Survivor: Israel

By Rob Muchnick

This week I came across a new CIA report which concluded that Israel would not exist for more than 20 more years. If I didn’t have faith then it would have disturbed me. This led me to review who really supports continued Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel and the state of Israel.

Let’s start with the Jewish leftists. They’re easy - they want a democratic, bi-national (Arab & Jewish) state of Israel. Cross them off the list.

How about the Israeli establishment? They founded and built the country on the principles of Communism and of paying lip-service to Judaism to fool American Jewry into financing them. They’ve lost all of their ideology except to do whatever it takes to keep control of the reins of power. They would prefer Israel to be a pile of ashes than have Jews loyal to G-d and the Land of Israel control the government [to paraphrase Shlomo Baum]. Cross them off, too.

How about the so-called “right-wing”? Under Menachem Begin & Yitzhak Shamir it was honest but weak. Ariel Sharon (who really fits into the last category but people think he was a rightist) has his notoriety resting on giving away Gaza in return for thousands of unanswered missiles. Good deal, huh? And Benjamin Netanyahu? All that needs to be said is that Bibi is the reason that Manhigut Yehudit exists. Our leaders helped get him elected in 1996 because he pledged to end the Oslo farce, but 10 minutes after he was sworn-in he changed his mind. He gave Arafat control of Hebron, he released Jew-murderers, he released those who became mass-murderers of Jews, and he gave away land that was used to snipe at and murder Shalhevet Pass in her father’s arms. Then he voted in favor of Sharon’s Gaza Expulsion before cynically resigning his post one week before it started. Now as PM again he is working night & day to create a viable ‘partner for peace’ on the ‘palestinian’ side so that he can create an Arab terror state in our biblical heartland of Judea & Samaria. He even calls this state “a fait accompli”. So much for “the right wing”.

The US under Obama has swung noticeably to the ‘palestinian’ side, but is this really a change in US policy? In 1948, Harry Truman is virtually sainted for formally recognizing Israel moments after it declared independence. However, honesty makes one note that Truman enforced and continued the arms embargo on Israel so that he could ensure Israel’s destruction (as the entire world thought would happen) while appearing to be a great friend of Israel. Lyndon Johnson commissioned a Joint Chiefs report in 1967 which concluded that Israel must keep Gaza, the Golan, a sliver of Sinai, Judea and 85% of Samaria in order to be militarily defensible. This report was seconded in 1974. What kind of friend continually tries to push you into a position where you are ripe for the taking by your enemies? Now we have Barack Obama saying that “Israel is crazy if it doesn’t accept the Arab Peace Plan” which calls for bringing 5 million Arabs into Israel and making it an Arab-majority state. And Rahm Emanuel tells Israel that it must make ‘peace’ with the PLO in order to gain US support against an Iran bent on nuclear genocide. The US can keep its 2.7 billion dollars - we’ll take our sovereignty and our lives thank you very much.

How about the largest ‘pro-Israel’ Evangelical organization, John Hagee’s CUFI? CUFI refuses to tell the US government to stop the peace process, refuses to say publicly that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish People, and refuses to publicly oppose the Israeli government while it gives away G-d’s Land. They even invited a speaker to their upcoming conference who is proud of the fact that he personally carried Jews out of Gaza. Why is this? They don’t want to upset the Israeli establishment which lets them build their Christian centers in Israel and doesn’t stop their proselytizing. This kind of help we don’t need.

What about Europe? They’ll never be with us. Enough said. And the Pope? His mantra this week in Israel was that ‘justice’ required the formation of an Arab state in Israel. Oh yeah, he wants Jerusalem, too.

And the American Jewish organizations (besides AFSI)? A recent past president of AIPAC admitted to my associate that Sharon’s folly was “a failure”, but that he “would support the next one anyway”. The most they will say is ‘don’t pressure Israel to make concessions until the Arabs stop the terror’. They will never put Justice on our side by saying that Eretz Yisrael belongs to the Jewish People and that is that. Never. Because they want to “stay in the game” and not be extremists.

The only honest ones are our mortal enemies. The ‘moderate’ PLO/PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ representative said last week that the two-state Solution means the death of Israel, because losing our holy sites and our biblical heartland will take away our chosenness, our communal spirit and raison d'être. He’s right.

It’s time we all realize that we are alone on this island. We cannot and should not beg or kowtow to anyone. We have no other choice but to do what is right, show that true justice is with us, and do what is in line with G-d’s will. If we do this well enough and hard enough, G-d will surely finish the job for us, as He has done throughout history whenever we have merited it. May we merit it now!

Press Release: Pope's Visit

(Released by Moshe Feiglin when the pope visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum on Lag Ba'omer, a Jewish holiday characterized by the lighting of bonfires.)

17 Iyar, 5769 (May 11, '09)

On the holiday of bonfires (Lag Ba'omer) the victims bring the leader of the religion that burned them at the stake to Yad Vashem, to view the crematoria.

Preventing the Triumph of Evil

By Moshe Feiglin

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
Albert Einstein


The new government Commission of Inquiry to Examine the Treatment of the Evacuees of Gush Katif and Northern Shomron began its work this week. If you had just landed here from the moon and heard the name of the Commission, you would assume that some sort of natural disaster had occurred in Gush Katif and North Shomron that required the evacuation of its residents - and that the response of the emergency personnel was somehow lacking. The lie that is in the very name of the Commission guarantees that nothing will come out of it.


The residents of Gush Katif were obviously not "evacuated" from their homes. In the summer of 2005, a civil war took place in Israel. The side that represented the feelings of most of the Israelis decided to fight by reciting Psalms in the synagogue. As a result, the residents of Gush Katif were expelled from their homes. Their flourishing towns and farms were completely destroyed and worst of all – they became objects of derision and the dam holding back further expulsions and destructions was burst wide open.


Post-Sharon and Olmert Israel is a country that has lost its founding ethos. It has no shared values system and nothing is holy anymore. In Israel 2009, you are not worth what you can give to society – you are worth how much damage you can cause. That is why the Arabs of Na'alin got what they wanted after killing two soldiers and that is why nobody dares to start up with Israel's Arabs. That is also why nobody wants to cross the big unions or the Ultra-Orthodox.


It makes no difference that the Orange public is the most creative and ethical of Israel's sectors or that it produces the largest number of volunteers for elite army units. All of that means nothing. If you cannot do damage, no commission of inquiry will help.


What the Left did and what the State's part was in the crime of Expulsion no longer matters. The real Commission of Inquiry has to be established within the Orange camp. All the evil of summer 2005 burst through the door opened wide by the people who wanted to protect the Land of Israel.


The main lesson that the Orange camp and the entire nation must learn from the Expulsion is that G-d does not work for us. On the contrary, it is we who work for Him. True, G-d made quite a few promises to our forefathers and we gaze on in wonder as He fulfills those promises to perfection against all historical probability. We have returned to our Land and it flourishes and develops against all odds. We have received the gift of Jerusalem, old people sit in its streets, canes in hands and the sound of children playing rings through its alleys – exactly as G-d promised.


But between the promise and its fulfillment we suffered through pogroms, a holocaust and other horrors. Whoever thought that our Father in Heaven is sitting snugly in his pocket and that the State of Israel cannot be destroyed and that the Holocaust can never happen again has a distorted sense of faith. (Please re-read this week's Torah portion, Bechukotai). G-d owes us nothing, and if we decide to commit suicide, our Father in Heaven just may honor our decision.


Some people think that they have G-d all figured out and that all they have to do is to keep putting up settlements. Everything else, they reason, will fall into place as per G-d's plan, to which they are privy. Unfortunately, this type of determinism turns simple faith into a distorted image of what it should be. I was born in Israel 47 years ago, and throughout the years, I have heard time and again that a Holocaust can never happen again because we have a state. That is simply not true. On the axis of time that begins in Auschwitz and ends at the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, we have run into a rut called Oslo. From that point and on, we have been progressing backwards. Yes, I am talking about destruction of the State and another Holocaust, G-d forbid.


The destruction of Gush Katif accelerated the reversal process. In the Expulsion of 2005, all the delicate fibers holding the Zionist ethos together snapped. The entire world watched on in glee as Israel accepted the Palestinian claims of ownership of the entire Land and destroyed itself. After Gush Katif, we have no more justification for our existence in any place in the Land of Israel. That is why we cannot win a war – and that is what happened in the two wars that we have fought since the Expulsion.


The poor residents of Gush Katif were deceived by the deterministic approach of their rabbis and political leaders. They did not fight for their homes and also prevented those people who came to help from fighting. (A clear example of this behavior is the case of Rabbi Aviner and Effie Eitam, who together prevented the masses from exiting Kfar Maimon on their way to Gush Katif.) He who does not fight – no matter what the outcome of his struggle – proves that he cannot damage the powers that be. This makes the next expulsion just a matter of time. True, in Amona the Orange deterrence was temporarily restored (despite the fact that Olmert "won") but that deterrence has since been lost.


The most hostile US government that we have known in recent history will now meet up with an easily pressured Israeli leadership that unfortunately has support to make concessions. While it is true that Bibi lost to Kadimah, he was endorsed by all the right wing parties. Outside of the Likud, there is no one to stop Bibi from surrendering parts of the Land of Israel.


Israel currently faces a two-pronged danger. The visible danger is from a nuclear Iran. But the more insidious danger is that Israel will willingly shrink back to its old Auschwitz borders (as they were called by Abba Eban), something made realistic and applicable by the "Disengagement." As the expulsion from Gush Katif has proven, retreat from the land directly brings loss of international acceptance of Israel's very existence. As long as our nation does not have ethical leadership, the process of internal disintegration will continue – until the final, redeeming blow.


Former Knesset Speaker and candidate for Prime Minister Avrum Burg understood the pathology of this process and procured a French passport. Don't make any mistakes; the people leading us to destruction won't be here to suffer the consequences. The Oslo adventure and the Palestinian state are just what these politicians need to buy time and power – until they take off.


When Obama creates linkage between Yitzhar and Bushehr, he is actually giving us the choice between swift destruction and a slower, less painful destruction. That is a very enticing choice for someone whose main goal is to remain in power. But the sad truth is that Obama will never attack Iran – even after Israeli retreats. Netanyahu will not attack Iran against America's will. I hope that I am wrong.


Israel is a strong nation and Israelis understand what has happened here since Oslo. That is why they voted for Sharon after Ehud Barak presented us with the Arab uprising in 2000. When Sharon veered left, everybody knew that it was either a mistake or a crime. But the media was with him, the elites were with him and there was no alternative political leadership. When that happens, the fact that the nation is with you in their hearts does not help. That is another important lesson of the Expulsion. The fact that we are right and beloved by the general public will not help without a real struggle - both political and on the ground.


So what can we do now? Pray? Nothing will succeed without prayer, but only when it accompanies action and does not replace it. Prayer that replaces action will not help, just as it did not help the na?ve, righteous Jews in Gush Katif. We work for G-d – remember? We are not angels. We must act within the framework of the world as constructed by the Creator – and pray all the while.


We must understand that this is a do or die situation. The worst thing that we can do now is to fall into the trap of compromise and surrender. It will start from one small trailer home on a hilltop in the Shomron and it will end in Tel Aviv. This is a total war and it should be conducted as such. The guidelines for action are quite simple. Whatever was done to save Gush Katif – we must do just the opposite!


But that is just the small part of the conclusions. Because if Bibi decides to expel the settlers – and that is what he will decide – the IDF will carry out its orders once again. The most important action that we can take right now is in the political arena. The only significant opposition to Sharon's tyranny was from within his own party. The Likud referendum on Gush Katif and the Likud "rebels" made Sharon sweat a lot more than the Orange demonstrations.


Smart and targeted action on the ground and in the Likud are the only tools that, with G-d's help, will stop the tremendous danger hovering over the existence of the State of Israel. If you have not yet registered for the Likud, now is the time to do so! If you don't, you won't have anything to say when good friends will toe Netanyahu's destruction line. Remember, ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.'


Real action means building new leadership. Not just to prevent the next expulsion – but to transform the State of Israel into a Jewish state. Israel must have leadership that strives to perfect the world in the Kingdom of the Almighty while having its feet firmly planted on the ground in science, communications, culture and every other facet of life. Now is the time for each and every one of us to take responsibility – to register for the Likud, to register others, to take up leadership positions within the Likud and to help in whatever way possible. This time, we really cannot afford to lose.

Obama prepares to throw Israel under the bus

By Melanie Phillips

(from The Spectator, Wednesday, 6th May 2009)

As predicted here repeatedly – Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus, and he’s getting American Jews to do his dirty work for him. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly told the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Sunday that efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. General James Jones, National Security Adviser to Obama, reportedly told a European foreign minister a week ago that unlike the Bush administration, Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel. Ha’aretz reports:

Jones is quoted in the telegram as saying that the United States, European Union and moderate Arab states must redefine ‘a satisfactory endgame solution.’ The U.S. national security adviser did not mention Israel as party to these consultations.

Of course not. If you are going to throw a country under the bus, you don’t invite it to discuss the manner of its destruction with the assassins who are co-ordinating the crime. As I said here months ago, the appointment of Jones and the elevation of his post of National Security Adviser at the expense of the Secretary of State was all part of the strategy to centralise power in the hands of those who want to do Israel harm.

Yesterday Vice-President Joe Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry turned the thumbscrews tighter, telling Israel to stop building more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.

This is all not only evil but exceptionally stupid. The idea that a Palestine state will help build a coalition against Iran is demonstrably absurd. The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear programme stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran.

The idea that if a Palestine state comes into being it will be easier to handle Iran is the opposite of the case: a Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.

It is of course, by any sane standard, quite fantastic that America is behaving as if it is Israel which is holding up a peace settlement when Israel has made concession after concession – giving up Sinai, giving up Gaza, offering all the territories to the Arabs in return for peace in 1967, offering more than 90 per cent of them ditto in 2000, ditto again to Mahmoud Abbas in the past year -- only to be attacked in return by a Palestinian terrorist entity, backed in its continued aggression, let us not forget, by the countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has made no concessions at all and is not being pressured to do so.

It is not the aggressor here but the victim of aggression that America is now choosing to beat up. In any sane world, one might think the Americans would be piling the pressure on the Palestinians to renounce their genocidal ambitions against Israel, to stop teaching and training their children to hate and kill Jews, to adhere to the primary requirement in the Road Map that they must dismantle their infrastructure of violence as the first step in the peace process; one might think, indeed, that they would view Mahmoud Abbas’s repeated statements that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state to be the main impediment to peace.

But no. The repeated professions that America will never jeopardise Israel’s security are stomach churning when Obama is actually blaming Israel for measures it has taken to safeguard its security – the settlements were always first and foremost a security measure, and the travel restrictions are there solely to prevent more Israelis being murdered – and trying to force it to abandon them. Today comes further news that Obama will also try to force Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would force it to dismantle its nuclear arsenal – which it only has as a last ditch insurance against the attempt to annihilate it to which more than a billion Arabs and Muslims remain pledged.

Of course Obama doesn’t care that Hamas would run any Palestinian state. Of course he doesn’t care that Israel would be unable to defend itself against such a terrorist state. Because he regards Israel as at best totally expendable, and at worst as a running sore on the world's body politic that has to be purged altogether (see this bleak assessment by Sultan Knish). His administration is proceeding on the entirely false analysis that a state of Palestine is the solution to the Middle East impasse and the route to peace in the region. What that state will look like or do is something to which at best the administration's collective mind is shut and at worst makes it a potential cynical accomplice to the unconscionable. So Israel is to be forced out of the West Bank. Far from building a coalition against Iran, Obama is thus doing Iran’s work for it.

None of this, however, should come as the slightest surprise to anyone who paid any attention to Obama’s background, associations and friendships before he became President and to the cabal of Israel-bashers, appeasers and Jew-haters he appointed to his administration, with a few useful idiots thrown in for plausible deniability.

Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardise their standing with America’s elite.

But the ordinary American people are a different matter. They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and America’s Jews and everyone else. He must tell the American people the terrible truth, that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.

This is shaping up to be the biggest crisis in relations between Israel and America since the foundation of Israel six decades ago. Those who hate Israel and the Jews will be gloating. This after all is precisely what they hoped Obama would do. To any decent person looking on aghast, this is where the moral sickness of the west reaches the critical care ward.

* An earlier version of this post linked to a story in the Jerusalem Post which said an AIPAC delegation to Congress was asking it to lobby for a two-state solution. This story appears to have been wrong.

** Further update:It now appears from this story and this that the AIPAC position may be more ambiguous still.

How to Save Israel from the Impending Danger

By Moshe Feiglin

In PM Netanyahu's video message to the AIPAC convention in Washington, he emphasized that during the negotiations with the "Palestinians," Israel will once again raise the issue of recognition of the State of Israel as the Jewish state.

Whatever Netanyahu's reasons for making that statement, and despite the fact that he already retreated from his condition for recognition before the start of negotiations, the fact that the PM repeatedly raises the issue is important. We hope that above and beyond any negotiation strategy, the PM and his advisors understand the critical intersection at which we find ourselves. In the wake of the Oslo process, Israel has essentially lost its legitimacy and the justification for its existence as a Jewish state. Negotiations will begin with Israel recognizing the legitimacy of the "Palestinian" state, but the "Palestinians" not recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

And the "Palestinians" are not alone. Obama has already declared that Netanyahu's opening demand for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is not reasonable (and Netanyahu beat a hurried retreat). Europe and the Third World countries have naturally followed suit. Israel's Left claims that Netanyahu's demand is unnecessary. But that is typical. The Left never wanted a Jewish state in Israel in the first place.

Anybody who still has a drop of nationalism in his bones understands that retreat from the basic principle on which our state was founded - the return of the Nation of Israel to history as a sovereign in its ancient homeland - paves the way for the destruction of Israel - whether through peace or through war.

" I believe that with the cooperation of President Obama and President Abbas, we can defy the skeptics," said Netanyahu in his videotaped speech to the AIPAC assembly. Netanyahu did not say Chairman of the Palestinian Authority Abbas. He said President Abbas. Those who still think that the Prime Minister elected with the votes of the national camp is planning to protect Israel from the dangers of a Palestinian state should note that Netanyahu's English is nearly perfect. He called him "President" - and essentially established a "Palestinian" state.

There is no reason to remind Netanyahu of the speeches that he made not that long ago enumerating the dangers of a Palestinian state. His actions throughout the election campaign and ever since have shown that he has no intention of ruling Israel. All that he wanted was to get the rightist voters to put him in the prime ministerial chair and then to ensure his position by selling actual control of Israel to the Left. Sad to say, Prime Minister Netanyahu is a pitiful puppet of Peres and his cohorts.

The reality unfolding before our eyes is all too reminiscent of the horror films of the Sharon days and even the days of Shamir and Begin. The Likud is in power, it destroys settlements, the Left sings the PM's praises and the only effective political opposition is within the Likud. It is crystal clear that the small right wing parties do not concern Netanyahu, just as they did not concern Sharon. The only place that it is possible to stop him is within his own party. Remember where the real political battles before the Expulsion took place. Where did Sharon sweat? When he had to face off against the Likud "rebels" and the Likud referendum? Or when he heard the toothless speeches of the NRP and National Union?

We have now come full circle - back to Manhigut Yehudit and the Likud Central Committee. If you have read up till here and have not yet registered for the Likud, you can go to one thousand demonstrations and protest marches with the clear knowledge that you have ignored the one fundamental, relevant political act that can possibly reverse the situation.

Soon, the debates on refusal to obey orders will start again. We will talk ourselves blue in the face about blocking traffic, our approach toward the IDF, to the rabbis and to the Yesha leadership. All the miserable memories of the Expulsion will become reality once again - this time on a larger scale. Will we have the political intelligence this time to carry out the one simple political act that can change the current course of events?

In the previous elections, large numbers of Judea and Samaria residents voted Likud. This means that our numbers in the Likud Central Committee will significantly grow. (The Judea and Samaria votes for Likud instead of National Union or NRP did not change the political configuration. Both the National Union and NRP endorsed Netanyahu as their candidate of choice for PM. What the vote for Likud did accomplish was to strengthen our position on the internal Likud arena). Mass registration for the Likud now will give the Likud MKs loyal to the Land of Israel the political power they need to face off against Netanyahu and to save our Land and our state.