Never forget Gantz’s, Ya’alon’s and Ashkenazi’s perfidy

They have committed perfidy and for a split second of quick math, the Center-Left 46 seems to be 61. That “61” will last even less time than did Roger Maris’s 61-home run record of 1961 but they only want it long enough to oust Netanyahu.

By Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, INN 23/03/20  04:01

There will be fourth elections. I never doubted it. The unity agreement has little chance of being signed, although Netanyahu’s offer to Blue and White is statesmanlike and more than fair. However, the “cockpit” foursome prefer to try to oust Netanyahu rather than join a unity emergency government to handle the corona crisis.

I called it before the third round, and I wrote then that the fourth ultimately will be coming and will be deciding.  By then, Prime Minister Netanyahu will have been more or less acquitted or convicted.

If justly acquitted, he and Likud will win a landslide, and the Religious-Right coalition will govern without Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beyteinu party. By contrast, if wrongfully convicted, then Bibi will be replaced at the top of Likud’s list by a competent person, whether by Gideon Saar, Yuli Edelstein, Nir Barkat, or Gil Erdan. And then Lieberman will drop his religious war and will join a Likud-Religious coalition because he will have achieved his primary purpose and cold revenge — the downfall of Netanyahu.

President Reuven Rivlin has been told that 61 of the recently elected Knesset members endorse Benny Gantz to try forming a government. The thing is, Gantz has only 46 seats:  his Blue and White have 33, the radical left Labor-Meretz have six, and Revenge-Driven Lieberman has seven. That is all Gantz has; he is not even close to the 58 seats garnered by Likud (36), Ashkenazic haredi United Torah Judaism (7), Sephardic haredi Shas (9), and Religious Zionist Yemina (6). Again, it is not even close: 58-46.

Therefore, in a desperate grab for power, Gantz has reneged on his campaign assurances and solemn promises, and — together with two other blinded former IDF generals, Moshe Yaalon and Gabi Ashkenazi, who now have gone completely off the cliff of sanity and departed from an IDF military general’s assumed unbridled loyalty to Israel — now has gone to bed with the 15 Knesset members from the anti-Zionist Arab Joint List. So, for a split second of quick math, the Center-Left 46 seems to be 61.

That “61” will last even less time than did Roger Maris’s 61-home run record of 1961.

I pray that we never forget what Gantz, Ya’alon, and Ashkenazi have done. They have committed perfidy.  And their defense cannot be insanity. Yes, their act is crazy, but they consciously know exactly what they are doing. They are legitimizing the Arab Joint List of anti-Zionists whose number include Hamas and Hezbollah sympathizers, defenders of Jew-hatred and anti-Israel terror, and people dedicated to ending the Jewish identity of the State of Israel. And they are doing it to attain a desperate moment of fading glory for themselves.

Military generals? No, they are cowards who cannot face the reality that the other side got 58, and they got 46.

No “minority government” that these renegades conceivably form will last long.  Arabs in Judea and Samaria (fictionally called “Palestinians”) and in Gaza will riot, thinking they now are about to take down Israel. Hamas will rain rockets, and Islamic Jihad will compete with them to see who launches more.

Sooner or later — and not after very long — the “Grand Blue and White Minority Government” will have to respond by bombing Gaza and bombing and bombing. They will not have a choice. It will be like all Israel’s prior Leftist Socialist Labor governments from 1949-1973 that, sooner or later, had to go to war and do so mercilessly because left-wing and liberal governments tempt terrorists and war-mongers to strike.

The haters strike because they think they now enjoy a golden opportunity to wreak havoc and destroy while weak-kneed leaders are in “the cockpit.”  So of course Sadat attacked when Golda Meir was Prime Minister. He practically had to do it, even if she would have been strong — and she was not — because this was his moment: a weak liberal socialist woman. And of course Hezbollah did not miss the chance when Israel was headed by Ehud Olmert with Amir Peretz as Defense Minister, an Israeli Col. Klink and Sgt. Shultz duo who practically embodied the TV comedy show “Hogan’s Heroes,” if it were not so tragic.

The rockets will come.  The response will come.  And then the Joint List Fifth Column bolstering the so-called “Blue and White Minority Government” will pull out to sabotage the IDF response amid the battle.  Either the government will fall mid-battle, or Likud temporarily will save the day by bolstering it till the fighting ends. And then Israel will go to the polls for the concluding Round Four.

Those who have backed Likud and the religious parties will be as fervent as ever.  Those on the Labor-Meretz left will not change, nor will the Arab voters.  The ones who will be compelled to self-account will be the Blue and White voters. They will have experienced the revelation that so many of us already knew — that Blue and White is not centrist but is leftist, albeit moderately so.

That when they promise not to form a government with Arabs who would destroy Israel, they are lying. That all the fancy stars on Moshe Yaalon’s old IDF uniforms that no longer fit him, and on Ashkenazi’s, and on Gantz’s were given to those fellows at a different time in their lives when they were defending their nation, not scratching and clawing for power at the expense of other Jews’ survival. Let others call Yaalon “Bogie.” I call him “Bogus.”

They now are seen for their perfidy.  The three in “the cockpit” now are exposed. They sold out hundreds of thousands who voted for them. So give some credit to Orly Levy-Abekasis.  She is no hero in this mess, and yet she also is because, having foolishly jumped in with the mud of the left, she at least manifested the strength, independence, and fortitude to walk away from aligning with those who would kill her.

As for Liberman, he is nuts, driven by a single hateful desire for revenge, a compulsive need to destroy Netanyahu. He has all the time in the world, no rush. He can run another five or ten elections, whatever it takes to bring down Netanyahu. For him, it is a war to eternity.

What drives that insane hate? Possibly resentment over the government investigations that almost brought down his party a decade ago and that permanently cut his Knesset representation by more than half, while resulting in several of his main allies being convicted of crimes of fraud.  So now he wants the Prime Minister who oversaw that period and who was Acting Defense Minister after Liberman was replaced to fall and be convicted for the same things.

It is what it is.  Liberman has his loyal following of ever-aging anti-Arab right-wing immigrants from the former Soviet Union, most of them non-Jewish halakhically.  Every four years some more of them die of old age.  Their kids all see themselves as Israelis, not as “Russians,” and do not vote for Liberman. His followers can contemplate that they just cast votes to bring into the government people who want to kill them. Every four years Liberman will lose another seat. So it will be.

But Blue and White’s three generals must never be forgotten nor forgiven for their perfidy. And the fourth election will settle this mess, finally.