Israeli Politics
Why I Oppose the French Law to Grant Immunity to a Prime Minister
Never give the state any more power than it already has. It will always come back to hurt you, every time. No state official should be immune to any investigation, least of all a Prime Minister. Pretty much the only respite we simple Jews have from constant government harassment is when the state stops spending our money and regulating our behavior and instead fights itself, blissfully forgetting about us for just a moment.
Consider, the only time in recent history there has ever been a government surplus in the US was under President Clinton, who spent most of his time dealing with investigations and impeachment proceedings.
Whether it’s serious harassment like forced evacuations and destruction of Jewish property, or minor harassment like filling out some bureaucratic form or other in order to do construction on your own house, when the State fights itself, the simple people win. So why make it harder for the state to attack itself?
I’m nobody’s chassid. I listen to differing opinions from all sides, but I don’t consider any of them holy, not even the opinions straight from the mouth of the leader of my party. A Prime Minister should never have immunity from investigation.
This new law is called the “French Law”. The point of the “French Law” is to make it almost impossible to indict a sitting Prime Minister. Moshe has his reasons to support the law, I understand them, but I disagree with them. Here is Moshe’s main claim verbatim, which I’ll translate loosely and then object to.
“הרבה יותר משאני מפחד משחיתות המנהיגים, אני מפחד מדיקטטורת חבורת שלטון החוק. את המושחתים בצמרת יש לי כוח להחליף כל ארבע שנים. את הכנופיה אין לי”
Says Moshe, “More than I fear the corruption of our leaders, I fear the dictatorship of the rule of law gang. Corrupt leaders I can vote out of office every four years. Unelected leaders, I can’t vote out.”
He’s referring to what Americans call the Deep State. Supreme Court justices are unelected in Israel, and so are part of the Deep State, as are most of the powerful bureaucratic positions referred to here offhand. It’s the unelected leaders, the Deep State, that mess around with the system to undermine the elected leaders, and therefore this law will be better for the balance of power.
Respectfully, I get it, but don’t agree. Making any part of the government stronger means they will be even worse than before.
Elected leaders and unelected leaders are on the same team. They don’t oppose each other. There is no difference between them. A sitting Prime Minister, immune to investigation, will be much better able to fulfill the goals of that unelected Deep State. Whether that’s destruction of settlements, freeing murderers in a good-will gesture, raising taxes, aggravating businesses, etc. the government will be more powerful than otherwise. Nothing good comes of powerful government.
In what sense is Bibi an “elected” leader anyway? Because 20% of voters dislike him slightly less than everyone else who ran? And then he builds coalitions with the people that these 20% dislike even more, and calls it a “government”? How do you replace him? His replacements will do the same thing he does. We all know this. So what’s the difference?
We can see the futility of “elected leaders” by the direction government goes in, all the time, no matter who you vote for. Consider the direction we are headed, not just in Israel, but globally. Government everywhere is growing – all around the world. Government budgets take up more and more of GDP by percentage, and with ever-growing budgets, government debt all over the world just keeps rising. States everywhere, globally, keep eating more and more and more of our wealth, no matter who we vote for.
Trump, for example, hasn’t cut a dime. He’s only increased spending, made airport travel even more miserable than before, he wants to raise all kinds of taxes, and any “tax reform” he proposes will be “revenue neutral”, meaning the government will, at best, still get the same amount of money from us, just in different slices from different people.
In Europe, despite a continent wide debt-crisis, not a single EU government has cut any debt. Not even Greece. It just doesn’t happen. Elections cannot change it. The unelected Deep State runs the show.
In Israel, no government ever changes policy. They just use different catchphrases that poll well in focus groups for a “demographic”. Nobody ends Oslo, nobody lowers taxes, nobody lowers spending, nobody increases freedom or shrinks government. Not Labor, not Likud, not anyone else. There are the unelected people in charge, and the elected puppets. You can change the puppets. But the puppet show must go on.
So why bother trying to get Moshe Feiglin into the Prime Minister’s seat at all? Because Moshe is not just another candidate puppet. He’s a revolution. He and the Deep State are incompatible. They can’t infect him.
Besides, look at it this way. When Moshe becomes Prime Minister, he will have already won the hearts of the people. With the people behind you, no investigation can ever hurt, French Law or not. Zehut does not need this law to be passed. It won’t help. Bibi being investigated is simply a result of the people of Israel not liking him.
If anything, we should make it extremely easy to indict and evict any Prime Minister from office for any reason reason no matter how small. Like for jaywalking, or sticking gum on the bottom of a public bench. For any Prime Minister who does that, the punishment should be not impeachment, but simply a publicly televised degumming of the bench by the Prime Minister himself. After that spectacle, he’d have no power anyway.
The Catastrophic Consequences of Banning Cash
I’m about to give you some very good and very sound investment advice, so take this down.
My good friend at the Esser Agoroth blog sent me this post on the new editions of cash bills to be printed by the Bank of Israel. He links to Ynet, which makes a big deal about the nice little pictures of dead people that will be on the new bills, and because they are women we are all supposed to clap about how amazing and equal the world has become.
For the record, I don’t want any person created in the image of God on any government bill. Make it dots, or stick figures, or whatever. In fact, I consider it a dishonor to have one’s face on a government cash bill. Someone who really cares about the status of women should insist that no women appear on any cash bill. To delve into this specific narrow issue for only a single sentence, since that is all I can bear of this nonsense of who is on a bill, they plan to have Leah Goldberg and Rachel the Poetess on the 20 and 100 shekel bills. These are both Jewish women and good writers who I admire, who wrote beautiful poems.
Because I admire them, the last thing I wish for them is to have their likenesses printed on inflationary government money.
Anyway, the point of my friend’s repost of the Ynet news blurb was to emphasize the last paragraph of the sneaky monstrosity and journalistic serpentine trickery. Here’s the last paragraph:
Economic officials have estimated this would be the last series of paper bills issued in Israel, as paper money is only changed once every few decades, as has been the case in this instance, and in 10-20 years payments are more likely to be made using smart phones, computers and credit cards, all but nullifying the need for cash.
This way, the article is set up to focus the attention of the masses on women being featured on government paper as the important item. The very last paragraph of the article mentions a seemingly bedieved (after the fact) consequence that most people do not read at all, that is structured to make it sound like there is no consequence to it, namely that this “happens to be” the last cash that the bank of Israel will ever print.
Well, here are the consequences of a cashless economy. Before you read my extrapolations for Israel, here’s what happened in India when only high-denomination bills were banned there. Cash is still legal, just not the highest denomination bill there. The results for people’s lives were still catastrophic.
The first thing that has to be understood about a cashless economy is that banks now control 100% of the money supply, and all of it is within the banking system at all times. The banking system is built on fractional reserve, meaning only about 10% (depending on the specific insistence of your local central bank) of your bank deposits are available in the form of physical tangible cash at any given time. The only thing that keeps banks from continually loaning out 90% of your money, from bank to bank, is the fact that theoretically, you can legally withdraw your money in the form of physical paper at any time from any ATM in the country.
The fear that any and all of your deposits theoretically can be withdrawn out of the banking system in the form of physical cash is the only thing that keeps banks from inflating the money supply continuously through infinite loans to other banks and making profits off the interest and enslaving you even further. If every single transaction is electronic, then everything remains in the centralized banking system at all times, with loan volume exploding. The money supply goes sky high and price inflation gets out of control. In the absence of real, physical cash, prices skyrocket. Real assets like gold, oil, food, real estate, skyrocket.
That’s the main, theoretical point. But let’s get down to things that are more specific and concrete.
Think about cash transactions that happen in the economy. Normal, legitimate ones, not drug deals, which these mainstream media government shills are obsessed with you focusing on. Say your kid does some babysitting for cash. Your wife does a private lesson and is paid in cash. The guys at the shuk in Machaneh Yehuda in Jerusalem sell fish or fruit or whatever for cash.
Now, all that cash is gone. All transactions are now digital and therefore recorded. That means they are all recorded by government. And government taxes every single one of those transactions. What does that mean?
It means that every transaction that used to be finalized in physical cash and which may or may not be taxed because the sellers can hide some of the cash, will now be taxed fully at the legal limit set by idiotic politicians in the knesset who can dictate how much money from each transaction they feel like taking for themselves. Let’s assume, reasonably and conservatively I think, that 30% of the cash earned by the simple Jews at the shuk is not delcared as income. That means in a cashless world, taxes rise on shuk food purchases by 30%, because now it would all be taxed. Profits fall by 30%, marginal producers are forced out, supply gets lower, demand stays equal, prices go up.
But worse than that. I’d be willing to bet that 90% of babysitting services in the entire country are undeclared. It’s 90% under the table, because it’s done mostly by kids. With no cash, it’s all taxed. Profits for babysitting plummet. Which means, by supply and demand, that the cost of babysitting services skyrocket by around the same price as the tax. More for food, more for babysitting. At least.
Further, the private tutoring economy will be destroyed. Very little of that cash is declared. It will all be taxed. Private tutors make less money for their services, marginal players exit the market, supply of private tutors shrink, prices for them go up, and the middle class will be less able to hire private tutors for their kids. Only the rich will be able to afford it. Contributing to that dreaded “inequality” that the left fears so much.
Private tutors, babysitters etc. though are just the tip of the iceberg. I only mention these examples because I am personally familiar with them. Can you think of any other legitimate services that are mostly cash transactions that will be destroyed by the lack of cash? Ah, I can, here’s another, and this has to do with a situation that Moshe Feiglin has spoken out about as the child of divorced parents. (This is public information.)
I have a friend in Katzrin in the Golan where I live who is a divorced father. Through some stupid mishap the government still thinks that he needs to pay alimony, when his own ex-wife has agreed that he owes her nothing. But since there is a computer error somewhere, his bank account is frozen. He can only eat and live if paid in physical cash.
Without cash, he would starve. Literally. He gets his salary through some convoluted path ending in cash. Without it, he’d be screwed. He would rely entirely on tzedaka to stay alive. The government controls the banks, and therefore all the bank accounts. If there’s an error, it’s your problem, not the government’s. That’s the reality.
Now think of anything in your personal lives finalized in cash that will now be taxed because it will all be recorded. All of those prices will go up because marginal providers are forced out of those markets, constricting supply and raising the price.
This will cause severe disruptions in the economy and will make those people’s lives who are just making end’s meet in Israel absolutely miserable, even more so than they are now, and add on top of this the exploding price inflation by the fact that there will be no check on factional reserve bank loans. It will be a disaster. People’s lives will be ruined.
But at least tax evasion will be a thing of the past in Israel.
הודו לה’ כי טוב, כי לעולום חסדו.
The investment advice I have? This will happen. Zehut cannot stop it. We will only stop it when Moshe Feiglin is Prime Minister. Before that happens, load up on commodities and physical assets of your choice. Provided they are still needed to make stuff, anything that humans need or want, they will rise in price dramatically when physical cash is no longer available.
On My Immunity to Politics, or Why Trust Me?
The two most unctuous words a politician can say to a voter are, “Trust me.” Politicians can never be trusted.
But I’m not a politician.
One of my favorite movie scenes is from the 1987 classic The Princess Bride. The Man in Black challenges the Sicilian Vizzini to a battle of wits to rescue Buttercup. The Man in Black tells Vizzini that one of two wine cups is poisoned with iocane powder. Vizzini switches the cups when he’s not looking, and waits for the Man in Black to drink his own cup first. He does. Vizzini then drinks, certain that his cup was not poisoned.
In the end, Vizzini dies, and the Man in Black lives. How?
“Both cups were poisoned,” the Man in Black says to Buttercup. “I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.”
This, my Zehut International friends, is politics. The most pure-hearted with the best possible intentions go in idealistically, and invariably come out dirty. If you go into politics and you want to stay clean, you have to know that every cup is poisoned and you must spend years building up an immunity to it.
I spent the last few years building up an immunity to politics, and that’s why I choose to drink the cup.
How am I immune? Let me tell you a personal story. Years ago I was working in Tel Aviv in marketing. My manager and I actually were quite friendly and we got along well. We’d argue a lot, him a secular Tel Avivi, me a dati American Oleh, immigrant. One day we argued about Ma’aser, giving a tenth of our incomes to tzedaka.
I told him that while I do slip up in other areas of religious practice from time to time, I am super machmir, very strict, about giving Ma’aser. This is my mitzvah, and if there’s one mitzvah I am going to do right, it’s this one. I make sure I give a tenth of my income every month to the Tzedaka of my choice.
Why am I so strict about this Mitzvah specifically? It’s not because I’m some pious man of faith or anything. In fact, my faith and religiosity are quite lacking. I am strict about Ma’aser for quite selfish reasons actually. Because this is the only Mitzvah that we are halachically permitted to test G-d on, and I needed to test Him. In other words, we are allowed to give Tzedaka as a test to see if G-d returns the money to us in some way.
In many ways, my faith in G-d is anchored in this practice, and it has been ever since I started earning my own living. But what really cemented it as the basis for my own faith in G-d is the challenge I made to my boss in 2012. He told me he didn’t earn enough to give Ma’aser every month, though he tries. So I said the following to him, perhaps irresponsibly, but I said it. (Sometimes I’m too confrontational.)
“I bet you that before the end of the year, I’m going to get a better job and you’re going to be laid off.” He laughed. that was our type of banter. But I was serious.
In the meantime, I applied to a new job that I wanted, one that would let me stay home and write about economics. On my birthday that year, I got the new job, and went out to a nice breakfast to celebrate with my wife before I went to work. I was going to tell my manager that day that I was quitting, but since I was coming in late, he actually called me first.
He called me at breakfast and told me the company was shutting down. I was absolutely dumbfounded. And I remembered the wager I made him, but didn’t bring it up. I told him, what a coincidence, I was just going to tell you that I’m quitting.
Here’s the point though. I have been a libertarian since 2012, even before that crazy day. But ever since that day, I became religious about it. Blending religious libertarianism with halachic Judaism has not been without its challenges I admit, but my life philosophy – my immunity to politics essentially – is this:
The Gemara in Shabbos 31A says that the first question we will all be asked when we die is נשאת ונתת באמונה? Were you honest in business? Did you steal money? Did you avoid paying debts? Did you swindle people?
I am not the most machmir – halachically strict – of observant Jews, and I have my own religious shortcomings. But I have chosen this aspect of halacha as my forte, my personal mitzva that I have chosen to fulfill as perfectly and as strictly as I possibly can.
It is the bedrock of my personal Judaism and I am a fanatic about it. When I am no longer here and I have to answer that question, I will answer it with absolute confidence. I am honest with money, I am a religious Jew and a religious libertarian and I believe in redemption, geulah. These are the pillars of my life on Earth that G-d has given me and I take them seriously.
I will not be bought, I will not be corrupted, bribed with position or anything else, and I will not be bent.
I will always vote not for what will secure my political career (I don’t even want one truthfully), but for what I know is right. I will be honest with money, so I will never vote to increase taxes or government spending, but always to shrink it, in any way that becomes available to do so in the Knesset, in any realm, in any part of life, for anyone in Israel, period.
I spent the last few years building up an immunity to politics. That immunity is the basis of my identity, both as a Jew and as a human being in general.
That’s why I’m telling you, trust me, and vote for me. Because I’m honest, because I’m immune, becauseI’m not a politician, and because I will do what is right.
Why I Will Bring the Most Votes to Zehut
There are about 300 of you, Zehut International members, last I checked. (If you’re not one, click here now and you can vote in the December 17 primaries.) There are 3 of us campaigning for your vote for slot #10 on the Zehut Knesset list.
I’ve been in contact with Rav Spitz and David Sidman. They are both great candidates. There really isn’t much we disagree on substantively. So why vote for me?
When I went to the meeting at Zehut headquarters in Tel Aviv for all our Knesset candidates, we introduced ourselves, naturally. Most of us spoke briefly about our qualifications, what we want to do in the Knesset, what we want to accomplish and why, our backgrounds and such.
When we were all finished with our schpiels, Shmuel Sackett got up and said the following (paraphrasing). “I don’t care what your background is or what degrees you have or what your qualifications are. The only thing I want to know is this: How many votes can you bring to Zehut?”
That, of course, is the essential question.
Let’s put this starkly. Besides G-d, Zehut is Israel’s last hope. I firmly believe that. Because I have faith in G-d, I also firmly believe Zehut will succeed, because we have to. At the same time, we have to elect people who will bring the most votes possible to our party in order to succeed. It’s that dialectic between reliance on G-d and hishtadlus, making a real effort and doing our part.
I will bring the most votes to Zehut for two reasons, both of which play off the other. First, I have an insatiable need to tell the truth. I cannot stop myself. No matter how ugly the truth sounds or how crazy it makes me look or how much I know people do not want to hear it initially. I can’t even sugarcoat it in the most superficial way to make it sound better. When I try to dress the truth up and blunt the sharpness of my words to make them sound more pleasant to the political ear, it just doesn’t feel right and it sounds awkward coming off my tongue. I feel like it’s someone else talking when I try.
I can’t even use nice words to convince you to vote for me!
Second, I can’t stand politicians. I just cannot play their game. Go through the actual content of what any of them (except Moshe Feiglin) say, Right or Left, very carefully, and you’ll realize there is no substance to any of it. The same generalities over and over, spoken so you’ll feel nice and gooey and apply whatever beliefs you may have to the extremely loose and imprecise language they use. Whichever empty shell of a man is best at saying nothing but making you feel that your values are somehow contained within the absolute vacuum of nothingness he spouts off, is the man that wins and runs the country.
Benjamin Netanyahu is the absolute best at doing this. He’s Prime Minister, but nobody likes him.
I am the absolute antithesis of this. A vote for me means a vote for dropping an antipolitical bomb right into the heart of the Knesset.
Now, I fully understand that a man like me cannot lead Zehut. I’m too one-dimensional for that job. I should not be permitted on the front lines and will never vie for that position, because I understand it’s not for me. That’s Moshe’s job.
But Zehut needs a man like me to make headlines, to get up in the middle of the Knesset and say straight out with an acid tongue how much I disdain the place and the politicians in it. How everything they do, almost without exception, just makes all of our lives worse, desecrates the Name of God and embarrasses the Jewish People globally. I say what all of us think and feel but don’t want to say out loud because for many it causes despair. Not for me. It gives me hope, and it will rub off on voters.
The very first thing I will do in my inaugural speech as a Knesset Member is paint a big fat target on myself and tell the MKs that I am not a “Chaver Knesset“, meaning Knesset Member or literally “Friend of the Knesset.” Rather, I am an Enemy of Knesset and I am here to stop them from abusing the Jewish People.
I won’t even be addressing other MKs whenever I speak (excluding Zehut MKs of course). I will be talking directly to the Jewish People, the ones producing value in the economy, off whose work politicians live, so we can eat and live and survive. The victims of the political class and bureaucracy who get taxed and regulated and tazered at the Temple Mount for praying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The Jewish People who get bombed and killed by Arabs because the politicians are too cowardly to cut a deal with the Arabs to leave our land and finally end the war because it is the war that gives the politicians the perpetual power they love so much.
The politicians that take our children into Gaza and Lebanon to fight and die with no strategic goals whatsoever, using our kids as cannon fodder for their own political power so they can give sickening stump speeches taking advantage of our nationhood screaming Am Yisrael Chai while they have absolutely no plan to actually win anything. It drives me out…of…my…mind.
The solutions are not complicated. You just need to implement them. For example, say a rocket falls on Ashkelon from Gaza and hits a house. Simply pinpoint the exact area the rocket came from, expel the people living there within an X-mile radius, seize all their assets, and offer the property and assets to the victims of the rocket attack to do whatever they want with it. Simple criminal-victim restitution practiced everywhere.
My point is this. I do not believe there is much of a substantive difference between myself and my co-runners, at least not from what I can tell. Perhaps I’m wrong and of course I’ll let Rav Bentzi and David speak for themselves. The difference between us, I believe, is a matter of style.
I am shock value. Am Yisrael is drowning in a swamp of government. We need to get their votes, and in order to do so we need to get their attention. You don’t get a drowning people’s attention by lightly tapping them on the back as they’re sinking. You grab them, pull them, scream, and wake them up before they sink.
Why will my style get the most votes? Because at bottom, everyone who is not a politician or a bureaucrat in Israel, does disdain the Knesset and the government as a whole, just like me. I just have the ability, or perhaps handicap, of being absolutely unable to hide it.
Whenever Israelis speak of the place they roll their eyes at it. They’re embarrassed by it. I remember this from as far back as when I was a kid in sleep-away summer camp. The camp had Israelis come for the summer to introduce kids to Israel and its culture. One of them, I distinctly remember, and this was back in 2000 and he was a left-winger, was talking about the Knesset.
“You come out of that place embarrassed to be Jewish,” he said.
Yes. Israelis do feel this way. It’s a real thing. I will tap into that reality and give the people some release. I’m the one who is telling them that these feelings, these true negative feelings they have towards this place, are good. They’re OK. They’re correct. They can indulge in them. It means they’re normal.
I won’t be leading Zehut. I will be adding hot sauce to the party. Zehut needs its soft-spoken candidates for sure, but it also needs a flavor of righteous anger so that frustrated Israelis can look at Zehut and say, “There’s a party that has just had enough!” Nobody does that better than me.
What will keep my head straight? What ensures that I won’t become a politician myself? Because they’ll have nothing over me, nothing on me, no leverage. I won’t be taking a salary, I’ll drive my own car that I bought with my own money, and I won’t be seeking any special positions, committees, or anything. I don’t want any of that. I just want to talk to the Jewish People and tell them I’m on your side. I’m not taking any of your money. I am fighting for you. Now get up and fight with me.
Why Rafi Farber’s Knesset Platform is So Simple
People are asking me my positions on various issues. It’s an understandable question. I’ll answer it briefly here, but I want to emphasize in the post exactly why my personal official Knesset platform is so streamlined and it doesn’t address issue by issue. My platform, to reiterate, is that I will vote against any law that expands government size or power, and for any law that shrinks it. The only exception is if I am personally convinced Israel is under existential and imminent military threat, in which case I will vote to mobilize the army even if government spending is increased as a result.
In terms of positions on specific issues, generally, I agree with much of the Zehut Platform, at least its general direction. For example, I am not a supporter of the government school voucher system per se, but I would vote for it if given the choice between the status quo and school vouchers, because vouchers do limit government power somewhat, and leave it with a little bit less than it has now. So I’m for it, relative to the status quo. Though my goal is to get rid of all government education entirely and to fire every single person in the Education Ministry and repeal the Mandatory Education Law.
So issue by issue, whatever question you may have, I will always come down on the side that I believe is less government power.
Buy why, in a deeper sense, am I restricting my official platform to simply voting against every law that increases power and for any law that decreases it, rather than going issue by issue elucidating details? It goes back to 2012, in a Republican debate in a back-and-forth between Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Santorum was asked his position on the “No Child Left Behind Act”. This was of course an asinine bill that had the Feds come in and issue these pedantic cookie-cutter exams that did nothing but waste time. Santorum, by his “principles” is against this, which is good, but he voted for it and violated his supposed principles because, in his words “Politics is a team sport.”
In other words, he may have his principles, but when push comes to shove, he has to “play the game”. Here’s the video:
Ron then skewered him, rightfully, by saying this:
Ron continued smashing Santorum beautifully on his voting for Planned Parenthood using the same “politics is a sport” logic. Listen:
Now here’s my point. We can all have specific positions on specific issues, that’s fine. However, if your positions on specific issues do not all flow from the same principle, then you are subject to being abducted into the game of politics and voting for bills you don’t agree with just to get other Knesset Members to vote on bills you want passed. This is what grows government, and I will not play this game.
I will be like Ron Paul, not Rick Santorum. I will not vote for government-funded abortion on the logic that I’m also introducing some stupid government-funded abstinence program. Or, to use the voucher example again, which is on the Zehut Platform, I will not vote for a tax raise just so I can get the school voucher program passed. It’s all a trap, and total nonsense. No deals. If we make deals like this we will never lead the country.
The way laws are passed in the Knesset is that all the menuvalim team up and play the sport and compromise with each other in order to expand the size and scope of the State in some respect, so it never, ever shrinks. I will not violate my principles and vote yes on some spending bill or on any law that restricts liberty just for the sake of having some other politician support me on some other issue. I promise I will not do that.
So, if you’re a Zehut International member and you are voting in this primary, you should know exactly what I’ll do on every issue, and that’s why I am giving you my principle. If it shrinks government, I vote yes. If it expands government, I vote no. No games, no compromises, no teaming up and violating that principle just to get a different law passed. Zehut must be consistent or we will never lead the country. That means we should never compromise and vote for something we don’t believe in.
If that means voting against the budget even if Zehut is in a coalition, I will vote against the budget. If I’m sanctioned by whoever, then so be it. The way you survive fully human without being eaten alive and becoming a politician is by never giving an inch, just like Ron Paul.
If I win this (in order to vote for me please become a Zehut International member!) I am determined to come out human on the other side, not a politician. If I am to not become a politician, I can never break this principle.
And from this principle, you will know exactly where I stand on every single issue. It’s simply deductive logic. If this is what you want to see, then sign up to Zehut International in order to vote for me.
Israeli Government Admits Its Laws are Stupid, Legalizes all Judea and Samaria Capital (Settlements)
Every so often a government can have an attack of pure sanity and admit to the world and to the people it oppresses that its laws are meaningless and stupid. Every so often the stars align.
The government just passed the חוק ההסדרה, which could colloquially be termed the “Who Gives a Crap About Our Legislative Rantings Law We Were Just Joking Carry On” which basically says that any capital built in Judea and Samaria is now legal even if it was never built legally.
Mashiach is coming.
Shimon Peres is Dead and the Thought Police Are Out Guns Blazing if You Don’t Think He Was Awesome
He’s dead. No joy, no sadness, just relief. He will no longer harm anyone ever again. The following are two Facebook posts I made after being rather infuriated by gushing lovey dovey “We Love Shimon Peres” posts.
Post #1
Alright Facebook. Another politician dead and here come the deep meaningful posts about what we can all learn from his life. The gushing, the love, and even the people who didn’t like him at all saying things like “Say what you want about Shimon Something, but he positive positive blah blah. He may have destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of people and worse, but at least he was a great blah blah blah.”
The aura of thought police is exuding, totally exuding today. I’m not interrupting or trolling comment threads about this Peres guy, except I will say this on my own.
There are many, many people who hate the guy’s guts, and justifiably so. It should be legitimate for them to have their own catharsis of relief that he’s gone.
That’s how it is in politics. You take from one group you give to the other. Those that were taken from have a right to resent it, and resent it intensely. Those that gained from it will likely love him, but only they are allowed to post things because they liked him? No.
Me personally, I don’t care. The world is not better or worse off now that he’s dead, because he’s been inactive for a while. But the people whose lives have been destroyed by him should not feel embarrassed or afraid to call him every bad name in the book and if their life or their home was destroyed by him, they should feel that it’s OK to cry in relief that this man is no longer breathing the same air that they are.
It’s OK to say bad things about dead politicians. It’s not pasul. You can do it, and it’s legitimate.
Post #2
Here’s a follow up on the lovey dovey Peres posts. As expected the Jewish thought police rang the alarm on me defending those who do not mourn the passing of Shimon Peres. I am one of those people and there are many many others.
There were the hysterical types calling me names, but they are more entertaining than annoying. Then there are the sagacious types who respond with counterpoints that sound reasonable but actually are not reasonable at all.
One case in point is a friend of mine who responded to me by saying something along the lines that Jewish etiquette encourages seeing the good side of people that just died, even politiciians, and that after the shiva we can all engage in a “dispassionate” debate about the merits and failures of the politicians.
Dispassionate? Dispassionate? If you have something critical to say you have to be DISpassionate and wait, while everyone else gushing over an evil man gets to be as passionate as they please, immediately upon hearing of the death?
No. Double standard.
Think about it this way. Imagine you are a person whose son committed suicide in the aftermath of the expulsion from Gush Katif. Your family is ruined, you livelihood gone, you live in a caravan and your marriage is a shell. You hate this man with a PASSION and you have to watch everyone else say great things about him while implying that anyone who says bad things about him now is doing something illegitimate.
You, the victim of Peres, on the other hand, even though your life was destroyed by this man, YOU have to wait, and you can only be DISpassionate even if you are allowed to criticize, eventually, after a certain buffer zone invented by the other side.
So I say no. We call the emperor nude when we see it. We do not praise him and then when nobody cares anymore, only then point out his nudity DISpassionately in retrospect, when it’s not in the news anymore and nobody is paying attention.
So I’m turning the tables. I say, if you have anything good to say about Shimon Peres, be quiet now, let his direct victims have their say first, PASSIONATELY, and then one week from now after shiva, anyone who wants to praise his legacy do so DISpassionately, when nobody gives anymore.
Otherwise, you are grievously insulting everyone whose lives this man destroyed.
And keep in mind, anyone he ever helped, by definition, he did it by taking money by force from others.
Farber out.
Thinking about Running on the Zehut Ticket
I just got a text from one of the Zehut Party activists that primaries for the party will be soon. I’m not very active on the ground at the moment as I have zero patience for grunt work and politicking. However, I am vaguely familiar with the Zehut crowd as I’ve been to a few key events, and they generally strike me as thoughtful people, not libertarian theorists by any stretch but they do have a better sense of what liberty is than most people.
That’s pretty good.
An internal poll commissioned by Zehut and done by Ma’agar Mochot saw Zehut getting up to 15 seats. That means if I can get a slot up to 15-20 I may actually get in.
If I do run, my campaign will be extremely simple and cheap. My platform will simply be this:
- I will not be running to be a Knesset Member, or חבר כנסת, literally “Friend of the Knesset”. I will be running to be a Knesset Enemy, or אויב כנסת. I will be a Member of Am Yisrael, not The Knesset.
- As an Enemy of Knesset and Member of Am Yisrael , I will vote against any law that decreases liberty for Am Yisrael and/or increases the power of the State.
- As an enemy of Knesset, I will vote for any law that increases liberty and/or decreases the power of the State.
- Any law that both increases and decreases liberty, or both increases and decreases the power of the State in certain respects, I will have to judge on a case-by-case basis as to whether State power or liberty is increased on net, and I will explain each decision I have made, and I will be open to discussion about it before voting with whoever wants to speak with me about it.
- I will not be subject to any coalition discipline from anybody, not even Moshe Feiglin. I am not his chassid, though I will listen to his opinions and take them into account.
- I will not accept a single shekel in State salary or subsidies for any purpose whatsoever. I will not drive a state car or use any of its money for any reason. If I am elected an Enemy of Knesset, I will do it for free. I will be accepting voluntary donations for my time however, for defending the liberty of everyone. Any money forced into my bank account by thugs will either be burned and inflation returned to the People or donated back to Zehut for the purpose of shrinking the State.
- I promise to make my opening Knesset speech a thing for the books. I will drag that place through the dirt and I will not hide my contempt and hatred for all politicians in that building.
If you want me to run, comment here and let me know.
Ya’alon Leaves, Yehuda Glick Enters Knesset, But Don’t Expect Too Much from Glick
There will now only be 119 morally challenged kleptomaniacs in the Knesset, as Moshe Bogey Ya’alon was kicked out for some reason and Rav Yehuda Glick will take his place. Since Glick is the 33rd on the Likud roster, he’s now in.
I have a lot of respect for Glick as of now. The coolest thing I’ve ever seen him do is say some Arabic prayer on Har Habayit with muslims. But I’m pretty sure that respect will fall away quickly and he’ll be absorbed by the system. He is good on one issue, and that is prayer on Har Habayit. There’s not much else I know about him in terms of his understanding of economics or his thinking about the State. I would assume he is your average Dati Leumi who believes the State is “Holy” and that the army is the hand of God.
Back in March there was a soldier who shot an Arab at point blank range in the head. The Arab wounded another soldier in Hevron by stabbing him and this other soldier shot him in the head after he was neutralized and supposedly no longer a threat. The debacle is what eventually somehow unseated Ya’alon.
The debate is being centered on whether the soldier thought that the Arab still had a bomb belt or not. But that doesn’t matter. That’s just smoke and mirrors, a legal defense being used to skirt the main issue.
The issue really is who has the right to seek justice. Most people say only the State, because otherwise we’d all be dead after shooting one another. That’s Hobbes’s point in the Leviathan. But the real answer is anyone has a right to seek justice. The case is complicated here though because occupied Arabs (the incident happened in Hevron) have a moral right to stab and kill the occupying force. Then the question becomes since the soldier did not have an intent to kill people before the stabbing, is he still a legitimate target? I don’t know. Maybe.
But let’s assume for a moment that the soldier’s presence in Hevron is morally justified, or at least that once attacked with lethal force, the soldier or his defenders have a right to fight back with lethal force. If he has the right by libertarian law even being an occupier, then his shooting of the Arab is no problem. Glick, however, doesn’t think so, because he believes that killing someone who sought to kill you, without first going through the state monopoly justice system, is immoral.
He’s wrong, and it shows that he is essentially a statist, like everyone else. הבא להרגך השכם והרגו does not have a caveat that we must wait for the State to decide.
And because Glick is a statist, he will meld into the system. His moves against the State, like praying on the Temple Mount, will be silenced, and he will go along with it, because he cannot challenge the state to the point that he would weaken its authority. His activism is probably just to make himself a name and once he has it he’ll back down. If he thinks I’m wrong I welcome his comment here and I’ll post it.
Glick would be a good force with Feiglin’s leadership, but his knowledge of economics is probably very weak. Don’t expect anything good to come out of Glick in terms of liberty, unfortunately.
I’m calling upon him publicly to reject coalition discipline, reject a Knesset salary, vote “yes” on all bills to reduce state power and money and “no” on all bills to expand state power and money.
But he won’t. He’ll start speaking politically correctly now, and he won’t go up to Har Habayit anymore, not without explicit permission from Netanyahu.
The Jewish Libertarian 