20 Elul 5779
20 September 2019
Graphic and Photo of the Day:
The red pinpoints are where Israeli men, women, and children had to run for their lives to bomb shelters late yesterday afternoon.
Just another episode in the theater of the absurd: incoming missile sirens were heard in the Sderot area at 6:16 pm last night just as a community concert was about to begin. Everyone hit the ground or tried to run to a bomb shelter. 4 Iron Dome interceptor missiles were fired. Dozens of people on the ground filmed the intercepts on their phones and posted them on social media. Explosions were heard throughout the city and area.
Immediately afterward, the IDF spokesman came to the microphone and said not to worry, it was all a “false alarm.”
The nose cone of a “non-existent” missile that was shot down over Sderot late yesterday afternoon.
Just unbelievable.
By the way, Palestinian terrorists fired another missile toward southern Israel in the middle of the night. It either exploded in Gaza or in an open area in the Eshkol Region.
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The News on the Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 48 hours . . .
On the Gaza border:
Aside from the constant rain of missiles from Gaza, our soldiers continue to deal with the constant attempt of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists to infiltrate Israel. Another such attempt was thwarted yesterday.
In Judea and Samaria:
The last two days have seen a massive number of “rock” and Molotov attacks directed against Israeli children, women, and men at such places as the Gush Etzion spring, on Highway 5 between the Ariel Junction and Gitit Avishar, the Beit Horon Junction, Nizam, Hawara, Halhul, the Al-Khader Junction, Deir Kadis, Ofra, Beit El, Elmathan, the Olive Junction in Hevron, Rosh Tzurim, Road 443 east of the Bell Checkpoint, near Kiryat Arba, between Kochav Ya’akov and Pisgot, Umm Safa, Silwan, Tekoa, and between Elon Moreh and Itamar.
There have been two thwarted stabbing attacks: at the Qalandiya Crossing a female terrorist charged Border Guards with a knife. She was shot and killed. Two more knife-armed terrorists were captured at Ein Bovin.
The Trump Peace Plan . . .
. . . edges ever closer. Jason Greenblatt, who is about to retire as Trump’s Middle East negotiator, arrived in Israel yesterday for talks with PM Netanyahu . . . and Benny Gantz. Greenblatt wants to nail down a publication date for the plan in the context of the current political situation.
For one thing, we can be thankful that PM Netanyahu was in power while the plan was formulated. Does anyone really think that Benny Gantz would have gone to bat for the Jordan Valley or the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria? Or the Jewish section of Hevron?
However, in your humble servant’s opinion, the failure of Netanyahu and his cohorts on the right to annex these areas to Israel and apply Israeli sovereignty there while we had the chance will forever be looked back on as a huge missed opportunity.
TODAY’S BLOG
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The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
The Israel Commission issued its final “unofficial” results last night. There are a few outstanding polling stations yet to be counted because of suspected fraud. But here are the results:
Out of 4,430,566 valid votes cast (69.72% of those eligible to vote):
Kahol/Levan (Blue and White), Gantz: 1,148,700
Likud, Netanyahu: 1,111,535
Joint Arab List: 470,611
Shas (orthodox Sephardic): 329,834
Yisrael Beiteinu, Lieberman: 309,688
United Torah Judaism (orthodox Ashkenazi): 268,688
Yamina, Shaked: 260,239
Labor, Peretz: 212,529
Democratic Union (Meretz/Barak): 192,26262 votes or 4.34%.
So, if this looks like a resounding 37,165 victory for Kahol Levan as its leader Benny Gantz said last night, you might want to think again. In terms of mandates, Gantz unofficially sits at 33, Netanyahu at 31. In terms of the left vs right blocks (not counting Lieberman and the Joint Arab List), Gantz has 44, Netanyahu 55.
The whole situation seems remarkably similar to the election in 2009.
In that election, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima Party won the most votes with 22.47%. Netanyahu’s Likud Party came in second with 21.6%. The difference was .86%.
Yet Tzipi Livni did not become prime minister because she could not form a coalition of 61.
This time, Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party won the most votes with 25.93%. Netanyahu’s Likud Party has come in second with 25.09%. The difference is .84%.
Will Benny Gantz become prime minister? No one should count their chickens before they hatch. Netanyahu will pull out all the stops to stop him–beginning yesterday when he formed a coalition of the parties on the right.
As we stated yesterday, Gantz needs Yisrael Beiteinu and the Joint Arab list to make it to 61, but Yisrael Beiteinu will not sit in a coalition with the Joint Arab List. Or he needs the orthodox parties, but Yisrael Beiteinu will not sit in a coalition with Shas and United Torah Judaism. So where does he go? We have to wait and see.
As for the “right”, it looks virtually impossible for Netanyahu to get 6 more mandates (the situation is markedly different from 2009), making it increasingly possible that we might go to a third election–as horrific as that prospect is. If he couldn’t get the additional mandates in April, it is difficult to see how he can find them now.
Since neither Gantz nor Netanyahu can make 61, the obvious solution is a unity government. However, that seems unlikely at the moment because of Gantz and Lieberman’s position on the orthodox.
A few final observations:
What happened to Netanyahu? Basically, not much. Likud’s percentages dropped very slightly all over the country. Whether it was Netanyahu fatigue (anybody but Netanyahu), the endless allegations against him, Netanyahu’s all consuming passion about Iran at the expense of issues on the ground in Israel, the abject failure in dealing with Hamas in Gaza or some other reason such as the increasingly strange antics of his wife, Kahol Levan capitalized on the situation.
Here at OneIsrael, our opinion of Benny Gantz has not changed. We feel that he was an abject failure as IDF Chief of Staff because of his complete passivity and his willingness to sacrifice his own soldiers to save our enemies. We hope for the best, but should he become prime minister, we expect the worst.
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.