Last month we said finally goodbye and good riddance to one Barak who recklessly and impetuously damaged Israel, and yesterday we finally said goodbye to the other Barak who quite impudently and deliberately hurt Israel even more.

Former Prime Minsiter Ehud Barak destroyed Israel‘s deterrence and former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak destroyed Israel’s democracy.

The Jerusalem Post quotes Dorit Beinish, the next autocrat and tyrant wannabe to take up the position of Supreme Court President. Beinish said, “Barak set up standards to last generations“.

G/d Forbid.

The article then goes on to praise two of the worst and most anti-democratic concepts and models that Barak introduced into our Judicial and Legislative system that made it the most anti-democratic and worst in the world.

There was his “constitutional revolution”.

A term he misused and abused and applied to a series of (“basic”) laws that were passed by the legislative branch. A branch who not only had no idea of what these laws could mean, but even considered them to be so irrelevant that no more than a dozen or so people actually showed up to vote on them.

12 out of 120 people showing up to vote in a poorly written law everyone thought was incredibly minor, and then turning them into a “constitutional revolution” which he used to constantly and consistently overturn legislative rulings he disagreed with is not a constitutional revolution - it’s a “Judicial Coup” no different than if Sharon had surrounded the Knesset with tanks.

The JP then continues on saying, “He was also the man who dramatically expanded the number of people who could petition the High Court of Justice, making it accessible to virtually any citizen or group taking upon itself to represent the public interest."

Unbelievable!

This man did something virtually unknown in any democratic society. He took “Judicial Activism“ to the level of tyranny and totalitarianism.

He allowed nearly anyone to petition the court on any “public” matter even if it had no direct or personal connection to the plaintant.

Even the ACLU in the US must at least find someone damaged and connected to a case in order to petition the courts.

But not in Israel.

If you don’t like how the Knesset voted, then just go to Aharon Barak. If he decides you were right (meaning Left and in agreement with his world view), then the elected Legislatures decisions would get overturned.

It didn’t matter that this is what the elected officials of our state wanted. It didn’t matter if this is what the majority of the people wanted, or even what our declaration of independence wanted.

If Barak’s cozy friends from say Peace Now petitioned the courts against the Settlements, well, then clearly it was an opportunity to not apply the law as was written, but to redefine it to what he wanted it to be.

This was particularly true when it came to removing the Jewish from the Jewish state and attempting to transform us into the Left’s “state of all its citizens”.

He even forbade the Jewish Agency from fulfilling their mandate - the organization that since even before the state was created, Jewish families, rich and poor worldwide, unreservedly donated their money to, specifically to help redeem the land for the Jews and restore Jewish sovereignty and control to the Land of Israel.

Barak pure and simply stole money from generations of the Jewish People.

Amazingly the article continues on and states, “He also expanded the number of issues that the court was willing to consider and frequently intervened in decisions made by the executive and legislature.”

That’s not called “Checks and Balances“. That’s called taking over a competing branch and enforcing your own elitist views on the country that doesn’t agree with you or want what you have to say.

Barak redefined the Rule of Law to not mean that the Law rules and applies to all, but that he, as supreme Judge, ruled over the law.

Good riddance to this dictator.

Hopefully Beinish will be too weak a replacement to follow in the footsteps of her sinister, dangerous and imperial master.

As I saw someone else point out, the article accurately points out, “Beinisch will be crowned his successor“. In democracies replacements are appointed, in tyrannies only tyrants are crowned.

I just started rereading Rav Nebenzahl’s book on Elul titled appropriately enough “Thoughts for the Month of Elul”. It’s an unusual book in that I always find the content appropriate for the events whirling around me.

I was reading the chapter “Teshuva is Very Near to You” and he is discussing the army and war.

Specifically he asked why did Moshe need to send the entire army (600,000 soldiers) to take down Ai, when 3000 would have been more than enough, and conversely, why did Gideon go out to battle with just 300 men, when 32,000 is really what he needed.

Rav Nebenzahl answers, it is to teach us that Israel being victorious in battle is related solely to our national spiritual merit. To capture Ai we needed all the nations spiritual merit in the battle (why is a separate question). For Gideon to win, he needed just a mere 300 men (specifically to teach us that G/d is fighting the battles for us).

In Shoftim it says that the Jewish people forgot G/d and our punishment was that the generations of Israel learned to make war.

That was our punishment? Learning how to make war!

Yes, because when out merit is high, we don’t need to know how to fight in order to win, as G/d takes care of that, but when our merit is low, we need to actually learn tactics (and logistics).

Applying this to our past wars and the recent Lebanon debacle, it would seem there is much truth in Rav Nebenzahl’s words - if we choose to hear them.

Effy Eitam gives his solution that would stop the terrorism, demographic threat, and remove one of Israel’s fifth columns.

Quite interesting, Jameel told me today that in 1986 a poll was done in Tel Aviv, and it was found that a full 25% of Tel Aviv residents supported Kahane and his solution. It was after that that his party was banned.

A Secular Jewish Terrorist was convicted of murdering 4 Arabs whom he knew and used to drive for work in an attempt to thwart the disengagement. This secular terrorist took on religious garb and life-style after his terrorist attack – for reasons unknown.

Conservative Judaism is taking another step to becoming totally Reform (or is it not Jewish at all).

Olmert plans to begin propping up Abu Mazen and himself with unconditional talks, despite that it is the PA (unless he is already in Egypt) that is holding our kidnapped soldier hostage.

And the Road Map is back after Peres declared Unilateralism dead, which is fine, because Tzippi Livni is looking forward to a phased-in terrorist state next door – just like Peres.

That’s all for now.

Arutz-7 is reporting that airline security personnel are now considering putting cameras and microphones in airport bathroom stalls because that is where terrorists tend to go to assemble their bombs.

Call me paranoid, but I’m sure Ben-Gurion Airport not only has no qualms about introducing this technology, but they probably introduced it a while ago (certainly in the new terminal). But what do I know.

How do we balance our right to privacy and need for security?

It is an age-old question, but I personally no longer enjoy flying as already the checks have become too invasive and hands-on.

New technologies can make this invasive process even more so.

Perhaps they‘ll merge the technologies. They’ll check you while you wait on line to go to the bathroom.

So next time you fly, do you want to do your striptease for security while in the can, or while waiting on the line to go?

Of course if you really want security, this isn’t far behind.

I’m sure most of you remember the front-page headlines regarding the young Chareidi Torah student from Meah Shearim who shook and beat his son to death. I’m sure you all remember how the Chareidim rioted when they went to arrest him. I’m sure you all remember the media's recriminations against this student and the Chareidi community.

Does anyone remember how much time he was sentenced with?

Last week Caroline Glick wrote an excellent piece (as usual) about Shmuel Cytryn, a boy being held, accused, and charged with attempted murder of a Gazan Palestinian without a single piece of collaborating evidence, merely because he is a right winger, and one of many people on the scene in Gaza of an event that Caroline reports didn’t happen as it was reported.

Glick reported the events based on collaborating testimony given by both sides involved in the fighting.

From people I talked with, her version sounded right to me, and she is a very careful reporter when it comes to the facts.

During the week, Larry Derfner rabidly attacked Glick’s reporting of the event.

Derfner was in Gush Katif. Derfner was even on the beachfront where the events happened.

Derfner then describes the settler youth as Judeo-fascist (I guess he couldn’t say Judeo-Nazi in the JP).

He described how the Palestinian evicted owners were there standing by their house watching. He described the evil actions of the Settler youth.

At this point I didn’t know what to make of it. He was there, and other people I spoke with were there, and he is telling a completely different story. But if he was there, maybe there is something to it.

This week Glick, rather surprised that her reporting was being questioned in her own paper wrote a response.

It seems I didn’t actually read Derfner’s article carefully enough.


You see Derfner was not actually there when the alleged stoning occurred. But he only mentions that towards the end of the article, after he has you tricked into thinking he was there, from the beginning of his article.

Derfner only showed up afterwards, and was shown a video by the reporters, the same reporters that manufactured the lynch story in the first place with their partial reporting and selective photography (we’re all familiar with that now after the Lebanon war).

More so, as is public knowledge the house was long abandoned and the boys were fixing it up, they evicted no one.

The supposed “victim” Halil Mejeida openly admits that he started and organized the attacks on the Jewish boys. He also claims that he wasn’t hit by a stone, but rather the butt of a rifle by an IDF soldier.

And amazingly enough, his life threatening wounds turned out to be rather superficial.

But for Derfner and his stereotyped negative preconceived notion of Settlers, he won’t let minor facts like that affect his agenda driven reporting.

And that’s what it is all about.

The Left report the news based on their agenda.

Last week I discussed the deceitful, skewed, omitted, distorted statistics that were reported in Yediot Achronot in order not to make the Settler look good (or that we exist at all).

The Left want to besmirch the Settlers and they want to besmirch the Chareidim. They won’t let minor points like the truth (or facts) get in the way.


So to go back to beginning of this post, you are probably wondering what happened to the murderous Torah Student from Meah Shearim. Did he go to jail? How long is his sentence for?

Well, unless you read the Chareidi papers you would probably never know.

You see, it wasn’t reported on the front page of Maariv or Yediot or Haaretz the results of the pathological examination done on the baby’s body.

If it were, you would have known that the baby didn’t die because the father hit him, beat him or dropped him.

No, the father took his baby to the hospital where quite possibly he died because of some negligence on the part of the hospital.

But in agenda driven reporting, that simply doesn’t make the front page.



I highly recommend you read Cosmix-X's post on the Cytryn story as he point out Derfner's discrepencies, bias, and all out fabrications far better than me.

And here is the A-7 post on the story.

I have absolutely nothing to write at the moment (unless I write something very cynical – which I’m not in the mood to do), so I’ve decided instead to simply wish all my readers a Shabbat Shalom – and thank you for visiting.

You got to love Leftists (or not). Hassan Nassrallah doesn’t understand Israel, they claim. Hassan Nassralah doesn’t understand Israeli ethos and morality. Hassan Nasrallah should have known we would attack if our soldiers were kidnapped.

They are so busy touting their moral ethos of supposedly never leaving a soldier in the field – that they ignore that they have, a number of times.

Hassan Nasrallah understands Israel quite well.

Nasrallah knows certain (leftwing as it happens) Israeli government will and have left soldiers in the field. Nasrallah was almost right in not expecting Israel to attack or make a war of it. Look at Kever Yosef (Labor government), or for that matter the previous soldiers (and drug dealer) he kidnapped in 2000 (Labor government).

But he made one little mistake this time.

He did what he did to one-up the Gazans. He didn’t think this one completely through before he did it. If he had waited just another 2 weeks, then he would have gotten away with it – without a war.

This government only reacted this way because it reached a stage of total panic – it was one more attack than they could handle, and not because of any moral values.

Nasrallah’s mistake was only in his timing. If he had waited until things cooled down, he could have one-upped the Gazans and avoided a full-out war. Instead he let his ego get ahead of his intellect.

After all, why was Nasrallah surprised that Israel reacted?

Because Leftwing Israeli governments don’t normally act the way this one did, and this one wouldn’t have either if it hadn’t already been pushed into the corner and Olmert hadn't panicked.

Just look at Sderot and Ashkelon – does anyone see 30,000 troops in Gaza fighting to stop the missiles or get our soldier back?

Haaretz has yet another rather disturbing article about the war.

It seems that many of the short-range Katyushas were actually not mobile at all but rather entrenched in the farms and groves of local Lebanese farmers hidden by vegetation and thermal blankets.

When Hizbollah wanted missiles launched they told the farmer by cellphone (whom it turns out they were apparently paying) to launch the missiles.

These missiles were found by accident when the IAF hit a grove and the vegetative cover was burnt down revealing the embedded missile launchers with their hydraulic lifts.

While Haaretz is concerned by the lack of intelligence transfer between the various army units I am concerned by something else.

Why didn’t we napalm all the farms (if not at the beginning of the war, then at that point)?

Once we knew the farmers and their farms were active participants we had an obligation to obliterate them completely – yet we did not.

There is no reason our soldiers needed to enter villages with buildings still standing (full of snipers and terrorists), and there is no reason our citizens had to sit in bomb shelters for a month when we could have burnt out their fields and destroyed the launchers hidden there.


Was this an intelligence failure, or actually yet another moral failure?

David Copperfield would do incredibly well in Israel.


Only in Israel can an illusion not only be passed off as reality but turned into government policy.

• Don’t like the Arabs, David Copperfield can make them disappear.
  
• Don’t like the Settlers, David Copperfield can make them disappear.
  
• Hizbollah has missiles, David Copperfield can make them disappear.
  
• Ashkelon gets hit again from Gaza, David Copperfield can make them disappear. (Your choice: Gaza, Missiles, Ashkelon)

Just transpose David Copperfield for your favorite Leftist.

I write this because I had a disturbing conversation with some fellow settlers this Shabbos. They believe that Olmert is so politically weakened there is no chance he will be able to promote any of his leftwing policies.

I am so embarrassed that they allow the wool to be thrown over their eyes.

Do they not understand that the memory span of the average Israeli is less than that of a goldfish?

School is starting, it’s a new year, Lebanon and the hostages are old news.

How do I know?

Count how many missiles fell on the South last week. Take a look at how much progress they are making right now on the imaginary wall that won’t block missiles or tunnels (or even suicide bombers in reality), Hamas, Hizbollah, and Egypt (say it in one breath) are stating that we will release 1000 terrorists for our 3 soldiers. Did not Olmert rip down homes and hand out new destruction orders during the Lebanon 2 war?

Has anything changed?

Look past the smoke and mirrors.

David Copperfield would do incredibly well in Israel, but no surprise there when The Amazing Ehud continues to fool the masses every time.

* No disparagement of David Copperfield is meant at all. He is an incredible illusionist, though not as good as our leftwing politicians.

I normally wouldn’t buy Yediot Achronot, but there was something very interesting on the front page. They were publishing the once secret draft demographics for IDF inductions.

After reading the article I realized the numbers are irrelevant.

Does it really matter that Tel Aviv actually does have the lowest percent of those drafted from the applicable population of inductees (excluding the Arab and Chareidi cities)? Does it really matter that the percent of those actually inducted from Tel Aviv that go into combat units is also not so great.

Nope, none of it matters because as the article points out, “Northerners and Southerners are drafted the most, but no one beats the Kibbutzim when it comes to percents of Combat soldiers”.

One little problem with the article. There is not a single statistic on Settlers (there is one and I’ll get to it).

It’s very easy to crown the Kibbutzim, when you kill off the actual King.

There is not a single breakdown of Settlers whether as a unit or as a whole.

5% of the population is ignored. The article completely doesn’t mention that we simply outrank the entire country in our percent of inductees and those that go into combat units.

So that’s right, so read their stats with a grain bag of salt because they deliberately wiped the Settlers off their statistics map (and obfuscated other numbers) – because we beat all the other sectors.


Other little games they played.

They claim that between the Moshavim, Kibbutizm, and the National Religious, the National-Religious have the lowest percent of draftees (still more than the national average though).

One little problem. If you actually read the article to see that their numbers for the National-Religious don’t come from those actually claiming to be National-Religious (or even Settlements), rather just from those that went to State-Religious schools.

That’s right, they excluded all other religious school that aren’t State-Religious schools (which is definitely not where a significant number of the National-Religious or Settlers send their children), and they ignored that probably half the student body of State-Religious schools aren’t even religious much less “National-Religious”, but rather their parents send them there for a variety of reasons (less violence, better education, etc.) – which is perhaps part of the reason why most actually National-Religious kids (and definitely the Settler ones) go to private schools.

And then the only actual statistic they have on Settlers is the number of those released for mental health reasons. There somehow the Settlers come in third, right after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (they didn’t mention the Chareidi cities).

We know Jerusalem leads (with an extreme percent) because the Chareidim pretend to be crazy to get out of being inducted, many in Tel Aviv have obviously learned to do that trick to, but…

But again a purposely misleading number as they are including the Chareidi Settlements (Beitar, Elad, etc.) which is where they play their “crazy” game to get out of the army.

So I ask you, what is the point of this article and these numbers?

They don’t show the true breakdown of who goes and who doesn’t.

They purposely obscure the Settlers true contribution, and purposely show false numbers when it comes to the “National-Religious” in order to prop up the Kibbutzim.

You know what?

Not only are these numbers worthless, so is the newspaper that wrote the article and their agenda.