New Elections

Benny Gantz was not able to form a coalition in order to become prime minister of Israel today, and so the mandate is turned back to the president, which means Israel will hold another round of elections in a few months. Evidently, Benjamin Netanyahu invited Gantz to form a unity government but was rebuffed.

It has been reported that Gantz has been urged to invite Arab elements into a government by Yair Lapid, a Netanyahu political foe.

Through all this, Avigdor Liberman has taken on the role of “kingmaker” in Israel, and his dislike of religious parties has brought the country to this point, this stalemate. After a decade in office, Netanyahu has even more enemies than he did in the late 90s.

It had been rumored that Liberman would be willing to bring in Arab MKs to join a Gantz-led government. However, according to the Jerusalem Post:

“It became impossible for Gantz to form a government when Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman ruled out helping to establish a minority government backed by the Joint List. Liberman called the faction of four Arab parties a ‘fifth column’ and said he never intended to cooperate with its MKs.

“’We won’t enter a government backed directly or indirectly by the Joint List,’ Liberman said.”

Now comes an intriguing ingredient into this stew. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the earthquake statement that the United States will no longer consider the Israeli communities in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) are illegal. That had been the long-standing view of American political leadership for 40 years, since the presidency of the odious Jimmy Carter.

This has prompted Netanyahu to approve an annexation bill in the Knesset, establishing long-term Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley. This is also a bombshell announcement, and we can hope that this will become established fact.

Now, all this plays a role in Bible prophecy, of course. As I constantly say, all we can is look at what the Bible says is coming and be certain that it will happen. Big Picture stuff.

This means that no matter what is happening geopolitically at any given time, we must keep our eyes on the Prize: the fulfillment of prophecy in the future.

I do not believe in saying that things that are happening right now are certainly going to result in an outcome in the immediate or even near future. We can know the general era.

Point being, it appears that the U.S. is becoming a catalyst in moving things toward conditions in which Israel will be hated even more by the international community. Specifically, anything that buttresses Israel’s argument that the Jewish state “owns” the land will be met with resistance globally.

Thus we can see how the current situation might play into a coming coalition against Israel. We just don’t know exactly when they will unfold.

For the moment though, huge things are happening in Israel, and I am proud of my president for taking unprecedented steps to bolster Israel.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

 

Propaganda from Gaza

It’s interesting, watching even “conservative” news sources spin what’s coming out of Gaza.

“Thuh” story will always be that Arab terrorists, ruling from Gaza after the Israeli pullout in 2005, are attempting to murder Israelis by firing hundreds of rockets.

We live in a fallen world, and one of the outcomes of the actions of Gaza’s Murder, Inc. is the deaths of Arabs, as well. Israel has no choice but to retaliate. The killers in Gaza know this and continue to use human shields, inviting violence from the Israelis.

We already know that much of world leadership hates Israel and Jews. Media hate them. So the Gazan crime bosses use that. They help the CNNs of the world craft a story that says Israel is committing war crimes if civilians die.

About 350 rockets have been fired; the Iron Dome has stopped 90 percent of them, with about 60 percent falling in open areas. What is somewhat different here is that Islamic Jihad is firing the rockets, not Hamas. Although the arch terror group has said it can get involved.

Why not? The world will stand by as Jews are in harm’s way.

Now, we hear that a certain number of Palestinians were killed. Media (and sadly, not a small number of “evangelical” leaders) claim these were 21 innocents. That is the perception. But according to the Meir Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Information Center:

“On November 13, 2019, the Palestinian ministry of health in the Gaza Strip reported 21 fatalities. An initial and partial examination conducted by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center of the names of ten of the Palestinians killed found that six were operatives of the PIJ’s military wing; three were operatives of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades/Nidal al-Amoudi Brigade (an organization that splintered from Fatah and is apparently participating in the rocket fire at Israel); and one was a Fatah operative.”

Huh. You mean that the real story is that a good number of those killed in Gaza are actually themselves murderers? Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews and Shane Claiborne won’t tell you that. They want you to think that the IDF literally targets sixth-graders.

Mediation efforts by Egypt and the comically ineffectual UN envoy Nikolay Mladenov are going nowhere. Islamic Jihad and Hamas know they have political cover. Media cover. Religious cover.

And here is a very interesting report from my friend Dexter Van Zile, with CAMERA (from March):

“Since when did Fox News start carrying water for terror groups in the Gaza Strip?

“It’s a strange question that must be asked in light of the short segment broadcast by the network on March 5, 2019. In the segment, Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst relays warnings from unnamed security analysts that a war could soon break out between Israel and ‘factions’ in Gaza Strip. The narrative that he offers to explain why war might happen places all the blame for the potential conflict on Israel.

“Yingst covers the story as if the ‘factions’ in question — Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — bear no responsibility for the tensions along the boundary between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

“He does this in a number of ways.

“First, he reports that, ‘Each week, thousands of Palestinians gather at the Israel-Gaza border to protest the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip,’ and that Israel has responded to these ‘protests’ with ‘tear gas and live ammunition.’ The way Yingst reports the story, it sounds and looks like Israel is arbitrarily gunning down peace protesters who pose no threat to Israeli security.

“Yingst fails to report that these protesters don’t just ‘protest’ the blockade, but have sought to break through the security barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip. He also fails to note that Hamas leaders have called on participants to invade Israel and murder civilians who live nearby.”

Dexter ends the piece with an intriguing question:

“Why is Yingst assisting in Hamas’s efforts to deceive the world about the purposes of the March of Return? And why is Fox News letting him?”

Why, indeed?

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com