Vengeance is the Lord’s

For 30 years, I’ve despised the fact that my own country played such a huge, negative role in establishing a sophisticated terror organization inside Israel’s “fort.” From the anti-Semitism of the pro-Arab U.S. State Department, to the mendacity of Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, America has been living on borrowed time with regard to how its treated Israel officially.

(My friend Bill Koenig’s compelling masterwork, Eye to Eye, chronicles in chilling detail just how much America’s propping-up of the Palestinian Authority has harmed our country in terms of natural disasters and economic disasters. It’s hard to argue with the research that every time we put pressure on Israel, trouble follows America.)

From the Fogel Family murders in 2011, to the maiming of countless Israelis, the West’s obsession with turning Yasser Arafat into a “statesman” has spelled disaster (history will boil over the absurdity of that mistake. Arafat was always a blood-soaked terrorist, from first to last. His 2004 death rid the world of a human gargoyle of epic proportions.)

Now Israel is in another round of violence, courtesy of the Palestinian Authority (really always the old PLO) and Hamas. Word came today that an Italian tourist was murdered on the beach at Tel Aviv(!), several others were injured, and two sisters were shot to death near an Israeli community west of Tel Aviv. At the beach, a terrorist rammed several tourists with his car and then shot the 33-year-old Italian. This outrage is unconscionable, yet it’s been going on for 30 years, since the (in)famous photo of Clinton on the White House lawn with Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin.

The Bush 41 team, right after the first Gulf War, decided it had enough political capital to blunder into a brokered peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Only six years before, Palestinian terrorists formed Hamas, in response to the “Occupation.” The First Intifada was a wave of Palestinian-led violence that created a “need” to bring the two parties to the negotiating table. Let’s be frank: coddling spoiled children leads to bad adults. Coddling terrorists leads to much more terrorism. People like this don’t reform on their own. The only thing terrorists really understand is their own pain.

From the moment outgoing PM Yair Lapid decided to incite violence by encouraging protests of Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming government, the Palestinians have sought to inflame the situation. This week Israeli police stormed the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City due to incitement. In a propaganda boost, the PA/PLO used this as a pretext to unleash terror. Hamas said that the murders in Israel this week are a “natural” outgrowth of “Israeli aggression and the Occupation.”

Scum.

From multiple fronts, Israel is attacked. Jordan has warned of “catastrophic consequences” if the police enter Al-Aksa again. Nice; good going, King Abdullah.

Today, six rockets were fired at the Golan Heights, so the Israelis struck sites in Syria.

I should say at this point that I have total confidence that Israel will put down this latest cycle of violence and I have no worries over that. Yet the escalation is troublesome. Think of it: rockets from Gaza in the south, rockets from Lebanon and Syria in the north, diplomatic threats from “friendly” Jordan. Netanyahu is earning his pay this week.

I think the most worrisome aspect of all this is the internal political war going on in Israel. Years of emboldening left-wing operatives, via help from the U.S. by Clinton and Obama, has created a dangerous situation. Israel has always been good about quelling violence from outside its borders but now the internal enemies are rising.

One day, God will put all this right. He will avenge the deaths of innocents.

I hope that day is soon and very soon.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

Devils in Israel

Readers of this column know better than I do the dangers Israel faces on many fronts. It is the internal foes that now present the gravest threat in some time. It is political forces that intend to pave the way for a military destruction of the Jewish state.

For some time, decades in fact, leftist politicians in Israel have imperiled their own country by seeking to appease the Arabs. From Yossi Beilin to Shimon Peres to now Yair Lapid, each has made dangerous compromises that defy explanation. Are they dupes, or part of some sinister plot? Until recently I would have chalked that last one up to conspiracy thinking, but now with globalists at the highest levels of American government harming our country in ways once thought unthinkable, I’m not so sure.

Once Lapid lost the elections to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud coalition (unquestionably strengthened in the last election with a healthy majority in the Knesset, he set out to undermine the incoming government.

Netanyahu’s attempt at “judicial reform” has met withering resistance. It’s so obvious the country needs to overhaul the corrupt system that allows leftist judges to effectively run things, one wonders why anyone would oppose it.

Oh, they say Netanyahu is doing this to erase his own corruption trial. Honestly, I’m sure he wishes he could. The “Trumped-up” charges (a more apt label I can hardly imagine) are identical to those efforts to remove a wildly popular former president in America. Netanyahu’s many enemies intend to see him gone one way or another.

He was forced to freeze judicial reform efforts due to protests around the country (although friends over there tell me media reports are vastly exaggerated). Now word comes that those efforts will resume after Passover.

Another particularly troubling effort from the Left involves opposition to incoming minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a strong right-wing Zionist intent on dismantling terrorist infrastructures.

Ben-Gvir, National Security Minister, is opposed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara over his desire to establish a National Guard that would take on violent enemies of the state.

Of course she does.

According to the Jerusalem Post:

“Baharav-Miara reportedly contended that there is a legal impediment in advancing the law, according to the National Security Ministry legal adviser. N12 reported that the legal difficulties were over the overlapping of duties between such a National Guard and the Israel Police.

“The ministry’s legal adviser also note that the proposal required establishing the National Guard’s legal status, its ability to indict and direct suspects into the judicial system, procedure for rights and duties for the officers, as well as a legal consulting arm. It was suggested that a committee be formed with the defense minister and other security officials to oversee these matters.”

I believe Gen-Gvir understands what’s going on:

“National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir attacked Baharav-Miara for her opposition to the National Guard plan, which he argued was needed to restore order in the streets. Ben-Gvir said that Baharav-Miara didn’t understand her role as attorney-general.”

You see, part of the violent opposition to the Netanyahu government is not just terrorists. It involves the opposition whipped-up by people like Lapid, whose hatred and jealousy of Netanyahu apparently knows no bounds.

“’Almost two years have passed since the [Operation] Guardian of the Walls events where we saw how the police didn’t succeed in responding quickly and smoothly, in those days it was clear why there is a need for a National Guard to deal with exactly the same problems,’ said Ben-Gvir. ‘There is no one to take care of the security in the Arab sector which is plagued by murders. Our wonderful police officers do as much as they can to provide security and service to citizens, but they are overloaded with work and unable to get to everything, every police officer who goes on duty has dozens of tasks, it’s crazy. That’s why we need the National Guard.’”

He says that national police leadership, because of ego, doesn’t want this new enforcement arm. Ben Gvir’s National Guard would go after illegal weapons shipments, crime wars, and “agricultural terrorism.” All areas left to fester in the past.

As Netanyahu continues to grapple with threats to his premiership, his ministers are also engaged in political combat with their peers. It’s hard to watch Israelis undermining their own country.

All the more reason for the good guys to win. The next months will be pivotal.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com