Month: May 2016

EAST BRUNSWICK – The right of Israelis to use the email server of their choice is recognized by the entire Democratic Party and is not up for debate, presidential candidate Hilary Clinton said yesterday at a campaign rally in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

“I am 100 percent pro-Israel when it comes to using email servers,” Clinton told the rally, in what observers said was an effort to reassure Jewish Democrats concerned about the possible email policies of a Clinton administration.

”I choose my own email server, my family chooses its own server and Israelis have the right not only to choose their own email server but to know that their right to do so will be protected by the United States government,” Clinton averred.

Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders was less categorical , however, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the United States “has got to respect the rights of the Palestinians to choose their own servers as well.”

Addressing concerns about a possible floor debate over the issue at the Philadelphia convention, Sanders said that he expects there to be “broad consensus within the Democratic convention that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to choose their own email servers.”

VIENNA – Austria’s far-right Freedom Party has acknowledged that its embrace of Israel during the recent presidential election took it too far to the right for most voters.

“I think the majority of the electorate was with us until just before the end,” losing presidential candidate Norbert Hofer told The Kibbitzer. “But we should have scaled back our support for Israel after Lieberman was nominated defense minister.”

“We may be on the radical right of European politics, but supporting a Netanyahu-Lieberman government was too extreme, even for our voters.”

University of Graz political scientist Prof. Carl-Heinrich Kern concurred that Hofer and the Freedom Party had overestimated the extremism of their own supporters.

“It’s one thing saying that you were present at an attempted terrorist attack in Jerusalem,” Kern said. “That makes you look macho, which is always a good tactic on the right.”

“But saying that visiting Jerusalem is a top foreign policy priority – just after Lieberman has been nominated to the defense post – was a goose-step too far.”

“Not even Europe’s neo-Nazi right wants to be seen as being associated with a Netanyahu-Lieberman government,” Kern concluded.

Israel’s opposition leader Isaac Herzog is expected to take a break from politics after being diagnosed yesterday with a borderline psychosis known as Credulous Personality Disorder.

As defined by the psychiatrists who examined Herzog at Israel’s Abarbanel Mental Health Center, Credulous Personality Disorder is a pattern of pervasive and excessive gullibility that causes the individual to accept without question claims unsupported by any credible evidence.

“In fact, Herzog seems to exhibit a sub-genre of CPD which we have never seen before,” said the facility’s chief psychiatrist Prof. Eitan Mapu. “At this point, we’re calling it Paranoid Gullibility Disorder.”

He define PGD as “CPD associated with a strong feeling of persecution for being gullible.”

Prof. Mapu said that diagnosing Herzog’s CPD had been quick and unanimous among the members of the team. “From the moment he came in, he was raving about Netanyahu agreeing to regional peace conferences, vetoes on settlement building and that sort of thing,” Mapu said.

“It’s axiomatic in the profession that anyone who believes anything Netanyahu says almost certainly has CPD.  So it was pretty straightforward.”

“The only thing that surprised us was the severity of Herzog’s CPD and the vehemence of the paranoia he presented.”

Prof. Mapu said the doctors had prescribed sedatives, rest and the total absence of all stress-inducing stimuli, in particular Shelly Yacimovich. “But if he doesn’t improve, we’ll have to commit him,” Mapu said.

The mooted appointment of former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman as defense minister in the Netanyahu government was warmly welcomed today by the leadership of ACIWEC (the Association of Corrupt Israeli Weapons Exporting Companies.)

“It is exactly what the country needed,” said ACIWEC chairman Nadav Alfon, lighting a Cohiba Esplendido cigar on the deck of his yacht in the Herzliya marina.

“Now we can start making real money without being hamstrung by dumb rules and regulations.”

Alfon added that he had already put his best man on a plane to South Sudan “to see if we can restart the civil war.”

A corruption case against Lieberman was closed due to lack of evidence in December 2012, after most of the witnesses either died or disappeared.

Dozens of members of his Yisrael Beiteinu were arrested in 2014 and 2015 in an ongoing corruption investigation

“Israel had $5.7 billion-worth of defense exports in 2015,” a prominent Lieberman associate told The Kibbitzer. “Imagine getting your hands on all that. It’s a dream come true.”

All Israelis travelling abroad over the summer will be provided with a free, pocket edition of the new high school civics text book, The Kibbitzer has learned.

Titled “To Be Citizens of Israel Abroad,” and small enough to fit into a pocket, the  travelers’ edition is a joint initiative between the Prime Minister’s Office, the Education Ministry and the Jewish Agency.

“Not only will it provide healthy reading while sitting in a plane or lying on the beach, but it will help Israelis put the things they see into perspective,” Education Minister Naftali Bennett told The Kibbitzer in an exclusive interview.”

“For instance, in Rome they’ll be able to understand that the Coliseum is almost a modern stadium compared to some of the biblical treasures we have in Israel. And in Germany, they’ll know how many Jews were deported from each place they visit.”

The book also has a specially prepared section with Zionist answers to the sort of questions an Israeli might be asked by uninformed foreigners.

These questions range from “Why does Israel build settlements?” (Answer: In fulfillment of God’s will;) to “How many people were killed in Operation Protective Edge in 2014?” (Answer: 70 brave Israelis gave their lives in defense of the homeland.)

“In a time of increasing anti-Semitism and boycotts, every Israeli visiting foreign countries needs to have the facts at his fingertips,” Bennett said.

JERUSALEM – IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen Yair Golan today become the first person to have a thorn-bush of Unrighteousness planted in his name at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

The bush, an Acanthus syriacus, was planted on a rocky path leading off the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations. A plaque attached to the bush reads: “Yair Golan: Once a brave soldier, but now a hater of Israel.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many other Israelis were incensed by remarks made by Golan during a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony last week in which he likened “revolting trends” in Israel to events in pre-Holocaust Germany.

“The comparison that emerged from the deputy chief of staff’s comments on the processes that characterized Nazi Germany 80 years ago is outrageous,” Netanyahu said during the bush planting ceremony at Yad Vashem.

“These are fundamentally unfounded things. They shouldn’t be said at any time, and especially not at the time at which they were said.”

Also speaking at the bush planting ceremony, Culture Minister Miri Regev called on Golan to resign his commission for “taking part in the delegitimization of Israel.”

Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev told The Kibbitzer that Golan’s thorn bush was the first of many that were planned. “We’re just waiting for the go-ahead to plant bushes for Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem and many others,” he said.