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      The Eye of the Storm
      by Batya Medad
      A Unique Perspective by Batya Medad of Shiloh
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      Batya Medad made aliya from New York to Israel in 1970 and has been living in Shiloh since 1981. Recently she began organizing women's visits to Tel Shiloh for Psalms and prayers. (For more information, please email her.)  Batya is a newspaper and magazine columnist, a veteran jblogger and recently stopped EFL teaching.  She's also a wife, mother, grandmother, photographer and HolyLand hitchhiker, always seeing things from her own very unique perspective. For more of Batya's writings and photos, check out:

      Shiloh Musings

      And:

      me-ander


      Adar 1, 5769, 2/25/2009

      "How do you report ballot stuffing?"


      I posted this on Shiloh Musings a couple of days ago. Considering the subject, I was certain that it would make a splash, but it has been ignored. Now it's one thing if this was based on hearsay, but it isn't. I've heard the same stories from two people, first-person accounts.

      I thought the driver was going to lose control of the car. A voice from the backseat had piped up with the question. It was a big, crowded van, and I couldn't even see who was talking.

       Apparently, someone who had taken the call of Likud to supervise voting stations in Arab towns was troubled by the experience. There was obvious cheating by people with "non-standard" and multiple Identity Cards. The person talking was even offered a "tit for tat."

      "Let's go 50-50, your party and mine."

      The organizers of this operation didn't think it through. It ended up being more a smokescreen to protect the cheating. Only one person was sent to each location, and most of the police were Arabs. It was made clear that "cooperation" was pikuach nefesh, life preserving. Even worse, there was no post-election debriefing. A debriefing should have enabled the workers to report violations and help with all the bureaucracy and subsequent follow-up. For me this was deja vu, having heard a similar story about the previous Israeli Elections.

      People should be suspicious about the results of the polls in the Arab towns and cities. During Election Day the media kept reporting the quiet, how few people were seen going into vote. But when the results were counted, the percentage was surprisingly high. The media can't imagine why. Can you?



      Shevat 29, 5769, 2/23/2009

      If The "Best Defense Is Offense," Where Are We?


      IMRA reports that this poster was banned by the University of Ottawa. Very nice, but what are we doing to promote the true situation here in Israel? At the recent Jerusalem Conference I attended a session which showed us how sophisticated and professionally the Arabs are using the media to promote their lies. We just don't rate in comparison.

      I'm just a blogger. I'm not a graphic artist. I'm an amateur in the media world. Our hasbara, information campaign must be moved up a hundred notches.



      Shevat 26, 5769, 2/20/2009

      End of the Suspense, Sort Of


      Does This Make You Feel Better?

      It’s Final: Peres Entrusts Netanyahu with Forming a Government
      And we also must pray that G-d will gift our political leaders with wisdom.
       

      Honestly, I don't. I don't want Bibi as Centrist.

      I don't want Left nor Center as Israeli Prime Minister. I don't want the incompetent opportunists in Kadima either.

      I wish that the National Union had gotten lots more seats, so that Bibi would really need them. As is Moledet's Uri Bank just missed getting in. Ketzeleh campaigned well, but will he be effective as an MK?

      Ketzeleh signed an agreement that if he's a minister he'd resign from the Knesset to give Bank the seat. That would be great, because it would increase the power of Ichud Le'umi.

      It's minutes to Shabbat.

      We must pray for rain.

      And we also must pray that G-d will gift our political leaders with wisdom.



      Shevat 23, 5769, 2/17/2009

      Caveat Emptor! Buyer Beware!


      Who's Being Naive?


      Obama Naïveté at the U.N.   by Anne Bayefsky, has a very inaccurate title.  I don't think that she believes Obama to be naive in his decision that America attend Durban II which is expected to be even more anti-Semitic/anti-Israel than the first one.
      "In a major foreign-policy decision taken over the weekend, President Obama has decided to legitimize the United Nations’s “anti-racism” forum known as Durban II. State Department officials announced in a press release buried on Saturday, that starting today the United States will attend for the first time the preparatory meetings of this controversial U.N. conference. The “Durban Review Conference,” scheduled for April in Geneva, is the progenitor of the anti-semitic hatefest that took place in South Africa in early September 2001....
      But the Durban Declaration asserts that Palestinians are victims of Israeli racism. This is also the only country-specific accusation in a document purporting to address international racism and xenophobia. Regardless of the quantity of new vitriol in Durban II's final product, therefore, participation legitimizes the mantra of Israeli racism. What is new is that the new president of the United States doesn’t care about the U.N.’s reincarnation of ‘Zionism is racism’.The position is not only repugnant, but naïve. Evidently, American officials believe that an African-American president can climb into a U.N. anti-racism ring, throw his weight around, and the 56 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference will roll over and play dead. Or hard-liners like Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand, and developing countries like South Africa, will jump on a U.S.-led bandwagon...
      In truth, this Obama trip to the U.N. represents an abandonment of Israel. All his campaign promises to the contrary, sacrificing Israel for the sake of currying favor with others — demagogues included — is clearly at the top of the new president’s agenda.
      Israel asked Obama not to attend. Canada also pulled out of Durban II and expected American support. Instead, today’s American foreign policy leaves America’s closest ally and its biggest trading partner out in the cold.The speed at which President Obama is selling off American assets is breathtaking. The speed at which he is selling them out is even faster."
      I wonder if the Israeli movers and shakers, politicians and media have a clue as to Obama's real feelings towards Israel, our security and our legitimacy.As Israeli politicians wiggle and wrangle, trying to make deals, they're not paying attention to what's happening in the real world.

      The loony Left which dominates our politics and controls our media are totally smitten by the Obama bug.  I wonder if they'll ever realized that there's nothing benign in Barack Hussein Obama.  He said what he needed to say to get elected, and now he'll do what he wants.


      Shevat 22, 5769, 2/16/2009

      The Will of The People


      I have no way of knowing what's happening behid the scenes in the coalition negotiations, but my kishkes (gut feeling) tells me that it's no good.

      Following is a post from Shiloh Musings.


      The media keeps telling us that because Kadima got a few more votes, equaling one more Knesset seat than the Likud, it means that the people chose Tsippi Livni to be the next Prime Minister of Israel.


      The Israeli political system is not all that simplistic.  We have neither a two nor a three party "situation."  These big "winners," in Kadima got less than 25% of the popular vote!


      That is the truth.  There are one-hundred and twenty, yes 120, Knesset seats, so you need thirty to have one quarter of the Knesset.  And a majority, more than half, means a coalition of more than sixty.  Whether 27 or 28, that means that the "ruling party" will be less than half of the coalition.

      I'll start a new paragraph to give you time to digest it.

      The Israeli media is working overtime to promote little (she's tall in body, but obviously short in leadership qualities) Tsippi.  It's rather pathetic how hard the media has to struggle to make her seem like Prime Minister material.


      Bibi is more intelligent and has more grass-roots support, but he hasn't shown true leadership.  His disgusting maneuver to change the Likud primary results made him look like a mean cheat, not a true worthy leader.


      So, we're stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.


      I find this Jerusalem Post survey very revealing.  Of course, the participating public was readers of the Jerusalem Post.


      Forming a new government won't be easy for either party, and if they manage something, it will be so top heavy and expensive with every MK and his/her mother as a Minister or Assistant Minister, "Volvos & driver plus."

      And if a government isn't formed, then we're stuck with Olmert for even longer, and we'll need new elections, which may have even less clear results.

      I've been taking a course in Matan about our ancient prophets, and it's horrifying to see the paralells today, thousands of years later. Hashem Ya'azor, G-d, please help us.