Naftali Bennett

Naftali Bennett on the torture of children by the State

rafifarber Israeli Politics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

From here.

שר החינוך התייחס גם לעדויות על התנהלות החקירות בשב”כ ואמר כי כל החקירה מפוקחת ומבוקרת “שמענו המון דברים ואני יכול לומר שהפעולות שמבוצעות הן פעולות בבקרה ובפיקוח משפטי צמוד ובמטרה למנוע את הפיגוע הבא. אנחנו יודעים לסמוך על השב”כ, השב”כ מגן עלינו יום יום מפני אלפי פיגועים פוטנציאליים וצריך לסמוך עליו גם בפעולה הזאת”.

“The Education Czar spoke about the testimony (including torture) regarding the Shabak interrogation, saying that the investigation was being conducted with oversight. “We’ve heard a lot of things (about torture) and I can say that what is being done is being done with judicial oversight. (Meaning Judges say the torture is OK so it’s OK.) The purpose is to prevent the next terrorist attack. We know we can trust the Shabak. The Shabak protects us day in day out from thousands of potential attacks and we need to trust them on this.”

Ah, Bennett. You are my favorite. Love you. May you live forever.

Lesson being: Question not. Be loyal. And shut up.

Notice what the primate is doing here. By saying “the purpose is to prevent the next terrorist attack” he is saying that the torture is happening and that it is justified. Because the “law” in Israel is that torture is legal when it is to stop a ticking time bomb, but not regarding past events. Bennett is saying that the kids constitute a ticking time bomb because their interrogation is for the purpose of stopping the next attack. Theoretically you can say that about anybody. Which means torture is legal in Israel.

He’s saying, in his own politician way, that the torture is happening as it should.

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Creepster Yinon Magal of Bayit Yehudi is Sexually Attracted to Women, Oh My

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There’s some zhlub I’ve never heard of in the Jewish Home party named Yinon Magal. His name can be translated as He Will Rule a Sickle. Apparently he is a raging heterosexual who has a penchant for telling attractive women that he would like to have sex with them. Also, according to tradition, Yinon is one of the possible names of the Mashiach (Messiah). Maybe it’s this guy. We should start a movement.

There’s a whole PC wave going on about how this guy is a criminal because, aside from the fact that he’s married (maybe not for much longer) with four kids, he isn’t very suave at clothing his sexual advances into something more socially acceptable. From what I read, he needs to improve his game, especially once he’s single again. His real crime is being a welfare bum Knesset member, but his problem is that he doesn’t seem to understand the crucial point that men must elicit sexual interest from women first by acting attractively before men make their own advances. Making an advance first without being signaled that it’s OK and wanted is the quintessence of being extremely creepy. “Lefties” love to arrest people on the “right” for being sexually creepy.  And vice versa. But it isn’t a crime. It’ll just keep you out of the human gene pool.

The only crime he committed was kissing women and smacking their tushes without permission. Yes, this is an actual crime, and he should be fined for it. But compared to being a Knesset member and drawing up laws about how people can and can’t live their own lives is a much greater crime.

No, I do not buy that unwanted sexual advances cause severe damage to women and therefore it is a serious crime. Some women like uninvited sexual advances, depending on who’s doing it. How many women would complain of a sexual advance from Brad Pitt? Some maybe, but not most. (Not that I’m recommending playing sexual harassment roulette here on the assumption you are Brad Pitt. That will probably get you ostracized and possibly committed.) Some women hate it.

A crime is not a crime because of what it makes you feel, be it good or bad feelings. It is a crime because it aggresses against other people’s property, in this case their own bodies. Rape is a serious crime. Unwanted kisses are a crime but not a serious crime. And making verbal sexual advances is not a crime at all, unless it is accompanied by an actual explicit threat of aggression.

Keep in mind that without primarily male sexual advances, there would be no human race.

Magal also committed a breach of contract with his wife, so it’s up to her if she wants to sue him for that or divorce him. The man is on welfare and has no real job anyway. I say dump him.

If he gets arrested for this, good. One less creep in the Knesset. Though he’ll be replaced immediately by some other creep.

Quick Thoughts on Election Results

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I ended up not voting for anyone. Someone pledged money and then backed out, and I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Arabs. If something bad happened I didn’t want it on my conscience that I voted. There was an article, I think on Zerohedge, a few days ago about common statist arguments. One of them was “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain.” The truth is exactly the opposite.

Ah, I found it. Here it is, originally on Liberty.me. Google really is an awesome search engine.

“If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain”

This is exactly wrong. People who do not vote are the only people who have a right to complain. Those who vote for people who win elections are endorsing politicians and their minions who will engage in activities under color of law that would be punished as crimes if you or I did them. Those who vote for people who lose elections may not be vicariously responsible for the crimes of state agents in the same degree, but participating in the system helps to create the appearance of legitimacy for that which is inherently illegitimate.

I did not vote, therefore I have a right to complain. If you voted, you have no right to complain.

So anyway, God has his own plans, I don’t know what they are, so whatever I think is good and bad about these results is irrelevant. But for what it’s worth, here’s what makes me happy (relatively) and what makes me less happy, in my own superficial emotional responses to larger pictures that are not presented to my eye directly by the Creator of the Universe.

First, Bennett can go blank my blank. He’s dead, his party is dead, it’s back to Mafdal sectoral nonsense, he has no future, he’s gone, goodbye. (Wry smile by me.)

Second, Eli Yishai is out, he can also go blank my blank. He’s never coming back, he will disintegrate into obscurity, good bye, good riddance, now go do your speaking rounds because there’s nothing else anyone will hire you for. The biggest Hillul Hashem in the Knesset, in my opinion, for specifically religious Jews (Netanyahu is the biggest for Jews in general) is out. No more hearing about how the gay people caused massive fires in the Carmel and other lovely gems.

Third, Baruch Marzel, who would have been the magnet for the “all nationalist Jews are crazy” mantra, is also out. That will save many a Hillul Hashem for nationalist Jews down the line.

Fourth, Tzipi Livni is again relegated to a loss. She’s the new Shimon Peres and I hope she looks for yet another stupid party to crash after Likud, Kadima, Tnua, now Labor. Or Zionists, or whatever they want to call themselves.

Fifth, Lieberman is dead. He’ll be absorbed by something, and Yisrael Beiteinu is dead. That’s good.

As for what makes me relatively sadder for today at least, Netanyahu’s, I admit it, pretty impressive victory, my two conclusions are, really, there is nobody else who fits the bill of Prime Minister except Feiglin of course, but he’s on hiatus right now. Anyone else filling that seat is, admittedly, laughable.

Second, the only way he will ever stop leading the Israelis government is in the event of a global economic catastrophe that everybody blames him for. Otherwise, he’s going to be Prime Minister until he dies (not calling for any violence here), and he’s got really top notch longevity genes in his family. His father died at what, 102 or something like that?

Yup, 102. Google gets it again. So it’s either economic catastrophe, or King Bibi for another 36 years give or take.

Why Bennett is so bad and Bayit Yehudi Is the worst, most dangerous party

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Vote Zehut!

Why is Bennett so bad? Just in terms of the number of people he is responsible for killing indirectly, and those who have yet to die because of him. Yes, die, because of him. Early on in the last coalition, Netanyahu wanted to do a prisoner release as a good will gesture to Abbas. The budget had not yet passed. Moshe Feiglin was going around to the the most right wing of right wingers in the coalition, telling them that the only way to stop this release of murderers was to vote against the budget, thereby bringing down the government. Bibi would have to recant, and the deal wouldn’t go through.

Moshe needed 3 more people to vote against the budget. That’s it. Bennett had 12. But not even Orit Struck, the most right wing of right wing of right wingers, mehadrin min hamehadrin, would vote against the budget to stop the terrorist release. I don’t like the word terrorist but I’m using it here so people who do like that word understand.

Orit Struck, who was kicked out of Sinai back in 1982, not even she would threaten to bring down the government. Only Moshe. Certainly not Bennett. But if Bennett had instructed his sheep to do so, they would have done it, and murderers would not be on the streets now. And Jews will die, and have died, because of it. Because to Bennett, what matters more than Jewish lives is his seat in the government.

Don’t sugarcoat it. In the end he had to make a decision. Seat in government, or block terrorist release. He chose the former. So did Struck.

The other stuff has to do with medical marijuana – anyone against that, that has the power to make it available to the sick but chooses not to, has no heart or pity and may deserve (I’m not God so I only say “may”) to die in pain for the pain he causes the sick and dying. I hate him for that and though I don’t wish pain on anybody – not even Bennett – if he suffers terrible pain from a disease (which I am not wishing upon him, to be clear) it would be midah keneged midah, theoretically.

Medical cannabis is a joke issue to those who don’t know what it’s like to have a relative sick and dying of cancer who can’t get a joint because some bureaucrat says he doesn’t need it. The chemo patients vomiting blood and unable to eat for weeks and have to be fed intravenously because the Medical Cannabis Regulation Office doesn’t want to give out too many government prescriptions. His fault. HIS FAULT HIS FAULT HIS FAULT. I look at and hear about people in pain and I think Bennett, and German, and other loathsome jerks walking around healthy and it drives me crazy.

Let alone if you are among the crowd that truly believes hash oil is a cancer cure. I’m not in that camp, but those who are should be able to test it and try it and smoke it and eat it and anything they damn will please with no restrictions period. Every time a dying cancer patient screams in pain it’s because of him – others too, but he’s included.

Then there’s the issue of the Jerusalem law to require 80 MK’s to give away the city, which he voted against to keep his stupid job as “minister of the economy” whatever the hell that means.

And there’s the Yisrael Hayom Law which forbids passing around free newspapers for God’s sake, which he came out “against” but did not, conveniently, tell his mindless wacko lackey Ayelet Shaked to shut up about. And that’s the thing with this guy. He takes the positive press for being “against” it when he knows it will pass anyway, but does not instruct his party to vote against it when it could actually threaten its passage.

There’s more, but I focus a lot on him because he talks the talk, but never stands up for what he says he believes in. And people just don’t get it. He vacuums in positive energy of people who think something good will come of him and he flushes all that energy into a bottomless stinking latrine. Nothing good will come out of this fake. Nothing.

All the people under his leadership would be good people if led by an actual person, like Feiglin. But he takes the positive energy in people like Struck and he channels it into the garbage. He’s like a lightning rod for goodness, channeling it through him and dumping it into nowhere so it doesn’t do anything and he keeps his stupid job.

If you vote for him and understand that, then fine. If you vote for him thinking that he’s a good guy, then you’re part of the problem.

Vote Likud and give Netanyahu hell

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If you want to make it impossible for Bibi to do anything stupid like dismantling outposts and robbing Jews of their land, then the best way to stop him is to vote Likud. The bigger it is, the less he can control it.

If you vote Bennett, Likud will be smaller, he will have less internal Likud opposition, and Bibi will use Bennett like a spare tire. Bennett will join the coalition when Bibi needs him, and when Bibi wants to do something stupid like “peace negotiations” or “gestures to the Palestinians”, he’ll kick out Bennett and bring in Yesh Lapid or Karl “Yechimovich” Marx and do it anyway.

The bigger Likud is, the more people in the coalition that cannot be kicked out at Bibi’s convenience. When Bibi wants to do something stupid, I’d rather he have 40 Likud MK’s to fight with that he can’t kick out rather than 30.

Bibi wants the smallest Likud possible while still maintaining his PM seat. That’s why he kicked down Moshe Feiglin last time, and that’s why he launched a suicidal inane distasteful campaign against Bayit Yehudi this time. To get the right wingers disgusted with him so they’ll  vote for an outside party that he can control with ease.

So help us stop Bibi. Vote Likud. Make it so huge it’s unmanageable. Give Bibi hell.

And if you really hate Likud and can’t bring yourself to do it, which is understandable, vote Aleh Yarok.

Naftali Bennett and the Mafdal’s last hurrah

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Those of us who really believe Moshe Feiglin can and will lead Israel and the Jewish Nation to liberty by becoming Prime Minister have this refrain. We always say that we’re not trying to lead the Dati Leumi, or the Religious Zionist sector. We are not a sector, we do not believe in sectors, and we try to speak to the Jewish nation qua nation and leave sectors aside. We want to lead everyone and free everyone. Not lead a sector and try to cut off a hunk of publicly funded steak and bring it home to a ravenous constituency starved for tax-funded whatevers.

But even those of us with our eye on the ball sometimes lose focus for a second and get sucked back into the “sector” that we supposedly “came from,” which in most cases is the Religious Zionist sector, the srugim, or whatever you want to call them.

We see in the polls that Naftali Bennett has totally revived the old Mafdal. He’s a new exciting guy, served in Tzahal as commander of a bunch of important stuff and did heroic things and whatnot just like Ehud Barak of the new up-and-coming then out-and-going Atzmaut (literally, “Forget Labor”) Party. He was a highly successful career man and made a skrillion dollars just like Yair Lapid of the new up-and-coming and soon to be out-and-going Yesh Lapid (literally “There is Lapid”) Party. Or was it two skrillion? I don’t remember exactly. And he can talk oh…soooo…smoothly…in perfect American English…with a perfect American accent…that’s so seductive…just like…

Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mafdal, or Bayit Yehudi, or whatever you want to call it, might get a bunch of seats. Maybe 10. Maybe 15. Maybe 20. It doesn’t make the least bit of difference. Why? Because Naftali Bennett is nothing but a new Netanyahu with a kippah on. He has no conviction about anything but he can talk as if he almost does. For example, he can say contradictory things like, “A soldier should never have to choose between expelling a human being from his home and disobeying orders,” and then end it with, “A soldier should never disobey orders under any circumstances,” and state both mutually contradictory statements together with the same conviction, thereby effectively saying absolutely nothing, but making people think he has.

And then, as if he didn’t contradict himself at all, he’ll go on in the very next sentence and challenge his twin, Benjamin Netanyahu, to state publicly if he plans on expelling people from their homes again or not, as if trying to fork another politician will take the attention away from the fact that he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too as well. Well, Bennett, my little Bibi with a Kippah, if he does, what will you do? All you’ve told us is you hope it won’t happen. But what will you do? Support private property or support immoral orders?

Bennett’s long term plan is genius. Get this: He wants to wait for the Arabs to “calm down”. Of course this isn’t what Israel has already been doing since Oslo. Inspiring. That’s it! They have to “calm down”! Why didn’t we think of this before! When I think of Jewish History and our job on this planet and the reason we came back to Israel after millenia of exile, I think of Arabs “calming down,” and when I picture calm Arabs, I get this kind of religious messianic zeal. Thanks Bennett. You have a very nice kippah and a cool buzz cut.

And his slogan: “Something new is beginning.” Yes, something new indeed. Bibi now has a kippah. That’s new. And the new Bibi  says right wing sounding rhetoric without committing to any actual positions and wants to wait things out until the Arabs “calm down”. New Indeed.

Now, back to why it makes absolutely no difference how many seats the Mafdal gets. It doesn’t matter because the only interesting thing that is going to come out of this Knesset will be the Knesset speeches and Knesset actions of Moshe Feiglin from within the Likud slate. He’s going to be in the Knesset. Nothing can stop that. Likud isn’t going down to 20 seats under any circumstances. From that podium, from that pulpit, Feiglin will speak about liberty and Jewish values and Jewish leadership. And the Jewish Nation will listen. And he’ll say actual things that don’t contradict themselves. And when Netanyahu tries to do something stupid, he will fight tooth and nail and probably get sanctioned in some way or another, and he won’t be invited into Bibi’s little circle, and if he is named as a Minister he may get fired, and if he doesn’t get fired and Bibi tries to expel someone from their home, he’ll resign, and it’ll be great.

Moshe Feiglin won’t have to pull stupid political tricks like asking the “Prime Minister” from a press conference if he intends to expel Jews from their homes or not. He will be able to fight it and embarrass Bibi from within the Likud itself if he does. Bennett will be able to do absolutely nothing but yell. He won’t pull out of the government because he’ll fear someone from the Left will take his place. So in the end he’ll do nothing and say things like “I wish soldiers wouldn’t have to choose between expelling Jews and following orders boo hoo.”

Meanwhile, while Bennett pouts and stays in the coalition posing no threat to Bibi whatsoever, Feiglin will be fighting from the inside and setting the stage for his next run at the Likud leadership.

So in the end, whether Bennett has 10 or 20 seats makes no difference. He’ll stay in the government just like every other Mafdal incarnate has over the history of the sector. Sometimes we Feiglinites forget that we are not in a sector and we are not trying to get sectoral votes for our party. We are not after “Dati Leumi” votes. We don’t want the Dati Leumi all suddenly joining Likud and filling out membership forms. We don’t want the Likud to be a sector. We don’t want to turn the Likud into the Mafdal. We want to lead the nation. That means we are after the votes of people who believe in the nation, not their sector.

Someone who feels they are part of the Dati Leumi sector more than they are part of the Jewish Nation as a whole should not vote Likud. Someone who feels that they are part of the nation should vote Likud, regardless of what kippah he (or she) wears or if he even wears one at all.

When all is said and done, the Nation will hear Feiglin speak softly, like he did yesterday, that he supports anyone who refuses orders on moral grounds, left or right, as he always has. Bennett will be screaming at a wall as he continually says nothing.

Bennett will speak loudly. Feiglin will speak softly as he always does, but this time he will carry the big stick. Let the votes fall where they may, and let the Jewish People separate the leaders from the politicians. Once they do, it will be clear. This is Mafdal’s last hurrah.