Attacks on police have backfired and demonstrate, once again, how pathetic and shallow, the message liberals have constantly been delivering of late and how divisive it is and became.
Yes, there are police abuses, even brutality, but the constant overboard calling attention to what recently happened in Ferguson and New York, implying it was viral with respect to our nation's police served to stir unruly crowds, the destruction of personal property and was totally uncalled for.
The mayor of New York and the president of our nation involving a hustler like Al Sharpton, a tax cheat, a race baiter, a consummate liar, is beyond comprehension and is a sad commentary on their own character and judgement. They provided the matches with their intemperate messages and are responsible for the consequences. In the case of Obama his distaste for police was evident when in Cambridge, Ma. he called the actions of a policeman stupid before Obama had all the facts.,
I just listened to some of Mayor De Blasio's press conference and his response to the presses' pointed questions. He came across defensive and to my hearing attempted to save his ass as he sought to take us back to the '60's and that the media shared part of the blame - shades of Obama always offloading on someone else,
If De Blasio was a mensch instead of a pathetic politician he would resign but he is so ideologically twisted I doubt he would ever consider it.
I would have wished,that at least during the Christmas Season we could have avoided more angst that seems to occur on a weekly basis but such was not to be. In the past month we have witnessed Ferguson and rioting, Brooklyn and murdered policemen because of reaction to a grand jury decision and parades calling for same sanction by the Mayor, a Senator releasing a half baked report attacking the CIA and George Bush's interrogation methods, release of unrepentant terrorists from Guantanamo, with a threat to release more, Obama's unilateral decision to recognize Cuba with no demands of change, and did I miss anything else? Oh yeah, N Korea's hacking of Sony and Obama's promise to respond once he returns from golfing in Hawaii! (See 1 and 1a below.)
Been a bad week for liberal philosophy. (See 1be below.)
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Israel's Super Women: https://www.youtube.com/embed/
Would not be surprised if war breaks out again and this time ISIS could be the culprits. (See 2 below.)
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It is Darwin Awards time! Pretty much the same year after year but they serve as a reminder how stupid people are and they probably vote! (See 3 below.)
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Palestinians have forced the issue in the upcoming Israeli election. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) After Snub, de Blasio Pays Respects to Cop's Family as Relations With NYPD Worsen
By Andrea Billups and Sandy Fitzgerald
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has met with the families of the two officers shot to death in a squad car this weekend.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the mayor said as he, his wife Chirlane McCray and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton visited with relatives of officer Rafael Ramos on the front porch of the family's Brooklyn home. They were inside the home for about 30 minutes, according to The New York Post.
De Blasio later met with the family of slain officer Wenjian Liu.
Relations had been growing strained between de Blasio and the NYPD, after the New York mayor quietly left a Mass at St. Patrick's on Sunday and disappeared, never showing up to pay his respect to the families of the police officers shot and killed in an ambush on Saturday.
John Rodriguez, who serves as president of the 75th Precinct Community Council, called out de Blasio for his conduct and said he should do more. "Come out here and show this family some respect — that’s what [de Blasio] should do," The New York Post reported.
Neither de Blasio, his wife or Bratton spoke publicly after Monday's visit.
On Sunday, de Blasio prayed alongside his wife and Bratton, taking communion and receiving a blessing from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, he left after the 10:15 a.m. service and was not seen later in the day, even as Bratton visited the scene of the attack in Brooklyn and as Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent an hour with the family of one officer, Rafael Ramos, at his home.
"An attack on a police officer is an attack on every law-abiding person in the city of New York, and that’s what this was," Cuomo said afterward, according to The Post.
The widow of the second officer declined a visit from the governor, saying she was too distraught, Cuomo's spokesman told The Post.
De Blasio has been heavily criticized for his conduct and comments since a grand jury earlier this month failed to indict officers in the chokehold death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner.
He made a statement to the effect that he was concerned for the safety of his biracial son at the hands of the police.
Police, in reaction, circulated a "Don't Insult My Sacrifice" waiver on the website of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, banning de Blasio from attending their funerals should they be killed in the line of duty.
"I, as a New York City police officer, request that Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito refrain from attending my funeral services in the event that I am killed in the line of duty,” the waiver states.
There is no word on whether the slain cops signed the waiver or if the mayor will be asked to stay away from their funerals.
Ramos' cousin, Richard Gonzalez, told The Post that de Blasio "could come if he wants."
"We’re not disrespectful. We’re not going to throw him out and say, 'Don’t be here,'" he said. "We want to bury our cousin and our son and grieve in peace."
On Saturday, police silently protested de Blasio by turning their backs to him at a press conference.
On Sunday, Patrick Lynch, the president of the city's largest police union, blamed de Blasio for the Brooklyn killings, reports The New York Times.
The officers' blood, he said, "starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor."
Those close to de Blasio said that it is essential to secure the trust of the police department, but it will be difficult, The Times reports.
"This is a nightmare of the highest magnitude for everyone," said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, and City Hall officials "need to dig down deep in their souls and understand that campaigning to be a leader is easier than being a leader."
Many of New York's elected officials are defending the mayor.
Like in New York, police departments in cities are warning their officers to be on high alert, The Post reports, and in the Washington, D.C., area, officers are saying they feel like marked targets.
In nearby Baltimore, Ismaaiyl Brinsley allegedly shot his former girlfriend before traveling to Brooklyn and killing the two officers before killing himself
"We are in uniform and in marked cars,” Delroy Burton, head of the D.C. Fraternal Order of Police, told The Post. “There is no way to defend against someone who wants to do us harm. There is no way to see it coming.”
In the hours before the officers were murdered, Brinsley announced on Instagram he planned to kill policemen in retribution for the deaths of Ferguson, Missouri, resident Michael Brown and Garner.
De Blasio called the fatal shootings "a despicable act," and President Barack Obama called Bratton on Sunday to express his condolences, but those words have not appeased critics.
The officers' deaths were assassinations that came after months of propaganda about how the police are the enemy of the black community, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Sunday, and said that anti-police propaganda was to blame.
"And it's certainly true that we have been treated to about three to four months of propaganda about how the police are the enemy," Giuliani told Fox News. "[About how] the police are the problem. [About how] they are the major problem between the police and the black community."
He insisted he does not blame de Blasio directly for the murders, but for "for is allowing the protests to get out of control."
On Sunday, police said Brinsley, at 28, had a long criminal record and a history of mental illness, and likely used the same gun to kill the police officers that he'd used to shoot his girlfriend.
The mayor "probably needs an intermediary to go between himself and the unions, maybe a religious leader," said former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly in an interview, The Washington Post reports, following the execution-style deaths of officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, who were killed while on duty near a Brooklyn housing project.
Any conversation about the murders of two New York City Police officers this weekend must start by acknowledging the ordinary heroism of law enforcement personnel that puts them in harm’s way every day. We should then acknowledge that all those who have criticized police actions in Ferguson, Missouri and New York after the controversial deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner are not responsible for the slaying of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. We don’t know yet who or what may have influenced the reportedly mentally disturbed shooter, who was apparently bent on “revenge” for Brown and Garner. But we do know this. After four months of non-stop condemnations of the police and the justice system for both racism and deliberately targeting African Americans for violence, it is time for the race hucksters and their political enablers such as President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to stop the campaign of incitement against the police.
Conservatives know very well that attempts to politicize violence on the part of the mentally ill is deeply unfair. They know that liberal claims that either the Tea Party or conservatives such as Sarah Palin were somehow responsible for the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was sheer slander. If some angry supporters of the police now try to say Obama, Holder, or de Blasio approved or countenanced the actions of Ismaaiyl Brinsley, they are just as wrong. Obama, Holder, and de Blasio have all rightly condemned the murder of the two officers.
But once we acknowledge that, we cannot ignore the fact that the discussion about race and the police in this country has gotten out of control in recent months and that these same political leaders who should have been seeking to restrain the public from drawing extreme and general conclusions about two very extraordinary cases instead kept the pot boiling for political advantage.
Even worse than that, they have empowered and legitimized racial demagogues like Al Sharpton who have sought to profit from exploiting these tragedies to promote their own agendas. In turn, Sharpton and those like him who are given prominent air time on networks like MSNBC and CNN have encouraged protesters who have not only engaged in violence but often openly called for the killing of police, a stance that has been openly endorsed by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and other radicals.
The act of a single possibly mad gunman does not mean that Americans must never question the actions of police or ponder broader issues about race. It is misleading to claim that those who have raised such questions have given a green light to the murder of police officers. Yet those who have sought to take two very different and quite unusual incidents in Ferguson and New York and weave them into a neat narrative of racism and anti-black violence by police have done very much the same thing. The difference between the two is that the media spent much of the last four months seeking to establish that wrongheaded narrative as a fact while they will, quite rightly, give no credence or air time to those who will blame Obama for cop killers.
The narrative of incitement against the police in recent months was based on two misnomers.
One was the unquestioning acceptance of the narrative of police wrongdoing and racism in the killing of Brown and the far more questionable death of Garner by both the media and political leaders. This involved not only the willingness of both celebrities and lawmakers to treat myths, such as the claim that Brown had his hands up when he was shot, as fact. It also involved the casual acceptance of the charge of racism on the part of ordinary cops around the nation in the absence of any real proof as well as the shouting down of those like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who sought to defend the role of the police in defending the black community rather than attacking it.
Just as reprehensible was the willingness to ignore the calls for violence against the police on the part of so many of those who took to the streets about Ferguson and Garner. While stray comments on the part of a handful of Tea Partiers became the foundation for conventional-wisdom dismissal of their movement as racist or violent, the anti-police chants at mass demonstrations were largely ignored, rationalized, or excused. The same is true of comments like those of Farrakhan delivered in Baltimore where the killer of the two policemen lived.
But just as the murder of two cops doesn’t necessarily excuse the actions of the police in the Garner case, neither should we forget that all too many public figures have accepted with very little evidence the assumptions about racism and violence that have done so much to besmirch the reputation of the police. Rather than working to connect the dots between the comments of the president, the attorney general, and the mayor to a murder that none of them wished for, sensible observers should instead be unraveling the even shakier narrative these figures helped create about police misbehavior and racism.
The unraveling of the false narrative of incitement against the police should not give rise to another that is also mistaken. But what happened in Ferguson, Staten Island, and the assassination of two police officers should teach us that simplistic, easily manipulated narratives that serve the interests of a few race inciters and politicians don’t deserve any more respect than conspiracy theories coming from the other end of the political spectrum. If there is any reproach today that should be laid at the feet of Obama, Holder, and de Blasio, it is that by helping to foster one false set of assumptions, they have now left themselves vulnerable to questions about their own willingness to accept and exploit calumnies against the police and the justice system.
1b) The more things change ...
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for the liberals’ narrative outlook on life. One after another of their favorite genres has blown up in their faces as they have been caught telling and promoting stories that were too good to be true.
There was the gender-based theme, as the Rolling Stone tale of the horrendous gang rape at the University of Virginia went the way of the Duke lacrosse story — an elaborate hoax put on by the self-styled victim with no connection whatever to fact. A feminist student complained that "to let fact-checking define the narrative" would be a "mistake." But a narrative without facts is simply a fiction and a lie that does damage to innocent people.
Damage to innocents is seldom a problem for the drivers of narratives, but it is for the people they hope to win over. This is a loss for the sisters in their war on the war against women, coming on top of the midterm elections. We can call this strike one.
There was no fact-checking around Ferguson, Mo., in August, because the story itself was so good. A 300-pound thief who picked a fight with a cop was turned into a "child" who was cruelly gunned down by a Bull Connor cutout. The incident became the excuse to loot and burn buildings, and then the excuse for the underemployed in large urban centers to lie down in crosswalks and block major arteries.
Six academics set upon two cops on the Brooklyn Bridge on Dec. 13 and broke the nose of one officer, as Columbia University graduate student Cindy Gorn and Rutgers-educated Spanish instructor Zachary Campbell tried to prevent the arrest of one Eric Linsker, a Baruch College professor and poet who was trying to drop a 50-pound garbage can on the officers’ heads. Isn’t it nice when intellectuals take an interest in local community matters? They have so much to contribute, what with their perspective and all.
Alas, this narrative of a racist police force suppressing "the other" exploded for good on Dec. 20, when two officers, Hispanic and Asian, were shot in their patrol car, mourned by the police and most of the city, and memorialized in a press conference translated in Spanish and attended by people of varying colors whose demeanor was a lot more refined than that of the protest community. The narrative may now never recover, mourn the liberal bloggers, varied race hustlers and many people at NBC News.
This has happened before. In the late 1960s, the last time students and faculty were this full of themselves, they succeeded in electing a lot of Republicans. They gave their own bete noir, Richard M. Nixon, his long deferred and soon squandered wish to be president. As Michael Barone writes in his book Our Country, "Some cheered the springtime rebels as demonstrations broke out in April and May 1969 at Harvard, the City College of New York, and San Francisco State College. Others cheered San Francisco State’s president, the beret-capped semanticist S.I. Hayakawa, as he climbed on the top of a student sound truck and pulled the plugs."
Steven F. Hayward quotes Diana Trilling expressing dismay at the boost the riots gave then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, whose approval ratings in 1969 would nearly reach 80 percent. "Every time he shakes his finger at one of those mobs," a supporter told Newsweek, "it gets him 10,000 votes." The next year, voters would re-elect him by a nice, healthy margin — and would elect Republicans as president for 20 of the next 24 years.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."
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2) ISRAEL BOOSTING GOLAN HEIGHTS FORCES IN RESPONSE TO RISING ISIS THREATS
By Dave Bender
The Israeli Army is boosting and regrouping its forces in the Golan Heights in light of ISIS terrorists overtaking more and more border areas, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat and Lebanese media.
A senior Israeli officer said that the army has regrouped and reinforced its forces in the Golan Heights after three divisions of insurgents operating near the Israeli and Jordanian borders in the southern Golan recently declared their loyalty to ISIS, the pan-Arab newspaper said.
Militants with the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) were among those who recently switched allegiance to ISIS, according to Israel’s Ch. 2 News.
The senior officer said the IDF muscle-flexing was intended to deter ISIS from hostile moves towards Israel, and that any show of weakness in the face of the terrorist organization’s advances could cost the lives of Israeli civilians.
“Israel cannot stand by while red lines which endanger its security are being crossed,” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon stated recently.
“This year, we find ourselves facing radical Islamic terrorism, which lurks in every Middle Eastern corner, seeking to destroy us only for who we are. The relentless terrorism is activated by cruel organizations which are not picky about their methods, and will do everything to try and sabotage our existence here in Israel.”
To that end, the Israeli army’s Combat Intelligence Collection Corps “Vulture” battalion held week-long maneuvers in the Golan Heights in late Nov., over concerns that Syria’s internal carnage could involve Israel.
The army, anxiously following events on the other side of the hostile border, held the exercise in light of six months of sporadic cross-border gunfire, mortar shelling and two foiled infiltrations by hostile aircraft – one an armed bomber on a run against rebel forces close to Israeli territory.
In a telephone call between Ya’alon and outgoing US Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel on Dec. 12th, the sides discussed “efforts by the United States and the coalition partners to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and they reaffirmed the strength of the U.S.-Israel security relationship,” according to the Defense Department.
Meanwhile, Lebanon-based NOW Media recently reported that the country’s military forces are bracing for an ISIS onslaught via Mt. Qalamoun to attack units of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group which are aligned with the forces of Syria’s Assad.
“Al-Nusra Front and ISIS’s plan warns of a black winter and bad days ahead in Baalbek and Hermel,” sources told the outlet, referring to two threatened border areas.
Both terrorist groups have clashed repeatedly in recent months, in attempts to wrestle control of the strategic hilltop which overlooks Lebanese territory, as well as in several other areas along the border between the two countries.
On Dec. 6th, Jordanian monarch King Abdullah told CBS News that battling the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other terrorist groups is “our third world war.”
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Darwin Awards participants and their acts are hard to believe .
Nominee No. 1: [San Jose Mercury News]:
An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend's windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.
Nominee No. 2: [Kalamazoo Gazette]:
James Burns, 34, (a mechanic) of Alamo, MI, was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police describe as a "farm-type truck."
Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise.
Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft."
Nominee No. 3: [Hickory Daily Record]:
Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, NC.
Awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson 38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.
Nominee No. 4: [UPI, Toronto]:
Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death?
A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the building’s windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously has conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports.
Peter Lawson, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the 200-man association.
A person has to wonder what the dimmer members of this law firm are like.
Nominee No. 5: [The News of the Weird]:
Michael Anderson Godwin had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison.
While sitting on a metal toilet in his cell attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.
Nominee No. 6: [The Indianapolis Star]:
A Dunkirk, IN man, using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader, was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said.
Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home at about 11:30 PM. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a 54 caliber muzzle-loader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.
Nominee No. 7: [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario]:
A man cleaning a bird feeder on the balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death.
"Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a wheelchair when the accident occurred," said Inspector Darcy Honer of the Peel Regional Police.
"It appears that the chair moved, and he went over the balcony," Honer said.
Finally, THE WINNER! [Arkansas Democrat Gazette]:
Two local men were injured when their pickup truck left the road and struck a tree near Cotton Patch on State Highway 38 early Monday.
Woodruff County deputy Dovey Snyder reported the accident shortly after midnight Monday.
Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc, and Billy Ray Wallis, 38, of Little Rock, were returning to Des Arc after a frog-catching trip.
On an overcast Sunday night, Poole's pickup truck headlights malfunctioned.
The two men concluded that the headlight fuse on the older-model truck had burned out.
As a replacement fuse was not available, Wallis noticed that the.....22 caliber bullets from his pistol fit perfectly into the fuse box next to the steering-wheel column.
Upon inserting the bullet the headlights again began to operate properly, and the two men proceeded on eastbound toward the White River Bridge. After traveling approximately 20 miles, and just before crossing the river, the bullet apparently overheated, discharged and struck Poole in the testicles.
The vehicle swerved sharply right, exited the pavement, and struck a tree. Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions from the accident but will require extensive surgery to repair the damage to his testicles, which will never operate as intended.
Wallis sustained a broken clavicle and was treated and released. "Thank God we weren't on that
bridge when Thurston shot his balls off, or we might be dead," stated Wallis. "I've been a trooper for 10 years in this part of the world, but this is a first for me. I can't believe that those two would admit how this accident happened," said Snyder.
Upon being notified of the wreck, Lavinia Poole (Poole's wife) asked how many frogs the boys had caught and did anyone get them from the truck
Though Poole and Wallis did not die as a result of their misadventure as normally required by Darwin Award Official Rules, it can be argued that Poole did in fact effectively remove himself from the gene pool.
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4)Dominant 2015 Election Issue: Palestinians and One or Two State Solution
by Yisrael Ne'eman
Whether spoken about openly or not, the major election issue in 2015 is Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. Most politicians are doing their best to avoid the issue, hoping it will go away. And as we will see, nobody has good answers. But the day of reckoning has arrived, placed on the agenda by the Palestinians themselves when they requested independence at the UN last year. The global community is behind them, Europeans included, getting on board just recently. There are both individual parliamentary resolutions calling for the recognition of a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders (with possible land swaps) and the EU resolution calling for a Palestinian State.
When we put all of the Israeli political trash aside (from my last article) as to who and how the elections will be won we are confronted with the existential question of Israel's continuation as the Jewish State. Yes, "To be or not to be?" if we are into melodrama. The basic issue is whether there will be a two-state or one-state solution. And if neither, then is the present situation sustainable? No options are positive, some could lead to disastrous results - so what is really being sought out is the answer containing the least damage.
The two-state solution was much more viable 20 and certainly 30-40 years ago. Nowadays there are over 300,000 Jews living in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and another 300,000+ in former East Jerusalem. The PLO/Fatah Palestinians demand the 1949-1967 armistice lines with or without mutually agreed upon land swaps as the recognized state border between Israel and the new Palestinian State. Hamas is the dominant unrepresented political player in the West Bank, and officially or not these Islamists are the sovereigns in Gaza. They remain a constant threat to overthrow the Fatah led PA and Pres. Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. Next they demand Israel's destruction. Hamas will forcibly replace Abbas & Co. if the Israeli army and the American led PA police force disappear.
Israel needs full security access to the West Bank in any final settlement and although in the interests of the PA as well, this is a condition to which Pres. Mahmoud Abbas may very well be unable to agree. Allowing Israel such involvement undermines his claims to sovereignty. Secondly and no less important, what is to be the future of the Jewish population in the Palestinian areas? Arabs live in Israel but according to the PA Jews will not live in the Palestinian State. They claim all Jewish settlement to be "illegal." What they prefer to forget is that the West Bank remains a disputed territory. The West Bank may be occupied, but from whom? Jordan gave up claims in 1988 and was replaced by the PA under the Oslo Accords. According to Oslo the settlement issue is only to be agreed upon in the framework of a permanent status agreement. There never was an independent Palestinian State (one was declared only a year ago) so it is a disconnect to claim Israel took the land from the Palestinians.
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Even a Left/Center coalition will not agree to allow the PA to fully police its own territory. Everyone is cognizant of Hamas activities in the West Bank. The stakes are exponentially higher than with Gaza. Israel's major population centers are within short and medium rocket range from the West Bank border regions. Neither will this same coalition be amenable to large scale evacuations of the Jewish population. Physically this may be downright impossible as there would be an overall rebellion throughout Israel. We could face civil conflict or worse.
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Much of the Right/Religious camp advocates the one state solution including annexation of the West Bank. This entails giving citizenship to the Palestinians since citizenship denial would make Israel into a form of an apartheid state. They claim the one state solution will make Israel safer since the enemy is no longer across the border. No so at all – the problem is only internalized and made worse. Palestinians who seek the destruction of the Jewish State will have Israeli citizenship with all the accompanying rights and privileges. Today's average Israeli citizen will have the "honor" of supporting Islamic religious schools teaching fundamentalism and advocating Sharia Law while supported by the "Islamic Front" - the Hamas affiliate in Israel which already exists. And whatever state supervision is imposed to guarantee against anti-Israel or antisemitic antics will be rendered ineffective in whichever school, cultural institution or mosque in question - wherever and whenever attempted.
Demographically the Arab birthrate outstrips the Jewish (including the haredi population). At the outset there will be more than 45 Arab Knesset members (out of 120) and at least half will be Hamas. All will be against the "Jewish" State and it will only get worse as the Arab population becomes the majority. This spells the demise of Jewish independence and the end of Zionism. Only the coming of the Messiah can save the situation – but that is not policy.
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Lastly there is the continuation of today's situation often advocated by the secular Right. As if we can go on like this forever. Here we kick the problem down the road a few more years. For those who hold democracy dear this prolonged policy only intensifies the contradictions of continuing partial rule over the Palestinians. The West Bank Palestinians have no national expression – meaning no state. Yes, they have a legislature in the PA autonomy, but such a creation is not a sovereign entity. Furthermore international condemnation of Israel is increasing and serious sanctions may not be long in following. The situation will prove unsustainable in the long run especially should the Israeli economy run aground.
Add to this that many Israelis have dual citizenship. Too much pressure and they will take an extended vacation. Israelis are always coming back "next year." And let's be honest, how many Israelis have close friends or relatives who once lived here but are now abroad indefinitely? For whatever "reasons"? (Hint: just about all of us - regardless of whether those living abroad are religious, secular, left or right.)
Bottom line: Let's have some serious debate about this existential issue and stop burying our heads in the sand. It is about time we and our leaders discussed the essence of our being as a state/society and individually as Jews seeking to ensure our continued existence.
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