What a fabulous time to shake up Israel’s government!

Bibi should get a T-shirt that says: “Ehud Barak did favors for Marc Rich / Obama got a $300,000 discount on a house / His wife got a $300,000 “Job” / And all I got were some crummy cigars and champagne.”

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer,

OpEds Rabbi Prof. Dov Fisch
Rabbi Prof. Dov Fisch
צילום: PR

Just in case no one in Israel has noticed, Iran recently flew a drone into Israel.  The Islamo-Nazis are probing Israel’s defenses.  They want to wipe Israel off the map.

Israel responded rapidly and forcefully — and with fierce effectiveness — but an Israeli fighter plane went down.  Israel immediately obliterated twelve critical military sites in Syria, taking out a major aspect of Syrian air defenses, and going frontally against Iran in Syria.

Simultaneously, Israel signaled to Vladimir Putin that no one in Israel wants trouble with the Russians — and thank you, by the way, for the centuries of your Jew-hatred under Tsars and Communists that helped bequeath us with so many of Israel’s best citizens and advanced-technology geniuses — but Israel can stare down Russians, too.

Then the Gaza border fence held hidden bombs that  severely wounded two IDF soldiers and a rocket was launched. Israel responded forcefully.

So isn’t this a fabulous time for Israel’s media and leftists to shake up the nation’s government and defense apparatus?  What a perfect moment to signal to the Ayatollahs, Assad, and Putin that Israel is rife with internal turmoil! Perhaps we can bring back Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz to mastermind the national defense.  Was it a leftist campus Conservative Rabbi at Hillel who said:  “If not now, when?”

Yes, it is very important that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut down on his cigars.  And too much pink champagne could give him a red nose. But, uh, just in case no one noticed. . . .

These guys in the Islamist Arab and Persian worlds wait for this stuff.  They are like the lion quietly waiting for the giraffe to bend down on its powerful legs and sip water.  That is when they pounce for the instant kill.  An Anwar Sadat does not make war with a Menachem Begin.  Rather, a Sadat sees his moment when a nice grandmother-type, a bubbe like Golda Meir, is the Prime Minister and tells him in a much quoted line that she completely forgives him for killing her children, just has trouble dealing with his making her teach her children to learn life-or-death self-defense.  That is when they strike.  They attack the Bubbe.  They wait for a labor hack like Amir Peretz who gets the Defense Ministry portfolio as a union payoff for delivering votes.  They don’t start up with Begin, with Sharon.

It is the same in America.  The Communists tested a young John Kennedy by shipping Soviet missiles into his backyard.  They test a joker like Jimmy Carter, beating him everywhere in the world.  They run amok on an Obama and Kerry, creating new terror groups and spreading their murder globally. But they do not mess with a Ronald Reagan — because Crazy Reagan will drop a bomb on their tents and kill their harems of wives. Even a Bush, if pressed, will see them hanged.

Yes, sometimes the political head of a country must be removed.  Hitler.  Stalin.  Tsars.  Ayatollahs.  Of course those. Also the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt.

And sometimes even non-murderous political leaders are so utterly corrupt, so bereft of any conscience, so tainted and devoid of morality, that they just have to be locked up, like the Clintons in America, traitors who allowed Putin and his allies to gain access to American plutonium reserves even as Bill Clinton was pocketing $500,000 around the same time for a speech in the the Russian orbit.  (That must have been some speech!) Crooks and Arkansas hillbillies who, when they left the White House after their eight years and two terms there, Bill and Hillary actually stole some of the American people’s furniture with them for their new home.  One day yet, an honest prosecutor will catch up with them.

But does Israel really want to shake up its political leadership right now, with the possibility of transferring power to less experienced and less intimidating leaders at the helm, because Netanyahu got cigars, champagne, and maybe some jewelry from the kinds of people he befriended?  Think back to the Ehud Olmerts and that Gang of Incompetents who truly brought about massive loss of Jewish life simply by their failures and inadequacies during the Hezbollah war.  If Israel wants ethically, morally pristine leaders, does Israel really want a return to the likes of Ehud Barak, who not only presided over the Creation and Flowering of the Intifada, the burning of the Kever Yosef structure, the Bloody Hands lynch at Ramallah — but whose own ethics deserve a good look?

Remember Ehud Barak?  Want to talk about corruption?  President Bill Clinton pardoned a corrupt financial wheeler-dealer, Marc Rich — whose very existence on this earth brought shame and humiliation to the Jewish People.  He was so corrupt that he fled from America rather than face justice.  Why did Bill Clinton pardon that crook?  When Americans reacted in outrage, demanding to know why, Clinton explained that he simply was doing a favor for a friend, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who had pleaded with him to pardon Rich.

So Netanyahu asked the Americans to give a visa to a Jewish billionaire or two, James Packer and the producer Arnon Milchan (who actually produces major blockbuster movies in America like “Pretty Woman,” “Twelve Years a Slave,” and “JFK”), doing something that any Israeli Prime Minister would do for any Israeli billionaire who requests a word from high-up to get him a visa, so he can make more money, which will redound to Israel’s national financial benefit. What is wrong with that? All politicians do that. Has no one ever heard the expression: “It’s not what you know; It’s who you know.”  Or “Vitamin P – Protektzia.”  It is the first “Hebrew word” that new immigrants to Israel are taught at Ulpan (Hebrew language class).

We may wish that the righteous would get all the honors, glory, and political favors on this earth. But we know how the earth works.  It is a shame that people do not rise solely based on merit and qualities of character.  But that is the world.  Donald Trump is the President. Ivanka is his daughter.  A guy married that daughter. Now that guy is a White House advisor and Middle East negotiator.  Protektzia. 

Clinton was President. His wife helped him get rid of the woman every time he sexually abused another woman, and she shared as his partner in crime.  Literally.  So she got to be a United States Senator.  Then she got to run for President.  Protektzia.  John Kennedy was President of the United States. So his brother, Robert, got to be Attorney-General and later a United States Senator.  That is how it works. Vitamin P.

Barack Obama initially had friends like basic local Chicago Jew-haters: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Minister Louis Farrakhan.  Then he got a little bit important in Illinois, so he started getting big payoffs from “friends.” His wife suddenly got a $300,000 hospital job that was eliminated soon after she moved on.  A crook named Tony Rezko — eventually convicted on 16 charges and sentenced to more than ten years in prison — arranged for Obama to buy a house at $300,000 less than its fair market value. And Obama did favors for Rezko. Ah, the joy of friends!  And instead of indicting Obama, they made him President.  So Obama threw his old pals and the Jew-hating pastor who married him under the bus, and Obama made new friends that had better presents.  A friend in need is a friend indeed — especially when the deed is to the property next door to the crook.

Y’know how kids wear those T-shirts that say: “My parents visited Hawaii, and all I got was this crummy T-shirt”?  Bibi should get a T-shirt that says: “Ehud Barak did favors for Marc Rich / Obama got a $300,000 discount on a house / His wife got a $300,000 “Job” / And all I got were some crummy cigars and champagne.”

Here is a secret, so please don’t tell anyone — just between us:  In modern-day Western democracies, it costs a fortune to run in a free democratic election for head of government — whether to be President of the United States, Prime Minister of Britain or France or Israel.  They have to raise millions.  Do you know who they raise it from?  (Rember, please: This is our secret.) Not from the homeless.  Not from the leper colonies.  They raise the money from billionaires who have the money.  Therefore, every such political leader is in bed with gazillionaires. Behind closed doors, they schnorr and beg.  And in time, because they are pursuing the same things — money, luxuries, and some ideology —  they become friends of sorts. It is the same reason that so many celebrities marry other celebrities: they hang out together, socialize in the same circles, spend money on the same vanities.

So Bibi Netanyahu hangs out and buddies with the likes of Arnon Milchan and James Packer.  What a surprise!  Then they come to his home, perhaps for a dinner with the Prime Minister of Israel.  What does a gazillionaire in Israel give his host, the Prime Minister of Israel, when he comes for dinner?  A bottle of Manischewitz?  A box of assorted Wissotzky tea bags? A gift basket of Bissli, Bamba, a Krembo, and Elite wafers? A wooden cutting board?  “Here, Sara, you will really love this wood board.  It is great for cutting cheese on crackers. Also for slicing vegetables.”

So of course they give him expensive exotic gifts like fancy cigars!  The only cigars Israel is known for are the thin Moroccan beef appetizers. Of course they gave him fancy champagne. Big deal!  And of course he makes a call to John Kerry to do a favor for a friend who needs a visa.

One can only hope and pray that Attorney-General Mandelblit will have the wisdom to drop this nonsense and that the Prime Minister will use this brush with political insanity to learn that his own political time is winding down, as all political epochs do.  With this wisdom and awareness that time is not endless, one can only hope that Bibi will see that that his enemies in Israel will stop at nothing, that his best friends are those who support Israel’s rights to Judea and Samaria, and that he finally will leverage this rare moment in history when his fellow head of government in America is a real friend of his and of Israel, to launch an historic legacy of building and new construction in Judea and Samaria while the gate of opportunity still is open.