A Slap in the Face

One of the Joys of Yiddish is listening to the comedy of Dzigan & Shumacher, two comedians from Lodz who brought shtetl humor to the early years of the State. They would lampoon every aspect of the emerging bureaucracy and authority of Jewish government.

One of Shimon Dzigan’s quips keeps popping up in my head these days. He said:
“Heint in Yisrooel, der kreditt is gevorden azoi shvach as mir gebt emetzen a patsch in poonem, gebt er doos oich nisht zurick ! ”

[These days in Israel, credit has become so bad, that if you give someone a smack in the face he doesn’t repay even that!”]

How true this has become for our people.

In the good times of zero tolerance, even Labor leaders like Golda Meir would mete out immediate and disproportionate retribution for any attack on our people. Now even the would-be leaders of Likud like General Shaul Mofaz cannot bring themselves to respond to a smack in the face.

On an evening when there are no international headlines relating to Israel, I see a report on Arutz Sheva that our people have gone through 24 hours of security incidents of all different kinds:

• A Kassam launched from Gaza into Zikkim.


• Another Kassam into the Western Negev near a gas station in Mavki’im.


• A third Kassam in the same neighbourhood landed near Kibbutz Yad Mordechai.


• An unexploded Kassam defused near a cemetery in Sderot.


• A female infiltrator on the Egyptian border.


• Four others male infiltrators intercepted at the Gaza border fence.


• A woman driver stoned on Highway 60 in Binyamin.


• Another rock attack on a man driving near Rachelim.


• No less than 26 Fatah Tanzim, Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorists were rounded up Sunday night in Shechem and Beis Lechem.


• An Israeli Arab abducted and found killed as a collaborator.

This is a day in the life of our people as our neighbors continue to spit in our faces and our leaders still maintain it is only rain.

Dzigan would have little to laugh about these days.
But sometimes a slap in the face is a good thing.
It can bring someone to their senses.
Before it’s too late.

Electing our Enemies

Ehud Olmert is dithering over his approach to Hamas.
It is only a question of time before the Americans take their usual cue.
If you’re prepared to live with them, heck! Why should we put up a fuss?
Remember, the Gaza withdrawal was our own strategy, not something that was forced upon us.
Now we are paying the price in facing a terrorist neighbour emboldened by our flight from Lebanon and Gaza.

But it is worth remembering how we got into this.
Without Arafat and his 2nd Intifada, Sharon would never have been elected.
Without Sharon and his withdrawals, Hamas would never have been elected.
Arafat elected Sharon. Sharon Elected Hamas.
The fact that it is so quiet in our streets, cafes and buses means Hamas is clearly out to get Olmert and Kadima elected.

As this process evolves, one wonders: Who will Olmert elect with his further withdrawals?

The wolf is at the door. If the electorate does not wake up soon to the reality of what is happening, they may expect a very rude awakening when the army comes calling for their help to defend our people again, in their 6th war of survival in as many decades.

To The Occupier

I received a letter at home today. It was addressed to “The Occupier”.

We’ve all had those kinds of letters before, and we probably all do the same thing with them.
They usually come from real estate brokers wanting to earn a fat commission by persuading us to part with our homes.

I was about to chuck the unopened letter in the bin when I got to thinking.
These real estate brokers are not the only ones who refer to us as “The Occupier” and want us to part with our property.

So do the Arabs.

So, I ask myself: What would it take for me to read such a letter, rather than to bin it?
Well, it would help if it were addressed to me by name.
That someone had taken the trouble to check rightful ownership at the Land Registry.
Then I would read it.
I might take it more seriously.
It might be something important.

So, the message to our Arab neighbours should be:
Stop referring to us as “The Occupier”.
Or even “The Entity”.

If you want us to listen to what you have to say, call us by our name.
The sovereign and eternal State of Israel.

Then you might get some kind of response.

Wageless in Gaza

The PA seems to be running out of money. There are riots in the streets of Gaza about unpaid wages. America has asked for the return of $50 million it gifted to Abbas to build his new state. One would hope the EU would follow suit but somehow I doubt it. The EU’s auditors haven’t been able to sign off accounts for more than a decade, so they probably haven’t got a clue what millions they gave and to whom.

However, the bleeding heart liberals in Europe - and no less in Israel’s Meretz, Labor and Kadima ranks – will no doubt be wringing their hands on the deprivations which will be faced by poor Palestinian kids whose parents just voted in the world’s first Terror Democracy.

Well, I am here to tell them: don’t worry. Uncle Ahmadinejad in Tehran has enough money to take care of all their needs. In control of the world’s second largest oil reserves he has an income stream of around $40 billion a year. That’s enough to buy all the help he needs from Putin and Chirac to build as many nuclear weapons as he likes and keep the money flowing to Hamas and Hizbullah and keep the Palestinian households fed and clothed so that their kids don’t miss a single lesson in Jihad 101 at the local medrassas. Not much of that $40 billion is frittered away on domestic needs; the Islamic Republic of Iran is content to keep its own people well below the poverty line as they have always been since the fall of the Shah.

But, in case those liberals cry: “Yes, but we want them to feel we are helping them as well!” I say, don’t worry. You will always be helping by filling up your cars at the pump. Every time you fill up with Iranian gas, you will be helping the Palestinian people. And also Hamas, Hizbullah, Al-Aksa’s Martyrs, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, Jemaa al-Islamiyya, the Mujaheddin Khalk and all the would-be destroyers of Israel and, soon after, the free world

There’s plenty to go around. But if any Palestinian family is short of some ready cash, they can always call Suha Arafat in Paris. I have a feeling her wage payments have not been interrupted by this latest crisis in the PA.

Watch Israel Disappear

This map is an extract from this month's airline magazine Business Traveller. It is part of a 4-page ad for InterContinental Hotels Group which has achieved in print what Mr Ahmadinejad seeks to achieve with nuclear weapons: the erasure of Israel from the world map.

Now I always thought its Crowne Plaza Dead Sea hotel was in Israel. According to this ad, it's in Jordan.

By its main website www.ichotelsgroup.com the group operates 7 hotels in this non-existent country:
Holiday Inns in Ashkelon, Haifa and Tiberias. Crowne Plazas in the Dead Sea, Jerusalem and Haifa. And a full-blown InterContinental hotel in Tel Aviv.

So, if you are booking a holiday anytime soon, or planning a function, wedding or conference, make sure the hotel is not owned and operated by one of these Iranian lackeys. All you will be doing is funding more of these disgraceful ads.

(Click the smaller graphic to read the full ad text)

Offendi

No Mor -Yosef

After 40 days in a coma they are now removing parts of Ariel Sharon; ergo 50 cm of his intestine. At this point I strongly suspect he is being kept alive to keep Olmert’s deputy premiership alive. And if I were a betting man, I would put money on a state funeral taking place one week before next month’s elections leaving a grieving electorate to pay their last tribute to Ariel Sharon ‘the soldier and general’ by voting for the already discredited party he created: Kadima. Whatever one’s views about Sharon’s surrenders of Jewish land, the man is entitled to go like a soldier and not in little pieces and with all the lies and cover-ups that saw out his nemesis Arafat in that Paris hospital.

Who governs Israel ?

Q: Who governs Israel today?
A: Kadima.
A party that has never been elected.
Q: Who is Prime Minister?
A: Ehud Olmert.
A prime minister who has never been elected.
Q: By what right does he rule?
A: As deputy to Ariel Sharon.
A prime minister who WAS elected.
But on a platform that he immediately abandoned.
In favour of the programme of his opponent.
Who was roundly defeated at the polls.
A prime minister who said he would accept the will of a people’s referendum.
And then reneged when that poll went against him.
And sacked any minister that opposed his abrogation of the election manifesto.

For over 50 years, Israel has claimed to be the only democracy in the Middle East.
Right now, we don’t measure up very well against Somalia.

Disengagement Bunny

Meet the Disengagement Bunny !

It gives up territory and security like no other bunny.

Long after others have given up on ‘giving up’ … this one just keeps on going.

With its distinctive comb-over top, it’s guaranteed to outlast all others.

On Election Day you are invited to renew its batteries.
For another 4 years of the same uninterrupted defeatism.

True Blasphemy

It is wrong for any religion to be lampooned by cartoonists, or by anyone else for that matter. In ordinary circumstances I could understand why the faithful would turn out in their tens of thousands, in capitals across the world, to protest such a blasphemy. But these are not ordinary circumstances, and they are far from ordinary times.

I ask myself: If all these people could organise themselves within 48 hours to mount such violent protests over a cartoon in a nondescript Danish journal, where were they for the biggest blasphemy of all? If the name of their prophet had been openly desecrated and his teachings abominated before the entire world, would that not have been cause for the most violent demonstrations, the burning of the perpetrators’ buildings and property and the issuance of fatwas calling for their capture and swift beheading?

If so, I ask myself: “Where were these protestors the day after 9-11?”

We seem to forget things so easily, but it is hard to imagine a greater blasphemy than the killing of 3,000 innocents in a single morning and the creation of thirteen hundred orphans whilst screaming: “God is Great!” What is this if not blasphemy in its purest and most blatant form? Sure, we saw the crocodile tears of Moslem clerics in the United States at the 9-11 memorial services, but where were the violent demonstrations against Al Qaeda? Where was the fatwa against Osama bin Laden and his associates? Why did no-one burn down the offices of Al-Jazeera, his mouthpiece of world Jihad?

No such thing! This king of all blasphemers is a hero. He is reverently addressed as the Noble Sheikh. And far from railing against the sins of 9-11, the faithful are now threatening more of the same with placards warning of a second strike in Europe.

History has consistently proven the old adage that ‘Jews are the canary in the coalmine of civilisation’. That what happens to us is just a taste of what lies in store for the rest of the free world. What Hitler started quietly with Jews ended up on a global stage. Similarly what started with the Palestinian hijack of an El Al plane in July 1968 became a commonplace in Europe over the next 30 years and ultimately mutated into the weaponisation of three passenger aircraft on 9-11. Suicide bombings in Israel are no longer a spectator sport for European audiences who have now seen and tasted this evil up-close in their own cities, where it continues to lie low, waiting for more holy orders.

Even the Arab boycott - over which we first fretted but then prevailed - has come home to roost in Europe. The Danish cartoonist stands to cost his country millions in lost trade though an Islamic boycott of its dairy exports. And so it goes on, and will continue to go on until the nations of the free world finally admit that this is now their problem just as much as it has always been ours. That acknowledgement alone will be the first step in dealing with the problem. Those who fail to publicly condemn the perpetrators of 9-11 and the bombings, kidnappings and beheadings that have followed in the name of Islam can expect neither respect nor sympathy for their hurt feelings.

For those who are genuinely concerned about blasphemy, there can be no double standards.

Beating our Entebbe Heroes

In 1988 Yitzchak Rabin – disciple of Ben Gurion - instructed the IDF to break the bones of rioting Arabs in Samaria. They were reluctant to obey his orders.

Today, Ehud Olmert – disciple of Jabotinsky – allowed the IDF to do the same to Jews in the tiny settlement of Amona. And his police chief Moshe Karadi went about it with gusto.

This is what Olmert’s storm troopers did to Effie Eitam: Father of 8 children, Member of Parliament, three-time minister, member of the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee, Brigadier-General in the IDF, decorated war hero of the Lebanon campaign, and one of the elite squad of commandos who freed the Entebbe hostages.

This is what Effie once said about the Entebbe rescue mission:

‘I told them that the trapped Jews in Entebbe were the most far-off and isolated settlement that could possibly be – a settlement 8,000 kilometres away... but the Israeli Defence Force proved that it was possible to protect settlements even in Entebbe – if there is the desire, if there is the willingness to be daring, and if there is the proper understanding of what is the true destiny of the state of Israel.’

Golda Meir once said that there could only be peace when the Arabs loved their children as much as they hated the Jews.

Well, I say that the future of Israel will only be secure when our government treats its own citizens as well as it treats those who seek to destroy them.

No Sacrifice

Letter to the London Daily Telegraph
re: the death of the 100th British soldier in Iraq.

Sir: Your dramatic front page headlined ‘Sacrifice’ was a waste of an opportunity. That word implies waste and seems to pander to the so-called pacifists who demonstrate against the war with placards saying: NOT IN OUR NAME. Such people still refuse to acknowledge that Iraq is the front line in the war on terror and that it is better that the battle is fought there than in our streets and tube tunnels. Better that trained and armed troops should be in the front line than our innocent office workers, women and children. Those who opposed our entry into Iraq were presumably content to see Saddam’s tyranny continue with civilians tossed live into tree shredders. Just as those who opposed Churchill were content to see my grandparents and millions like them gassed and burned in Auschwitz.
No sir.
Now as then, the correct word is Valour!