Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Israeli Arab, John Podesta, Knesset elections 2015, Middle East peace process, V-2015, Wikileaks
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:20 PM
0 comments
At 1:36 P.M. on March 17, 2015, a senior Israeli journalist fielded a phone call. “I’m transferring the prime minister,” the voice on the other end told him. “Hello, Mr. Netanyahu,” the reporter began.
“I want to tell you that what’s happening today is election stealing,” Benjamin Netanyahu thundered. “Nothing like this has ever happened in any democracy anywhere. Because you’re in the press, you didn’t report on this scandal here. I’m about to lose the election.”
The astonished reporter asked the prime minister what he was talking about and added, “You’re [going to be] the next prime minister.”
“I'm not,” Netanyahu answered. “The V15 movement, backed by the American administration, brought software programs here …. You know what I'm talking about. I don’t want to elaborate over the phone, okay? Super-software that locates voters.”
The reporter had no idea what software the prime minister was alluding to. He also sensed paranoia in Netanyahu’s next remarks about a global conspiracy to topple him that included Washington, espionage agencies, the V15 movement that sought to unseat him, opposition leader Isaac Herzog and the Israeli media.
“What do you suggest I do with this information?” the journalist asked. “The vote is today.”
“I want you to know that this is what happened,” Netanyahu said, ending the conversation by making an accusation in the plural. “You won’t touch it. You aren’t handling [the story.] That's why I'm going to lose the election.”Netanyahu won the election. But he was right about V15. They did try to topple him. Fortunately, they failed.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Knesset elections 2015, V-2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:40 PM
1 comments
A press release states:
Today, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), released a bipartisan report examining the U.S. State Department’s grants to OneVoice—a non-governmental organization operating in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The group received nearly $350,000 in grants from the U.S. State Department to support peace negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority over a 14-month grant period ending in November 2014. In December 2014, Israeli elections were called following the collapse of peace negotiations.
McCaskill tried to put the best face on it.The Subcommittee’s investigation concludes that OneVoice Israel complied with the terms of its State Department grants. Within days after the grant period ended, however, the group deployed the campaign infrastructure and resources created, in part, using U.S. grant funds to support a political campaign to defeat the incumbent Israeli government known as V15. That use of government-funded resources for political purposes after the end of the grant period was permitted by the grant because the State Department failed to adequately guard against the risk that campaign resources could be repurposed in that manner or place limitations on the post-grant use of resources.
"While this report shows no wrongdoing by the Administration, and should put to rest such allegations, it certainly highlights deficiencies in the Department’s policies that should be addressed in order to best protect taxpayer dollars.”Really? No wrongdoing in using US taxpayer dollars to unseat the democratically elected Prime Minister of an ally? I must have been asleep in my Constitutional Law class when they said that was okay.
The campaign’s explicit goal was to elect “anybody but Bibi [Netanyahu]” by mobilizing center-left voters. . . .
The State Department permitted One Voice to use a taxpayer-funded grant to build valuable political infrastructure—large voter contact lists, a professionally trained network of grassroots organizers/activists, and an impressive social media platform—for the putative purpose of supporting peace negotiations. But during the federal grant period, OneVoice devised a plan to target Prime Minister Netanyahu; immediately after the grant period ended, OneVoice deployed its taxpayer-funded campaign resources to launch the largest anti-Netanyahu grassroots organizing campaign in Israel in 2015. Despite OneVoice’s known history of political activism in Israel, the State Department did nothing to guard against the clear risk that OneVoice could engage in electioneering activities using a taxpayer-funded grassroots campaign infrastructure after the grant period. Remarkably, according to the State Department, OneVoice’s conduct was fully compliant with Department regulations and guidelines.And I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and to hear that both the White House and the State Department enthusiastically approved OneVoice's activities.
Among the report’s most damning findings, evidence was found that the “durable campaign resources” built during the grant with taxpayer dollars included “a larger voter contact database, a professionally trained network of grassroots activists across the country, and an enhanced social media presence on Facebook and Twitter. OneVoice was even permitted to use State Department funds to hire an American political consulting firm called 270 Strategies — run by Obama 2008 campaign veterans — to train its activists in how to execute a ‘grassroots mobilization’ campaign.”Can't wait to hear all the lemmings tell us how this is the 'most pro-Israel administration evah.' UNbelievable.
A senior State Department official admitted to congressional investigators that he deleted several emails pertaining to the administration’s coordination with OneVoice.
“The State Department was unable to produce all documents responsive to the Subcommittee’s requests due to its failure to retain complete email records of Michael Ratney, who served as U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem during the award and oversight of the OneVoice grants,” the report states.
Investigators “discovered this retention problem because one important email exchange between OneVoice and Mr. Ratney … was produced to the Subcommittee only by OneVoice,” the report continues. “After conducting additional searches, the Department informed the Subcommittee that it was unable to locate any responsive emails from Mr. Ratney’s inbox or sent mail.”
Ratney was ultimately forced to tell investigators that “[a]t times I deleted emails with attachments I didn’t need in order to maintain my inbox under the storage limit.”
While Ratney had the option to archive emails—as required by the department—he did not do this. Ratney claimed he was not aware of the rule, stating he “did not know [he] was required to archive routine emails.”
The deletion of the email chains appears to be a violation of the Federal Records Act, which mandates official records be archived for future disclosure purposes.Note - this is on John Kerry's watch and not on Hillary Clinton's. Yes, John Kerry is just as corrupt as Hillary Clinton.
One source with intimate knowledge of the situation told the Free Beacon that the deletion of these emails is highly suspicious given the seriousness of the claims about the administration’s behavior.
“The Obama administration had the money, skills, and personnel to build a gigantic campaign infrastructure that was used to try to defeat the prime minister of an ally,” the source said. “But apparently they didn’t have what they needed to store the emails in which they did all of those things. That’s certainly a lucky break for the State Department.”
State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday afternoon that he could not comment on the accusations due to the department’s inability to thoroughly review the Senate’s report.
“We’ve not had time to go through it closely, so I’m not going to be able to comment on specifics,” Kirby said. “But I would note that the report makes clear there’s no evidence that OneVoice spent State Department grant funds to influence the Israeli election. Again, I just don’t have additional comment at this time.”Even McCaskill admitted that OneVoice spent US government funds to influence the Israeli elections. She just claimed it didn't show 'wrongdoing.'
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, John Kirby, Knesset elections 2015, OneVoice, S. Daniel Abraham, US State Department, V-2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:34 AM
4 comments
On Thursday, The Post exclusively obtained the list of NGOs which show that 23 out of the 25 organizations are left-wing, with only two being centrist or non-affiliated. There are no right-wing organizations.The reason the Left needs funding from foreign governments is because most Israelis have turned Right after the Oslo debacle, and will not support Leftist NGO's.
The Justice Ministry bill in question, which returned to the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Wednesday after passing a first reading in the plenum, requires any NGO receiving more than half its funding from a foreign political entity identify itself as such in any publications and any meetings with public officials, and has been controversial because most of the organizations under the bill’s purview were predicted to be left-wing. The list, obtained on Thursday, confirms that that suspicion.
...
The organizations listed included, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, the Economic Cooperation Foundation, Yesh Din and The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. According to the Justice Ministry report, Yesh Din, for example, receives NIS 4.7 million of its NIS 5.3 million budget from foreign political entities. B’Tselem gets NIS 6.2 million of its NIS 9 million budget from foreign sources as well.
On Wednesday, Nonprofits Registrar representative Yafit Shemer told the Knesset committee that the legislation on transparency for organizations getting most of their budgets from foreign governments will affect 27 NGOs.
Committee chairman Nissan Slomiansky (Bayit Yehudi) prohibited Shemer from presenting the list to the MKs, arguing that he wants the bill to be “clean” of being drafted in a way that would target specific NGOs, sparking vocal debate among lawmakers. The Justice Ministry did not respond to requests for the list.
NGO Monitor President Prof. Gerald Steinberg said donations of more than NIS 100m. per year from foreign governments “distort Israeli democracy and dangerously damage its sovereignty.”Of course, those European lawmakers seem to be having trouble stopping those contributions....
But this should be mitigated by dialogue with lawmakers in Europe, many of whom oppose their government’s donations to political organizations.
Also on Wednesday, the Knesset approved in a preliminary reading the “V15 bill,” meant to make American- style Super PACs illegal. The measure proposed by MK Yoav Kisch (Likud) would limit political organizations’ ability to raise funds in an election year by making the limitations on NGOs involved in elections similar to those on a political party.V15 was sponsored by Obama cronies and US tax dollars, and staffed by the Obama administration.
The legislation is nicknamed “V15” after an organization that campaigned against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the last election using advanced data methods to target voters door-to-door.
Labels: Gerald Steinberg, Knesset elections 2015, NGO funding, NGO Monitor, NGO's, V-2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:47 PM
1 comments
Isaac Herzog, member of the Knesset and Chairman of the Israeli Labor party, revealed that Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz financed the election campaign of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“In March 2015, King Salman has deposited eighty million dollars to support Netanyahu’s campaign via a Syrian-Spanish person named Mohamed Eyad Kayali. The money was deposited to a company’s account in British Virgin Islands owned by Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire and businessman, who has allocated the money to fund the campaign Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”, Herzog cited a leaked Panama Paper.The story is still being shared on social media:
Panama Papers: King of Saudi Arabia secretly donated $80M to Netanyahu's Israeli election c… https://t.co/80OXgHaARA pic.twitter.com/wWRHKYURQK— Boing Boing (@BoingBoing) May 9, 2016
But according to sources that seem to be in a decent position to know, the story is not true.#PanamaPapers: Saudi king secretly donated $80M to Netanyahu's Israeli election campaign https://t.co/f8LenM5vJq pic.twitter.com/nlsoBDgeI8— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) May 9, 2016
(Update): A spokesperson from Isaac Herzog’s office reached out to Al-Masdar News on Monday to confirm that this quote was fabricated.
And there goes President Obama's foreign policy legacy.... /sighLabor leader Hertzog denies to me unsane websites' reports that he had said that Panama Papers would reveal Bibi got money from Saudi King— Yossi Melman (@yossi_melman) May 9, 2016
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Knesset elections 2015, our friends the Saudis, Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, Yitzchak Herzog
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:27 PM
0 comments
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Facebook post Friday that while he would “make every effort to incorporate MK Benny Begin into the cabinet later,” Likud’s coalition partners had objected to changing the agreed-on number of portfolios per faction, making it impossible to keep both Begin and Erdan.
Netanyahu’s Facebook post seemingly left Begin no choice but to announce his resignation from the cabinet.
“Over the past few days I have turned to my friends and partners, the heads of the coalition, with a personal request to leave our friend, Benny Begin, as an additional Likud minister in the government,” Netanyahu wrote. However, the coalition partners would not permit the number of ministers per faction to change and allow Likud to have 13 ministers.
Netanyahu, who effusively praised Begin in the post, also wrote that “there is not a shred of truth to the claim that he [Begin] said he would refuse to resign from the cabinet.”
...
Begin was first appointed minister without portfolio, while Erdan, who was number two on the Likud Knesset list, remained outside the cabinet after turning down an offer to become public security minister. Erdan wanted the Foreign Ministry portfolio, which Netanyahu insists on holding himself, or a ministerial portfolio that included elements of both the interior and public security ministries.
When Erdan’s demands were not met, he refused to join the cabinet. However, last week Erdan agreed to become minister of public security, strategic affairs and public diplomacy.
Erdan’s appointment angered his fellow party member MK Zeev Elkin, who was initially given the strategic affairs portfolio along with immigrant absorption. He then demanded to be made Jerusalem affairs minister and threatened that, otherwise, he would absent himself from Knesset votes, which could put the coalition at risk considering its razor-thin majority (61-59).
Netanyahu subsequently had to break his commitment to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat that the Jerusalem Affairs Ministry would be abolished and its powers absorbed into the Prime Minister’s Office.One MK having a temper tantrum is enough to bring down this government. Anyone want to take bets on how long it will last?
It's not that surprising that Begin would have resigned and not told anyone, since he refuses to hire a spokesperson.
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) May 31, 2015
Until the next crisis.... Labels: Benny Begin, Binyamin Netanyahu, Gilad Erdan, Israeli Knesset, Knesset elections 2015, Likud party, Ofir Akunis, Zeev Elkin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:19 PM
1 comments
German-govt funded NGO official @Kerstin_Mueller @boell_stiftung w/ @victory_2015IL FYI @LahavHarkov @Gil_Hoffman pic.twitter.com/jRmB7gT4DZ
— Gerald M. Steinberg (@GeraldNGOM) April 17, 2015
If you go through the comments, you will see that Victory 2015 - the group that attempted to defeat Netanyahu in the last election with backing from the Obama administration - is not happy about being exposed. Labels: Angela Merkel, Binyamin Netanyahu, Gerald Steinberg, Germany, Knesset elections 2015, V-2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:21 AM
0 comments
BREAKING: Israel's Netanyahu apologizes for offending Arab citizens with his comments during election.
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 23, 2015
Given that the most pro-Likud town in the country was also an Arab town, maybe next time Netanyahu should be more precise and say that people are being brought en masse to vote for the Arab parties. Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Arab, Knesset elections 2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:59 PM
0 comments
So here’s the dynamic: Netanyahu, while talking tough publicly about terms for an Israeli-Palestinian deal, was much more accommodating privately during actual negotiations. Just before Israeli elections, the U.S. government likely leaks evidence of his flexibility to harm Netanyahu. As a result, Netanyahu starts to lose right-wing voters to smaller parties, and the left-leaning major opposition party takes a lead in the polls, putting Netanyahu’s leadership in question, just as the U.S. wanted.
Netanyahu responds by using increasingly right-wing rhetoric (including denying that he ever agreed to the framework in question), to win back the voters from smaller parties that the leak cost him. He wins, and almost immediately announces that his campaign rhetoric was misunderstood, and that he still supports a two-state solution when conditions allow. The Obama Administration then announces it nevertheless has to reassess relations with Israel, allegedly because Netanayahu is no longer committed to the two-state solution.
So you get it? The Obama Administration, or someone with similar motivations, leaks a document showing that in practice, Netanyahu was surprisingly flexible in negotiations sponsored by the U.S. Netanyahu then tries to compensate by sounding tough in the closing days of his campaign. The administration then pretends that this is much more meaningful than its actual experience with Netanyahu, as indicated by the document it likely leaked, because it was out to punish Israel for electing Netanyahu regardless.
Indeed, recent reports show that the administration was planning to retaliate against Israel diplomatically if it reelected Netanyahu months ago, not only before his controversial election remarks, but before his Iran speech to Congress was even planned. (In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if Israeli intelligence had gotten wind of this, and thus Netanyahu thought he had little to lose by irritating Obama further with his speech).So which of Obama's goals did he accomplish?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iranian nuclear threat, joint session of Congress, Knesset elections 2015, Middle East peace process, two-state solution
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:31 PM
3 comments
ח"כ @Ayelet__Shaked מיד ב"אולפן פתוח": "כמו שאני לא קובעת לאובמה מי שריו, הוא לא צריך לקבוע לנו. והם גם לא צריכים להתערב בבנייה ביו"ש"
— ערוץ הכנסת (@knesset99) March 23, 2015
For the Hebrew impaired, the tweet above is from a Knesset Channel (like CSpan in the US) interview with MK Ayelet Shaked, number 2 on the Jewish Home party list and a likely minister in the next Netanyahu government. She says "Just like I don't decide who Obama's ministers are, he shouldn't decide for us. And they also should not be interfering in construction in Judea and Samaria."Labels: Ayelet Shaked, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem construction, Jewish Home party, Judea and Samaria construction, Knesset elections 2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:04 PM
1 comments
@Syechimovich ל@perez_esty : לו היה תיקו הייתי שוקלת ללכת לאחדות. משזה לא קרה- העם אמר את דברו ורוצה את נתניהו בראשות הממשלה.
— chico menashe (@chicomenashe) March 23, 2015
Translation: Former Labor party leader (and Israel Radio broadcaster) Shelly Yacimovich says that the people have spoken, that they want Netanyahu to be the leader, and that her party will be going to the opposition.
Kahlon rejects Herzog offer & nominates Netanyahu for Phase 2. BB clinches with 61. Liberman could bring him to 68.
— Jeremy Man Saltan (@TheJeremyMan) March 23, 2015
Of course, he'd still have to get them all to agree on ministries.... Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, coalition government, Knesset elections 2015, Labor party, Likud party, Shelly Yacimovich, Yair Lapid
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:08 PM
0 comments
"What was not well reported in the American media is that President Obama and his allies were playing in the election to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu," John McLaughlin, a Republican strategist, said in an interview on John Catsimatidis's "The Cats Roundtable" radio show broadcast Sunday on AM 970 in New York.
"There was money moving that included taxpayer U.S. dollars, through non-profit organizations. And there were various liberal groups in the United States that were raising millions to fund a campaign called V15 against Prime Minister Netanyahu," McLaughlin said.
He noted an effort to oust Netanyahu was guided by former Obama political operative Jeremy Bird and that V15, or Victory 15, ads hurt Netanyahu in the polls. McLaughlin said the Israeli leader rebounded after delivering a speech to Congress early this month, prompting more critical ads.
V15 was viewed as part of a broader campaign to oust Netanyahu. The group was linked to Washington-based nonprofit OneVoice Movement, which reportedly received $350,000 in State Department grants. Money to OneVoice stopped flowing in November, officials said, before the Israeli elections.
After Netanyahu's win, V15 co-founder Nimrod Dweck said in an interview with Ronan Farrow aired on MSNBC's "Jose Diaz-Balart" that "not a single cent" of State Department or taxpayer money had gone to their campaign.
"These are false allegations and they have nothing to do with reality," Dweck said.
McLaughlin also cited an effort "to organize the [Israeli] Arabs into one party and teach them about voter turnout."
"The State Department people in the end of January, early February, expedited visas for [Israeli] Arab leaders to come to the United States to learn how to vote," McLaughlin said.
"There were people in the United States that were organizing them to vote in one party so they would help the left-of-center candidate, Herzog, that the Obama administration favored," he added.All except the expedited visas have been reported here before. But as usual, the US mainstream media largely ignored it.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iranian regime change, Knesset elections 2015, regime change, Syrian regime change, V-2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:24 AM
2 comments
Our peevish petulant poor loser president
http://t.co/tPPFpnsCth
@instapundit @rsmccain @AmPowerBlog @LegInsurrection pic.twitter.com/HX2o5zm1Fm
— JeSuisEBL (@MsEBL) March 22, 2015
Sore loser.Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Knesset elections 2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:00 AM
0 comments
The latest trend among leftists who were shocked by their defeat at the polls Tuesday is an apparently spontaneous campaign called “Don't Give,” which calls on people to stop donating to the poorer Israelis and the socio-economically weaker regions known as “the periphery,” because these Israelis insist on voting for Likud, in election after election.
The campaign's name in Hebrew, Lo Latet, is a reference to Latet (“To Give”), a major charity group that collects donations for the needy.
The campaign started as a Facebook trend, which gathered steam after it was reported about in the news, and has turned into a Facebook page with over 3,000 likes.
"As the holiday of Pesach approaches, I would like to remind you that there are hundreds of people who have no way of celebrating,” wrote one Lo Latet poster. “It's important that you do not give them a single shekel.”
He added sarcastically: “After all, elected a government that will change their situation, so why interfere and ruin things? Happy holiday!”
"From now on, I want peace of mind,” wrote another poster. “From now on, it's every one for himself. Don't tell me about minimum wages and people whose salary doesn't carry them through the month. I don't want to hear about hungry children or single mothers in distress, about distressed contract workers, or eroded pensions. Don't preach to me about 'the people's choice and majority rule', I understand what democracy is, but from now on, let every person take care of himself.”Maybe the poor figured out that raising the minimum wage (which was part of Labor's platform) would put more of them out of work. Maybe they figured out that a nuclear Iran and a rocket-laden 'Palestinian state' within firing range of the center of the country would kill all our investments. And maybe - definitely - the Left has shown its true colors as the 'beautiful people' (yefei ha'nefesh in Hebrew) who couldn't care less about anyone but themselves.
Labels: charity, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli economy, Israeli Left, Knesset elections 2015, Labor party, Likud party, Palestinian state
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:20 PM
1 comments
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iranian nuclear threat, John McCain, Knesset elections 2015, Obama's obsession with engaging Iran, Obama's obsession with Israel, Robert Menendez
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:26 PM
1 comments
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Knesset elections 2015, P 5+1, Tom Cotton
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:18 PM
1 comments
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, humor, Knesset elections 2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:28 AM
2 comments
Angered by Netanyahu’s hard-line platform toward the Palestinians, top Obama officials would not rule out the possibility of a change in American posture at the United Nations, where the U.S. has historically fended off resolutions hostile to Israel.
And despite signals from Israel suggesting that Netanyahu might walk back his rejection, late in the campaign, of a Palestinian state under his watch, Obama officials say they are taking him at his word.
“The positions taken by the prime minister in the last days of the campaign have raised very significant substantive questions that go far beyond just optics,” said a senior administration official, adding that recent Israeli government actions were in keeping with Netanyahu’s rhetoric.
While saying it was “premature” to discuss Washington’s policy response, the official wouldn’t rule out a modified American posture at the United Nations, where the U.S. has long fended off resolutions criticizing Israeli settlement activity and demanding its withdrawal from Palestinian territories.
“We are signaling that if the Israeli government’s position is no longer to pursue a Palestinian state, we’re going to have to broaden the spectrum of options we pursue going forward,” the official said.Netanyahu has walked back the comments.
Mr. Netanyahu said in an interview on MSNBC that he still wanted “a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that he had not intended to reverse the position he took endorsing that in a 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University. But he said the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and its pact with the militant Islamist Hamas movement, made that impossible right now.
“I haven’t changed my policy,” Mr. Netanyahu said in the interview, his first since his resounding victory on Tuesday, which handed him a fourth term. “What has changed is the reality.”
His description of the reality is correct, but I think it's been that way all along. And whether or not Netanyahu intended to reverse the Bar Ilan speech remains to be seen. In the meantime, the Obama administration will seize Netanyahu's Tuesday comments as a way to do what Obama has wanted to do all along.“I don’t want a one-state solution; I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that, circumstances have to change,” he added. “I was talking about what is achievable and what is not achievable. To make it achievable, then you have to have real negotiations with people who are committed to peace.”
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, fierce moral urgency, Knesset elections 2015, Palestinian state, two-state solution
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:25 PM
1 comments
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Jon Stewart, Knesset elections 2015
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:09 PM
3 comments
It's almost impossible for me to post because I still cannot access this account on my laptop - only on my phone. This situation will continue until late Thursday afternoon Israel time. So I guess I won't even miss the WiFi on the way home.
Two comments on today's election. First, I can't vote. Israel doesn't allow absentee ballots and I happen to agree with that. Too great a chance of ex-pats throwing the elections.
Second, don't believe the polls. Israelis constantly lie to pollsters. If you knew how often they call us, you'd understand why. On top of that, there are certain groups in society who are grossly under-represented in the polls. In 2013 and 1996 (to name two recent examples), the polls were way off.
Finally, if you're addicted to following me, there's always Twitter at least until Thursday. My user name there is @IsraelMatzav.
Labels: Knesset elections 2015, personal stuff
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:38 PM
0 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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