Dov Fischer
How could a “National Unity” government exclude the elected representatives of 516,470 Israelis who comprise 10.84 percent of the nation’s voting population? Moreover, as among Jewish voters, they comprise more than 12 percent — more than Gantz’s National Union (432,482). How closed-minded and anti-democratic Lapid’s obscene demand is!
Israel can do fine with a long-overdue Lapidectomy. Leave him in the opposition when everyone else around him grasps that it is a time for unity. His party’s name, “Yesh Atid,” means “There is a Future,” but his time is past.
Hamas-ISIS does not need to be described here. Enough ink has been devoted to its abhorrent evil on Shmini Atzeret 5784. In my lexicon, they are not (i) the “enemy,” and frankly they are not even (ii) “terrorists.” Rather, they are (iii) subhumans, and the time is long overdue for those beasts of prey to be “put down” whether by veterinarians or Tzahal. No more half measures. And any Gaza resident who gets in the way, accidentally or by Hamas-ISIS design as a human shield, becomes collateral damage. Sorry.
Hamas-ISIS did not mean to do so, but they saved Israel even as they brought forth unspeakable catastrophe. If more Jews on his Left had been smarter than Lapid, they would have understood that. How stupid, thinking no one around them was watching them tear Israel apart with their 27 million shekel, $100,000-plus weekly chaos in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, thinking they were acting in a vacuum. Iran wasn’t watching? Putin? Islamic Jihad? They were like little children who play with their parents by covering their little eyes with their little hands and thinking that, “Since my eyes are covered and I cannot see Mommy, that means Mommy cannot see me.”
But Mommy can. And so can Nasrallah. And so can Supreme Leader Khamenei. And so can Ismail Haniyeh. And Mohammed Deif.
They all can see. They see Lapid dilapidating Israeli unity. They see the brilliant Shikma (or is it Shiksa?) Bressler, an expert in radiation detectors and particle physics, tearing Israel into particles, blind to all the Israel haters busy detecting the toxic radiation she emits.
For forty weeks, they rioted at Yarkon Highway, while the police failed to do what police in America do when people block the streets: they arrest them. I marched for Soviet Jewry when I was in my college years half a century ago. We marched to East 67th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan, at the face of the Soviet Union consulate and embassy (technically called a “mission”) to the United Nations.
When we got too close to the building or blocked traffic, the police pushed us back. When we refused to be pushed back, they arrested us. That’s how I got arrested for Soviet Jewry. Many, many times. That is what happens when you break the law, even peacefully with civil disobedience. Certainly, if you wear orange and protest that expelling 8,500 Jews from their homes and abandoning Gush Katif and all of Gaza to Arab Muslims is planting the seeds of Shmini Atzeret - 7 October 5784.
But rioting leftists in Israel do not get arrested.
People who block traffic in Western democracies (Deh-Mo-Kraht-Yah, Deh-Mo-Kraht-Yah) get locked up. That substantially preserves civility. I could not afford the luxury of getting arrested too often. I had intensive reading assignments, termpapers due, exams coming up, second-run Mel Brooks movies to see. So I became a rav, a law professor, and a columnist. If Tel Aviv had a competent police chief instead of a Keystone Cop, Yarkon would have been cleared in less than an hour each time, with hundreds arrested. Instead, it mirrored George Soros District Attorneys of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco: unbridled chaos in cahoots with the Lapids and Shikmas. Those who would murder Jews watched Kan 11, Keshet 12, and Reshet 13 just like all of us — and took notes. Then reservists started refusing to report, although many of those seruvniks actually were too infirm to walk even out of their homes to the Gett or Yango cab.
How many of the reservists killed by Hamas-ISIS this week were people who had failed to report when called to train and remain at peak performance? How many had gotten just a bit rusty, had lost just a step, getting into position and readying to pull their triggers just a moment later than if they were freshly re-trained?
I wrote constantly these past 40 weeks that all the reservist refusals were bluff. Despite their self-righteous bluster and virtue signaling, they never were going to abandon the country and, instead, would be flying back from Thailand vacations and India yogi self-actualizations at the first hint of war. I wrote frequently that, on Judgment Day, they would be back in uniform at the front, only rustier in the face of deathly conflict, inadequately reconditioned. If only all those pollsters who publish ten polls a day to induce moderate conservatives to turn Left would survey how many soldiers who died this week had refused to attend refresher training when called. Shikma’s Angels.
This catastrophe reached its nethermost debacle when Judaism haters broke up a public Yom Kippur service in Israel’s most populous city. That is something Stalin’s NKVD, and Khruschev’s and Breshnev’s KGB did. Likewise, Hitler and Goering did that. By Ne’ilah, the malcontents and depraved apostates had reached their nadir. Shikma’s Devils.
The disruption of Yom Kippur davening may have sealed the nation’s short-term fate, laying the foundation for the most horrific punishment and catastrophe, reminiscent of what happened to Jews when our ancestors tore each other apart during the Concubine of Givah era (Shoftim-Judges 19-21), and partly a catastrophe that saved Israel.
I wrote so often these past 40 weeks that there would not be a civil war, notwithstanding Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert provocations, and there will not be a third Churban that ends this Third Commonwealth. Readers would write in Comments or even in private correspondence that I am “too optimistic” when I assert point-blank that there will be no civil war. And I responded, again and again, “No, when I write there will be no civil war, I am not being optimistic. Rather, the late Chief Rabbi HaRav Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog averred there will be no Third Churban, so I am terribly concerned that G-d will punish so severely that, in short time, it will pull the society together and save the Third Commonwealth.
pNow that there is a “unity government,” contemlate the sacrifices in life and limb, in blood and fire and pillars of smoke, to make that happen and save a country tearing itself asunder on the world stage to entertain Thomas Friedman.
Unity will be fine without Lapid. Gantz, Eisenkot, Sa’ar, and their two sidekicks will get along with the coalition. In time, Avigdor Liberman may join. Lapid is irrelevant. After the war, though, there will be repercussions:
Polling will reflect widespread dissatisfaction with Bibi, although, as has been revealed, the IDF brass told him on Sukkot that Hamas was weakened and would not contemplate invading As long as he was perceived as irreplaceable to assuring security, he was forgiven the cigar-and-champagne hedonism, the bogus indictments, and the endless broken campaign promises and years of splits once-loyal associates like Liberman, Bennett, Shaked, Sa’ar, Elkin, and others. His wheedling out of his power-sharing deal with Gantz was good for the cause but especially shameful. Still, all was accepted as long as he assured the peace. And they too were at ault.
October 7 ended that, and this very probably will be his last term. He knows this and can weigh two possible ways to leave: (i) to “mow the lawn” one more time and go down in pathetic pathos like Golda and Dayan after Yom Kippur 1973. Or to robustly eradicate, annihilate, and exterminate Hamas-ISIS and thereby be remembered as having salvaged his and the IDF's “lawn mowing” blunderous strategy by boldly fixing things. Golda and Dayan lacked a “Plan B,” so exited in shame. If Bibi destroys Hamas-ISIS, both Gantz and he will take credit. The public will side with Gantz more, — even though Bibi knew to annihilate this time anyway.
The first three months after the extermination may see huge shifts in public support for Gantz and National Union, even though Gantz and the IDF brass are the main proponents of the containment policy that allowed Hamas to invade. Lapid’s divisiveness will cost him precious seats to Gantz, but he may scoop some votes from Meretz and Labor leftovers, having exposed how leftist he is, too.
One final thought here: Each and every poll the past nine months showing the Gantz-Lapid Left gaining and overtaking Likud has shown that the only way they ever can actually form a government is by including Mansour Abbas and his Muslim Brotherhood party. The Left never makes it to 61 (or even 58) without him. Contemplate Israel’s quagmire at this very moment if Mansour Abbas were holding the critical seats that could bring down the government amid a Gaza ground invasion. Abbas would have to do it to mollify his base. It would be catastrophic. There could be no annihilation, no ground invasion, and barely a “lawn mowing.” It would produce a cataclysmic debacle. Remember and do not forget that.
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Rav Fischer’s recent hour-long interview on a range of pressing contemporary Jewish issues, ranging from the “Palestine” Fraud to incorrigible Jewish leftists and their like-minded reform rabbis to the weakness of pro-Israel campus Jews who root their advocacy in Victimology instead of Jewish strength, can be found here. And his Zoom program for Israel in the Hamas Gaza War may be found on Youtube here.