Insubordination Can Save Israel

By Moshe Feiglin

5 Kislev, 5770 (Nov. 22, '09)

As a result of my attempts to halt the Oslo collapse, I was put on trial for "sedition." I asked the judges to allow me to read a short piece from a book that I had brought with me. The judges agreed, and to their surprise, I removed "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint Exupיry from my briefcase:

"Sire--over what do you rule?"

"Over everything," said the king, with magnificent simplicity.

"Over everything?"

The king made a gesture, which took in his planet, the other planets, and all the stars.

"Over all that?" asked the little prince.

"Over all that," the king answered.

For his rule was not only absolute: it was also universal.

"And the stars obey you?"

"Certainly they do," the king said. "They obey instantly. I do not permit insubordination."

"I should like to see a sunset . . . Do me that kindness . . . Order the sun to set . . ."

"If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?" the king demanded. "The general, or myself?"

"You," said the little prince firmly.

"Exactly. One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform," the king went on. "Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into the sea, they would rise up in revolution. I have the right to require obedience because my orders are reasonable." (The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupיry, Chapter 10).

It is a mistake to think that the state works within the boundaries of laws. The public does not obey laws. It obeys rules within the boundaries of a triangle, the first side of which is the law. But the triangle has two other sides: common sense and ethicality.

What if the Knesset would pass a law requiring drivers to drive in reverse all winter? That would counter the logic side of the triangle. The public's subsequent refusal would be the fault of the government, not of the public. In other words, the fact that we obey the law is not because of the law itself, but because it is logical enough to warrant our adherence.

The third side of the triangle is ethicality. If the government would order us to drive our elderly and infirm out onto the frozen tundra, as per Eskimo custom, we may agree that it would logically enhance the economy. But nobody would obey, because it would be patently immoral. The party at fault for the insubordination would be the government that enacted the law and not the citizens who refused to obey.

How are the boundaries of this triangle determined?

The law is obviously determined by the government. A government has unlimited power to enact and enforce laws. The government, with its Knesset majority, can enact a law that would postpone elections for fifty years. Why doesn't it do so? For only one reason. Because it knows that the public would not accept it and the government would subsequently lose its credibility. In other words, just like Exupיry's king, the government enacts laws within the boundaries that it assumes the public will accept, both logically and ethically.

Power always strives for more power and the government will always attempt to test the boundaries of common sense and ethicality. But fortunately, it is not the government that determines these boundaries, but the public. How does the public accomplish this? By using its right and sometimes, its duty – to refuse to obey the law. That is how the logical and ethical platform for the healthy functioning of society is created.

In order to increase its power, the government tries to convince us that insubordination will cause the state to collapse. But that is completely false. The greatest crimes in human history were perpetrated when citizens ignored their duty to delineate logical and ethical boundaries for the rule of law. The societies in which this took place by and large collapsed.

"Good men must not obey the laws too well" (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

Emerson understood what the disengaging Israeli tyranny no longer wants to hear.

Those soldiers who obeyed the Expulsion law in Gush Katif despite the fact that they knew that it was illogical and unethical, brought the Hamas missiles to Be'er Sheva, the resulting Cast Lead Operation, Goldstone and the international anti-Israel demonization campaign that is gaining momentum by the day. In short, our eager-to-obey soldier has endangered Israel's very existence.

The writing on the wall of Netanyahu's office is clear: Destruction of the Golan Heights, of the settlements in Judea and Samaria and the division of Jerusalem. Public delineation of clear, logical and ethical boundaries for the law can prevent Netanyahu from carrying out his plan.

In the past few weeks, soldiers from two separate units in the IDF expressed their civic responsibility by refusing to obey orders to expel Jews from their homes. These brave young men are positioned to save Israel from collapse.

Feiglin on Netanyahu: Writing is on the Wall

8 Kislev,5770 (Nov. 25, '09)

Following the cabinet decision to freeze construction in Judea and Samaria, Jewish Leadership Head, Moshe Feiglin, said that "the writing on the wall is clear, Netanyahu is working to surrender the Golan, destroy the towns of Judea and Samaria and divide Jerusalem."

"Anyone who supports this move proves he has not learned anything from the crime of the expulsion from Gush Katif. I urge everyone to whom Israel and the future of the state are important to them, to join the Likud in order to replace Netanyahu with a leader that has a God".

"Thanksgiving Break"

As Americans begin to celebrate their victory (genocide) over the Native americans with Turkey and family gatherings....Jewish americans need to reflect on their lives here and their futures that will be where?

Is Aliyah on your "Thanksgiving" table???

Avi

US Presidential Election 2012 ?

The Democrats will throw the incumbent Obama out to run in 2012, almost without exception...unless there is a major disaster during his 1st term. Even then he would be likely to run.

The Republicans seem to have a wide open field.... 

Will it be Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rudi, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, ERIC CANTOR or even another Bush...Jeb Bush.....Sean Hannity or RUSH..(HaHa)


So who will it be?

Palin’s Rapture - Seth Lipsky

A bit of a brouhaha has erupted regarding Sarah Palin and the Jews. It seems that the former governor of Alaska went on television to promote her new book, Going Rogue, and was asked by Barbara Walters what she thought of Israel’s West Bank settlements. “I disagree with the Obama administration on that,” Palin replied. “I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

When I read her reply, I thought that it was wonderful. In the two generations in which I’ve been covering the Middle East debate, it was one of the few times a public figure gave in response to a question about the settlements an answer that I would call ideal. It seemed to me courageous, in that Palin was going against not only the administration but many in her own party and the gods of political correctness. There was no shilly-shallying about the Oslo process and the Quartet and the United Nations. Palin didn’t seem particularly worried one way or another about how she might be perceived. She is just on Israel’s side.

But it turns out that one of the shrewdest reporters on the Middle East beat, Jeffrey Goldberg, finds the governor’s language alarming. He put up a post on his Atlantic blog under the headline, “With Friends Like Sarah Palin…”—a phrase that one expects to be finished with the question, “…who needs enemies?” Goldberg wants to know who, exactly, she reckons is going to be flocking to Israel and whether her view grows from her analysis of Jewish demography. Or whether she anticipates a sudden upsurge in Zionist sentiment among American Jews, who are, he points out, the only sizable Jewish community outside Israel.

“Or,” Goldberg asks, “is this an indication that Palin buys into creepy End Times thinking, in which the ingathering of the Jews, and their mass death, presage the return of Christ?”

That is a vision in which Christians are to be gathered up in something called the Rapture. Goldberg was so determined to get to the bottom of the question that he called the executive director of the Pre-Trib Research Center at Liberty University, Thomas Rice, who heads what Goldberg calls “one of the pre-eminent evangelical institutions in this country arguing for the literal Bible prophecy.” Goldberg asked him whether he thought Palin’s statement on Jewish settlements was informed by the belief about a Jewish ingathering to Israel in advance of Armageddon.

Rice, Goldberg reports, said that he’d heard the governor “has been part of an apparently unique movement” whose pastor “believed based on some personal revelation he claims to have gotten from God” that during the Tribulation “the Jews would move to Alaska.” But Rice also expressed his “understanding” that Palin actually holds what he called “fairly typical Protestant Zionist beliefs, and one of those beliefs is the regathering of the Jews in Israel.” He suggested that Palin “may just have a general geopolitical belief that the world is going to be increasingly anti-Semitic.”

I’ve been reading Goldberg long enough to have developed an abiding regard for his reportorial instincts. It turns out that he’s not the only writer worrying about Palin and the Rapture. Frank Rich echoed Goldberg’s worries over the weekend. And last year Alexander Cockburn’s Counterpunch, which specializes in attacking Israel from the left, ran its own warning about the possibility that Palin believes in the Rapture. Its writer, Raymond J. Lawrence, expressed the fear that a “believer in the Rapture with his or her fingers on the nuclear trigger might even be tempted”—apparently in the hope of advancing the Second Coming—“to bring on the Rapture.”

Lawrence reckoned that while Americans were prepared to accept reassurances from John Kennedy that he wouldn’t be taking orders from Rome, it’s not so easy to get around what he sees as the danger of a president who believes in the Rapture. “The problem is both more simple and more worrisome. The public must presume that Palin believes in the Rapture, since it is one of the central doctrines of her church. Furthermore, the American people should assume that Palin’s personal religious beliefs will have consequences in her decision-making as a President.”

Continues Lawrence: “The press and much of the public seem reluctant to engage Palin on her religious views, considering them to be a personal matter. In certain respects that is admirable restraint. We do not want candidates for office grilled on their private religious views as long as those views do not impinge upon the public welfare…. However, a belief in the Rapture as an historic event toward which history is rapidly moving, is a belief with potentially catastrophic political implications. Do the American people want a believer in such a fantasy to hold in her hands the nuclear power to destroy civilization?”

In other words, what Lawrence has done is set up, even while suggesting he is loath to do so, a classic religious test.

Now I don’t believe for a moment that it is distaste for the Rapture that animates Counterpunch; rather, it’s distaste for Israel and the prospect that Jews might settle in Judea and Samaria. That Palin is prepared to leave to the judgment of Israel and its democratic government is what seems to animate the Counterpunch camp. The thing to remember is that if we start allowing religious tests in politics, such tests will eventually be used, as they so often have, against the Jews.

Goldberg’s blog post sent me to the bookstore, and I spent the weekend reading Going Rogue. It turns out to be a marvelous memoir by a very smart, high-spirited woman, who is handling the messiness of family life and the challenges of a public life in a way that is inspiring millions. She may not be a veteran of, say, the anti-communist battles of the free-trade union movement that made Ronald Reagan a sage on the biggest issue of his time, Soviet communism. But she has the kind of clarity of commitment on key themes that he had and the same kind of wholesome optimism—and she’s still young. I couldn’t find anything in the book that made me worry about the fact that even on the difficult issues she supports Israel.

The Jewish Country....

Is the first step to being the Jewish Country, telling Mitchell and Obama to go home?
Of course it is. If Bibi is not skilled enough as a politician to yell Yankee go home nicely....then we need Feiglin or Dr Ben Ari to do so!

Then we must educate our children about their heritage!
No more apoligizing to Gentiles or asking for their approval. Enough!

Do I have a right to tell Israeli politicians what to do with my Country? Of course I do! I was at Sinai! I have my portion also!

I am still in the Galut, it is true. But I will extricate my family and come home soon. Perhaps those righteous Jews in Israel can unite and give us all a united cause to support and enlist our hearts!

Torah based Government will remove the graft and corruption.

Who will lead?
Who can lead?
Who wants/needs to lead?
Who can we trust to lead for the right reason?

As a Jew in America, do I want the right to vote in Israel?
Do I want to be able to join National Union or Manhigut Yehudit etc?

Yes. Yes I do!

All Jewish voices need to be heard!

MK Ben-Ari to High Court: Punish Barghouti for Interviews

(IsraelNN.com) Knesset Member Dr. Michael Ben-Ari and several other petitioners filed a motion to the High Court Wednesday against the Prisons Authority Commissioner, the Prisons Authority, the Minister for Interior Security and convicted terror prisoner Marwan Barghouti. They are demanding that the defendants be required to say “why they have not replied to the plaintiffs' inquiry why Barghouti was not put on trial for interviews he granted to different media without any permission.”

Barghouti's name has been mentioned as one of the terrorists who might be released in return for Shalit, the petitioners noted, and he has “made use of these rumors and the special status accorded him by some journalists – especially haters of Israel – and chose to give interviews to Arab media as well as to the Reuters news agency to get his messages across.”

Lion's Den: Islamism 2.0 - an even greater threat

Nov. 24, 2009
Daniel Pipes , THE JERUSALEM POST

To borrow a computer term, if Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and Nidal Hasan represent Islamism 1.0, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the prime minister of Turkey), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss intellectual), and Keith Ellison (a US congressman) represent Islamism 2.0. The former kill more people but the latter pose a greater threat to Western civilization.
The 1.0 version attacks those perceived as obstructing its goal of a society ruled by a global caliphate and totally regulated by Shari'a (Islamic law). Islamism's original tactics, from totalitarian rule to mega-terrorism, encompass unlimited brutality. Three thousand dead in one attack? Bin Laden's search for atomic weaponry suggests the murderous toll could be a hundred or even a thousand times larger.
However, a review of the past three decades, since Islamism became a significant political force, finds that violence alone rarely works. Survivors of terrorism rarely capitulate to radical Islam - not after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt in 1981, nor the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombings of 2002, the Madrid bombing of 2004, the Amman bombing of 2005, or the terrorist campaigns in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Terrorism does physical damage and kills and intimidates but it rarely overturns the existing order. Imagine Islamists had caused the devastation of Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 tsunami - what could these have lastingly achieved?
NON-TERRORIST violence aimed at applying Shari'a does hardly better. Revolution (meaning, a wide-scale social revolt) took Islamists to power in just one place at one time - Iran in 1978-79. Likewise, a coup d'état (a military overthrow) carried them to power just once - Sudan in 1989. Same for civil war - Afghanistan in 1996.
If the violence of Islamism 1.0 rarely succeeds in forwarding the Shari'a, the Islamism 2.0 strategy of working through the system does better. Islamists, adept at winning public opinion, represent the main opposition force in Muslim-majority countries such as Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Islamists have enjoyed electoral success in Algeria in 1992, Bangladesh in 2001, Turkey in 2002, and Iraq in 2005.
Once in power, they can move the country toward Shari'a. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces the wrath of Iranian street demonstrators and bin Laden cowers in a cave, Erdogan basks in public approval, remakes the Republic of Turkey, and offers an enticing model for Islamists worldwide.
Recognizing this pattern, al-Qaida's once-leading theorist has publicly repudiated terrorism and adopted political means. Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (b. 1950, also known by the nom de guerre Dr. Fadl) was accused of helping assassinate Sadat. In 1988, he published a book that argued for perpetual, violent jihad against the West. With time, however, Sharif observed the inutility of violent attacks and instead advocated a strategy of infiltrating the state and influencing society.
In a recent book, he condemned the use of force against Muslims ("Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers") and even against non-Muslims (9/11 was counterproductive, for "what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy's buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours?").
Sharif's evolution from theorist of terrorism to advocate of lawful transformation echoes a much broader shift; accordingly, as author Lawrence Wright notes, his defection poses a "terrible threat" to al-Qaida. Other once-violent Islamist organizations in Algeria, Egypt, and Syria have recognized the potential of lawful Islamism and largely renounced violence. One also sees a parallel shift in Western countries; Ramadan and Ellison represent a burgeoning trend.
(What one might call Islamism 1.5 - a combination of hard and soft means, of external and internal approaches - also works. It involves lawful Islamists softening up the enemy, then violent elements seizing power. The Hamas takeover of Gaza proved that such a combination can work: win elections in 2006, then stage a violent insurrection in 2007. Similar processes are possibly underway in Pakistan. The United Kingdom might be undergoing the opposite process, whereby violence creates a political opening.)
In conclusion, only Islamists, not fascists or communists, have gone well beyond crude force to win public support and develop a 2.0 version. Because this aspect of Islamism undermines traditional values and destroys freedoms, it may threaten civilized life even more than does 1.0's brutality.
The writer (DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

If I was a Jew in Britain, I’d start planning Aliyah

Friends,

If I was a Jew in Britain, I’d start planning Aliyah after I read this.
The Brits have how many Muslims living in Britain, and they feel threatened
by....Jews?

Naomi (Ragen)

Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy British media and society are gripped by lies about a "secret" Israel lobby controlling foreign policy. By ROBIN SHEPHERD

• Here is a small selection of events that have taken place in Britain
since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.

The government has imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel and failed to vote against the Goldstone report in the U.N . 

The charities War on Want and Amnesty International U.K. have both promoted a book by the anti-Israeli firebrand Ben White, tellingly called "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide.

" The Trades Union Congress at its annual conference has called for boycotts of Israeli products as well as a total arms embargo.  

In the media, the Guardian newspaper has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the extent that the paper's flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day.                                                                  
The BBC continues to use its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features
a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group's virulent hatred of Jews or its adherence to a "Protocols of Zion"-style belief in world-wide Jewish conspiracies. Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished
critical opinions of Israel from the public domain. Such charges have been aired to mass critical acclaim this week in a landmark  documentary, "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby," on Channel 4"the same outlet that offered Iran's Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an uninterrupted, seven-minute propaganda slot on Christmas Day last year. The makers of
the documentary"top Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne and TV journalist James Jones"have also written about their program in the Guardian. Both furiously deny that they are peddling conspiracy theories.

But the mindset we are dealing with was neatly exposed by the authors' own explanation on
how their suspicions were aroused that something sinister is at work in the corridors of British power. It all transpired, they told readers ominously, during an address earlier this year by Conservative Party leader David Cameron at a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Israel. "The dominant event of the previous 12 months had been the Israeli invasion of Gaza," they wrote. "We were shocked Cameron made no reference in his speech to the massive
destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that resulted, or for that matter the invasion itself. Indeed, our likely future prime minister went out of his way to praise Israel because it 'strives to protect innocent life.' This remark was not intended satirically." Since it is inconceivable, the authors obviously believe, that anyone could honestly credit Israel with anything other than the most damnable motives it must therefore follow that those who do in fact praise the Jewish state must be being paid or bullied into doing so. If you think this all sounds familiar, you'd be right. Messrs. Oborne and Jones produced an extensive pamphlet accompanying the documentary,
which openly claimed inspiration from none other than John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"another conspiracy theory alleging malign Zionist influence in the United States. But if Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt at least felt the need to dress up their polemic in pseudo-academic wrapping paper, the sheer amateurishness of the
British documentary they inspired is breathtaking.

There was the endless superimposition of the Israeli Star of David on to the British flag, which,
along with some absurdly melancholic background music, was presumably designed to prepare viewers for an astonishing series of revelations. But of course such revelations actually never materialized. It turns out from the documentary itself that the allegedly secretive Jewish donors have been quite open in declaring their interests in accordance with the law. One
of them, Poju Zabludowicz, the billionaire funder of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) is good friends with Madonna"not
exactly the kind of company you'd choose if you were trying to hide behind
a veil of obscurity. Much is also made of the influence of Friends of Israel
groupings in the British Parliament. Such allegations are, of course, rendered
ridiculous with a moment's reflection on the countervailing influence of
vast amounts of Arab oil money, not to mention the fact that membership in
such groups for many parliamentarians is either purely formal or outright
meaningless. Michael Ancram, for example, a former Northern Ireland minister
and a member of Conservative Friends of Israel for more than 30 years, is
famous for calling for talks with Hamas. Given the paucity of the arguments,
it would be tempting to dismiss the whole thing as unimportant. Would that we
could. The documentary has already provoked a torrent of abuse against British
Jews, not least on Channel 4's widely read Web site, whose moderators have
seen fit to approve dozens of postings about the Zionist lobby's "seditious
behavior," its "disgusting attack on British democracy," "the hand of global
Zionism at work," and several along the lines of the following, which said
flatly: "We want our country back. The agents of a foreign power embedded at
all levels of our government and politics need flushing out." If this sort of
language takes hold, a bad situation in Britain may be about to get a whole
lot worse. Jewish leadership organizations have long feared accusations
of divided loyalty between Britain and Israel and, ironically given the
charges now being made against them, are frequently criticized in their own
communities for failing to be sufficiently robust in Israel's defense. The
risk is that some may now be panicked into silence. Non-Jews who call for a
more reasoned discussion of Israel"already a small and diminishing group
in Britain"will likely face additional slanders against their integrity:
Since there is supposedly no reasonable case to be made in favor of the
Jewish state, we must have sold out to the "Lobby." Such calumnies cannot be
allowed to stand. Now more than ever, the forces of reason and decency must
continue the fight to be heard.

Dr. Ben Ari - MK

I have been a fairly strong supporter of Manhigut Yehudit and Moshe Feiglin, but there is a new voice that seems to be loud from the Knesset, Dr. Ben Ari.

This has made me look back at National Union and say hmmm.  seems pretty good and perhaps their route is correct.

My interest is finding a way to form an alliance between MY &  NU for the good of Israel....

Any ideas?

Avi