Entries from March 2006
Believe it or not, Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Party are still using the same, tired argument of some kind of demographic threat to justify surrendering to the Arabs’ demand that Judea and Samaria be cleansed of Jews.
Senior Kadima member Haim Ramon was confronted by a prominent leftist journalist this week regarding Olmert’s dangerous “convergence plan” - which will see Israel retreat and hide behind its security barrier.
“I want a division of the land. But I hold that Ehud Olmert’s…unilateral division plan is dangerous. It will lead to the establishment of an armed and hostile Hamas state that will undercut the stability of Israel, Jordan and the Middle East…It will inevitably lead to war,” argued Ha’aretz’s Ari Shavit.
Ramon’s response was to regurgitate the threat of an Arab demographic take over between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea if Israel does not sever Judea and Samaria from itself - a threat that has been decisively proven false.
Wake up Israel! There is no more danger of being overwhelmed demographically today than there was 50 years ago.
If you are really worried, then work on convincing your 6-12 million brethren still living abroad to come home. That would eliminate any imagined or real demographic threat once and for all.
Thank God the Jews who took part in Israel’s rebirth did not listen to such nonsense, or the Jewish state may still be just a dream.
March 30th, 2006 · 1 Comment
Rather than sit in relative obscurity as the Knesset’s fifth largest party, Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud is now the third largest party after Thursday’s final vote tally resulted in a small but significant shake up in the allocation of seats in the 17th Knesset.
The 17th Knesset will now look like this following the count of the final 150,000 ballots from on-duty IDF soldiers, prisoners, Israelis abroad, etc:
- Kadima - 29 seats (+1)
- Labor - 20 seats
- Likud - 12 seats (+1)
- Shas - 12 seats (-1)
- Israel Beiteinu - 11 seats (-1)
- National Union/National Religious - 9 seats
- Pensioner’s Party - 7 seats
- United Torah Judaism - 6 seats
- Meretz - 5 seats (+1)
- Ra’am-Ta’al - 3 seats (-1)
- Balad - 3 seats
- Hadash - 3 seats
So all of you who were praying for “Bibi”, keep doing so!
This seemingly minor alteration means that he will most likely now serve as official opposition leader, rather than the head of a largely insignificant faction.
The international media this week unsurprisingly and enthusiastically took Hamas’ desire to hold talks with the Middle East Quartet as proof of its assertion that the terror group had moderated upon assuming power.
Hamas it seems is doing a good job of following Arafat’s example of covering its blood-stained hands in silk gloves in its dealings with the outside world.
Very quickly will the international media start to totally ignore more hostile statements like this:
“The Koran is our constitution, Mohammed is our prophet, jihad [holy war] is our path and dying for the sake of Allah is our biggest wish.”
And this:
“We cannot recognize Israel. The land of Palestine is ours and not for the Jews.”
In favor of statements made for Western consumption, such as this:
Hamas “won’t spare any effort to reach a just peace in the region…we’re not warmongers and we don’t call for terrorism and bloodshed.”
Of course, none of the above statements, even the supposedly “moderate” one, says anything about peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state.
A “just peace” for Hamas means the eradication of Israel and its replacement with an Arab Muslim state.
Can someone please convince the Bush Administration that these truths also hold true in Israel:
In Iraq and around the world, we will never peacefully dissuade those dedicated to violence against us. They must be captured or killed.
Nor are the actual terrorist murderers the only problem:
sympathetic local populations…sustain the insurgency with cash, weapons, and intelligence.
And, in the case of the Palestinian Arabs’ overwhelming elecion of Hamas, with international legitimacy.
The article also provides logic that perfectly explains how and why Hamas managed to score its electoral coup:
Hamas is an “enemy who thrives by delivering empowerment and vengeance to [a population] drowning in poverty, social humiliation, and political marginalization. These masses in return sustain the enemy — passively with cover and actively with fighters.
Where I disagree with the authors is in their view that overwhelming firepower is not part of the answer, but rather greater involvement of local law inforcement.
If the Israeli-Arab conflict has taught anything, it is that in the Muslim world the perception of strength carries much weight.
When the enemy is perceived as strong, the terrorists are deterred. When the enemy is perceived as weak due to its failure to respond strongly to the terrorists’ threat, those terrorists are better able to convince local populations of their own strength, and so gain greater support.
The authors get back on track with their assessment of the need for a re-education of the local population.
The overall strategy, however, should be closer to that implemented again Japan in World War II - a strategy that worked perhaps better than any expected.
The Japanese were a people unquestionably dedicated to war on behalf of their deified emperor. It was overwhelming American firepower that convinced them of their own weakness and the need to lay down their arms, leading to the ability to carry out a true re-education of the general population.
Israel’s approach should be no different - the outright defeat of its enemies, followed by a concerted Israeli-controlled campaign to win the hearts and minds of the local Arabs through education.
This, of course, is unlikely to happen in the current liberal atmosphere of appeasement.
Fortunately, all hope is not lost. One day the overwhelming firepower of the Messiah will defeat Israel’s enemies, and a divine program of re-education will transform not only the Arabs’ hearts and minds, but their very souls.
It’s all over. Israel has voted in a Knesst that will seek to divest the Jews of their biblical heartland.
The breakdown looks like this:
- Kadima - 28 seats
- Labor - 20 seats
- Shas - 13 seats
- Israel Beiteinu - 12 seats
- Likud - 11 seats
- National Union/National Religious Party - 9 seats
- Pensioner’s Party - 7 seats
- United Torah Judaism - 6 seats
- Meretz - 4 seats
- United Arab List - 4 seats
- Balad - 3 seats
- Hadash - 3 seats
The election outcome was the product of most of the nation’s Jews convincing themselves that the coming surrender is somehow an act of self-strength.
But Kadima leader Ehud Olmert has conveyed anything but strength as he laid out the intended policies of Israel’s next government.
“We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want to be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies,” said Olmert in June of last year.
Problem is, Israel may be tired of having to fight for its land, for its rights, for its very life, but the nation’s enemies are not.
“We will never let the Jews rule Palestinian territories,” said Hamas official Shaikh Mohammed Mahmud Al Siyam in Pakistan this week.
Al-Siyam was of course referring to all of “Palestine” - the entire Jewish state.
“The Koran is our constitution, Mohammed is our prophet, jihad [holy war] is our path and dying for the sake of Allah is our biggest wish,” shouted Hamas legislator Hamed Bitawi to thunderous applause as his party’s government was sworn in Tuesday.
The deception leading Israel down its current path of weakness, despite the openly stated intentions of its enemies, is the same deception that caused Jerusalem to get into bed with Yasser Arafat and his PLO more than a decade ago.
That is not to say the LORD is not still in control. For He is. His Will will ultimately be done.
The question is how many more Jews have to suffer en route to the fulfillment of that Will because of the path chosen by their leaders?
Israel could have entered the Promised Land almost immediately after exiting Egypt, but ended up wandering in a desert for 40 years because of their failure to trust the LORD.
What will be the consequence now for rejecting His instruction to resettle and never sell the land, especially for a false peace?
Well, I have managed after many years to finally get Zionist.com back online as a content website, rather than just a parked domain.
And just in time for the results of Israel’s general election, too!
Rather than think up my own thought-provoking description of myself, I will take the quick and easy way out this time and make use of my colleague Stan Goodenough’s, which, of course, also describes me:
I’m a Gentile Believer - also known as a Christian. I believe in God - the One the Bible tells us about - and in Jesus - His Son, the King of the Jews and the Messiah of the world - and in His Holy Spirit. I believe in a lot of other things too, but all of them stem from my faith in the Creator of all things, in the atoning work of the Savior, and from the comfort I have knowing His Holy Spirit resides in me.
That is where I am coming from, and that will be the basis of all my writing as I examine and comment on the situation in this region, the Middle East.
Both Stan and I see our writing the pages of our blogs as a fulfillment of the divine commission to be “watchmen on the walls,” a task that is becoming increasingly important as the Almighty moves us closer to the fulfillment of His will.
We are certainly living in exciting days. Stay tuned!
