What kind of Independence is this?

Days after Israel celebrated its 75th independence day, a demonstration of Israel's non-independence played out behind the closed doors of Israel's supreme court.

It concerned a tiny Bedouin settlement of ramshackle dwellings illegally-built on the outskirts of Jerusalem within Area C; a designation of full Israeli control under the Oslo Accords.

In a bizarre scenario, Israel’s supreme court ruled these to be illegal dwellings and ordered them to be demolished. 15 years after that ruling, the eyesore, called Khan Al-Ahmar remains standing.

The court wants it demolished. The government wants it demolished. And I daresay even its 35 families would like to take up the Israeli government’s offer to relocate them to brand new housing units a stone’s throw away, which are connected to mains water, sewerage and electricity – all free of charge.

What is standing in the way of this ideal solution? It is foreign-funded NGOs like B’tselem who have turned Khan Al Ahmar into an international cause célèbre which has left successive Israeli governments fearful of implementing the supreme court’s ruling.

You only have to look at this UK Government page on Khan Al Amar to see the furore that has been stirred up, as if this is a major priority for the UK or Finland or any other foreign government. Of course it’s not. If any of the foreign service mandarins of protesting countries cared a fig for Palestinian Arabs, they would want them to be properly housed like human beings. Instead, their visceral hatred of the Jewish state and nausea over its very existence means that the families of Khan Al Ahmar are to be treated as pawns just as they are treated by the corrupt Palestinian leadership which soaks up foreign aid for its own enrichment (Google: Hamas Billionaires).

I have said this many times before. Israel may celebrate its independence each year with parades, fireworks and all manner of pomp. But it will not be truly independent until it acts like a sovereign state. If the Netanyahu government does not finally lance this abscess, the infection will spread to other parts of Area C and we may then be forced to amputate parts of it. Which is exactly what the PLO and its foreign funded NGOs seek as their goal: the dismemberment of the Jewish state.

Israel at 75

 My interview on Revelation TV's feature on Israel's 75th Independence Day. 

The BIG Lie

The latest and largest in the series of Saturday night demos against Netanyahu are reminiscent of the “Not My President” marches against Donald Trump in 2016. Elections have consequences, but it seems leftists both in Israel and the USA are never prepared to accept them like grownups.

In both countries those demos were driven by a media that blatantly lied to the public in the service of an all-powerful left-wing establishment. This has been exposed most recently in America with the exposure of the Twitter files and the release of video coverage of the entry of demonstrators into the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The BIG lie being peddled in Israel is that Netanyahu is out to change the legal system in order to escape conviction in the trial he faces for accepting free cigars and conspiring to get better treatment in the left-wing media. If that had any shred of credibility you might ask: why on earth would Bibi want to upset the very judicial elites who will decide whether or not he goes to jail?

The truth is that the proposed judicial reforms, far from being retrospective and of any use to Bibi in his own indictments, have nothing to do with civil or criminal cases. They have to do with the self-appointing judiciary overruling the democratically elected parliament, the Knesset.

In no other democracy do courts have such veto power. As everyone knows, judges are there to interpret laws, not to make or change them. As things stand in Israel, and has been demonstrated very recently, all the supreme court has to do is deem a law or a ministerial appointment ‘unreasonable’ for it to scuttle the will of the people and its elected government.

Far from a threat to democracy, Netanyahu’s proposed reforms are solely directed to preserving ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ as opposed to autocratic rule by an unelected court president acting as if he sits in an upper house of parliament.

Which brings me back to those Saturday night demos, stirred up by the media peddling the BIG lie.

Have you thought how much police manpower is needed to secure any one of those mega demos? How much background investigation is involved by the Shin Bet and other branches of the security apparatus? You are talking about many thousands of officers and working hours which are normally devoted to detective work in the prevention of the kind of terror attacks which have plagued Israel since these Saturday night circuses began.

Surrounded by mortal enemies, as well as clearly infiltrated by them, Israel’s security resources are still limited. A week’s planning for the securing of a major demo could better be spent protecting innocents like the 14 Jews who have so far been murdered in half as many weeks.

Divine Calculus

We had so many questions when Trump was not re-elected as the most supportive president Israel ever had in the White House. Within 100 days, the Iran talks were put back on track and Palestinian funding was restored.  What kind of Divine plan could this possibly fit??

I think we found out last week, with another big question. Why didn’t Hezbollah open a northern front with its over 100,000 missiles, especially last Wednesday when domestic rioting seemed to stretch Israel’s resources to the limit?

The answer: Biden’s election.

As last week’s missile war was getting started, the fourth session of Iran talks began in Vienna. With their economy beyond bankrupt, the ayatollahs are desperate to get Trump’s crippling sanctions lifted. Any aggression by its Hezbollah proxies over the Lebanon border would have almost certainly torpedoed the talks. Had Trump been re-elected, the mullahs would by now have had nothing to lose.

This foresight and forward planning has happened so often in our history, just as G-d told Moses, in Exodus, 33:23, “You will see Me pass before you but you will not see My face, only the back of Me.”. In other words, you may not see Me at the time, but you will know that I was there. 

Days before the Hamas blitzkrieg began, Israeli politicians were actually on the verge of forming a government coalition that would have depended on the support of Arab lawmakers opposed to the State and who’ve openly sided with terrorist groups that seek our destruction. That plan evaporated with the first 500 missiles.

Time and again it seems that the Almighty has saved Israel from the folly of its leaders. In 2008 Prime Minister Olmert was ready to give up the Golan Heights for a peace agreement with Syria. By the grace of G-d that didn’t happen. Less than 5 years later, Syria became an Iranian military base. Just imagine Iran’s Quds Force in control of the Golan – and the Jews holding a worthless piece of Chamberlain paper signed by a neutered Assad?

The game of existential chess is played out on this earth, but the Grandmaster sits in heaven. 

May He continue to protect His people and our soldiers from all trouble and sorrow, and deliver us full victory over our mortal enemies.

Chag Shavuot Sameyach. 

Am Yisrael Chai ! 

It's that simple....

 

Don't Lecture Israel on Defence

 

Never Again

 The Israeli Air Force now has two fully combat-ready squadrons of Lockheed Martin F-35 Adir fifth generation stealth fighter jets, 20 aircraft in all.

My Love for Trump

I enjoyed watching Trump’s rallies in the closing days of the election campaign. The huge crowd sizes and overflows were amazing as was the enthusiasm which was booming. Amid the raucous chants of “USA” and “Lock Them Up” there was one unusual chorus I’d never heard before – least of all in politics.

"We love you!” they roared. Again, and again.

Well I guess I do too.

And it’s not just for all the bountiful gifts Trump has bestowed on our people and our Jewish state. From the Jerusalem embassy and Golan sovereignty to stifling the antisemitism at the UN, defunding UNRWA and holding Iran’s feet to the fire. More than that, I loved him simply as a kindred spirit.

Just think of how Trump came on the scene. As soon as he declared his candidacy he was demonized from all sides, right and left, as some sort of creature from the depths. I recall one conservative podcaster referring to him as ‘some kind of lizard’.

Once elected with a wide margin his presidency was promptly delegitimized, with hordes of protesters marching under the banner of “Not my president!” for months on end.

And then came the two impeachments over Russia and Ukraine. After 2 years and 40 million dollars of the Muller enquiry (staffed exclusively by Clinton supporters) it was found that there was no Trump collusion with Russia. Instead we learned that the whole Russia hoax was started by Clinton based on a fake Russian dossier to deflect attention from her own email scandal. Then as to Trump’s phone call to the president of Ukraine, it was found the only real story with Ukraine was Hunter Biden’s million dollar payoffs by corrupt Burisma and Joe Biden’s televised leverage of a billion dollars of US aid to get a Ukrainian prosecutor off his son’s back.

So it turns out, everything the Democrats accused Trump of, and falsely, they were actually doing themselves. Russia collusion to spy on the Tump campaign and abuse of Vice-Presidential privilege to hide Ukrainian corruption. Those are double standards by any measure.

These three elements: Demonization, Delegitimization and Double standards happen to be the 3D test of antisemitism as defined by former Russian dissident Anatoly Sharansky.

And there lies my kinship to Donald Trump.

Israel is today the World’s Jew. The Yid among nations. The one so many European leaders still wish had never come into existence, to mess up their lucrative deals with oil-rich sheikhdoms. The place they call ‘that shitty little country’. The one that is singled out at the UN for more punishment than all the despotic and rights-abusing members combined. Between the UN and EU, all 3D boxes are checked.

As the son of an Auschwitz survivor whose parents were gassed and incinerated on arrival, it hurts me every day that despite all that happened, the Jewish state is still the one country that is not welcomed in the family of nations – truly a nation that dwells alone.

Which is why I empathise with any victim of 3D – like Donald Trump. Truly a kindred spirit.

How ironic that in less than four years he made such stunning progress bringing together Arabs and Jews. And how sad that the Saudi icing on the cake will now melt away with new American empowerment of Iran.

Israel, UAE & Bahrain - 15 September 2020

Today’s peace ceremony at the White House showed as much about the greatness of Donald Trump as it did the moral bankruptcy of the media that censored it from their newsfeeds.

Watching Netanyahu at the subsequent press conference brought to mind this 2009 picture:

Obama’s face of seething enmity that never had a chance of achieving a fraction of the progress that has been demonstrated today in a region and struggle that has defied virtually every world leader to grapple with for over seven decades.

Imagine what Netanyahu must have felt after that meeting 11 years ago? Having to endure 4 years under a newly elected US president who made his first priority a visit to Cairo to apologise for America and to make sure that the Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to attend his speech, and helped it overthrow Mubarak in Egypt.

Netanyahu critics on the Left will for once unite with critics on the Right in debunking the notion that this was the first non-land for peace deal. They will say that Netanyahu gave away sovereignty.

The truth is that our people always had sovereignty and always will over the land of Israel, by our divine title deed and by our strength as the most powerful force in the region. The moment the Jordan Valley ever becomes an active front line, our forces shall have it – within the space of a day, or more likely an hour or two.

What’s more important is the trust and prosperity that can be built on this historic day, to end the gulf states’ enrichment of corrupt leaders like Abbas and Haniyeh and allow the Palestinian street to rise up, overthrow them and usher in a better future for their children and ours.

Bury the Auschwitz Borders

 

This week marks the 15^th anniversary of Israel’s forcible expulsion of 8,000 Jews from their homes in 25 farming and agricultural communities they had lovingly built in the Gaza strip with the active support of previous governments. Those thriving settlements had provided jobs and a decent living to thousands of Gaza Arabs and were a model of the kind of coexistence that can never be created by American roadmaps or forced by European boycotts and divestment.

By the end of August 2005, no house, synagogue or schoolhouse was left standing – even the dead were removed from their graves. The only structures left intact were 3,000 greenhouses which Israeli leftists hoped would be taken over by the Arabs to build their new state. They encouraged American Jewish donors to pay fourteen million dollars to buy up these greenhouses only to see them quickly looted and converted to arms and missile production for a new Iranian proxy front against the Jewish state. A front that has ignited three wars and left southern Israel under continuous rocket attack for the past 15 years.

Over the centuries Jews had become used to being expelled from their homes and host countries. But for this to happen in their own homeland and by the hand of their own brothers and sisters in uniform was simply too much to bear. Many abandoned their religion and others left Israel for good. Those that remained were rehoused at a cost of 15 billion shekels and all too many of them are still costing the state dearly in terms of psychotherapy, whether from the uprooting in their infancy or the stress of incessant rocket fire.

And for what?  The so-called ‘disengagement’ was not forced on Israel by war or some edict from America, the EU or UN. It was a totally unilateral move by then prime minister Ariel Sharon in hopes that this would ease world pressure on ceding West Bank territory to a PLO state. The trouble is that you cannot keep throwing pieces of red meat to a lion in hopes that it will turn into a vegetarian. And the reality of the Arab world is that vacuums are never filled other than by terror groups. What happened to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan will follow in any area carved out for a so-called Palestinian state. We saw how quickly Hamas threw out Abbas from Gaza. The same will happen to the West Bank if our leaders are ever so foolish as to volunteer more land for peace.

I do not blame the IDF for their role in evicting 8,000 Jews from their homes. The real villains are the media who branded peaceful protest as ‘insurrection’ and cheered on the judiciary which meted out Soviet-style punishment and administrative detention to Gush Katif supporters, many of them minors.

That same media turned a blind eye to the two corruption probes against the architect of the Gaza surrender, Ariel Sharon. As long as Sharon was giving away part of the homeland and empowering the building of a Palestinian state, the media and judiciary would protect him like an etrog – this being the exact wording of the senior journalist and commentator who instigated this perversion of his profession.

The multimillion-dollar bribery and corruption claims against Ariel Sharon 15 years ago make the indictments against Netanyahu over champagne, cigars and favourable press coverage look even more pathetic by comparison. Both prime ministers leading Likud governments - but only one doing the bidding of the Left. Only one protected by the media and judiciary.

Unfortunately lessons in Israel need to be learned the hard way. By cheering on the nightly demonstrators outside Netanyahu’s home, the media is again playing a dangerous game. They want to unseat a fairly elected prime minister and deny him the presumption of innocence and a fair trial. They are underestimating the strength of Jewish nationalism that bolstered the Likud vote in each of  last four elections, to its highest ever level this time.

Fifteen years ago the settlers had no such thing as social media to get their voices heard, organise larger protests and expose the treachery of the mainstream media and the ugliness of its enablers in the judiciary.

For all his swashbuckling warrior status, Sharon would probably not have withstood one tenth of the pressure that has been meted out to Netanyahu over these last few months, even without the scourge of Covid 19.  To repair the damage wrought by Sharon’s Faustian deal with the Left, Netanyahu should now act in the boldest way possible - by implementing Israeli sovereignty over the strategically vital Jordan Valley. What happens to the interior of the West Bank can be left for another day. But now is the time to finally bury the narrative of 1967 borders.

History will judge Netanyahu harshly if he fails to seize this opportunity. The uber-benevolent Donald Trump is in the White House. He has been starving the PA kleptocracy of terror funds as have other former benefactors even in the gulf. For decades Israel has been the lead story in media, no matter how trivial the issue. But now the world is mesmerised by Covid. Iran is on the ropes and no longer able to fund Hezbollah and Hamas. Syria is a basket case and Lebanon is now in meltdown.

So, if not now, when??

Annexation: We Dare Not Fail

In his imperious and widely-condemned putdown of Israel on its 72nd independence day, Londoner Sir Mick Davis wrote: “…Palestinian dysfunction, corruption and intransigence were previously an obstacle for Israel to overcome, not a set of values to emulate”.

That inane statement came to mind on Yom Yerushalayim during a Zoom conference I was chairing with special guest Ambassador Dore Gold.We were talking about how there was no plan to take back Jerusalem at the start of the Six Day War. The Jordanians were supposed to stay out of the war and only started shelling the Jewish suburbs of West Jerusalem after Egypt’s president Nasser lied to King Hussein about heavy Israeli losses. Under fire and on a strong legal footing of self-defence, Israel seized the opportunity which in little more than a day led to the restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount to our people.

Another important opportunity seized was in 1973 when General Ariel Sharon went rogue and launched his unit over the Suez Canal to encircle the Egyptian Third Army and bring the Yom Kippur War to a swift end.

The annals of IDF campaigns are replete with stories of improvisation, seizing opportunities in the field and striking while the iron is hot.

The Trump peace plan is today’s opportunity. And we dare not let it pass.
Just as our children today cannot conceive of a Jewish world without Jerusalem and the Kotel, future generations will blame today’s leaders for not seizing the once-in-a-lifetime gifts of President Donald Trump in securing the Jordan Valley and reasserting Jewish sovereignty over our tribal heartlands of Judea and Samaria.

Israel’s most eloquent foreign minister was Abba Eban who famously referred to the 1967 ceasefire lines as ‘Auschwitz Borders’. He also authored that famous line: the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Which is why Mick Davis’s statement came to mind.

If there is even a grain of substance in his suggestion that Israelis are emulating the Palestinians – please let it not be the missing of opportunities.

We Never Got To 72 By Saying Dayenu

It started over a century ago with the ‘Uganda Plan’ brought by Herzl to the Sixth Zionist Congress which in 1903 voted overwhelmingly to consider a British plan to create a Jewish homeland in East Africa.

The plan failed and with it the health of Herzl who died in the following year. But this didn’t stop the noted Jewish author Israel Zangwill and other leftists from rallying this ‘Zionism without Zion’ cause for another twenty years. 

It was dubbed ‘Territorial Zionism’ and one of its leading lights happened to be a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. I mention this because I suspect that, like so many of today’s deputies, he was simply looking for honours from the British government which had dreamed up this scheme, clearly to please the rulers of Arabia.

For these progressive Jews a homeland without Zion would have been Dayenu; good enough.

And so it continued with their ‘enlightened’ heirs and successors. Good enough to accept the British gifting half of our mandated homeland to Abdullah of Jordan. Good enough to maintain the status quo without that ’terrorist’ Menachem Begin upsetting the British and forcing them to leave.

For these people the Old City of Jerusalem wasn’t that important, and the State could do just fine without any parts of the ‘West Bank’ and it was perfectly safe to evacuate South Lebanon and the Golan. Give us peace within the 1967 ‘borders’ and Dayenu, it was good enough.

Which brings us to the present day, when the most benevolent presidency of the United States wants to give us the sovereignty we want and the eastern border security that is so vital to our survival. True to form, the Zangwills of today are lobbying against the Trump Plan.

I have often remarked that hindsight has shown us that the Almighty has consistently been protecting Israel from the folly of its own leaders. Just think of how much we came so close to losing by the stroke of a pen.

Israel cannot keep relying on miracles. It must seize every opportunity with both hands as there are rarely second chances. Almost certainly there will be no second Trumps.

Happy birthday Israel. 

And never blow out the candles.

Stupid American Jews

I should be talking about tomorrow’s Israeli election, but I am seized by a most depressing headline last week about the American election stage.

A poll of American Jewish voting intentions by the Jewish Electorate Institute claimed that American Jews would still vote 65% for Socialist Bernie Sanders against 30% for Trump. This is despite 45% of the sample having an unfavourable view of Sanders and 91% of the poll group claiming to be pro-Israel.

What is wrong with these people? Supposedly OUR people?
Trump is undeniably the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the Oval Office and he has backed up every word with action.

Trump appointed Pence, Pompeo, Haley, Greenblatt, Friedman and Kushner - all staunch supporters of Israel and outspoken critics of Iran - to the most pivotal positions of influence over Middle East affairs. Then he cancelled Obama’s iniquitous Iran deal which gave the rabid ayatollahs the cash and cover to fulfil their dream of wiping out Israel as “a one-bomb-country”. Next he recognised Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem and moved the US embassy there. If that wasn’t enough, he went on to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Whilst all that was going on his ‘dream appointment’ of Nikki Haley as UN ambassador led to the defunding of UNRWA and its Hamas-run schools of Jew-hatred and America’s withdrawal from the incessantly Israel-bashing Human Rights Council in Geneva which has just welcomed Venezuela’s Maduro as an honoured member.

On top of all that, Trump brazenly took out Israel's most dangerous terrorist foe, Qassem Soleimani, in a clear message to Iran that he wasn’t afraid to hit them hard, even in an election year.

And while all this was going on in public, Trump was quietly providing Israel with all the military and defence materiel that it used to have to go begging for to former US presidents. New planes, spare parts, early warning systems, bunker busters. Whatever was needed, Israel got.

And now there is the grand peace plan, backed by a new alliance of Arab countries which Trump knitted together on his very first foreign visit as president. This plan would not only assure Israel of the security of its settlements and sovereignty over Jerusalem but will give it vital and permanent control over the Jordan Valley, Israel’s eastern border and the last frontier not yet facing an Iranian proxy.

For the Jews, undeniably, Donald Trump is the gift that just keeps on giving.

So what is it that 60 percent of American Jewish voters don’t get??
How in good conscience could they vote for a Bernie Sanders who excoriates Israel and takes selfies with outspoken haters like Linda Sarsour and Rashida Tlaib? Sanders truly is their ‘useful Jewish idiot. (Ironic that the expression was invented by Lenin!)

How can such voters claim to be 91% pro-Israel and yet bite the hand that has fed Israel’s vital needs for the last 3 years?

Have American Jews forgotten how Obama threw Israel under the bus with UN resolution 2334 as his final act as president? A public tarring of illegitimacy as his parting gift to the Jewish state. The applause of every Jew-hating state and BDS peddler around the world was deafening.
And you American Jews want more of this?
With Sanders?
Or with Obama’s vice president Biden?

Are you all completely stupid?

He who saved us from Olmert

So, do you believe in God?

And if so, do you believe He watches over His people and the Land of Israel?

Well, if you had any doubts – not least after witnessing Israel’s wartime victories against the most impossible odds – you only need to see today’s headlines.

How ex-prime minister Ehud Olmert has teamed up with PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas to reject Donald’s Trump’s bold peace plan.

This is the same Olmert who, in 2007, offered Syria’s president Assad the surrender of the Golan Heights, in exchange for a peace agreement. Just imagine if Olmert had succeeded with this lunatic plan. Less than 10 years later, Assad would lose control of his country to Russia and Iran, whose rocketeers would be solidly entrenched on the commanding heights with all of the Galilee laid out before them for daily target practice.

The following year, 2008, Olmert would have over 35 secret meetings with Abbas and his henchmen to thrash out a peace agreement by which Olmert would give away our sovereignty over the Temple Mount and Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem would be transferred to a 5-nation committee made up of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, “Palestine”, the United States and Israel. On top of that, Olmert was to give up the Jordan Valley and all of Judea & Samaria (aka the West Bank) except for the 5% comprising Jewish settlements, which would be exchanged for an equal amount of Israeli territory inside the Green Line. In other words – a total surrender of Jewish homeland and sovereignty over its biblical capital city as well as withdrawal from the strategically vital Jordan Valley - all in exchange for a peace contract signed by the chairman of a terrorist group.

(And oh, just by the way. Olmert also agreed to take in 5,000 so-called Palestinian refugees.)

So, where does God come into this?

He is clearly protecting the Jewish people from the folly of its own elected leaders.
You can see this Fatherly care playing out before your eyes.

Just imagine if Olmert had prevailed.
We’d have lost Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and control of our vital Jordan Valley - the last border not in control of Iranian proxies.

Then roll the calendar forward to 2018. Trump is US president and is having a conversation with prime minister Netanyahu on the White House lawn. Trump says: “Hey Bibi – real shame your guy Olmert gave away so much. I’d have recognised Jerusalem as yours, given you the Golan and Jordan Valley and approved all your settled lands in the West Bank”.

Behold He neither slumbers nor sleeps, the Guardian of Israel. [Psalms 121:4]

He fought them on the beaches .....

Where else but Israel would you find a sitting prime minister going down to the beach on election day to tell bathers to get dressed and vote?

Bibi Netanyahu’s blitz on Netanya yesterday tells you all you need to know about the man. He does not accept no for an answer and will always seize the very last chance and opportunity to stop or reverse something he feels is a clear and present danger to the people and state of Israel.

It's that true grit that took him to the US Congress to defy Obama’s sellout to Iran. It’s what took him to Moscow so many times, even after the disastrous downing of that Russian airplane for which all of Putin’s military brass openly blamed Israel. That’s what took him to previously hostile countries to try and build alliances that seemed impossible just 5 years ago. And that’s what took him down to Netanya beach on election day.

After four terms as prime minister of the world’s most talked-about country, Netanyahu could easily retire with enough book deals and lecture fees to pay for a small submarine. But he feels passionately that with Trump in the White House for another two or six years, he is uniquely placed to take advantage of the most special relationship that’s ever existed between the Oval Office and Jerusalem.

In just over two years of Trump’s tenure we have seen the US embassy opened in Jerusalem, recognition of our sovereignty over the Golan Heights, massive sanctions on Iran and cuts in funding to UN and Arab entities engaged in discrimination against Israel and the propagation of incitement and boycotts. There is still plenty of work to do.

Let’s hope the final results put a better shine on the Right. And let’s hope than Bennett & Shaked pass the threshold with the help of IDF votes.

Rest In Peace ?

Last Sunday’s burial of the mortal remains of six Holocaust victims was a poignant and utterly unique event in Jewish history.

For a people whose laws mandate immediate burial, to wait 75 years is an eternity. The ceremony ended with Kaddish, which everyone was invited to join in saying. And they all did – both religious and secular. And even the non-Jews recited it in transliteration.

This event evokes for me the story of Joseph who exacted a solemn promise from his brothers not to be buried in Egypt. His mortal remains had to wait 350 years before being taken by Moses for burial in Shechem in the Land of Canaan – now Israel.

The ceremony at Bushey, with its attendance by so many dignitaries and the outstanding eulogy by Chief Rabbi Mirvis, was a great success and tribute to these unknown martyrs of the Shoah. But I do feel that if those souls had been looking down on the ceremony, and the Britain in which it was held, they might have preferred being buried in the Jewish State of Israel.

After all that they had suffered up to the point of their murder, the hate speech, the synagogue burnings, the yellow stars, the roundups, the family separations, the cattle wagons, the SS selections and finally the steel clang of the gas chamber door behind them… would they ever entrust the safety of their mortal remains anywhere in Europe, amongst people who had turned a blind eye to their genocide on an industrial scale?

Desecrations of Jewish cemeteries in Britain and other European countries are almost a monthly occurrence. The anti-Semites can’t seem to stand us either alive or dead. I fear it is only a question of time before Bushey cemetery becomes another of those statistics and the headstone of these 6 martyrs is targeted.

Some would see this as a fatalist view, but the writing is on the wall with the resurgence of Jew hatred we are seeing here and in the rest of Europe and now in America. And all within living memory of the Shoah when there were still survivors to carry the coffin last Sunday.

My own father, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, is buried in a London cemetery. He died when I was sixteen, a victim of heart disease contracted in the concentration camp. When my mother’s time comes, I intend to take his remains for reburial in Israel where a plot awaits him in the hills of Beit Shemesh. There he may truly be at peace.

Sadly, this cannot be said for our patriarch Joseph. After waiting 350 years for burial in Israel, the leftists gave Shechem away to the PLO, whose people regularly attack and defile his tomb in the most unspeakable ways.

Plus ça change .....

What is the secret of the Jews ?

We begin 2019 with a horrifying level of antisemitism being openly displayed in Europe and beyond, on a scale unprecedented since the days of Nazi Germany. 

But we must not be disheartened.

Instead we should energize ourselves by revisiting our unique mission statement.

Watch here:  

Genocide of the unborn

This picture of 'unborn' Amiad Yisrael wrapped in his burial tallit is truly heartbreaking. It is a tragedy for his parents and all of Israel. But the picture must also convey a message to all of us.

The message is that these rabid Arab beasts have gone way beyond the idea of driving us out of our land. Now they don’t even want us born into it.

This and other brazen attacks, including today’s killings in Jerusalem, show very clearly that we are still dealing with the same PLO as before they were gentrified by the Oslo Accords. The difference is that they no longer fear our soldiers or our people. Goldstone probes, prisoner releases and the sacred cow of human rights have worn down our deterrence at every level. Where the IDF used to have news reporters embedded with their units – now they have lawyers. Soldiers have to think twice or three times before defending themselves, whilst their fanatical opponents exploit those vital milliseconds to their most savage advantage.

I have always thought that the fundamental difference between Left and Right is that leftists do not accept that there is such a thing as pure evil in this world. It’s really no more complicated than that.

Unlike realists on the Right, leftists always react to evil acts by blaming anyone or anything other than the perpetrator. For the common killer or rapist the ‘justification’ is usually a broken home, poverty, drugs or abuse by their stepfathers. For suicide bombers and terrorists it’s usually about their hopelessness under grinding poverty and lack of education or civil rights under Western domination or Israeli 'occupation'.

It’s nearly 20 years since 9-11 and leftists have still not internalised the lesson that there is indeed such a thing as pure evil in this world. Evil that cannot be justified at any level. That a so-called human being could stand at an airline departure gate in a queue with smiling families, young children and infants knowing full well that he would be turning them into human bombs within less than an hour. It is the lowest level of evil you can possibly imagine. And yet the 9-11 hijackers were educated middle class men mostly from rich, unoccupied and unoppressed Saudi Arabia.

The same pure evil exists in Tehran, where the ayatollahs call Israel ‘a one-bomb country’. Given a window of opportunity they would not hesitate to seize the moment to incinerate 8 million people – the devil may care if they are Jews or Muslims. It still beggars belief that a US president gifted 150 billion dollars to such genocidal fanatics let alone with the support of 5 major world powers who still oppose Trump’s new sanctions.

And the same evil exists within our homeland, as we end this awful week of killings by our so-called peace partners. The leftists sipping their lattes in Tel Aviv will blame the settlers, the occupation, the right-wing Likud or Jewish Home parties, the Nation State Law … anything but the killers themselves. It’s time they woke up to the stark reality that pure evil exists, can never be justified and must never be trusted to live among us.

Coalition Crisis

When Liberman walked out of the government last Wednesday he created the biggest coalition crisis I think Netanyahu has ever faced. Both right-wing factions – Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi and Kachlon’s Kulanu demanded to go to elections ASAP. And all the pundits said elections were totally inevitable.

But Bibi dissented, and stuck to his line that elections could be avoided and should be avoided at this sensitive point to deny Hamas and its sponsors in Tehran, the satisfaction of having brought down the government of the ‘Zionist Entity’ with 400 rockets.

And by yesterday, Bibi won. Bennett conceded his claim to the defence ministry ‘or else elections’ with a very responsible statement saying: "It's better that Netanyahu beats me in a political fight than that [Hamas leader Ismail] Haniyeh beats the State of Israel."

Netanyahu may have his faults, just like all of us. But he has proved again and again that he is a brilliant tactician. There can be few things more tortuous and exasperating than Israeli coalition politics. It’s a gorilla pen of massive egos beating their political chests, grasping for their moment of fame. But Netanyahu seems to have the deepest pockets of self-confidence and sticks it out to the end.

Netanyahu holds the record for the longest single term (his second term) of any Israeli prime minister and, if he survives until July 16, 2019, he will tie Ben-Gurion to become the longest serving prime minister in Israel's history.
In today’s Knesset, that’s achieving the impossible.

Gaza is is not a city or a country ...

As we retire safely to our beds in London, Paris and New York, our brothers and sisters in Israel will have no sleep this night. 

Some will be in bomb shelters, others will be kept awake by the sound of sirens. Most will be glued to their TVs and phones. And, many parents will be packing up their sons and daughters called up by the army for deployment to the front.

Tomorrow the media will be all over the story, with the usual bias against Jews for daring to defend themselves. They will point to this or that incident which sparked the latest round of fighting - but the consensus will always be the same: "it all started when Israel retaliated".

The truth is that Gaza is is not a city or a country.
It is simply an Iranian rocket base, filled with human shields.
And make no mistake about who is fanning the flames here, in total disregard for civilian life on either side. 
It is the rabid ayatollahs in Tehran.
And right now they are desperate, wounded animals.

Trump's sanctions have all but crippled their precious Islamic Republic. Its currency is in free-fall, its cities are crippled with power cuts for large parts of the day and its citizens are without basic food and medical essentials for lack of hard currency which is being burned unceasingly as rocket propellant in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.

Their way of getting back at the Great Satan is to unleash, through their Hamas proxies, fire and fury at Little Satan, and Israel is once again having to pay a heavy price.

There is no doubt that this amount of damage and ferocity has crossed a red line with Israel's leadership, and this time there will be no retaliation against soft targets. The vipers' nest will now have to be cleared out once and for all. The Hamas leadership must be sent to their virgins like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin - in scorched bits.

And this time, thank G-d, there will be no calls from Bush and Obama to show restraint and withdraw.