Eurovision

So it’s all over.

What was billed to be the most controversial of all Eurovision contest venues has discharged its hosting with panache and aplomb.

There were no major gaffes - so common it seems whenever Israelis have to put together audio and visual on any given stage; great at high tech but Muppets at the low.

Madonna braved the BDs-ers but not without making her own political statement. And as for the alt-gendered punks from Iceland, I do hope they get to do a rooftop gig in Ramallah or Gaza one day very soon.

For me the unsung heroes of the event are the Israeli police and particularly the Shin Bet. This event had to be the most tantalising target for terrorists – a captive crowd of performers from 26 countries, a convention centre filled with 7,000 people and an audience of 70,000 packed into the new ‘Eurovision Village’ across town. How the heck do you secure an event as big and as heaving as that in a country that was being rocketed just two weeks ago and has never enjoyed a day in its 71-year history outside the shadow of terrorism?

And how do you foil the most determined terrorists in denying them a 180 million TV audience to rival the World Cup and Superbowl?

On the ground, Iron Dome units were deployed in all corners whilst, in the skies, the IDF was in action over Syria even as the final songs were being sung. And all this in a country where one fifth of citizens are Israeli Arabs who, in the view of any security camera, are pretty indistinguishable from their PLO cousins in the West Bank who regularly slip under the radar to kill and maim with the assurance of rich rewards from Chairman Abbas.

Long after the Village has been cleared up and life returns to normal, I am sure we will be hearing stories about baddies whose plans were foiled during the event but not mentioned at the time, so as not to spook the participants.

So, hats off to the security forces for a spectacular job!
I can’t imagine what the cost of all the extra military and security efforts must have amounted to. Let’s hope it gets paid back in spades by way of tourism, when people who never pictured Israel other than some kind of war zone finally pluck up the courage to visit and discover the amazing oasis of culture and humanity that is the world’s only and most precious Jewish state.

Dumb American Jewish Voters

This man said: “God willing .... the beginning of the end of Zionism is here. May Allah help us overcome this monster ...”

Our of 4 million American Muslims, the Democrats chose this person to lead prayers in their majority's  House of Representatives.

This is just the latest twist in the Democrats' downward spiral into the racism they project onto others.

This is the party that welcomed the odious Rashida Tlaib into its freshmen ranks.

It's the party whose leader, Nancy Pelosi made excuses for Ilhan Omar's antisemitic tropes rather than denounce or dissociate from them. 'She didn't understand what she was saying' was Pelosi's message, even as Omar retained her Democrat seat on the powerful Foreign Relations Committee which has so much to do with funding America's allies in the defense against Radical Islamic terror.

It's the same Democrat party which appointed Keith Ellison as its deputy chairman despite his ties to the racist Louis Farrakhan.

The same Democrat party that voted to delete reference to God from its party convention in 2012. 

Going further back, it was the party of slavery and the KKK. 

And secular American Jews still vote for them in hordes. Go figure!

Little wonder that Reform Judaism in America has been lampooned as "the Democrat Party with holidays thrown in".

Gaza & Brexit

To all the peaceniks and ‘Two-Staters’ still out there – take a GOOD LOOK at where ‘land for peace’ gets you.

Every piece of land that has been given up in peace experiments since 1967 has been turned into terror and rocket bases: Sinai, South Lebanon and Gaza. The idea of handing over the ‘West Bank’ to Iran – because that is who will quickly grab it – is utter insanity; so aptly defined by Einstein as repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result.

We have been out of Gaza for almost 14 years and our people in the south have hardly known a month of peace and quiet.

Netanyahu resigned from Sharon’s government on the eve of the ill-fated disengagement. I’m sure he wishes he had done that sooner in the process. But his message to the Knesset at the time was clear:
"Only we in the Knesset are able to stop this evil. Everything that the Knesset has decided, it is also capable of changing. I am calling on all those who grasp the danger: Gather strength and do the right thing. I don't know if the entire move can be stopped, but it still might be stopped in its initial stages. [Don't] give [the Palestinians] guns, don't give them rockets, don't give them a sea port, and don't give them a huge base for terror."

If you voted for Brexit and are rightfully angry about your elected parliament's defiance of the democratic will of the people, you might be interested to know that the Gaza withdrawal was actually put to a people’s referendum a year prior.

No less than 65% of Israelis voted against the disengagement.

(If you discount eligible Arab voters who may have voted largely in favour of any Jewish surrender, that makes our people’s NO vote even more powerful).

And yet, Prime Minister Sharon disregarded the will of the people. In a sop to the voters, the ‘Deep State’ made some cosmetic changes to the disengagement plan and sent it to the Knesset which then ignominiously voted to deny the people a second referendum.

The message is clear.
Democracy is not some badge for countries. It needs to be government of the people, by the people, and for the people.