Thursday, March 07, 2019

The Shamrak Report: Abolish Cheap Vote-Catching Politics and more...

Israeli parties scramble for last-minute mergers, vote-catchers. Leaders of two emerging blocs are hustling for partners, while some of the small fry are ready to jump aboard to escape the dreaded threshold (3.7pc) threat.
Likud has a top poll rating of 30+, is thinking of the day after election. While vigorously bidding to expand his base, Gantz’s party was slipping fast in the polls – down from a high 22 to 18-20. His invitations to some political personalities were firmly declined. Suddenly, the newly-formed alliance between Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid became popular!
Kalfon joins the owner of the Beersheba soccer team, Alona Barkat, and two journalists, Caroline Glick and Eliashiv Reichner in top billing on the New Right list. Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu aims solidly at the Russian speaking voters. (Israel needs to put the end to 'personality' and 'ethnicity' based parties that have no political conviction - just personal self-serving egocentric ambitions! This is a residue of the "divide and conquer" policy of colonial Brits, spiced by Jewish insecurities and inherent need for external approval by others. We are the Jewish nation – we need to start behaving like one people – the proud nation!)
Please, accept my Apology for a Last week posting Mistake!
Israel - Daily Terror Snapshot! (March 5, 2019)
Food for Thought. by Steven Shamrak
US ambassador to Poland said that Israel should apologize to Poles for Holocaust comments of Israeli FM. Why? Has Poland admitted it’s participation in Holocaust and anti-Semitism after the war? Jews were forced to leave Poland even after the war, under Communist regime of Gomulka! Has Poland paid compensation for Jews killed by Poles during the war, and for all the Jewish wealth and properties confiscated by the Polish state and ‘appropriated’ by Poles?
Please, read and send to your friends!
The United States Consulate in Jerusalem, which served as a de facto embassy for Palestinians, officially closed its doors in Jerusalem and will be merged into the U.S. Embassy to Israel.
An international survey ranked Israel as the eighth most powerful nation in the world for the third consecutive year, narrowly ahead of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The survey ranked 80 countries on a range of issues, including power, cultural influence, economy and entrepreneurship. Jewish state moves up to 29th on the best countries list, up one place from last year, but scores woefully low when rated as a ‘fun’ or ‘sexy’ destination.
At the direction of the Secretary of Defense, US European Command deployed a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to Israel in early March as a demonstration of the United States’ continued commitment to Israel's regional security.
As in the 2017 metal detector controversy, Jordan and the Palestinian factions have made a significant achievement, taking over the Gate of Mercy after 15 years. The Gate of Mercy was sealed by Israeli authorities in 2003 because the group managing the area had ties to Hamas.
Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, believes that Israelis and Palestinian Arabs can accept each other's existence. “25 years ago, Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians & wounded 125 in a universally condemned attack in Tomb of the Patriarchs/Sanctuary of Abraham. I pray our separated peoples can reconcile as Isaac & Ishmael did before they jointly buried their father Abraham at that holy site,” he tweeted. (Goldstein was a good doctor who saved his community from massacre by Hebron Arabs - they were armed with knives and machetes and cut him to pieces, being in the Mosque! Israel-hating press did not report this!)
Arabs do not Tolerate Hamas Nonsense
A court in Tripoli has passed heavy jail sentences on four Palestinians accused of establishing a “secret foreign organization on Libyan territory, arms possession and conspiring against state security.” Prison sentences of 17-22 years were handed out to the four Palestinians who, while working for technology firms in Libya, tried to establish a Hamas cell in the country.
Reps from Defense Min. reportedly surprise US senators when they recommend to delay bill recognizing Israeli sovereignty in Golan Heights, , at least not at this time. Israeli opposition to the bill comes despite the support of both parties in the US!
Poland is still awaiting an apology from Israel over comments made by acting foreign minister Yisrael Katz regarding the role of Poles in the Nazi Holocaust. Poland withdrew from a formal gathering of the central European Visegrad Group of countries set to take place in Israel after Katz said that "many Poles" had collaborated with the Nazis in World War Two and shared responsibility for the Holocaust. (The Polish resistance was killing Jews, while fighting German occupation! Only by facing the truth the real change can be archived - anything else is just a 'window dressing'!)
Fatah terrorists attacked by Hamas terrorists during a demonstration in support of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza. Hamas and Fatah have been embroiled in a bitter rivalry since 2007, when Hamas violently took over Gaza from Fatah in a bloody coup.
Israel will withhold over $138 million from the PA for payments given to families of Palestinians who carried out attacks against Israelis. The law was passed last year allowing Israel to withhold funds used to pay stipends to Palestinian attackers and their families from taxes Israel collects on the behalf of the PA. The freeze comes as the Palestinians face major budget cuts made last year after the United States slashed funding for the UN's Palestinian refugee program UNRWA and for development programs. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Abbas, called the decision to implement the law “piracy of the Palestinian people’s money.”
Hamas expels PA administrators from Kerem Shalom Crossing, seizing control of primary goods crossing. Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 in a near civil war with PA Chairman Mahmud Abbas' Fatah party. (Most residents in Gaza have Egyptian ancestry. In Judea and Samaria they are mainly of Arab origin!)
Dozens of Bedouin illegal structures in the Negev remain standing despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that the local Planning and Building Committee should demolish them. It’s been six years since that Supreme Court decision, and the vast majority of the buildings which were in the initial stages of construction back then not only were they not demolished, but have been populated and then expanded.
Quote of the Week:
"All it takes is one time for the left to return to power and it can ruin in 20 days what we've been working on for 20 years. Therefore, we'll have to work hard in these elections to remind everyone to come out and vote until the left cries out that the right is flocking to the polls... I hope that this union (between Gantz and Lapid) will cause many good people in the right-wing camp to understand that they have to go out and vote." - Shevach Stern, the chairman of the National Committee in the Likud - Zionist-wing camp! - Where Zionism (Jewish Independence movement) is concerned, there should be no right or left wing!
Being a Jew Trumps Assimilation
by Steven Shamrak
Assimilation is the biggest threat to the existence of the Jewish people! There were around 9 million Jews during the Roman Empire, similar to the number of ethnic Hans in ancient China. Two thousand years later we are just 14 million-weak (the population of Han Chinese is 1.2 billion now). After WW2 there were eleven million Jews. Most nations have at least tripled their number since then - Jewish population has increased by three million only!
There are some Judo-Christians groups that celebrate Christmas and Hanukah. There are many reform Jewish organizations, advocating changes to Jewish Halachic practice and adaptation to ‘current environment’. Usually they all disappear within one or two generations. Most Jews, who chose the path of assimilation, do not realize that the ‘Integration’ of Jews is still official policy of many Christian Churches and organizations. By converting or facilitating disappearance of Jews they to satisfy their schizoid and delusional need for acceptance and to ‘prove’ that Christianity is the true Abrahamic religion.
Not long ago, being a Jew has always meant that one is either a religious or ethnic Jew, most often both.  Our ‘Jew-loving’ neighbours in Europe had never failed to remind us about this! Jewish ethnicity, even in total absence of religious practice, had secured the continuation of family traditions even in secular countries like the Soviet Union.
Breaking this duality of Jewish identity is encouraged by Jew-haters and anti-Semitic religious ‘nutters’, as well as by self-hating Jews, as the way to facilitate assimilation and elimination of Jewish people. You just need to ask why there are only about 14 million Jews in the world now. It is almost the same number as 60 years ago (after WW2 there were 11 million Jews)! During the same time most nations tripled or quadrupled their number.
The biggest mistake many of our rabbis and Jewish community leaders make is by insisting that Jewishness is the religious observance only. Being a Jew has always meant, for Jews and our enemies - the peoplehood, belonging to the tribe, ethnicity or nation - whichever term you feel comfortable with - combined with Judaism when it was possible! We also have the unique and advanced religion, deep seated spiritual tradition, common history and aspirations that bond us all, observant and secular Jews.
We need to focus and promote our uniqueness and be proud of it. Our leaders must do more to bring unity and purposefulness to the life of Jewish communities in Israel and Diaspora! This tradition was the only cause of our survival for two millennia of persecution in exile!

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