ISRAELI POLITICAL

FREEMAN CENTER PASSOVER MESSAGE

TO OUR FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS:

As we approach Passover, a festival of Jewish liberation, we must think seriously about the future. The election in Israel was a blow to those who believe in the Right of Jews to their Holy Land.

The L-rd promised Abraham that Eretz Yisrael would belong to the Jewish People forever. Despite this a government has arisen in Israel that denies G-d's promise. We must continue to struggle for our rights and not give in to frustration and despair.

Jewish history has been a long process with many ups and downs. After the Holocaust, we witnessed the re-birth of the Jewish State. And so history will continue. Olmert and his party of self-destruction will one day be defeated. That he can cause great harm to Israel in the meantime is well known. However, we are a strong people and one day we will overcome this set back.

NIGHTMARE INTO DREAM: BACK TO THE FUTURE
by Prof. Eugene Narrett
28 March 06, 28 Adar 5766

I must have been sleeping. I had this dream in which a leader of Israel said 'we have no beliefs, we have no traditions. We are tired of winning battles, we are tired of being brave......' It was March 2006.

No; it wasn't a dream: it was a nightmare. Then, by providence divine, my beloved pinched me and I woke up and it was early morning on June 05, 1967. Jews had been anxious for weeks as the Arab nations again massed their armed forces and vowed to soak the sands of Israel in blood, to drive all the Jews into the sea. Then Israel attacked Egypt and the forces of the armies of Israel swept across the Sinai to the Nile. Israel attacked Syria and Lebanon, liberating the Golan Heights and upper Galil, to Sidon. When the displaced Meccan sharif in Amman bombarded Jewish Jerusalem, Israel drove the trespassers out of Judea and Samaria and into the deserts beyond Moav and Ammon.

FREEMAN CENTER ELECTION BLOG - ONE DAY LEFT
By Bernard J. Shapiro
March 27, 2006

This is a day of great reflection for me and all of Israel. The issues before the electorate are immense, yet the level of political action seems to be restrained. The front runner, Kadima, has no ideology except retreat in the face of Arab terrorism. The right wing parties are terribly divided and have not really launched a coordinated campaign against the Left.

Despite all of this I am optimistic that a miracle could occur tomorrow. My optimism is based on two factors:

1. That the voters who support Eretz Yisrael will be highly motivated to vote and
2. That the Kadima voters will "wake up" and understand the consequences of electing Olmert.

OLMERT IS DANGEROUS FOR ISRAEL!
LETTER FROM RUTH MATAR (WOMEN IN GREEN) JERUSALEM
Thursday, March 23, 2006

Dear Friends of Israel all over the World,

March 28, 2006, will be an important day in Jewish History.

Will the "destroyers" like Ehud Olmert win, or those of us who truly believe that the G-d of Israel promised the Holy Land to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?

Ehud Olmert boasts that he is the one who convinced Ariel Sharon to disengage from the Jewish Land of Gaza, and to make Gaza "judenrein." From Olmert's point of view the disengagement was a great success. There is not a single Jew left in Gaza! Even dead Jews had to be removed from their graves and buried elsewhere, to satisfy the Arab enemy.

Defend the Land - NU/NRP
BY BENNY ELON
THE JERUSALEM POST - March 20, 2006

The National Union-NRP approaches the upcoming election with renewed strength and conviction based on our unique status as the only party on the Right whose candidates encompass both Orthodox and secular, immigrants and native Israelis, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, residents of development towns as well as communities in Judea and Samaria.

The Union in our title aptly describes the diverse but focused voices that make up our membership and our leadership. Our unified slate represents the major Zionist values of settling and defending the Land of Israel, encouraging aliya, and instilling pride in our ideals through solid Jewish education.
National Union-NRP leaders have a clear vision, based on respect for our heritage and our right to live securely in our homeland. We believe in creating a strong right-wing bloc to prevent further territorial withdrawals.

FREEMAN CENTER ELECTION BLOG SIX DAYS UNTIL ELECTION
by Bernard J. Shapiro

TO FREEMAN CENTER SUPPORTERS:

The political climate in Israel is finally beginning to heat up. Kadima is gradually sliding in the polls and the polls themselves are suspect. I have been in day to day, face to face contact with Israeli voters for almost three weeks. While many are still apathetic, a few words explaining how crucial this election will be for Israel’s future seems to turn them around. Young people (18-30) are often completely lacking in good strategic information as well as the Right of Israel to the Lands of Israel.

I start to explain that giving up Judea and Samaria is not only wrong and against Jewish Rights but also disastrous for many other reasons. It is not just homes of "settlers" at risk, but also 30% of Israel’s water supply. From the Judean-Samarian mountain ridge that Olmert is anxious to give to a Hamastan (a terror state), rockets can easily be fired on the heavily populated coastal plan of Israel. While rockets from Gaza frequently miss their targets, the coastal plain from Ashdod to Haifa has 80% of Israel’s population and industry. One doesn’t even have to aim and damage will be done.

The Jihad of the Israeli Left
by Steven Plaut
Arutz Sheva - March 20, 2006

In the campaign in the UK to organize an academic boycott of Israeli universities, led by the British Association of University Teachers (AUT), it turned out that a fanatic anti-Israel faculty member at an Israeli university, Ilan Pappe from the University of Haifa, was the driving force. He was seeking to create a boycott of his own university. That boycott campaign ultimately fizzled and failed. But the attempts by radical anti-Israel faculty members in Israel to promote attacks on their own country continue. Recent campaigns are in some ways more outrageous and far worse than the earlier boycott initiative. The newest campaigns are directed against individual Israelis in their private capacity and are being promoted by some of the most openly anti-Semitic of Israel's academic extremists.

Israel's Uninformed Electorate
by Caroline Glick
THE JERUSALEM POST - Mararch 20, 2006

On the eve of the Knesset elections, Israel faces multiple challenges. Hamas, in appointing technocrats and terrorists to run its new government is showing that it is possible to learn from the Nazi model of governance. Even genocidal mass murderers who seduce their societies with delusions of racial and religious supremacy can receive international acclaim if they make the trains run on time. Israel's political spectrum is divided between the Left, represented by Kadima and the Right represented by Likud. Kadima wishes to contend with the Hamas threat by making a public show of shunning Hamas while surrendering Judea and Samaria to the terror organization.

The Likud points out that surrendering Judea and Samaria to Hamas will make it impossible to defend the rest of the country. Since Likud doesn't think that Israel should surrender its right to defend itself by turning its heartland over to a global terrorist organization which together with Fatah and Islamic Jihad has already murdered over 1,100 Israelis and remains committed to annihilating Israel, it objects to surrendering any territory to Hamas.

Stephen Walt's War with Israel
by Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky
THE AMERICAN THINKER -March 20th, 2006

Harvard Professor Stephen Walt and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer have just published a lengthy diatribe against what they call the “Israel lobby.” Their article appeared in the London Review of Books, and a longer version has been released as a Harvard Kennedy School working paper. The two professors are employed by prestigious universities. But their new paper, a collection of innuendo, half truths, and outright misrepresentations, fails the test of academic integrity and honest research.

It is a work without a trace of balance, in essence no more than an angry polemic disguised as academic research. “The Israel Lobby” is a long, bitter, op-ed piece given a patina of respectability because of where the authors are employed. They may feel themselves protected from criticism by tenure and their titles. They live and work in the proverbial ivory towers of an academic environment that has become an Arab-subsidized lobby against Israel.

DOUBLE STANDARD FOR ISRAEL IN MEDIA & POLITICS
by Gerald A. Honigman

A few years back during this trying time of the year in the Daytona Beach area of Florida, I penned an article ("Makos, Kristof, and Bike Week") which focused on the hypocrisy and double standards the liberal, left wing press habitually practices towards the Jew of the Nations. Not that I'm in love with extreme right kooks either, but the former have become more of a problem of late than the latter since respected circles--such as those in academia--tend to give them more credibility. Coming right after the world famous Daytona 500 NASCAR race in this town, and just before most of the college spring breakers arrive, Bike Week brings with it scores of thousands of motor cyclists from all over the world...and the traffic snarls and noise that accompany them as well...Lovely.

While I'm sure it has nothing to do with the bikers' thunder, The New York Times' syndicated columnist Nicholas Kristof seems to vent some of his own particularly hot air around this season as well. A few years back (late February 2004), for example, he wrote a piece about double standards which appeared in our local news version of the problem being described here in which he complained about Israel's security fence, Arabs allegedly being given no alternatives (to their barbarity), and such. The paper's editors typically spout the same lines, and this prompted my own response mentioned above.

Israel's Policy Quacks
by Caroline Glick
THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 17, 2006

If a doctor treated a breast cancer patient by amputating her big toe, he would doubtlessly be kicked out of medicine. Medical quackery is punished today. Sadly, the same cannot necessarily be said of public policy malpractice. On Wednesday the US suffered a predictable diplomatic defeat. The UN General Assembly approved the establishment of a new human rights council to replace the existing human rights commission. The lopsided vote was similarly preordained: 170 supported the move and four - the US, Palau, Israel and the Marshall Islands - opposed it. The irony is that forming a new human rights body to replace the current one was the US's idea.

Olmert: Tired of Fighting and Winning
by Evelyn Gordon
THE JERUSALEM POST - Mar. 15, 2006

Kadima's campaign spots, by highlighting Ariel Sharon and billing Ehud Olmert merely as his heir, send an unintentionally revealing message: that Olmert himself has nothing to offer the country, so he must instead exploit the popularity of Kadima's comatose founder. And an analysis of Olmert's recent statements confirms this conclusion: He indeed has nothing to offer - except lies, empty promises and evasion of responsibility. Consider, for instance, his pledge last week that a Kadima-led government "will not invest in construction or infrastructure development beyond the Green Line," thereby freeing up "billions of shekels for infrastructure development in the Negev, Galilee and Jerusalem."

SELLING OLMERT AS A GENERAL
by Emanuel A. Winston,
Middle East Analyst & Commentator

A slightly fishy smell emanates from the action by the Israeli troops surrounding the prison in Jericho, 20 minutes after British guards/monitors abandoned their posts. Since the Brits are sticklers for keeping certain agreements –– as guarding a prison –– and do not casually get into their cars and drive away as they did from Jericho on March 14th.

As reported in The New York Times and CNN, Israeli troops and tanks arrived within 20 minutes of the Brits' precipitous departure. Israeli spokesmen declared it wasn’t "coordinated, just coincidental". CNN’s Tom Clancy and Zain Verze interviewed Mark Regev at the Israeli Embassy of the Foreign Ministry and asked him if this was a pre-election action. Regev denied any connection. Clancy and Verze were hostile in their questions and it was not the first time they displayed their overt hostility. What does this theatrical performance really look like? The Americans and British are anxious to make Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appear decisive and militarily capable just before the elections which he hopes gives him the royal stamp of legitimacy as a Real Prime Minister.

IF YOU DON'T VOTE, THE LEFT WINS

JEWISH SECURITY AND LIFE MUST BE ISRAEL'S TOP PRIORITY
KADIMA- FORWARD TO RETREAT AND SURRENDER
ISRAELIS MUST UNITE AGAINST THEIR TRUE ENEMIES -
NOT EACH OTHER
KADIMA - NATIONAL SUICIDE AS A POLICY
IF OLMERT IS LEFT IN POWER IN ISRAEL
THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT OF ISRAEL
KADIMA = CORRUPTION + FATAL STRATEGIC CONCEPTS
=====================

Kadima - in Bed with the Enemy
by Steven Shamrak


"I hope that Olmert wins," Mahmoud Abbas endorses Ehud Olmert's bid for the Israeli premiership during interview to an Italian newspaper.
Ehud Olmert plans to embark on another unilateral West Bank deportation of Jews immediately after next election. T he Herut party leader Michael Kleiner said: "With the money Olmert plans to use for the disengagement it is possible to implement an evacuation-compensation plan under which the (Arab) Palestinians are relocated to Arab states."

Israel's State Comptroller publicly reprimanded the current government over its failure to adequately care for the thousands of Jews it deported from their homes in northern Samaria and the Gaza Strip last summer.

What is Kadima Saying?
By Moshe Arens
Ha'aretz - March 14, 2006

Last week, Kadima's candidate for prime minister, Ehud Olmert, gave lengthy and comprehensive interviews spelling out just exactly what he intends to accomplish during the coming four years if he wins the election. Unlike his mentor, Ariel Sharon, who, prior to his election, did not even hint that he planned to forcibly evacuate 10,000 Israelis from their homes during his forthcoming tenure as prime minister, Olmert makes no bones about his intentions: He plans to forcibly evacuate some 100,000 Israelis from their homes in Judea and Samaria. For his candor, Olmert has received accolades from a number of media commentators who make no secret about where their sympathies lie.

But what was Olmert actually saying? His statements imply turning most of Judea and Samaria over to Hamas and thus bringing Palestinian terrorism that much closer to Israel's population centers. Has he really learned nothing from the daily barrage of Qassam rockets that have been falling on the outskirts of Ashkelon ever since the forcible evacuation of Nissanit, Elei Sinai, and Dugit, south of the city?

IF YOU DON'T VOTE, THE LEFT WINS

JEWISH SECURITY AND LIFE MUST BE ISRAEL'S TOP PRIORITY
KADIMA- FORWARD TO RETREAT AND SURRENDER
ISRAELIS MUST UNITE AGAINST THEIR TRUE ENEMIES -
NOT EACH OTHER
KADIMA - NATIONAL SUICIDE AS A POLICY
IF OLMERT IS LEFT IN POWER IN ISRAEL
THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT OF ISRAEL
KADIMA = CORRUPTION + FATAL STRATEGIC CONCEPTS
=====================

OLMERT'S ARROGANT PLANS
By Ari Shavit
Haaretz - 14 March 2006
www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=olmert++settlers&itemNo=694172

In September 2000, the Palestinians began a terror offensive against Israel.
They did this because they refused to accept the Camp David proposal, which
promised them the entire Gaza Strip and 91 percent of the West Bank in
exchange for full recognition of Israel and an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If Ehud Olmert is elected prime minister and implements his convergence plan,
then in September 2010 the Palestinians will have sovereignty over the
entire Gaza Strip and some 91 percent of the West Bank, and all this
without recognizing Israel and without ending the conflict.

WILL A RETREAT FROM GEOGRAPHY SECURE ISRAEL's DEMOGRAPHY?
by Yoram Ettinger
Ma'ariv - March 8, 2006

OBSERVATION

The willingness of Israel's Center and Right to consider a retreat from Geography (Gaza, Judea & Samaria), in order to secure Demography (Jewish majority), has been based on the fatalistic assumption that the Jewish population is destined to become a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

FAILURE OF PAST DEMOGRAPHIC PROJECTIONS

Demographic fatalism was employed by opponents of Jewish leaders, such as Theodore Herzl, David Ben Gurion and Levi Eshkol. For instance, in 1900 Herzl was urged by a leading Jewish historian-demographer, Shimon Doubnov, to refrain from the Zionist voyage, since by the year 2000 "Jews will be a minority of 500,000 west of the Jordan River side by side with millions of Arabs." However, by 2000 the Jewish population west of the Jordan River reached some 5 million! In 1948 Prime Minister Ben Gurion was lobbied by the leading Israeli statistician-demographer, Prof. Roberto Bacchi, to postpone declaration of independence, because by 1967 Jews would supposedly become a minority within the 1947 Lines.

Israeli Candidates - Seinfeld vs. Churchill
by Caroline Glick
THE JERUSALEM POST - Mar. 13, 2006

Israel's election campaign presents an unparalleled challenge to Israelis on both the Right and the Left who care about the issues challenging the country. Today, not only do that have to defend what they believe, they also have to defend their right to believe anything.

Last Friday, Makor Rishon published an in-depth report on the growing isolation and demonization of the religious Zionist camp. Hebrew University sociologist Tamar Elor explained that the front running Kadima Party presents an impossible challenge for the religious Zionist sector, represented most prominently by the settlers in Judea and Samaria.

"The settlers are an ideological sector. Kadima, as a party devoid of an identity, a face, a name or a path, is their polar opposite," she asserted. While it has made expelling Israelis from their homes in Judea and Samaria its flagship policy, Kadima has no ideology with which religious Zionists can clash. As a result, Elor maintains that religious Zionists "cannot do anything against it. They prefer [former far-Left Meretz party leader] Yossi Sarid the idealist, ten times more than Kadima which lacks any identity."

FREEMAN CENTER ELECTION BLOG
by Bernard J. ShapiroMarch 13, 2006

As the election grows nearer, I detect some positive signs. Olmert’s extreme leftist Kadim party has dropped from its peak of 42 potential Knesset seats to 34. The parties who support the security and survival of Israel as a Jewish State seem to be holding their own and increasing slightly. Recent analysis of the polls also show some real deficiencies in their accuracy as to final results. A full 20% of the electorate says it is undecided at this late date (15 days to the election). This would amount to at least 24 Knesset seats. A mere shift of 10 seats from Left to Right would change the outcome completely. At present the polls are indicating a total Left wing bloc (including Hamas supporting Arabs) of 65 seats. The Right/religious bloc now has 55 seats.

COHERENT POLICY TO SAVE ISRAEL
by David Basch
March 12, 2006

Sharon and Olmert's Kadima must be recognized as a party without
vision that believes in the fairy tale that Israel can trust
peace to 100 million Arabs that want to destroy her and can
afford to gut the natural perimenter defense that keeps the enemy
far off and prevents it from successfully mobilizing forces
against Israel. The Kadima policy smacks of an other worldly
insanity of an ideology that makes more sense on Mars than on
Earth.

"Contrary to what was alleged in the propaganda
column by Gershom Gorenberg in NY Times,
Israel does indeed have full claim to the lands
assigned to the Jewish people under the Mandate
of Palestine...."

"So successful was this element of a coherent
Israeli policy that included Jewish community building,
that the Arabs were stampeded to enter negotiations,..."

"The [coherent] policies that Israel must return to are
spelled out below and require an Israeli government that
believes in the rightness of the Israeli cause and
determined to bring Israel's people the future they are
entitled to and justly deserve...."

IF YOU DON'T VOTE, THE LEFT WINS

JEWISH SECURITY AND LIFE MUST BE ISRAEL'S TOP PRIORITY
KADIMA- FORWARD TO RETREAT AND SURRENDER
ISRAELIS MUST UNITE AGAINST THEIR TRUE ENEMIES -
NOT EACH OTHER
KADIMA - NATIONAL SUICIDE AS A POLICY
IF OLMERT IS LEFT IN POWER IN ISRAEL
THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT OF ISRAEL
KADIMA = CORRUPTION + FATAL STRATEGIC CONCEPTS

=====================
Kadima is Wrong - The ‘Occupation’ is the Solution, Not the Problem
by Ted Belman
Israpundit.com - March 12, 2006

Proponents of withdrawal both before Gaza and now, argue that it will save money. They also argued that Israel will be more secure, but that’s another story. Olmert has gone so far as to say that Kadima will no longer spend money on the settlements east of the fence. In so doing he is reinforcing the message that the settlements and or the occupation are a financial burden, a waste of money that could be better spent on Israelis rather then settlers. Fair enough, but where is the proof? What are the facts?

Kadima vs. Israel
by Caroline Glick
THE JERUSALEM POST - Mar. 9, 2006

US President George W. Bush is immersed in a political crisis of his own making. For the first time in his presidency, Americans trust the Democrats more than the president on issues of national security.
There is an Israel angle to Bush's current misfortunes. In fact, the nature of the mess in which Bush now finds himself explains a great deal about the nature of Israel's relationship with America. It also shows how that relationship is harmed by the expedient interests of both the Bush administration and the Israeli government.

Last month, the administration announced it had approved a deal to place the management of 21 US ports in the hands of the United Arab Emirates-owned firm Dubai Ports World or DPW. This caused an uproar on Capitol Hill. Citing Dubai's documented connections to al-Qaida, legislators from both parties demanded the deal's cancellation.

FREEMAN CENTER ELECTION BLOG
By Bernard J. Shapiro
March 8, 2006

I have been in Israel one week and have made the following observations. The National camp is seriously depressed. Many are saying that they may not even vote. The reasons for this are quite understandable. The destruction of Gush Katif and N. Shomron and then the brutality which crushed Amona has caused a major problem for the Israeli Zionist/Religious parties. After the noble efforts to save parts of Eretz Yisrael, they are simply dispirited. To give up now will create a self fulling prophecy of defeat.

There are heroes and heroines to be found in Israel. Nadia and Ruth Matar, Baruch Marzel, Effie Etam, Aryeh Eldad and Benny Elon come to my mind. There are many more. We should remember that none of them are totally without flaws. It pains me greatly to see members of the Right picking at the flaws of others on Right. There are plenty of faults to go around.

What If It Should Really Happen? How Nuclear War Could Begin In A Very Bad Neighborhood
By: Louis Rene Beres
THE JEWISH PRESS - mARCH 4, 2006

The year 2006 could become a fateful one for Israel and for the entire world. Still struggling to survive in the very worst of international "neighborhoods," the always imperiled Jewish State knows only too well that nuclear war and genocide need not be mutually exclusive.

Listening to the chilling bluster and bravado from the openly murderous president of Iran, it is increasingly evident to every prudent leader in Jerusalem that nuclear weapons can never be allowed in that particular Islamic regime. With this existential awareness in mind, it is now altogether likely that an Israeli preemptive strike against certain pertinent Iranian nuclear assets and infrastructures will take place sometime before the summer. If it does, this strike – following the recommendations originally detailed by Project Daniel three years ago – will be an expression of what is correctly called "anticipatory self-defense" under international law.