Surprise! Netanyahu wins as Israeli Right soars

[bigbadjohn45]

Surprise! Netanyahu wins as Israeli Right soars


posted at 8:31 am on March 18, 2015 by Ed Morrissey







In the end, the Israeli election wasn't even close - and certainly not in the way that analysts expected. For the past week, media outlets in the US had written Benjamin Netanyahu's political obituary, insisting that Likud and the Right had collapsed, and looked forward to a Left coalition that would align better with Barack Obama. Instead, Netanyahu scored a decisive victory, taking 30 seats as the Right ran to an easy majority in the new Knesset:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party was the clear winner in Tuesday's election, a near-final tally showed early Wednesday morning, defeating the Zionist Union by a margin of some six seats.


That margin was far more decisive than TV exit polls had predicted when polling booths closed at 10 p.m. on Tuesday. All three TV polls had put Likud and Zionist Union neck-and-neck at 27 seats, albeit with Netanyahu better-placed to form a coalition.


On the basis of those TV polls, Netanyahu hailed a Likud victory, though Herzog initially refused to concede. As counting proceeded through the night, however, the Likud opened a growing margin of victory.


By 6 a.m., with some 99% of votes counted, the Central Elections Committee was indicating a dramatic victory for Netanyahu, with the Likud heading for 30 seats, compared to Zionist Union's 24 seats.

The Washington Post's William Booth acknowledges that a lot of people got this wrong, and wonders why:

Before the vote, pundits were beginning to write the first drafts of Netan­yahu's political obituary. Reporters asked him in interviews what he planned to do in retirement.


But in the past five days, Netan­yahu took to the airwaves, warning repeatedly that Herzog and the left were going to turn over land to the Palestinians and divide Jerusalem, which both Israel and Palestinians claim as their capital.


It was unclear whether Israeli pollsters just got it wrong or could not keep up with fast-moving events. The last opinion polls on Friday suggested that Netanyahu was losing. Exit polls Tuesday night said it was a tie. The final vote count showed that Netanyahu had won by a wide margin.


Leading pollster Avi Degani, president of the Geocartography Knowledge Group, said Wednesday that there were several reasons for the disparity.


"We are not looking for excuses, but in Israel we are always dealing with 20 percent of the voters who have not made a decision before the election and you just do not know who they will vote for," he said.

That sounds like a pretty good argument for keeping the powder dry on questions about retirement plans until after the vote count. Sky News offers a slightly more bitter explanation:



That's certainly another view, and one likely to be adopted by those disappointed in the results. However, the Jerusalem Post's Gil Hoffman writes that the real difference may have been Netanyahu's appeal to the "second Israel," and his fight against the elites:

The Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe were seen as having an unfair advantage over their Sephardic counterparts from North Africa and the Middle East. The people who are called "the second Israel" have complained since then that the "elites" in the Israeli Left, the media and academia have discriminated against them.


The "second Israel" did not like the the way the media seemed to be deposing of Netanyahu and bringing to power the Left under the leadership of Zionist Union leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, who were raised not far from each other in North Tel Aviv and are both the children of former Knesset members. …


Many who considered staying home, or voting for one of the Likud's satellite parties, hurried to the polling stations to cast ballots for Likud. People who have not voted in years - or at least not for Likud - felt the need to save Israel from the Left, Iran and from a hostile international community.

The challenge for Netanyahu will likely be more on the domestic economy rather than international relations. The US will press Netanyahu to back down from his newly announced opposition to a two-state solution, but the Obama administration has torched that relationship over the last year. They were hoping to get another PM to improve their standing at home on Israel, but now it's clear that Netanyahu will outlast Obama and John Kerry. It's also clear that Israelis aren't terribly keen on two-state solutions while Hamas runs Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas keeps pledging unity governments with them, either. Otherwise, Netanyahu's final pitch wouldn't have resulted in his surprising win last night.


Where does this leave the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, then? In a shambles, but it's been that way for decades, and it wasn't going anywhere with Obama and Kerry any more than it was with George Bush and Condoleezza Rice. The problem still remains that one side wants peace, and the other side wants all the land and the Jews pushed out into the Mediterranean. When that changes and both sides want peaceful and permanent coexistence, then the problem will find an easy solution.


In the meantime, the White House will have to find a way to reach out to Netanyahu if it wants to have any influence at all in Israel before the end of Obama's term. Don't expect Netanyahu to make it easy, either.
This post was edited on 3/18 9:09 AM by bigbadjohn45

 

[bigbadjohn45]

Poor libtards, they're having a hard time in their echo chamber this AM. Sometimes the narrative the leftist media tries to build just doesn't turn out the way they planned.






Our very own Petulant Punk Prezzie couldn't get the job done, just like he has failed here. He sent a team of his community organizing punks (ACORN) over to Israel to use his tried and true methods (including busing in suspect voters), and he fell flat on his face. Israel has a strong leader, a MAN who stands up for what is right. America is stuck with this Petulant Punk for two more long years. May God Bless America and deliver us from this evil man.

Additionally, I am impressed that Netanyahu opposes the creation of a "palestinian state," and promises to expand construction in Jewish areas of east Jerusalem, the section of the city claimed by the palestinians as their capital. That's good enough for the interloping arab squatters.


This post was edited on 3/18 9:24 AM by bigbadjohn45

 

[bigbadjohn45]

Who is Responsible for the Palestinian Refugees?

www.IsraelForum.com

While Arab propaganda sources bemoan what they term the "Nakba," i.e., "catastrophe" of 1948, they seldom lay blame for their troubles on their own Arab leaders who are responsible for the lion's share of Arab misery. Historically speaking, the self-inflicted problem of Palestinian refugees began with a massive voluntary departure of an Arab population of squatters who were present in Israel in 1948. Let's briefly turn back the clock to understand the reasons that Palestinians chose to leave Israel and now prefer to wallow in misguided self-pity as so-called refugees in their own homelands.

Since the decline of the Ottoman Empire - a conquering Muslim force much resembling the brutal and corrupt dictatorship of present-day Arab states, the composition of the Middle East was changed forever. The Colonial Britain was viewed by the UN as a perfect candidate to rule and "administer" the land of Palestine, which was the name assigned to the Jewish homeland. While the Ottoman rules of the land were more than happy to sell land to Jewish residents at exorbitant prices, the new British rulers made a concerted effort with their Arab allies to discriminate against Jews in land allocation.

Still, the growing Jewish population thrived and surpassed the Arab lifestyle by leaps and bounds. The Jews combined hard work with advanced scientific and agricultural innovation, while the Arab population was simmering with racial hatred. The Arabs, who originally arrived from the deserts of Saudi Arabia and settled in the Jewish homeland, began to realize that not only was there growth among the Jewish population which continuously lived in the Land of Israel for thousands of years, but a new reality was at hand, as well. A new group of Jewish refugees escaping from Hitler's concentration camps, was returning to its historical homeland, only to find Arab squatters occupying the Jewish land.

The Arab squatters were full of animosity and belligerence, as they began to dedicate their efforts to spreading Islamic extremist Anti-Semitism, and they proceeded to set a new Jihad-genocide plan in motion. The Arabs quickly began to launch terrorist massacres of the residents of Jewish towns, in places like Kfar Etzion, Jerusalem, Haifa, and many more.

The goal of the Arabs was quite clear, as it was proudly made public by their leaders - to ethnically cleanse the Middle East of its Jewish presence through extermination of the Jewish population. And so, following the passage of UN Resolution 181, which provided for a sharing of the land between a Jewish state and an Arab state, the Arabs immediately rejected all principles of international law and refused a peaceful settlement. Instead, on May 15, 1948, as the British were leaving the area, the armies of Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq joined Palestinian and other Arab guerrillas in a war to extinguish all Jewish life in the Jewish homeland.

To more conveniently slaughter large numbers of Jews, the Arab armies began to prepare the ground by issuing orders to all Arab residents of the Jewish state to immediately leave Israel and return to their Arab homelands to make room for the invading armies. Indeed, a large portion of the Arabs were pleased to assist with the ethnic cleansing of the Jews, and contributed to the Jihad effort by leaving Israel.

Although the Arab Jihad of 1948 failed, the invading Arab armies did, in fact, massacre scores of innocent Israeli citizens. At the same time, the Arabs who left Israel to facilitate the mass murder of Jews, were now again residents of their original Arab countries. To advance the upcoming Arab battle for world sympathy, their Arab brothers dubbed the new arrivals as "refugees," although it can be hardly said that one who returns to his historical homeland and reunites with his brothers, is a refugee at all.

Nonetheless, the Arabs who voluntary left Israel were forced to live as outcasts in their own Arab lands to better play to the cameras and to the sympathies of misguided Westerners. In Arab countries, yet another use was made of these cosmetic "refugees," which was to fan the flames of hatred in Arab society in an effort to divert the hatred of the Arab masses towards Israel and away from the true cause of their misery - their brutal and corrupt Arab dictators.

The following is a collection of historical quotations relating to the Arab refugees, collected by Moshe Kohn. With these quotes, the Arabs tell the story of the origin of the Palestinian refugees in their own words:

ON APRIL 23, 1948 Jamal Husseini, acting chairman of the Palestine ArabHigher Committee (AHC), told the UN Security Council: "The Arabs did notwant to submit to a truce ... They preferred to abandon their homes,belongings and everything they possessed."
ON SEPTEMBER 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, secretary of the AHC, as saying: "The fact that there are those refugees isthe direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposingpartition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously..."
ON JUNE 8, 1951, Habib Issa, secretary-general of the Arab League, wrote in the New York Lebanese daily al-Hoda that in 1948, Azzam Pasha, then League secretary, had "assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade ... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property, and to stay temporarily in neighbouring fraternal states."
IN THE MARCH 1976 issue of Falastin a-Thaura, then the official journal of the Beirut-based PLO, Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen"), PLO spokesman, wrote: "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."
ON APRIL 9, 1953, the Jordanian daily al-Urdun quoted a refugee, Yunes Ahmed Assad, formerly of Deir Yassin, as saying: "For the flight and fall of the other villages, it is our leaders who are responsible, because of the dissemination of rumours exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... they instilled fear and terror into the hearts of the Arabs of Palestine until they fled, leaving their homes and property to the enemy."
ANOTHER refugee told the Jordanian daily a-Difaa on September 6, 1954: "The Arab governments told us, 'Get out so that we can get in.' So we got out, but they did not get in."
THE JORDANIAN daily Falastin wrote on February 19, 1949: "The Arab states... encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies."
ON OCTOBER 2, 1948, the London Economist reported, in an eyewitness account of the flight of Haifa's Arabs: "There is little doubt that the most potent of the factors [in the flight] were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit ... And it was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
THE PRIME Minister of Syria in 1948, Khaled al-Azem, in his memoirs, published in 1973, listed what he thought were the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948: " ... the fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and leave for the bordering Arab countries ... We brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees bycalling on them and pleading with them to leave their land."
"FOLLOWING a visit to refugees in Gaza, a British diplomat reported the following: 'But while they express no bitterness against the Jews...they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states: 'We know who our enemies are,' they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes."

British Foreign Office Document #371/75342/XC/A/4991 [From "Revising or Devising Israel's History" by Prof. Shlomo Slonim in Jewish Action, Summer 5760/2000, Vol. 60 #4]

 

[bigbadjohn45]

WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS?
WHAT AND WHERE IS PALESTINE?


Rockwell Lazareth


These and other questions will be addressed more fully as you go through this website. However, there is a preliminary historical fact that must be established now. There has never been a civilization or a nation referred to as "Palestine" and the very notion of a "Palestinian Arab nation" having ancient attachments to the Holy Land going back to time immemorial is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated upon the world! There is not, nor has there ever been, a distinct "Palestinian" culture or language. Further, there has never been a Palestinian state governed BY Arab Palestinians in history, nor was there ever a serious Arab-Palestinian national movement until 1964... three years BEFORE the Arabs of "Palestine" lost the "West Bank" and Gaza as a result of losing the 1967 Six-Day War (which the Arabs started).


Before the 1967 war, the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) primary goal was to destroy Israel. Post-1967, their goal became two-tracked: Either (1) destroy Israel outright (the same pre-1967 goal) or (2) the creation of an Arab-Palestinian state to be used as a launching pad from which to destroy Israel. Different strategies - same ultimate goal... a state not along side Israel, but IN PLACE OF Israel. It's really that simple!


Israel became a nation in 1312B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam! Seven hundred and twenty-six years later in 586 B.C. these first ancient Jews in the Land of Israel [Judea] were overrun and its First Jewish Temple (on Jerusalem's Old City Temple Mount) was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of ancient Babylon. Many of the Jews were killed or expelled; however many were allowed to remain. These Jews along with their progeny and other Jews who would resettle over the next 500 years, rebuilt the Nation of Israel and also a Second Temple upon the Temple Mount. Thus the claim that Jews suddenly appeared fifty years ago right after the Holocaust and drove out the Arabs is preposterous!


Then in 70 A.D. (nearly 2000 years ago), it was the Roman Empire's turn to march through ancient Israel and destroy the SECOND Jewish Temple, slaughtering or driving out much of its Jewish population. Many Jews left on their own because conditions for life were made unbearable in many respects... yet thousands upon thousands stayed and rebelled on for centuries in order to once again rebuilt a Jewish Nation in this Holy Land.


Over the next 2,000 years various Peoples, Religions and Empires marched through Jerusalem, Israel's ancient capital. None bothered, nor were they in the least bit inclined, to build a Nation of their own. The region was successively ruled by the Greeks, Maccabeans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Egyptians, Crusaders, Mamelukes and finally the Ottoman Turks who indifferently governed the backward, neglected territory from the 16th century until the British drove them out during World War I (1914-18). It must be noted that in 636 A.D., when the Arabs marauders came to the land and uprooted even more of its Jews, they did not form any Arab nation there... and certainly not a "Palestinian" nation. They were simply "Arabs" who, as did others before them, moved into a geo-political area called "Palestine!" And remember this one fact... it was not the Jews who "usurped" (a favorite word from the Arab propagandists) the land from the Arabs. If anything, it was the Arabs in 636A.D. who overran and stole it from the Jews!


In Conclusion: No nation, other than the ancient nation of Israel and later again in 1948 with the rebirth of the Nation of Israel, has ever ruled as a sovereign national entity on this land. A mighty Jewish empire extended over this entire area before the Arabs and their Islam were even born! The Jewish People have one of the most legitimate Birth Certificates of any nations in the world. And if you want to talk religion, fine. G-d GAVE the Land of Israel to the Jewish People. And G-d does nothing by accident!


"PALESTINE?"


The term "Palestine" came from the name that the conquering Roman Empire gave the ancient Land of Israel in an attempt to obliterate and de-legitimize the Jewish presence in the Holy Land. The Roman Procurator in charge of the Judean-Israel territories was so angry at the Jews for revolting that he called for his historians and asked them who were the worst enemies of the Jews in their past history. The scribes said, 'the Philistines." So, the Procurator declared that Land of Israel would from then on be called "Philistia" [further bastardized into "Palaistina"] to dishonor the Jews and obliterate their history. Hence the name "Palestine." One more thing. Very often one hears the revisionists and propagandists finding ancient historical links between the "Philistines" and the Arab "Palestinians." There is no truth to this claim! The Philistines were one of a number of Sea Peoples who reached the eastern Mediterranean region approximately 1250-1100B.C. They were actually an amalgamation of various ethnic groups, primarily of Aegean and south-east European origin [Greece, Crete and Western Turkey] ... but surely not of Arabian origin! These Philistines were not Arab... and neither was Goliath! The Arabs of "Palestine" are just that... Arabs! And these Arabs of "Palestine" have about as much historical roots to the ancient Philistines as Yasser Arafat has to the Eskimos!


If anything, the name "Palestine" was associated with Jews. In the years leading up to the rebirth of Israel in 1948, those who spoke of "Palestinians" were nearly always referring to the region's Jewish residents. In fact, Arab leaders rejected the notion of a unique "Palestinian Arab" identity, insisting that Palestine was merely a part of "Greater Syria."


THE RETURN TO ZION


The Land of Israel was never devoid of Jews, although at times, only in the tens of thousands. This was because the land was virtually uninhabitable when the Jews once again began their God-given right AND duty to return en masse to the land of their forefathers (the Zionist Movement) in the 1880s. The silly rhetoric about a massive Arab presence being overrun by "invading Jews" is quickly dispelled by Mark Twain, who visited the area in 1867. From his book, "The Innocents Abroad"... "A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent mournful expanse.... a desolation.... we never saw a human being on the whole route.... hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."


1880's


Palestine's early Jewish Zionists were idealistic pioneers who arrived in pre-state Israel with every intention of living in peace alongside their Arab neighbors and upgrading the quality of life for all of the land's inhabitants. The vast majority of Arabs came to the area after these early Zionists pioneers began to drain the malaria-infested swamps and rebuild the land! In doing so, these Jews created the economic opportunities and medical availabilities which attracted Arabs from both surrounding territories and far-away lands! In fact, over 90% of the Arabs migrated there within the last one hundred years. Most of the so-called "Palestinians" are in fact interlopers and squatters from Syria - and others places - mostly in the 1920s and 1930s who simply took possession of pieces of land in Israel. So much for their unfounded claims that they have been there since "time immemorial!"


Yet while the returning Jews were highly motivated to restore the land, the Arabs seethed with envy and hatred because they lacked both the leadership to inspire or motivate them for they were in fact historical strangers to this land! Unlike the Jews, these Arabs who immigrated there had no ancient attachments or historical memories to this homeland ... this ancient Land of the Jews!


In Conclusion: There Was No "Arab Palestinian" history before the Arabs created one somewhat after 1948 but especially after the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War! Archeological sites to this very day continue to yield artifacts with Hebrew writing, not some fictitious "Palestinian" or Arabic text! The so-called "Palestinian" Arabs were simply then, as they are now, Arabs no different culturally, historically or ethnically from other Arabs living in any other of the 24 Arab countries from which they emigrated and came into "Palestine!" Had the Chinese come to the area, they too would be called "Palestinians!" And had not the Arabs continued to brainwash generation upon generation into believing this HISTORICAL HOGWASH about some ancient "Arab Palestinian" ties to the Holy Land, most could have gotten themselves a real life by now with much less bloodshed and suffering for everyone concerned!


GREED, PRIDE, ENVY!


The Arabs of today controls 24 nations... 99½ percent of the ENTIRE Middle East land mass while Israel occupies only a 1/2 of 1 percent speck on this same map. But that's still too much land for the Arabs to spare. They want it all. As they shout out, "We will fight to our last drop of blood for for every last grain of sand!" And that is ultimately what all the fighting is about today. And no matter how many land concessions the Israelis might make for "peace," it will never be enough! Any peace treaty between Israel and the Arab world are ultimately meaningless. Even the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties are holding on by a single thread and if you were to read their government-controlled newspapers you'd think they were still at war with Israel!


PEACE IS IMPOSSIBLE!
-The Death of Compromise-
There's No More "Middle" in the Middle East


From the moment the Jewish People re-established sovereignty in their ancient homeland, they sought genuine peace with all of their neighbors. Unfortunately, their neighbors did not wish to share a peaceful existence with the Jews. They, like Bin Ladin, felt that they had a religious obligation to destroy the non-Muslim/Arab Jewish State... and all non-Moslem governments in the world. The Arab campaign against Israel is rooted not in any negotiable grievances but in a basic opposition to the very existence of Jewish sovereignty in THEIR Middle East! The ultimate intent of the Arabs is to separate out Judaism from Israel... and then to separate Israel from the face of the Earth.


The Question of Jerusalem
And the Temple Mount


For over 3,300 years of history, Jerusalem (founded by King David) has been a capitol city for only the Jewish People. Jews have always lived in Jerusalem, except when they were massacred or driven out. There has, however, been a nearly unbroken Jewish presence in Jerusalem for the past 1,600 years. And since the early 1800's, the population of Jerusalem has been predominantly Jewish. Even when the Jordanians captured and occupied Jerusalem from 1948-67, they (the Jordanians) never sought to change it to their capital (replacing Amman) nor make it the capital of any "Arab Palestinian" people. In fact, Arab leaders from other Arab countries hardly ever bothered to visit Jerusalem! Only to the Jews has Jerusalem ever held special meaning!


Another myth deals with the issue of Jerusalem and its Temple Mount. The myth is that Jerusalem is really an Arab city and that it is a central focus of Islam. The truth is that the Arabs expressed very limited interest in the Temple Mount before 1967. Besides, Mecca and Medina (both in Saudi Arabia) are Islam's holiest cities!


One more thing about Jerusalem in general and its Temple Mount in particular. Jerusalem appears in the Jewish Bible 669 times and Zion (which usually means Jerusalem, sometimes the Land of Israel) 154 times, or 823 times in all. The Christian Bible mentions Jerusalem 154 times and Zion 7 times. Islam's Holy(?) Koran mentions Mecca hundreds of times. It mentions Medina countless times. It never mentions Jerusalem and with good reason. There is no historical evidence to suggest Mohammad ever visited Jerusalem! And if he did visit Jerusalem, it could not have been until 6 years after his death. Therefore, the notion that Mohammed ascended to Heaven from a rock in Jerusalem (today's Dome of the Rock) is even more ridiculous!


From 1948 to 1967, when East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were under Jordanian rule, they were ignored by the Arab world. No Arab leader ever paid a visit, not even to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque or the Dome of the Rock (both located on the JEWISH Temple Mount). Even the Arabs of "Palestine" placed so low a priority on Jerusalem that the PLO's founding charter, the Palestinian National Covenant of 1964, made no reference whatsoever to it. Only when the Jews recaptured it after the 1967 "Six Day War" (initiated by the Arabs) did the Arab world SUDDENLY grow very passionate about Jerusalem!


In truth, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosques are just but two of hundreds of thousands of Muslim mosques around the world. Except for these two minor mosques, Jerusalem itself has no major Islamic significance. In fact, far more Christian shrines are in Jerusalem than Muslim ones!


When a Jew prays from anywhere in the world, he faces the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. When a Moslem prays, even while IN Jerusalem, he faces Mecca (in Saudi Arabia). So in many cases, even when a Moslem is in Jerusalem, his "hind quarters" are facing these two Jerusalem mosques! What does THIS tell you! And when Islamic suicide bombers try to take apart Jerusalem piece by piece, what does THAT tell you!


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This post was edited on 3/18 10:14 AM by bigbadjohn45