NUMBER OF TERRORIST MISSILES AND MORTARS SHOT AT SOUTHERN ISRAEL SINCE THE CEASEFIRE AGREED TO BY BENJAMIN NETANYAHU ON NOVEMBER 21, 2012:
30
- Naftali Bennett–the leader of the Jewish Home Party who should be the next Prime Minister of Israel.
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UPDATE 9:30 am Israel time Tuesday:
Despite all of the events on the Gaza border yesterday (see today’s blog), the news in Israel was all politics.
***The Likud primaries finally finished after two days of computer voting machine mishaps.
Your humble servant was at the Likud primary polling place in Ashdod yesterday as an observer. It is like walking through a shuk (marketplace) with candidates' booths lining the way to the actual voting place.
The results were announced last night, and they represent a distinct changing of the guard with “oldsters” Benny Begin and Dan Meridor out and a host of newcomers in–all of whom are in the very conservative wing of the party. The most identifiable newcomer is Moshe Feiglin who has been fighting the battles of Judea, Samaria, and the Temple Mount for years.
Posters posters everywhere. In the foreground is the former Kadima MK Tzahi Hanegbi (122) who jumped to the Likud Party to be with his friend Bibi. Hanegbi just barely made it in.
***But, the headlines were stolen by Ehud Barak who announced that he is quitting politics, again–sort of . . . (he also left the political scene back in 2001 when he was defeated for Prime Minister by Ariel Sharon). Declaring that he had “no passion” for politics, Barak disingenuously opining that he wanted to “spend more time with his family.” He then proceeded to declare that he would remain in his post as so-called “Defense” Minister until a new government is formed after the upcoming elections. And, oh by the way, Barak said he would be willing to serve in a new government in a “professional way.”
The truth is that Barak faced the inglorious prospect of having his Independence Party not getting enough votes in the coming election for him to even have a seat in the Knesset. So rather than fight for a seat, Barak shockingly abandoned his fellow Independence Party members for his own selfish ends. In essence, Barak’s action is just another one of his infamous unilateral withdrawals.
How did Barak’s announcement and the loss of Begin and Meridor affect our wonderful Prime Minister Netanyahu? He imperially announced that he will include the three of them into a new government whether they are elected by the people or not. Do you begin to get a sense, dear reader, why your humble servant says that it is time for Netanyahu to go?
The joke in Israel this morning is that Netanyahu is the new Morsi–arrogating absolute power to himself.
On other fronts:
***The Bank of Israel transferred another 50,000,000 shekels to Hamas yesterday. When I say “transferred to” what I really mean is “laundered for”. Money, in dollars, pours into Gaza all the time, smuggled in suitcases from terrorist supporters all over the world. Yet the currency in Gaza (why I don’t know) is shekels. When Hamas accumulates enough dollars, it calls in the Bank of Israel to swap the money. The dirty terrorist dollars are laundered into clean Israeli shekels. Unbelievable.
***The miluim (reservists) who were called to the southern border last week to fight in Gaza–only to be left stranded by Netanyahu’s dithering–are beginning to speak out. Yesterday, Major Rani Shachar, an elite tank officer had this to say: “We’ve seen the absurd. It was just miserable. I had to move my men north and east to protect them. We had a tin roof, and a few trailers. There was just nowhere to hide from the missiles.” Another officer, a Major Assaf, declared: “We were sitting ducks.” Incredible.
***It was also revealed by Turkey yesterday that the Netanyahu government is in the advance stages of negotiating an “apology and compensation agreement” with the Turks. Senior Turkish diplomat, Feridun Sinirlioğlu has just met with Netanyahu’s personal envoy, Joseph Ciechanover to begin to finalize the details. Unbelievable.
TODAY’S BLOG:
The next cycle of violence with Hamas began yesterday–despite the best efforts of the IDF and the government to disguise the truth.
If you notice the israelstreet breaking news ticker to the right, there were numerous attempted incursions by Gazans into Israel. In each case they were repelled by IDF troops who are now being forced to take on the added dangerous responsibility of dealing with the disappearance of the buffer zone between Israel and Gaza.
But two events were especially troubling because of the way that the Netanyahu government and IDF tried to obscure what happened.
First was the terrorist infiltration from Gaza at Sde Avraham. In that incident, a woman found an Arab in her home, attempted to call security forces, and was stabbed. When an IDF squad appeared on the scene, they tracked down the attacker and killed him.
The hole that the Hamas terrorist cut in the ramshackle Gaza border fence at Sde Avraham yesterday. After publication of the picture, it became impossible for the IDF to claim that the terrorist had not come from Gaza.
At first it was announced by the IDF that it suspected that the infiltrator was a Palestinian from Gaza. Then, that information was retracted, and it was reported that the infiltrator was a Bedouin thief. Then, when the hole in the fence was found which the man had cut–and his footprints were found leading to the woman’s house–the IDF was forced to return to the “suspicion” that he had come from Gaza. However, the IDF continued to insist that the infiltrator was a simple thief. By late last night, the final story was that the intruder was from Gaza and had acted out of “nationalistic motives.”
In layman’s terms, the infiltrator was a Hamas terrorist from Gaza who wanted to kill Israelis–but the government and the IDF will not say it.
The second event happened at 7:27 pm yesterday evening when incoming rocket sirens suddenly sounded for communities in the Chof Ashkelon and Eshkol regions in the area near the Border fence sending everyone running to their bomb shelters again.
Every missile launch from Gaza automatically triggers an air raid siren in Israel.
It must be remembered that sirens sound the instant that a launch is detected from Gaza.
Yet fifteen minutes later, the IDF was defending the ceasefire claiming that the launch had been “a false alarm.” An hour later, the IDF changed its story to say that there had been “a high trajectory launch” (in other words a missile) but that the missile had fallen in Gaza. By late last night, the IDF had reverted to its story that there had been no launch at all.
What does all of this mean?
It means simply that the Netanyahu government and IDF are now going to go through extraordinary contortions to not have to take action against Hamas. Who is going to bear the brunt of this remarkable dissembling? The people of southern Israel, again.
In the words of an Irish song, “we find ourselves in the same old mess singing drunken lullabies.” Except that it is not the people singing the fake stories. It is Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF General Staff.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.