Bibi Netanyahu really, really, for DOUBLE REALLY & DOUBLE SURE wants you to know he had nothing, nothing, NOTHING to do with Charlie Kirk's assassination

The blood was still warm on the ground when The Greatest Leader Since Moses took to social media to declare Charlie Kirk the greatest friend Israel ever had. Oh, and even though at that point no-one had mentioned such a possibility, he wanted us to know Israel had nothing to do with it. Since then he's had multiple appearances on American news shows expressing Israel's profound and abiding love for Charlie. Today he released a fresh Youtube video that begins, hilariously, with a quote from Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebels. Then he procceeds to plough yet again the well-tilled terrain of Charlie's love affair with Israel, and offers the hint that the radical leftists, in cahoots with radical Islamists, who killed Charlie, may have been funded by Qatar! Methinks he's protesting way too much.

When politicians want war but generals don't, who you gonna listen to?

Case in point; the much anticipated Gaza land invasion. Over 300,000 IDF reservists have been cooling their heels at the Gaza fence for two and a half weeks by now. Set the way-back machine to three weeks ago, and a lot of those reservists were doing what? Taking to the streets and protesting against Netanyahu, that’s what! And while every last one is prepared to avenge what happened on 10/7, they’ve now had two and a half weeks to think it through and stew over it… A Gaza ground invasion is going to be a brutal undertaking. They know the odds are good that they’ll be dead. For what? How many of them truly believe killing more Palestinians will bring peace to Israel? How many have come to the realization they’re about to give up their lives for the greater glory of The Greatest Leader since Moses? And you can bet the generals aren’t thrilled either. It’s too bad they never speak the truth till they’ve retired, but any number of retired IDF senior staff talk about Hezbollah having a missile inventory in the hundreds of thousands. Iron Dome is overwhelmed by a few dozens. Meanwhile, Netanyahu still barks war war war… Let’s pray those reservists and the senior IDF leadership can find the courage to say no to more death and destruction. Peace now!

Trump's brazen interference in the Israeli election

Trump's gifting of the Golan to Israel on Thursday was a present meant to give Netanyahu's election campaign a boost, nothing else.

Bibi finds himself bedevilled by various corruption probes and up against the toughest competition of his political career since Ariel Sharon. The race between Netanyahu and Benny Gantz is so close that this could tip the balance.

This move can only be seen as a provocation by Arab states in the region, and provoking Arabs and Palestinians has long been a feature of Netanyahu's electioneering.

And you can't deny that it works.

Unfortunately, it comes at a time when there is a growing rift between the ever more right-wing tilt of Israeli politics and the attitudes of Jews in the US, especially the younger generation. As an example, consider that in recent memory any aspiring US political leader found it expedient to show up and speechify at the annual AIPAC convention.

This year, almost half of the Dems who have declared for the 2020 presidential race are taking a pass. This is a big deal. The Democrats are in the early stages of a generational sea-change. The momentum is clearly with the OAC-Ilhan Omar contingent. Last century Dem bigs like Pelosi and Schumer will still show up at the AIPAC shindig, of course, but anyone who wants to be perceived as progressive will give it a wide berth.


American policy in the Middle East has been an unmitigated disaster for at least fifty years. Legitimising Israel's theft of the Golan just makes it worse.

The tragedy that is Israel

When venerated Israeli film-maker Marcel Ophuls produces a doc sympathetic to the Palestinians, you should know that there are deep cracks in the very foundation of the state.

How timely, how ironic, that this story appears on the very day that Netanyahu is once again bemoaning the lack of international condemnation of terrorism in Israel with the same enthusiasm the international community showed in condemning the terror attacks in France.

For sure, France is far from blameless in bringing this tragedy upon itself. There will always be Algeria, and the manifold excesses of France's colonial empire, and the all too enthusiastic rush into Washington's "War on Terror."

Those facts of French history should be enough to shame BHL and other warmongers of the Republic into silence, at least for the next thousand years or so.

But the sins of colonial-era France have nothing on today's apartheid regime in Israel.

Apartheid walls, apartheid highways, new apartheid settlements on stolen land announced practically every week. Prison time for children throwing stones. Live ammunition against children throwing stones...

What has Israel become?

Fear and loathing and sheer imbecility at the Munk leader's debate

You gotta feel Peter Munk's pain. A couple of years ago he had the biggest gold mining company in the world. Now he's got the "Munk Debates."

Tonight's iteration of that over-reaching franchise is billed as the "Munk Leader's Debate," and features the three old boy leaders while ignoring the new girl, Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

Near as I can tell, the only winner in this "debate" was the unctuous moderator, "social entrepreneur" and careerist extraordinaire Rudyard Griffiths. He was obviously enjoying his most recent fifteen minutes of fame.

I have a hunch that a lot of tickets for this gig were sold via the Ukrainian-Canadian Council. How else to explain the undue prominence given that tired trope, "Putin's aggression?"

Before watching this I read the texts of both Obama's and Putin's speeches at the UNGA. Sure, Obama was obliged to toss in a few bromides about how it's unacceptable for big countries to run roughshod over small ones, but absolutely no one in the place takes that seriously.

Who runs over more small countries? The USA or Russia? And how many refugees are streaming out of Crimea?

The Israel-pandering was quite distasteful too. Apparently none of these charlatans can grasp the fact that it's possible to be "pro-Israel" while being vehemently anti-Netanyahu, anti-settlement, and anti-Likud. In fact, the long-term viability of Israel will depend on allies who are capable of doing just that.

Who won the debate?

Elizabeth May, simply by not disgracing herself by being a part of it.

Bomb Iran crowd waxing hysterical over prospective nuke deal

 Because what America really needs most is more war!

All the usual Iran-haters are circling the wagons and warning that the doomsday clock is about to strike midnight if the Kerry negotiations reach a successful conclusion.

Here's Charles Krauthammer; he's got this pegged as the "worst deal in American diplomatic history."

Not to be outdone, fellow war-monger John Bolton introduces an international perspective by claiming this deal is "America's Munich." That's code for Kerry is the dupe Chamberlain to Rouhani's Hitler. If Bolton had his druthers he would have bombed Iran years ago.

But wait, those dastardly towel-heads are even worse than that... in fact, they are even worse than ISIS, if such a thing can be imagined! Yup, no less a fear-monger than the Greatest Leader Since Moses came up with that one!

The prospect of a deal is a little more personal for Netanyahu; he's crafted a thirty year political career out of claiming the Iranians are months away from a nuclear weapon.

Wonder what surprises he has in his tool kit to scare his country's voters going forward?

Netanyahu offers to coach Kenya in war on towel-heads of terror

That's got to be welcome news for the beleaguered Uhuru Kenyatta, who has been having a tough time passing his family fiefdom off as a stable and modern democracy. Every time you turn around the towellers of terror from next door are pulling some headline grabbing stunt to sully the reputation of one of our most staunch allies in all Africa.

As with virtually all terror outfits, the al-Shabaabers have come up with some flimsy excuse to justify their mayhem. In this case, it's the fact that Kenya has troops in Somalia. Well, of course they do! How else is democracy and good governance to take root in that benighted land? Of course, the Kenyan intervention is doubly good because it is being carried out at the behest of the Nations of Virtue.

Now that Netanyahu is aboard, expect the Shabaabers to exit stage right in the very near future. After all, look at how the visionary stewardship of the "greatest leader since Moses" has brought peace and prosperity to the Holy Land.

Netanyahu drops the "two state" mask

This should not come as a surprise to even the casual Netanyahu observer. Bibi's commitment to the two state solution was never anything other than a sop to his diaspora supporters who were desperate to portray him as a man looking for peace... if only there were a partner on the other side to negotiate with!

If even the toadying Abbas was not a viable partner, then it was plain all along that a viable partner could not possibly exist. Abbas has essentially served the function of being head kapo of the occupied territories. The fiction that he is somehow the "leader" of the Palestinians has allowed pro-Israel countries like Canada to call their support of Palestinian security services "foreign aid" to the Palestinians, when in reality it is a subsidy to the occupation.

The bona fide leadership of the Palestinians, the democratically elected Hamas party, were promptly shuffled onto the terror lists of Israel's most ardent foreign supporters, thereby allowing the US and Canada and a few others to endorse Israel's repeated genocidal wars on Gaza as a noble battle in the war on terror.

In this last day of electioneering, Hamas is once again a useful foil as Netanyahu waves the threat of "Hamastan" at the electorate.

"Elect me, because I am the only leader who can deal with the terrorists... all the others are leftist Arab-lovers..."

That is the pathetic sum total of Netanyahu's election platform. It's always served him well before, but this time around it looks like it might be selling better in New York and Montreal than in Tel Aviv and Haifa, where people are seeing through Netanyahu's endless fear-mongering and are more interested in a job and an affordable apartment.

A resounding Likud loss tomorrow, and a functional coalition of "leftist Arab-lovers," and there will be a glimmer of hope in the Holy Land for the first time in a generation.

Bibi's crass marketing campaign

The blood of today's terror victims in Copenhagen had not yet congealed on the pave-stones before Israel PM Netanyahu was making campaign fodder of it.

Yes, now we have more proof that every European Jew belongs in Israel.

Let's have a reality check.

More Jews have died in traffic accidents in Israel in the past month than have perished in European terror attacks in the last twenty years.

Perspective can be a beautiful thing!

Yes, there are Jew-haters aplenty in Europe...

So move to the safety of Sderot.

It of course remains forbidden to mention why these blood-thirsty Arabs are such Jew-haters...

Could it, at the end of the day, have something to do with occupation and settlements and state-sponsored land theft?

Bibi feints right, goes left

Oh, he's a sly one, that Netanyahu!

When the IDF took out that Hezbollah convoy in Syria on 18 January, we thought, "here we go!" It's Netanyahu with his predictable pre-election escalation. It's the time-tested Netanyahu strategy of shaping the landscape in such a way that he makes himself look like the indispensable "strong hand."

Even Israelis who loathe Netanyahu fall for that one again and again.

But the wily fox seems to be taking a different tack. After the 100% predictable Hezbollah retaliation of the past week, we expected Southern Lebanon to be consumed in fire and brimstone. Instead, we get some vaguely conciliatory verbiage about how back-channel messages from Nasrallah indicate that Hezbollah is not wanting an escalation...

What the hell is that all about? Has the Greatest Leader Since Moses gone soft?

So aside from the immediate bombardment of a few Lebanese border villages, there has been no retaliation for the Hezbollah attack, and for the moment at least, it appears that the PM is treating this as a balanced ledger.

Not only that, but today we learn that Israel is cooperating in an investigation into the death of that Spanish peace-keeper who died in that initial retaliation.

Bibi cooperating in an international investigation of Israel?

There you have it! Bibi the "strong hand" is yesterday's man...

He has remade himself as a man of peace, moderation, and reconciliation, just in time for the election!

Bibi ups the ante...

I see where the Greatest Leader Since Moses has managed to push back his date before the American TV networks from 11 Feb to 3 March.

What a score that is!

Instead of stealing the media limelight a month before the election, he has managed to push his moment in the spotlight back two weeks, to a mere fortnight before the election!

We are witnessing absolutely genius election rigging!

Nothing sways the Israeli vote like Bibi swanning about in front of a fawning US Congress!

Netanyahu takes election campaign to Washington

Ten days ago the Greatest Leader Since Moses wowed his people with a front-row front-page photo-op at that infamous rally for "free speech" in Paris.

He is about to one-up himself with a spot of political grand-standing in Washington!

And if that is in itself not enough of a coup, he has simultaneously managed an end-run around der Schwartze! The well-known antipathy between the White House and Netanyahu would not have helped Bibi had he arranged this trip via normal protocol. Instead, it would have opened him to accusations of appeasement.

Therefore, Netanyahu arranged an invitation through his acolytes in Congress, by-passing the White House entirely. On 11 February, a mere four weeks before the Israeli election, Netanyahu will be seen on every TV screen in Israel as the man who has the ear of the US Congress, at the invitation not of the President, but of John Boehner. Not only does this avoid the unpleasantness of having to appear deferential to Obama, it shows every voter in Israel that he has more schlep in Congress than the President himself!

An absolutely brilliant strategy!

How to recognize a true child of God

The blood was not yet scrubbed from the Kehilat Bnai Torah Synagogue and already the political opportunists from across the spectrum were braying for vengeance.

Netanyahu was first off the mark, promising a resumption of house demolitions and "many other steps."

Bennet tried to score a few cheap points by blaming the attack on Israel's lap dog, the toothless Mahmoud Abbas.

Canada's ever-outraged FM John Baird, forever angling to be seen as Israel's best friend, chimed in with a press release that featured his vocabulary of indignation in finest form; condemns, condemns, cowardly, cowardly, savage terrorist attack, despicable terrorist acts...

Yes, it was certainly a red-letter day for the eye-for-an-eye crowd...

Meanwhile, back in Har Nof, a JPost reporter found a radically different attitude. An attitude of quiet resignation that, while deeply wounded, nevertheless believes that vengeance and judgement are in the hands of God, not up to the politicians.

"We are not a vengeful people. We are not a culture of blood for blood," a congregant of Kehilat Bnai Torah told the paper. "Our answer to such events is to strengthen our faith and our religious practice."

If more people, from every side in every conflict, could leave vengeance and judgement to God, and focus instead on being a better child of God, the world would be at peace.

Netanyahu to double down on Gaza war

Looks like Netanyahu wants to keep the party going till Hamas has no more tunnels and no more rockets.

That will require how many more to give their lives?

And does anyone imagine that there will be no more tunnels or rockets after he has declared victory?

Obama to mediate Middle East cease-fire

That's not a good news story. That's a save-Netanyahu-from-the-consequences-of-his-stupidity story.

And why should Obama be doing that for Netanyahu?

No, far better to let Netanyahu follow through. I don't think Hamas has got the message yet. There still remains considerable attitude on their part. The good sharp slap has thus far failed to shut them up.

Slap them harder.

Send the ground forces in there, Bibi.

Let's find out once and for all what kinds of anti-tank weapons might have got through those tunnels before your friend al-Sisi took the helm in Egypt.

The beauty of an air campaign against an enemy that has neither an air force or air defences is that you're going to come out looking pretty good.

As in "oh look, we killed 2,000 terrorists and all we got was a guy who scraped his knee..."

But if the terrorists are still sending rockets to Tel Aviv, the people will have their doubts.

So root out those terrorists once and for all, Bibi, as you have promised.

Send in the ground troops.

That's what Hamas is waiting for.

Canada FM Baird smears critics with "anti-semitism" slur

Ferry de Kerckhove had a long and distinguished career in Canada's Foreign Service, culminating in Egypt where he served as Canada's ambassador from 2009-2011. As such we might have some cause to assume he knows what he is talking about when he questions Canada's non-chalant handling of the Mohamed Fahmy file. Specifically, he had the temerity to suggest that Ottawa's lethargy may be related to the fact that our very best friends in Israel are quite enamoured of the al-Sisi regime, and neither Harper nor Baird are willing to go against the Likud party line.

To which the Foreign Minister replied with this appalling non-sequitur; "There are some people in this world who want to blame every single problem on Israel, the Jews... it's deeply offensive and ridiculous."

Fans of Israeli PM Netanyahu will recognize this strategy as coming straight out of the Likud playbook. When rational debate fails you, seize the moral high ground by calling your critics names. Not a particularly sophisticated strategy, but it works. 

Heebie jeebies in the Holy Land

All is not well on Planet Bibi.

While Netanyahu has spared no rhetorical flourish in milking the miracle of the Iranian missile shipment, he has yet to explain why anyone should give a rat's ass about 40 missiles allegedly headed for Gaza, when top IDF intelligence boffins routinely claim that a minimum of 170,000 rockets and missiles or more are at this very moment targeted at every city and town in Israel.

Then there's the matter of those US-orchestrated "peace talks." Most thinking people realized from the beginning that these talks were dead in the water from the get-go, but spare us the nonsense about Palestinian inflexibility! Listening to Netanyahu one could be forgiven for concluding that it must be the Palestinians' illegal construction of thousands of housing units inside the Green Line that has derailed the peace process.

And things went from bad to worse when Netanyahu had to apologize for the murder of Jordanian judge Raed Zeiter at a border crossing by trigger-happy IDF soldiers the other day. How were they supposed to know that the guy was a judge, and that this otherwise routine killing would attract international opprobrium?

On top of all that schmerz, you now have the Committee for the Fight against Poverty making it plain to all the world that if you think Israel is the land of milk and honey, you'd best bring along your own milk and honey, because otherwise you're screwed.

Oh dear! Whatever is the greatest leader since Moses to do?

I'm guessing Netanyahu will hew close to his traditional "the best defence is a heavy-handed offence" strategy.

Don't panic, folks; plans for Lebanon III are well advanced!

The miracle of the Iranian missile shipment

It's been a busy week for Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli PM has spent a few days in America, addressing the AIPAC loyalists, having meetings in Washington, and generally rallying all who will listen to the Likudnik vision first handed down by Moses all those millenia ago.

It's been a tough sell. Like it or not, BDS is gaining traction. Talks with the Palestinians may not be going anywhere, but the mere fact of talks is severely discomforting for Netanyahu. And then there are the Iranians.

You'd think that Netanyahu's turn at the UN last year, with that spiffy nuke schematic as a teaching aid, would have convinced the world once and for all of the message the PM has been shouting from the rooftops for well over twenty years now; that the Iranians are mere months from a bomb!

But instead of bombing the evil Iranian empire to ratshit, Obama opens a dialogue with them?!

Yes, these have been dark days indeed...

And then, just  as things are at their darkest, with a stroke of impeccable timing, the Almighty arranges to have the Israeli Navy stumble upon a shipment of Iranian missiles destined for Gaza!

WHAT A MIRACLE!

The world once again witnesses the perfidy of the Persians. Talking nice in Vienna about nukes while shipping Syrian missiles to the Palestinians to rain down on innocent Israeli civilians...  And the Palestinians are no less duplicitous, talking two state solution while secretly planning the elimination of the other state.

Were these missiles to fall into the hands of the Gaza rocketeers they could hit Tel Aviv!

It's a compelling story. Unfortunately it has more holes in it than the last Gaza farmer to wander too close to the fence.

Lets look at a map:



In the first place, that's one hell of a long trip to make just so Gaza militants can fire rockets at Tel Aviv. If the the goal of the Iranian terror-masterminds is to hit Tel Aviv with missiles, the missiles allegedly seized could do that from the Lebanese border. They could be delivered in an afternoon by truck instead of this months-long odyssey by sea.

Secondly, the Lebanese border is effectively controlled by Iranian ally Hezbollah, who already have plenty of missiles according to the highest levels of IDF intelligence. They could readily hit Tel Aviv anytime the mood seized them. No circuitous shipping extravaganza required. In fact, given the hundreds of thousands already in their possession, they wouldn't seem to have any urgent need for more, but this fact would undermine the story's "we have saved Tel Aviv from a terrorist missile attack" fear factor.

Finally, relations between Iran and Hamas have been less than cordial for the past couple of years. They are effectively fighting on opposite sides in the Syria conflict. The idea that Iran would be shipping weapons to its enemies is just foolishness.

So maybe it wasn't a miracle from up high after all, but just a well-timed PR stunt to discredit Iran.

There are any number of more plausible destinations for those rockets; anti-government rebels in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or rebel groups on the African side of the Red Sea just to name a couple of more obvious ones.

But it's a beautiful story, and the AIPAC faithful are gonna love it.

Ariel Sharon, Rabbi Kaduri, and the imminent arrival of the Messiah

There's an awful lot of internet traffic today devoted to imaginary prophecies concerning visions allegedly visited on Mizrahi rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri.

Kaduri was quite a character. Spent his whole life reading scripture and seeing visions. He kicked the bucket just weeks after Sharon went into what was to be his terminal coma. But he's having a bit of a resurrection today, thanks mostly to Christian Zionist propagandists in the US.

I'm personally a bit of a skeptic when it comes to visions. Oh, I've certainly had my share... that's why I'm profoundly skeptical. But Kaduri was mostly a big deal among the more orientalist folks in the Holy Land, and God knows those are the folks who will go in for visions and prophesies and quackery of all stripes.

It's a bit of Netanyahu-inspired folk-lore that Rabbi Kaduri once confided to him that Jehovah himself had revealed in a vision that anyone to the left of Likud was no longer an authentic Jew.

Netanyahu himself is of course the ultimate pragmatist and he knows quackery when he hears it, but he's certainly not adverse to harnessing it for his own ends.

Pretty much the only people anywhere even more susceptible to quackery are American Christian Zionists like Paul Begley.

What is really astonishing, and this is a profound indictment of the American education system, is that millions of people lap this stuff up.

Syria and the not-so-obvious

It is more than obvious that both Hezbollah and Israel have been knee-deep into the Syrian morass.

The official proclamations coming from Netanyahu et al have been pretty predicable. They're preventing advanced weaponry from falling into the hands of Hezbollah.

Of course they are.

But is it possible that both Israel and Hezbollah are in Syria propping up the same guy?

Both have plausible reasons for preserving the Assad regime. In fact, they both have much to lose if Syria devolves into a failed state on the lines of Iraq.

The Likud brain trust doesn't mind failed states per se; they've certainly done their best to ensure that Lebanon goes down that road. But it's important to them that the anarchy be manageable.

And Syria is out of control.