Month: November 2015

Stabbing at Nabi Elias…No Words

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Well is my face red. Just when I finished writing a post about how I shop at Nabi Elias on principle, there is a stabbing at Nabi Elias. I go to NRG and see a kid from my neighborhood on the front page, mamash my neighbor, he’s the EMT taking this guy to the hospital.

When shopping at the Arabs, it is a good idea never go get out of the car or let the windows down too far. I never get out of the car when I shop there.

Two criminals apparently just stabbed the Jewish guy and ran into the village. The guy was not in his car at the time. I’m also pretty sure the merchants are pissed and these guys will be lynched. The guy drove to the army checkpoint down the hill who gave him first aid and he is in serious condition.

This doesn’t change the valid point that business lowers attacks. However, I do understand the side that refuses to shop at the Arabs out of fear for their safety, and I don’t criticize people for avoiding doing that. I also do not criticize people for preferring Jewish labor over Arab labor. I myself prefer Jewish labor to Arab labor at equal prices. I just don’t appreciate those who badmouth Jews who shop at the Arabs.

I also understand the impulse that says not to allow Arab labor in the Yishuv. It’s a normal reaction. I just think it’s wrong, and if you want to protect yourself, stay armed at all times.

I’ll have to think about the timing of this. I am aware it is very disturbing.

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More Arab Workers, More Arab-Jewish Business Ties, Less Stabbings

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

My family that is still in America is worried that I’m going to be stabbed any day now. Maybe I will, but I doubt it. The general reflex when attack waves happen is to clamp down. Arab workers are no longer allowed in my town. That is really bad timing because the community pool just started undergoing renovations, and then the stabbings started, so now the pool is unusable and won’t be finished any time soon because Arab workers may not enter.

The local butcher, Basar HaShomron, is looking for Jews to replace its own Arab workers.

This is when the nationalists start coming out of the woodwork and accusing anyone who uses Arab labor of being a self-hating Jew. And endangering the community.

I shop at the Arabs. There’s a village called Nabi Elias (Eliyahu HaNavi in Arabic) that has little hole in the wall shops of vegetables, eggs, meat, a little 7-11 type Arab Kwik-E-Mart. I don’t buy the meat obviously, but we get eggs and olive oil there, mainly. Sometimes vegetables, though I haven’t lately because of Shmitah and I don’t know where they come from exactly.

Beyond the money-saving, I shop at Nabi Elias on principle. The more business between Jews and Arabs, the less stabbings and attacks in general. This is not the inane Shimon Peres theory that if you give them luxury they stop attacking. In other words if you take money from Jewish taxpayers and give it to an Arab government, everyone will be happy. No no. No peace results from one government giving money to another government. Shopping at the Arabs is based on the common sense theory that business owners want to make as much money as possible, and therefore will protect their businesses and customers from attack.

There are no rock attacks or shooting attacks in the area of the Nabi Elias market because if some stupid Arab kid dares throw a rock at passing cars in the vicinity of shop owners looking for customers, the shop owners will beat the snot out of the kid for ruining business. The rock attacks usually take place around Azun, or between Azun and Nabi Elias on the stretch of road with nothing on it.

So Thursday I was coming back from a meeting in Herzliya and decided to go shopping for eggs. I get 120 eggs at a time for 80 shekels. That’s 66 agorot an egg, because there is no State supervision on them, no minimum price controls to support egg farmers, and no sales tax. Eggs stamped by the State cost a shekel and a half usually, more than twice what I pay. And I eat between 3 and 5 whole eggs a day, so it’s not trivial. I also got olive oil, which is much more hearty than the industrialized Jewish stuff and 33% cheaper.

That’s the usual. Thursday I decided to get something extra. I bought a live chicken and had the guy put it in a box for me. Then I drove home and put it on the balcony. Then I quickly did a rerun of hilchos shechita in the שמלה חדשה, prepared my knife, checked it, got some dirt, shechted the chicken, defeathered it and gutted it, washed it and salted it, and we had chicken soup for Shabbat.

I’ve had my knife sitting in my drawer for years and finally decided to use it. My girls got to see a real shechita and pluck some feathers, and my wife got to do the mitzva of כיסוי דם, covering the blood with earth, for the first time.

Back to the Arab point, a good way to reduce attacks is to promote business. Where there is business, there are less attacks. Not that attacks and murders have not happened around joint Arab/Jewish business, but most happen in no-man’s land where there is no trade going on.

Therefore, just empirically, a good solution to lessening attacks is to buy Arab. It’s understandable if this makes you scared or uncomfortable, and I don’t mean or recommend going over to Shechem and painting the refugee camp red. Within reason. More importantly, the State, both local and national, needs to loosen restrictions against Arab labor, not tighten. If you object to that, then at least the State should get rid of welfare and minimum wage so Jews will do these jobs instead, but the state makes that impossible for Jews so Arabs must be hired instead.

Ultimately, Jews and Arabs should be allowed to build and settle wherever they want and trade and exchange between each other without interference, so that if I wanted to, I could buy land or real estate in Azun, and some Arab in Azun could buy real estate in Karnei Shomron.

Hate-Filled Wacknutter Michael Ben Ari Makes it Mainstream

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

A while back, several years ago actually when Michael Ben Ari was in the Knesset, he had a tizzy about something that the Supreme Court did or other and called them a “Junta.” I have a strong dislike for Ben Ari since he embodies collective ignoramus anger. He’s like Trump with less money and less self control, more anger and less humor and more annoying amazingly.

Most people hate him because he’s a “Kahanist” though that means nothing to me. I don’t like him because he’s off-putting. He’s also my neighbor. His brother was the local mafia boss who I paid taxes to for a while. Annoying family.

Anyway, I see this in Maariv just now:

בית המשפט העליון: מוטציה מוגדרת שמשכפלת את עצמה

התקרית שבה השתיקה השופטת מרים נאור אם שכולה באופן משפיל ומבזה היא שיעור מאלף עד כמה הניתוק והאטימות קשים. מישהו בהיכלות הצדק צריך לענות על השאלה: כיצד ייתכן שקודש הקודשים של הדמוקרטיה הישראלית מנוהל כמו חונטה?

Supreme Court: A Self Perpetuating Mutation

That Justice Miriam Na’or (note, Na’or ironically means “enlightened”) can silence a bereaved mother in such a condescending disrespectful way is an instructive lesson on how severe the disconnect and inflexibility is. Someone in the Halls of Justice needs to answer the question: How is is that the Holy of Holies of Israeli Democracy functions like a Junta?

This was written by someone named Galit Distel-Atbarion. Since her name doesn’t ring any bells and she has two last names, and her bio said she wrote some book about peacocks, I assume she’s one of those feminist types who believes in equality or whatever. She doesn’t like the fact that a judge put down a woman. Has she been reading Ben Ari lately?

Incidentally, the woman she put down was yelling at this other woman judge for not destroying the houses where criminals happen to live. I’d yell at her myself for advocating the destruction of capital for no reason (I advocate transfer of the capital to the victim, which makes a hell of a lot more sense), but yelling at mothers whose sons died for the State for nothing is politically incorrect, and I’m very concerned about political correctness.

Most people who remember that the Junta thing is a Ben Ari line are probably laughing at that. I’m rather laughing at the irony of someone thinking it’s unnatural that the holy of holies of democracy functions like a Junta. Even more so in the Israeli version of it, where the court literally elects itself.

In any democracy, the government still judges itself and decides cases for itself. The court is the government and the legislature is the government and the executive is the government. The government cannot check the government. That makes no sense. Anything deciding its own cases is a Junta. Democracy creates a ruling class, which is a Junta.

It is colloquially used to describe a totalitarian system. When you take a wider view, namely that the government decides the limitations of the government, you realize that a Junta is the only thing it could possibly be.

This is also why the Supreme Court in the US always, eventually, puts a nice rubber stamp on anything any president ever does.

Congratulations Ben Ari on finally making it mainstream. Too bad almost everyone else does not realize the true irony of your statement. No matter how you organize it or whatever you do to fix it, the Supreme Court will always be a Junta, until courts become fully private and can limit legislative and executive power from outside the government entirely.

What I fear more than a random Arab stabbing

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

A law was passed today in the committee of super politicians (Ministers and Other Thugs) that accomplished something good by setting a very bad precedent. The law fixes a previous injustice of children automatically going to the mother after a divorce, even if the mother is an insane abusive person, by introducing an even worse and more dangerous injustice, namely that the State is the official caretaker of all children in Israel rather than the parents, and therefore the State decides where a child goes after a divorce.

The precedent that defines the State as the caretaker of all children means that if someone does not like someone else for whatever reason, he can call the police on the other person and claim he is abusive, at which point the State can shift to the default position of taking his children away without any evidence of anything at all. If you are a “racist” they will take your kids away.

Mark my words. This is what will happen. It is what happened under Stalin, and it is what will happen here. Stay safe. Not from arabs with knives, but from the mafia you are calling on to protect you from them.

How to make a Yitzhak Rabin Event Apolitical

rafifarber Israeli Politics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

I’m seeing these articles now about supposedly apolitical events surrounding Yitzhak Rabin. This year is the 20th anniversary of his killing, so the MSM is waxing all poetic and butterflies about his wondrousness.

The events are promised to be “apolitical” which is an absolute contradiction in terms with Rabin. Rabin’s entire life was politics. Everything he ever did was funded by tax payers. Every order he ever gave was an order of force, and every word he ever spoke publicly concerned what he would force other people to do. So what the heck are you going to discuss about Rabin that is apolitical?

It is possible to have a non-political discussion about an Israeli state leader like, say, Ariel Sharon. You could theoretically talk about how he managed his ranch when he wasn’t in the government or something. Because he did do that a bit. You can talk about Chaim Weitzman, who was a chemist. Talk about his chemical discoveries or whatnot. You can talk about Levi Eshkol’s years in Kibbutz Deganya milking cows or whatever he did. David Ben Gurion picked oranges. That’s it. Beyond that, I cannot think of a single Israeli leader that ever did anything nonpolitical. I count law firms as political, because they make money off of weaving through government legislation. That’s why lawyers and politicians are so similar. Two sides of the same coin.

No Israeli leader ever made any significant contribution to humanity through voluntary exchange. This is what we call the ruling class. They are a class. There is really no public service where private people go into government for a while and then return to their normal lives of voluntary exchange. It doesn’t exist.

The only thing you could say about Rabin that is apolitical is that he learned agriculture before he became a soldier. From that point on it was all politics.

I suppose one could discuss his family life, relationship with his parents, children, wife, whatever. You could theoretically discuss his medical records. Those are apolitical. What food did he like. What books did he like to read. All that is apolitical. But nobody cares about any of that.

Somehow I seriously doubt that any of these Rabin-worshiping events will be about Rabin’s family life or sex life or medical records or personal art preferences. They will be about how Rabin made decisions thereby forcing one group of people to do something in favor of another group of people, backed by State power which threatened to kill anyone who opposed Rabin’s decision. And how whatever the decision was, it was wise and thought out and well taken and vomit etc., not that we’re being political.

Rabin did nothing in his life that was apolitical. Therefore, it is impossible to have an apolitical event commemorating his life.

Thanks to a friend, here is a video of the Altalena incident in which Rabin shot at people jumping ship swimming in the water.