Moshe Arens wrote a good article here.

I would describe the NU’s acquisition of the Mafdal as follows:

You’re hungry, you have a cold, and you’re eying a sandwich which looks like it might fill you up. You eat it, and despite your cold, it doesn’t taste quite right, but you’re not quite sure what. A few hours later you realize what you ate was old, rotten, spoiled and should have been thrown in the trash a long time ago.

Let’s look at the anatomy of this deal.

We have a party that evolved itself into dead-end insignificance by not properly representing the will of the public it was supposed to represent (unlike Meimad which never really had a large enough following to even be able to justify its continued independent existence).

Let’s look at Orlev’s last major epiphany - he would give up settlements to protect his State-Religious schools.

This man is an imbecile.

He would destroy hundred of schools and yeshivot (and Jewish communities) to protect his little dominion of State-Religious schools!

Torah education and Jewish communities are obviously far less important to him.

In all the years that Orlev and the Mafdal have meddled in the Ministry of Whatever, besides running (and ruining?) his State-Religious schools, what has he done for the rest of the Jewish population of this State?

Doesn’t every Jewish student in this country deserve to receive a quality education about Torah and Judaism (I’m not talking proselytizing, I’m talking removing ignorance, hate and having a decent background as to why you are even in this country), or are they simply to be written off?

Based on Mafdal’s success rate I’d say their seat in the government is the only thing really important to them.

So now, the NU saved Mafdal from a well-deserved, timely demise - but at what price?

Orlev gets the first Minister’s seat offered to the NU union (if any is offered at all). Wonderful! Four more years wasted on a seat warmer.

Orlev will look to get out of the union as soon as he deems possible, taking at least 4 undeserved seats with him.

Aryeh Eldad is pushed down to the ninth position – most unfair to this excellent legislator.

Over Shabbat many people told me they won’t vote for the NU now, because they absolutely don’t want Mafdal.

Pass the Di-gel.

Perhaps the length of time it takes a void to get filled is determined by the quality of what was lost.

So while nature abhors a vacuum, it isn’t always clear who is able to fill it. Certainly many try, but the more qualitative the loss the more difficult it is to displace the void it left behind.

A few personae have begun to become more influential, more central, and/or more visible in Israeli, Jewish rightwing circles. And these are the ones to watch.

Are they the filling that void?

I don’t know. Time will tell, but I think for some the potential is there.

The first is Mordechai Lavie of Radio Kol Chai.

Mordechai is the solitary voice of reason on our captive and occupied radio waves.

Always asking the right questions, unafraid to challenge basic assumptions, and ready to interview the most challenging of people (politely too, I must add), he makes his point, his points are right, and he wins.

Truly I’m surprised the establishment haven’t yet found a reason to take him off the air already. Of course he may still be below their radar since he is speaking on a ‘fringe’ radio station. They’re wrong.

Next is Moshe Feiglin. Here is a man with potential, with vision, with ideals, a man unafraid to say that right is right and wrong is wrong. Moshe is someone who’s proven that he is willing to stand on the front lines and pay the price for what he believes in.

Moshe is someone our youth can and do look up to. Here is a leader that the youth are willing to rally behind.

But here is the million dollar question. When will Moshe realize that our youth do look up to him as a potential leader and will he then fully maximize his true potential and theirs?

Baruch Marzel. After today, Kahane would be proud. A thousand cops (with helicopters) show up to stop you and your 5 cars, and the Arabs are in a tizzy like we haven’t seen since, well, Kahane.

While other right-wing leaders may say that the ‘rule of law’ in Israel in Israel is used, abused and one day they’ll prove it and bring justice to light, you certainly did that today.

Unfortunately like Kahane, too many of your more visible followers come across as disturbing, but as Kahane once said, 'Who else would be willing to be the first to jump over a police barricade?'

Your non-violent confrontational style (at least today’s) got the message out, and perhaps the youth will learn that tactics like yours today can sometime be much more effective than a head-on assault.

I hope so.

And then there is Avry Ran. An unintended leader if ever there was one.

Unintentionally leading by personal example (the best way), Avry lives by his values and his love for the people and land of Israel. In a way like Shlomo Carlebach, he walks his own path and others simply follow what they know to be right and true. Unlike Reb Shlomo, I hope he gets appreciated by the masses while he can still guide his legacy.

And who can forget the firebrand Nadia Matar. No doubt a leader in ad-hoc protests and someone who does what she sets out to do, Nadia doesn’t rest in fighting her uphill battles.

Are they effective? Yes, no, and I really don’t know.

Nadia is both tireless and fearless. And she is one of the few people that can actually inspire adults to go out and stand on a street corner or in field after a long hard day. That says something in of itself.

Finally there are the youth leaders on the front lines. I (perhaps) don’t know their names, and even if they are making some strategic or tactical mistakes along the way they are leading and learning and fighting for Am Yisrael.

That leadership will arise here is of no question, who it will be remains to be seen.

Watch these names.

Israeli polls are famous for telling us that Shimon Peres is the Prime Minister. It's no joke, the polls here are not so much off by a few percentage points, as they are completely off in the wrong direction.

In another poll which bucks the Israeli mainstream, we see a potentially different picture from what the Israeli media keeps shoving down our throats.

We see Kadima not necessarily with 40 seats. Nor do we see Israeli voters in favor of more disengagements.

From conversations with certain friends, the feeling is that Kadima is going to max out at just 25 seats. Still not good, but certainly better than 40+. Where the other votes will go remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, so many people have (perhaps rightfully) given up on this political system that they don't intend to vote, or alternatively (and quite a number of people have actually said this ) plan to put a piece of toilet paper in the envelope.

I hope not, because the game isn't over yet.

I think this picture from the protest today says it all.

Why do they hate us (the Settlers) so?

This question bothers me. After all, we’re not like the Chareidim - we serve in the army, we work, we pay taxes.

They once called us the best soldiers and the best citizens. There are more religious-settler officers and elite combat soldiers in the army than there are secular ones. A mere 8000 Gazan Jewish settlers made up some 20% of Israel’s agricultural exports. We are certainly doing more than our share for the State of Israel than the average secular Israeli.

Yet suddenly we find ourselves demonized. We’re pariahs, hated, and criticized, even beaten and banished. We’re treated in ways that even the most hated Chareidi in Israel has never experienced.

It’s all too easy to say the reason is that we stand in the way of the Israeli panacea.

We settlers are ‘obstacles to peace’. If only we weren’t here, the Arabs would either accept or we could unilaterally implement a two-state solution. We dastardly settlers are keeping the country at war. Even though a two-state solution could be (and actually has been) implemented right now, without removing a single settler.

And on the simplest level, there is no doubt that that has been the explicit message to Joe Israeli - whether that settler was from Hebron or the Golan Heights.

It’s all too easy to say that we succeeded too well and they are jealous. We stole their army from them. We built wonderful communities. We are tax-paying professionals and business leaders. Our kids don’t beat their teachers or stab their fellow club-goers.

But that too is far too easy and unsatisfactory an answer.

I think we need to look deeper.

We need to examine the battle-cry of the Left.

They desire to be a nation like every other. They desire to assimilate and remove the vestige of Jewishness from the appendage of their humanity.

In Germany, the battle cry of the Reform was “Be a Jew at home, and a man on the street”.

Reform Judaism certainly never succeeded at being Jews at home, and when the man on the street shoved them into the gas chambers they were shocked at the affront. “But we are men just like you”, they cried, while the world indicated otherwise.


As Meretz and Shinui lead the new struggle against Judaism in their blinding desire for national assimilation they look at those who are preventing that goal.

In pre-Nazi Germany, it was the religious who prevented the Jews complete assimilation and disappearance into Germany’s superior culture, similarly, for many years in Israel it was the Chareidim.

Those Chareidim refused to become “New Jews”. They refused to shuck off their old traditions and quaint customs. They refused to participate in Israeli society and accept the overt and covert attempts to turn their community into ‘New Jews’- like the secular Left forcibly did to the Yemenite immigrants and other Sephardic communities.

And so that is why they really became hated.

Numerically, there are about as many secular Jews as there are Chareidi Jews who don’t serve in the army, and we won’t even discuss the percentages of other Israeli minorities who do absolutely no national service for the country, far unlike the Chareidim who open and run national charities and aid centers that serve the entire Israeli population, Jew and Arab alike.

And alas for the poor secular Jew desiring to integrate, assimilate, disappear, Chozrim B’tshuva, secular Jews returning to Judaism are still growing more than ever. And worse, many are becoming hated Chareidim.

So now we turn to a new front, the Religion of Peace (and Assimilation).

After Nazi Germany, what could possibly be more indicative that we have properly and completely assimilated than if no one was trying to kill us anymore?

And who more than anyone else is preventing that Messianic Peace from arriving? Hamas? Syria? Iran? Egypt? The Palestinians?

No, of course not. The Arabs are simply reacting to our Jewishness. If we were the same like them, quietly eating Hummus in Damascus, then we too would be accepted.

Humanity understands why we “expropriated” Tel Aviv and Haifa.

After the Holocaust we needed it to survive (so we can assimilate properly on a national level). The Arab would understand and accept that too, if only someone didn’t stand in the way of their particular nationalistic aspirations.

Who is that someone?

Certainly it’s not the Israeli living in a former Arab home in Yafo. Of course it’s not.

It’s none other than the Settler moving on to a barren hilltop.

The secular left cannot accept that the Arab speaks the truth when he says they want “all of Palestine”. After all, the secular, humanistic Israeli understands compromise and the Arab obviously would too, if only, only those pesky obstacles to peace weren’t there.

And worse, those Settlers aren’t just obstacles to peace; they are religious obstacles to peace, just like the Chareidim. Double whammy.

And so they must be removed, debased, destroyed, and deported.

As long as a single settler stands on land that the secular Left chose to not “expropriate” for their post-Holocaust needs there can’t be peace.

Don’t confuse them with the facts that the Arab won’t be satisfied with everything over the Green Line (unless it means both sides), for unlike the secular Israeli’s Religion where the Green Line is Holy, the Arabs maintain no such confusion.

For if it disagrees with their religion of Peace and Assimilation then it can’t be true.

So the Settlers are hated. Not because we ‘cause them more reserve service’, and not because we are preventing the Arabs from making peace with us, and not even because we make them ‘interact’ with the Arabs, and certainly not because we are against the ‘rule of law’ (as if they were actually big upholders of it).

No, we are hated, because they are completely right, it is we religious settlers who are preventing the national assimilation of the Jewish people.

If that makes me hated, I can live with it.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Video of police brutally beating clearly non-violent settler youths sitting in a room.

Warning it is graphically violent.

If you need anything more to convince you that something is very wrong with the Government of the State of Israel and its representatives, then you are hopeless.

This is what Olmert thinks will win him more votes. This is what Olmert thinks his potential constituency wants to see.

Not fighting Hamas. Not stopping Kassams. Not fighting real terrorists.

Brutally beating up children is what will get Olmert his votes.

What does that say about Israeli society?

(Translated from the original Hebrew)

The State of Israel was demolished today – now here is the alternative.

A long time ago the Israeli Entity lost all connection to Judaism and the People of Israel. This state has transformed into a non-Jewish Arab State.

I, as a Jew, have every right to this land. While the Israeli and the ‘Palestinian’ don’t have the right to a single centimeter here.

The Israeli Nation, like the Palestinian Nation, are products of a disturbed mind.

The Israeli Nation (without connection to Judaism) have zero rights to anything.

Ben-Gurion and all the early establishers of the state tied the Zionist state to Judaism for a reason! They understood quite well that without Judaism the state would never arise.

I personally no longer have any representatives in the Knesset. Not from the Right, not from the Left, not from the religious, and not from the secular. They are all corrupt.

The Hebron market was just one example of the complete bankruptcy of this secular-arab state now called Israel. Everyone knows the market is Jewish property. The Jordanians even have documents showing that the land belonged to a Jew from Chabbad who bought the land in question.

In 1929, along came the partners of Olmert and Meretz, Inc., raping, murdering, and exiling the Jewish community from Hebron. What exactly converted this Jewish market into an Arab one? Murder?
Amona too is purchased Jewish property.

But it is the properties in Tel Aviv and Haifa that were conquered and stolen by the Israelis. How many homes on Emek Refaim, where the leftists now live, were originally Arab homes that were abandoned in the war?

Meanwhile not a single home in Gush Katif was built on any home that used to belong to any Arab, the same for Hebron, and Amona.

The Left as a society are corrupt, dishonest, liars, and historical revisionists of the worst kind.

This state is no longer my state.

But No! I won’t leave this land. This was my land long before the disgusting Israeli conquered it. And understand this, there are two occupiers in my land; the Moslem on Jewish land, and the Israeli on Jewish land.

We need to conquer with force all the land occupied by Arabs, and deport (with sensitivity and feeling) the Arabs from here. We must cleanse the land of Arabs, exactly like the Israeli wants to do and does to the Jew.

I hope that soldiers refuse orders, and refuse to follow the orders of this temporary, interim government that has no right to exist.

Thousands of Arab homes in East Jerusalem are still standing – against the law, but 9 homes of Amona must be destroyed before elections.

This state must disentangle itself from its current secular, anti-Jewish framework. The faster, the better.

The only solution that will bring us security is the return to Jewish tradition, and the expulsion of all nations that see the destruction of a Jewish state as a viable and hoped for option.

We must deport and transfer the Arabs to any other Arab nation.

It can't be racist to suggest this, as both the Secular Israeli and Arabs see this as a perfectly healthy move when implemented against Jews.

And certainly, based on recent history, we don’t even need to compensate them, or even provide them with alternative housing.

Come election time, I plan to put a piece of toilet paper in the envelope – this toilet of a Knesset needs to be flushed.