afghanistan is a large, mountainous country, easily defendable and difficult for invaders to either conquer or control. Al Qeda, America's original target in Afghanistan, is not bound to the country, and transfers its operations to other Islamic nations, like Pakistan, Somalia, etc. Having tens of thousands of American troops mired in a pointless war with no clear goal and essentially no plan is bad enough, sending in more soldiers is insanity. Republicans are deeply in need of some soulsearching, and had better find their roots prior to the 2010 midterm elections. Otherwise, they can count on remaining the minority party in both houses of Congress for even longer than America will be stuck in its new Vietnam.