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It will be Bibi — progressive American Jews hardest hit

It will be Bibi — progressive American Jews hardest hit

Hordes of critics who have another country.

The talk of forming a ruling coalition is over — at latest count, the Likud-led coalition has 67 Knesset seats (61 needed for majority) pledged to it, as The Times of Israel reports this morning:

With [Avigdor] Liberman’s (unsurprising) endorsement, Prime Minister Netanyahu has 67 MKs, representing six parties (Likud, Jewish Home, Kulanu, Shas, UTJ and Yisrael Beytenu), while Isaac Herzog wins only the endorsement of his own party.

The Joint (Arab) List and Yesh Atid did not recommend any of the candidates.

Meretz, yet to meet the president, is likely to recommend Herzog, but by then it would be a purely technical move, since Netanyahu already has a clear majority.

Liberman says he want the defense portfolio, a demand Netanyahu is likely to reject.

Shmuel Rosner has another excellent column taking progressive American Jews to task for their disappointment, American Jews are disappointed with Israel’s election? Tough luck:

This happens every time the Israeli electorate decides to elect a government that is right of center….

When Ariel Sharon was elected in 2002, The Guardian reported that “Sharon divides world’s Jews”. When PM Ehud Olmert visited President Bush in the White House in 2006, the Jewish Forward editorialized that “for American Jews, this was one visit by an Israeli prime minister that drove home the distance between the two great Jewish communities, not their closeness”.

Today, the electoral victory of Binyamin Netanyahu is igniting headlines and editorials with the same tone. Jews dislike the fact that he was elected, and they dislike his statements and actions. Once again, talk of “distance” is the talk of the Jewish town….

Many of the critics have been focusing on two miserable statements made by Netanyahu as they express their anger. As I already wrote more than once, I agree that both statements, the one about a Palestinian State and the one about the Arab Israelis, were unnecessary.

But I also wrote that these statements serve as an excuse – and are not the reason – for the Obama administration’s decision to reexamine its relations with Israel’s government. And the same is true for many, if not most, of the hordes of Jewish American critics.

American friends and critics, at least be sincere about this: You are not angry with two unfortunate statements – you are angry because Netanyahu managed to squeeze yet another electoral victory. You were angry with him before the election. You wanted him gone. And Israelis didn’t really care.

Flash back to an earlier Rosner column last summer, about which I wrote, when the same hordes of progressive American Jews were ready to throw Israel overboard because of the Gaza conflict, Israel’s Fair-Weather Fans:

Clearly, these critics of Israel’s behavior believe that Israelis themselves would be safer if the country adopted their prescribed liberal policies. That might be true, but it makes no difference.

On matters of life and death, war and peace, Israelis are going to make their own decisions. If they lose the support of some liberal Jews over it, that would be regrettable, but so be it.

Israel will have to learn to survive without that support, and I’m certain it will.

So am I, though there will be a lot of sound and fury in the meantime.

Rosner in his earlier column referenced this Israeli song, I have no other country, noting that American Jews do have another country, unlike Israelis:

The Israeli song “Ein Li Eretz Acheret” is a curious tune. “I have no other country,” go the lyrics, “even if my land is on fire.”

It’s hard to find a Jewish Israeli who doesn’t identify with it. Lefty Israelis interpret it as a protest song. It was sung at demonstrations against the 1982 Lebanon War and vigils following the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Israelis on the right interpret it as a patriotic song about attachment to the land; they sang it after terrorist attacks and during the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

I was reminded of the song in recent days as I read a string of articles by smart, savvy, knowledgeable, non-Israeli Jews, who say that the brutal war in Gaza has made them question their Zionism.

What unites these writers, of course, is that all of them do have another country. And that’s why, when push comes to shove, the Israeli government doesn’t — and shouldn’t — listen to them….

[English lyrics here.]

I have no other country
even if my land is aflame
Just a word in Hebrew
pierces my veins and my soul –
With a painful body, with a hungry heart,
Here is my home.

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Comments

legacyrepublican | March 23, 2015 at 10:22 am

Wonderful news. Praying for the peace of Jerusalem and for blessings on their Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Somebody needs to remind our Nobel-winning black messiah that “elections have consequences” … LOL!

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/03/22/bedouin-arab-village-is-most-pro-bibi-town-in-israel/

Interesting lil’ story you’ll NEVER hear about from any Mushroom Media outlet.

I’d give anything to hear Bibi utter just two familiar words to Obama: “I won.”

It’s faux outrage over hardball comments not uncommon in the last moments of a tough race.

Where is their outrage over the vitriol spewed so often by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, etc.?

Progressive Jews have ‘reformed’ themselves out of Judaism, and into a liberal cult whose beliefs are whatever Rabbi CNN tells them to believe that day. They often ‘observe’ Jewish tradition, but it’s merely a reason for a party.

In other words, progressive American Jews are ‘Jews’ like Barack Obama is ‘American.’

The irony is that in the eyes of the world’s Jew-haters, progressive Jews are just as valuable a target for killing as as any other Jew.

Being progressive Jews are facilitating murder of other Jews with their idiocy, it’d only be polite of them if they went first.

MaggotAtBroadAndWall | March 23, 2015 at 2:12 pm

From Rosner’s column:

“Why presuppose that it is the Israeli voters that need to change their outlook to win favor with American Jews – and not conclude that it is American Jews that need to change their outlook to win favor with Israeli Jews?”

Exactly. The majority of Israeli Jews are right leaning in their voting. A significant minority of American Jews are right leaning. Add the right leaning Israelis to the right leaning American Jewish population and it is the American left leaning Jews who are out of step with the Jewish mainstream. Which isn’t to say they need to change their views. But it doesn’t make sense for a minority to impose its view onto the majority.

That would be apartheid-like.

Carol Herman | March 23, 2015 at 7:11 pm

Olmert was an accidental choice. Arik Sharon didn’t want to put Shimon Peres in “seat #2.” Olmert was no Teddy Kolleck (sp?). But had been a mayor of Jerusalem. (He was a known graft taker. But that’s not unusual in politics.)

So, Sharon sat Olmert in Seat #2. (He didn’t give him any portfolios.) And, then, Arik Sharon stroked. While Shimon Peres has been sidelined into the presidency. Which, in Israel, is strictly a ceremonial job. (Katsav was booted.)

That Bibi now has enough ministers to form a government is good news. Livni’s gone. And, whatever portfolios Bibi hands out, it won’t be made because of demands from the press. (Bibi’s win was very handsome!)

Herzog will be a flash in the pan. And, he can sit in the opposition, where vapid Lapid will outmaneuver him into whatever spotlight exists.

Who knows? Maybe, obama will get an ulcer? Maybe, he can double-up on how many packs of cigarettes he smokes a day? While his wife is in Japan and he doesn’t miss her.

Bibi knows obama is a lame duck. And, only if he can, will he poke him with a stick! Today, Israel sent Dermer back to DC. Just in case obama’s arse wasn’t frosted enough.

At first i thought these liberal Jews should have to LIVE in Israel, but then i realized that they have a death wish, they are inviting another holocaust. If they actually had the votes instead of the money they made in America they would take the sane people with them for a suicide venture.

David R. Graham | March 23, 2015 at 9:34 pm

In Spain/Iberia in the day, Jews, Muslims and Christians intermarried freely. No other European country had that phenomenon. Hear it/see it in Flamenco music and dance. Isn’t Bibi Sephardi? Don’t Ashkenazis, in general, regard Sephardis as second-raters? And Sephardis regard Ashkenzis, in general, as humorless stand-alones/separatists? Absent the Sephardi Mendelssohn we would not have the music of J. S. Bach. I am happy for Bibi. I think he is a good man.

    Absent the Sephardi Mendelssohn we would not have the music of J. S. Bach.

    I realize the topic here is Jews, Politics and Israel but I’d love to hear your explanation for the above, since J.S. Bach died before Mendelssohn was born.

    Bibi is definitely not Sephardi. I don’t know where you might have got that impression from.

    Re your question “Don’t Ashkenazis, in general, regard Sephardis as second-raters? And Sephardis regard Ashkenzis, in general, as humorless stand-alones/separatists?

    That might have been true a generation ago, but not any more. The “intermarriage” rate between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Israel has become great enough to blur the ethnic lines and create a new generation of “Israeli Jews” proud of their mixed heritage. I count my own family in this mixing, and it is a great blessing.