Empty promises are Bibi’s specialty.

Bibi Frees Killers, Gives Construction, Cancels Construction, La Di Da
The ultimate goal of the prime minister’s current policy melange, as always, is political survival.
By: Yori Yanover, JP

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a train to the southern town of Sderot, to inaugurate a new, rocket proof train station. As this picture exhibits, Netanyahu’s political foundation relies on right-wingers (like Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz sitting next to him) and the Orthodox, without being one himself. He must devise maneuvers to keep the right at his side, while supporting the secularist Ashkenazi elite where he really belongs. Photo Credit: Kobi Gideon /GPO/FLASH90


Here’s the only real purpose of anything and everything Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been doing regarding the “peace negotiations” with half of the Palestinian leadership: staying alive. Netanyahu cannot afford to let his coalition government collapse this early in its term, because there’s a serious danger that he would lose the next elections. He may not even be able to retain his position of leadership in his own Likud party. The settlers, who supported him more than they care to admit last time around—because practically their entire local leadership is on Bibi’s government’s payroll—are furious at the prime minister. Their roads are unsafe, the secret police is dismantling their outposts, their archenemy has been appointed state attorney, and Tzipi Livni is discussing their fate, with Bibi’s blessings, behind closed doors, with thugs and gangsters. Now comes the third phase in those negotiations, when Israel has promised to release the first batch of seriously bloody handed Arab murderers. The list is awful: men who burned women and children alive and blew up buses with dozens of innocent civilians in them. The kind of scum that would make the earth open up and scream in agony as they step into their freedom buses. It’s the kind of move that could have been a Mandela gesture if it came against the background of real achievements on the way to a modicum of peaceful coexistence.
As it happens, since the notion of peace is so delusional that the negotiations must be done in complete secrecy—the next prisoners’ release looks more like a capitulation to evil. It’s also the kind of move that could bring down Netanyahu’s government, with a walkout not of “just” his Jewish Home coalition partner, but also of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu election partner, as well as a number of Likud party MKs and ministers. Israel Beiteinu has already decided not to extend its campaign partnership with Likud, which cost both parties combined about a dozen seats last time around. All of these political entities are heavily influenced by the settler movement, which is a sleeping giant at this point, but can become a raging, or, more likely, a panicky giant. What to do, what to do? Of course: announce sweeping construction starts across Judea and Samaria, to coincide with letting out the very men who would happily go about murdering the folks settling in those constructions. It’s brilliant, because it pleases the settlers, who now have something to lose, so they stay on Bibi’s wagon even as he makes “painful concessions,” letting go of Jew killers. He doesn’t have to do anything, just have his PR people deliver a promise that in a few weeks he will announce yet another promise to take bids for new housing in the disputed territories.
This will anger the Palestinians and the Americans, who will declare that Bibi is killing the peace—which doesn’t really exist, because the Palestinians will never recognize that Israel is a legitimate Jewish state, will never denounce the right of return, will never give up East Jerusalem, will never agree to Jewish settlements east of the 1949 armistice line. Then the Americans will start threatening—they won’t even have to write new threats, the ones from a few months ago, when Bibi initiated exactly the same PR maneuver, are still fine. And then Bibi will just not make good on his promise, as he hasn’t done before, the way he buried the Levi committee’s recommendation to impose Israeli law wherever Israelis reside in Judea and Samaria, and so remove the scourge of civilians living under permanent martial law. Empty promises are Bibi’s specialty. Remember his promise last year of going into gaza this time and removing the Hamas criminal government once and for all? Remember how, a mere two weeks later, Bibi, Barak and Lieberman announced that not going into Gaza and signing an accord legitimizing the Hamas government was the astute thing to do? Breaking promises is what he does best, and so our prime minister will bury this week’s promises, too. There will be no housing starts in Judea and Samaria, there will be no permanent peace agreement, basically, the only real outcome will be the same outcome as before: Israel will continue to release select groups of Jew killers for no good reason, with no return gesture on the part of the Arabs, and the PA will continue to send out small reminders in the form of a knifing here, a shooting there, a firebomb, a rock throwing event, in small increments, just to show who’s really in charge.
You know what’s the truly depressing part about all of the above? That you, dear reader, could have written this article with your eyes closed. You know it’s just a dance, and everyone involved knows it’s just a dance. We’re all just kicking the can down another block and then another, and another one yet. Bibi gets to stay in office another year, Abbas stays on as well, everybody is not exactly happy, but we’re surviving. Jewish guy is drowning off Miami Beach, the guy that rescues him asks: How you doin’, and the first guy says: I make a living. Israel has a good supply of about 6,000 “security” prisoners. The Arabs have plenty of rocks in stock. The Americans… TWO DANCE FLOORS, SAME IDEA OK, at this point I’ll admit I have no idea why the Obama Administration is doing this. Let’s agree, for the sake of argument, that the Obama and Kerry motivation is not rabid antisemitism. And that Obama is not the antichrist. Or a Muslim vanguard. If you believe those explanations I can’t have a debate with you because you already know and I’m not convinced. My problem is that, once I eliminate those insane options, I can’t for the life of me fathom why they’re so heatedly into this fake peace process thing. What do they want to achieve? Obama already has a Nobel Prize – he really wants to be the first politician to receive it twice for no reason at all? Is it Kerry’s Nobel Prize? Maybe, although the thought of the man being so vain he would work against American interests so eagerly just for an invite to that evening with the King of Sweden is very upsetting. It kinda’ makes him the Sheldon Cooper of international politics…
The stated strategic aim of the Obama Administration has been to disentangle the U.S. from all the needless obligations it was left by the Bush 2 Administration. After redistributing the wealth with trillions of dollars obtained from the taxpayer and given to the military industrial complex; after thousands of Americans have been killed in wars that only made things worse for America in the region; after false starts of an imagined “Arab Spring” across the region resulted in civil wars and even worse dictatorial regimes in most places, it’s finally time to go home—and the Obama White House has been pulling out in earnest.
In a couple of years, the U.S. will be practically self-sufficient in its energy supply. The one ultimate reason that has kept us in the Middle East, putting up with its crazy sheiks and murderous tyrants, was oil. We now have all the oil we need, let’s go home. So why stay so madly focused on the unfulfilled national aspirations of the Palestinians? Seriously, I’ve been asking myself this question often over the past couple of years, and I don’t have an answer that doesn’t depict the president as all kinds of supernatural things.
How would U.S. interests possibly benefit from a 2-state solution, without the Hamas? What’s in it for America? What’s in it for the Democratic party? Gurnisht, nada, nothing. There’s only one reason I could think of, and it frightens me more than three antichrists and a madrassa full of jihadists. They’re afraid of us. Both the ruling elites in Israel and in the U.S. are afraid of the Jews. Hear me out: The fast diminishing Ashkenazi secular elite is terrified of the growing traditional, patriotic, progressively more affluent National Religious, as well as the Haredi Jews, who already comprise a decisive electoral majority in Israel.
In this equation, Netanyahu is in the same fast diminishing class as Tzipi Livni. This secularist junta of billionaires, judges and lawyers, media moguls and politicians, all depend on their centralized ownership of the state for their very livelihood. They are terrified that one day we’ll take it away from them. And so they do whatever they can to terrorize us, manipulate us, maneuver us, force us into these meaningless dances, and as long as we’re willing to dance, they’ll provide the music.
In America, the political class will not feel safe as long as a Jewish Israel is allowed to thrive unmolested. The amount of goodness that’s flowing out of Israel, in all aspects of technology and commerce, scholarship, spirituality, wisdom, military effectiveness, provocative originality—constitutes a threat to the powers that be in Washington. Left to our own devices, we could, some day, infuse the world with our spirit and imagination. We’ve done it at least once before, when our Torah liberated humanity from darkness.
The world is afraid of what all this goodness and innovation could once again do to the status quo. And so they invest heavily in exposing us to danger: Iran, the Palestinians, the boycotts, heaps of lies about who we are and what we do – just to keep us busy defending our good name, arguing, explaining, cajoling, making insane sacrifices. Same dance, different rinks. Don’t lose heart, though. The day is near when we come to our senses and refuse to dance any more. Neither to the tune of our secular Ashkenazi masters, nor our Washington nemesis. We’ll rediscover our courage, realize that we are protected by the Creator of the universe, and leave the dance floor. No more dancing for us.
About the Author: Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba’Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published two fun books: The Cabalist’s Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.
Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/bibi-frees-killers-gives-construction-cancels-construction-la-di-da/2013/12/26/0/
Ted Belman