Categories
Uncategorized

Friedman Planning Sacrifice at Temple Mount Home

David Friedman, the newly sworn-in United States Ambassador to Judea and Samaria, intends locating his official residence on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, The Kibbitzer has learned.

“My predecessors stayed in the kapo ghetto of Herzliya,” Friedman told The Kibbitzer in an exclusive interview following his swearing in by Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday.

“But that is very far for the faithful to drive for the annual Passover sacrifice. I decided that it would be much more convenient for all of us if we did it on the patio of my residence on the Temple Mount.”

Friedman added that his representatives were still looking for an appropriate building on the Temple Mount, but “there’s a nice mosque there that they think could be adapted for residential use at minimal cost.”

President Donald Trump will soon issue an executive order for the residence to be available for the Passover sacrifice in ten days’ time, the new ambassador said,

“I can already picture us on the patio, doing al ha’esh (barbecue) and drinking our wine with a joyful heart as the sun goes down over the kotel,” Friedman said.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Netanyahu to Present Prime-Time TV News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will anchor the prime-time evening news on the new TV channel that will replace Channel 1, The Kibbitzer has learned.

The prime minister’s new media position was agreed last night in a compromise solution resolving the long-running crisis over a new broadcasting corporation. On Saturday, Netanyahu threatened to call new elections if he didn’t get his way.

“Bibi wanted to disband the new corporation because he couldn’t control it,” a source close to the prime minister told The Kibbitzer. “So anchoring the prime-time news seemed to be a good solution.”

“It will be a lot easier than submitting the news items to him for approval, which was the other option.”

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who had clashed with Netanyahu over the corporation, said that he would only agree to the compromise if he was appointed the channel’s news director.

In Beijing, meanwhile, a government official said that Netanyahu, who is currently visiting China, had asked to meet with former Politburo member Chen Liangyu, who is in jail for corruption. “My understanding is he wants to assess the prison conditions of politicians convicted of graft,” the official said.

Categories
Uncategorized

Iranians Plotting Another Purim Massacre

Quoting intelligence indicating that Iran was “once again planning to destroy Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today urged Israelis to display utmost vigilance over Purim.

“Our intelligence shows clearly that there has been no letup in the Iranian efforts to destroy us since the last time they tried,” the prime minister said in a TV interview on Channel 2.

A source in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Kibbitzer that the intelligence referred to by Netanyahu included wiretaps of recent conversations between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and Haman, leader of the previous plot to destroy Israel.

“It’s the same Haman and the same Revolutionary Guards,” the source said. “Nothing has changed.”

Prof. Alon Shimoni, head of the Jewish History Department at Tel Aviv University, told The Kibbitzer that he considered it unlikely that Haman was involved in the current Iranian effort to destroy Israel.

“I’m not privy to the information that the prime minister has,” Prof Shimoni cautioned, but “Haman hasn’t been seen in public since the fifth century BC. Personally, I doubt whether a man of his age would still be politically active.”

 

Categories
Kibbitz Kvetch

Israel Pursues True Apartheid

For those of us who consider Israel to be an apartheid state, it is sobering to realize that things are likely to get a lot worse before they get better. In South Africa, racial segregation took a long time to gestate, before reaching its full potential in apartheid. The Israeli version is only now showing signs of approaching maturity, never mind reaching its inevitable demise.

The term “apartheid” emerged in 1947 as the slogan of the pro-segregationist National Party in South Africa while it was still in opposition. It represented a slew of policies aimed at tightening white control over the country, deepening segregation and “balkanizing the country into separate socio-economic units,” as Richard Steyn put it in his new biography of South African statesman Jan Smuts.

In other words, apartheid was the formalization of the segregation that had existed in the colonies that made up the Union of South Africa, as it was then, for well over two hundred years. It’s implementation, in the years following the Nationalist victory in the 1948 elections, provided the legal framework for the entrenchment of practices – of a social reality – that, to a large extent, already existed.

The whites of South Africa were no more or less racist after the introduction of apartheid than they were before. What had changed was that they felt sufficiently unencumbered by their previous colonial master, Britain, were more organized and they finally had a plan.

It’s worth remembering that less than 50 years before apartheid became state policy, the Afrikaners were fighting the British in the Boer War, which they regarded as a struggle for survival against the colonial, commercial and, in particular, mining interests – represented by Britain – which threatened to swamp them.

Apartheid, then, was the culmination of a long and hard struggle by the Afrikaners to overcome foreign rule, establish themselves on the land, build up their power and create a nation. The presence of a large black population throughout that process was a problem that necessitated increasingly discriminatory and harsh measures, but until the formation of the Nationalist government in 1948, no overall solution to the race problem was ever put forward.

Even Jan Smuts, an international statesman and the drafter of the preambles to the charters of both the League of Nations and United Nations, was at a loss when it came to solving what was called the “native problem.” For most of his career, he preferred to side-step the issue. It fell to the Nationalist government of 1948 to propose an overarching race policy – apartheid. And it took close to another 50 years for apartheid to collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions and in the face of international obloquy.

In a very similar vein, Israel has failed to come up with a policy for its own “native problem.” It wants the land of the West Bank, but it has no idea of what to do with the population. Like Smuts, Benjamin Netanyahu’s only policy is to side-step the issue, his vague nods in the direction of a two-state solution notwithstanding.

In a technical sense, therefore, Israel is in a pre-apartheid phase. It has the functional segregation, the oppressive measures and an apathetic population that is largely disinterested in the fate of the other. It is apartheid-ready. What it lacks is the legal framework in which to implement its aspiration toward a state in which Jews control all the land and all the power.

That could soon be on the cards. Following the passing of the so-called Settlement Regularization Bill in early February, Knesset members from the coalition have now set their sights on annexing the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim to Israel. That is likely to be followed by further annexation, either on a piecemeal basis or of large swathes of the West Bank in one go.

The Regularization Bill, which retroactively legalized Jewish theft of private Palestinian land, was the first law passed by the Knesset that dealt with the fate of the Palestinians and their land. Until then, the displacement of the Palestinians had been accomplished by means of military decrees and Supreme Court dismissal of appeals by Palestinians or their Israeli representatives against the decrees.

To put it another way, the bill was the first occasion on which the Israeli legislature passed a law enabling discrimination by one segment of society against another. As such, it was an important milestone in the advance to fully-fledged apartheid.

Apart from David Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving prime minister and he has fought numerous bruising diplomatic battles. He may not be the most appropriate person to lead Israel into the full bloom of apartheid. That distinction could well fall to Naftali Bennett, head of the avidly pro-settlement Habayit Hayehudi party, who, unlike the prime minister, does have a proper apartheid plan. Until now, Bennett has anchored the right-wing of the ruling coalition and prevented any deviation from the coalition’s pro-settlement line on the part of Netanyahu.

Bennett’s plan would involve the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, the herding of West Bank Palestinians into areas reminiscent of bantustans and the creation of two legal systems, one for Jews living anywhere in the greater territory and the other for West Bank Palestinians. It is a plan of which the South African architects of apartheid would have been proud.

To the best of my knowledge, Bennett’s plan doesn’t envisage discriminatory action against the Palestinians living within Israel proper, but that could be only a question of time. With apartheid fully in place in the West Bank, it’s unlikely that Israeli Jewish baasskap (domination) will tolerate unregulated Palestinians elsewhere. Their model could be the scrapping of the qualified black franchise in South Africa’s Cape Province by the apartheid regime.

If the experience of South Africa is anything to go by, therefore, apartheid is a slow-growing plant that needs ample time and water. In Bennett, Israel has the means, but will it have the time?

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Comptroller Recommends Compulsory Weed Smoking by Ministers

Israel’s state comptroller has recommended that marijuana smoking by government ministers be made compulsory during meetings of the country’s security cabinet.

The government voted on Sunday to decriminalize personal use of the noxious weed.

“I am of the firm opinion that being stoned will help the members of the security cabinet see things that they don’t otherwise see,” Comptroller Yosef Shapira told journalists this morning.

“For instance, they may finally see the explosive humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. They may even see that the settlers are stealing Palestinian land left, right and center.”

“I’ve never tried the stuff myself,” Shapira continued, “but I understand it gives a sensation of euphoria and calm. That may be a step too far for Israeli politicians, but it could be a worthy goal.”

In his report on the 2014 Gaza War, issued last week, Shapira castigated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the security cabinet for ignoring clear signs of desperation and distress from Gaza before the war.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Bibi Orders Emergency Relief Supplies of Cigars for Gaza

Stung by accusations that he had ignored explosive economic and humanitarian conditions in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday ordered Arnon Milchan to organize an immediate shipment of cigars and pink champagne to the beleaguered enclave.

“To all those who say I am indifferent to suffering, let this be the answer,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

“And to prove my commitment to the wellbeing of Gaza, I have instructed Milchin to send exactly the same Cohiba Robustos and Charles Heidsieck 2006 that Sara and I consume. There will be no discrimination while I’m in office.”

“I feel deeply for any human being who is unable to return home to a good smoke and glass of bubbly after a hard day in the office.”

The prime minister went as far as to indicate that he was prepared to break open his own supplies, stored in tunnels beneath his Jerusalem home, if Milchin was unable to arrange the emergency shipment with sufficient speed.

In a report issued earlier this week, the State Comptroller accused Netanyahu and his senior ministers of doing nothing to avert a looming humanitarian and economic explosion in Gaza in the year leading up to the 2014 war.