13 Kislev 5779
21 November 2018
Quote of the Day:
“I would not want to see Benny Gantz as defense minister. We all remember Gantz as IDF Chief of Staff and remember what happened when he said, ‘Go out and pick anemones in the south’ . . . Daniel Tragerman, the 4-year-old boy was killed . . .”
Culture Minister Miri Regev, speaking on Channel 12 “Morning News”
Thank you Miri Regev for stating exactly what was on your humble servant’s mind when he saw this Channel 12 poll which asked Israelis who would they like to see as Defense Minister:
From left to right: Benny Gantz, Gabi Ashkenazi, Naftali Bennett, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Galant, Ehud Barak.
Why anyone would want Gantz, a disastrous failure as IDF Chief of Staff in the 2014 war with Hamas, as our Defense Minister is beyond understanding.
As Regev says, we all here in the South remember how Gantz called on all the people of the South to return to their homes in his infamous “anemones” speech–only to result in a number of them being killed when they did, most memorably 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman who was killed by shrapnel when a Hamas mortar exploded in front of his house.
Outrage of the Day and Pending Outrage of the Year:
Try to wrap your mind around this, dear reader.
The last 18 months have seen a parade of anti-Israel actions taken by Jordan, from numerous steps taken against Israel on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to King Abdullah’s most recent declaration that he is abrogating part of the Jordanian-Israel Peace treaty as it relates to two leased areas along the Jordanian border.
The last 18 months have also seen our national lake, the Kineret (aka the Sea of Galilee) sink to unprecedented lows as water has been drained out to give to Jordanians. According to Israel’s water experts, the Kineret has already reached a level of no return without major inflows of desalinated water which are, at best, a decade away.
In this context, a delegation from Jordan visited Israel yesterday and went for a boat ride on the Kineret:
Jordanians boating on the Kineret yesterday with Israeli officials.
Outrageously, the Jordanians demanded that Israel increase water supplies to Jordan by millions of cubic meters.
Can you believe this?
Even more outrageous was the comment from our “Energy Minister” Yuval Steinitz who said that the Israeli government will consider the Jordanian request in the coming days and will probably grant it “as a gesture to the Jordanians.”
No dignity. What we have is a government with no dignity. Jordan can rub our noses in the dirt ad nauseum, and we keep pathetically coming back for more. Like your humble servant’s daughter is want to say, Israel suffers from an egregious case of Stockholm Syndrome.
The News on the Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria attacked Israelis at Ged Oz in Gush Etzion, on Road 446 near Nili, Dura al-Kara, El Aruv, Hizma, Hawara, and more than 20 other locations.
After two days of thwarted Palestinian stabbing attacks, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed an Israeli repeatedly at Har Gilo as he walked out of grocery store. As usual, the Israel Police quickly sought to classify the attack as being “criminal” and not “nationalistic (aka terroristic), but were forced to backtrack once the following video became public–note that the video was taken from a security camera and is at an angle–stabbing in Har Gilo.
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Interestingly, the terrorist escaped only to turn himself in to police late last night. The stabbing victim is in “fair” condition this morning.
Good news: the Iranian economy is teetering on the edge of collapse . . .
With oil prices plummeting by the minute, U.S. sanctions on Iran have caused hundreds of Iranians companies to close their doors and lay off their workers.
According to a Reuters report, every type of company from soft drink to clothing is succumbing to the high prices of imported raw materials.
As of this morning, the official exchange rate is $1 = 42,105 Iranian rials.
The black market rate is closer to $1 = 150,000 rials–but since black market traders are now being arrested and sometimes executed, the black market has become extremely black indeed.
Bad news: smoking is back in again in Israel . . .
Anyone traveling around Israel these days is aware that many people have begun smoking again.
A report from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics published yesterday shows that approximately 1 in 4 Israelis are now lighting up (cigarettes, cigars, hookah).
Twice as many men as women smoke, and approximately the same number of Israeli-Arabs (26%) as Israeli Jews (21%) smoke.
TODAY’S BLOG:
The Profound Shift of the Israeli-Jewish Public To The Right
Taking into account all the perils associated with surveys and polls, one fascinating survey was released at a conference held by the Israel Democracy Institute yesterday.
Among its findings:
*91% of Israelis sampled agree that “the lives of IDF soldiers must be protected at all costs, even at the cost of increasing the number of Palestinian casualties.”
*90.5% agree that a terrorist’s home should be demolished with the approval of the court.
*82% agree that a mosque should be shelled “if there is a suspicion that it is serving as a cover for hostile activity against Israel.”
*79.1% support arresting family members of terrorists as a means of forcing a terrorist to turn himself in.
*77.9% believe that “Israeli human rights organizations such as B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence harm the IDF’s fighting.”
*73.3% agree that “a terrorist should not leave the scene of an attack.”
Your humble servant is not quite sure what the last statement means but assumes that it means “a terrorist should be killed at the scene of an attack.”
Again, this poll has every reason to be questioned, not the least of reasons being that it only sampled 517 Jewish respondents over the age of 18. Certainly, the number would have been different if Israeli-Arabs had been included, and most likely the numbers would be different if a larger sample had been used.
Nevertheless, the survey is a relatively dramatic indication of where the Israeli Jewish public stands these days, and how decades of terrorism which it experiences here on the front lines everyday have moved it inexorably to the right.
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.