“Ghattas Law”: New Bill Seeks to Revoke Salaries and Pensions of MKs Convicted of Harming State Security

On Tuesday Jewish Home MK Moti Yogev submitted a bill that seeks to revoke the salaries and retirement benefits of elected officials convicted of security-related offenses.

The bill comes in light of the recent episode surrounding Balad MK Basel Ghattas, who was charged with smuggling cellphones to security prisoners and subsequently signed a plea bargain to serve two years in jail and resign his Knesset seat.

A similar law passed in 2011 aimed to strip ex-MK Azmi Bishara of his pension after he was charged with relaying sensitive information to Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War. However, the “Azmi Bishara Law” only applies to prison sentences of 10 years or higher.

As an amendment to the Penal Code the new bill seeks to revoke the benefits of all elected officials convicted of security-related offenses, which would include MK Ghattas. According to the bill, the revoked benefits would include all pension funds, retirement stipends, severance payments and more.

The bill’s sponsor MK Moti Yogev said: “It is inconceivable that the Israeli public should pay from its own pocket the pensions of MKs convicted of supporting terror and harming Israel’s security.”

Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg, who was involved in formulating the bill, said that MK Ghattas is merely the newest member of a long line of Balad Party members seeking to harm the security of Israel.

“The bill aims to revoke the salaries and retirement benefits of elected officials who work against the State of Israel and its citizens,” said Peleg. “The reality in which elected officials violate laws that endanger the security of the state on the one hand, and continue to receive benefits at the expense of the taxpayer on the other hand, cannot continue.”

Peleg added: “All members of Knesset, regardless of religion or ideological affiliation, are expected to uphold the law and not act as a fifth column. This is another step towards ending the phenomenon wherein the state funds those seeking to destroy it.”

END OF DAYS: Russia is Coming for Israel

The Middle East is becoming unhinged. Whether Putin maliciously planned to allow Israel to be cornered by Iran and Hezbollah or not may never be known, but what is clear is the agreements between Russia and Israel on “freedom of attack” when Iranian arm transfers to Hezbollah are determined to be for attacking Israel appears to be changed from their original parlance.  When the IAF attacked a convoy that inadvertently destroyed Russian armaments, Israel’s relationship with Putin changed.

True, Putin most probably set the confrontation up as a test to see how serious Israel was in taking out Iranian weapons, but the question is why.  With the Syrian crisis far from over and the Ukrainian conflict growing in the Don-bass, Russia is trying to demarcate who stands where.  It had been assumed before Friday’s attack and Sunday’s Hezbollah movement to the Golan that Israel would elect to stay out of the burgeoning war between Russia and the West.  Israel’s reaction proved this hypothesis wrong.

The next stage is a purposeful allowance of Iranian and Hezbollah soldiers to take the Syrian Golan.  This is a red line for Israel and  yet vitally important for Russia to execute in order to put in place a Gordian knot on the Jewish State.  While Putin cements his control of Syria, the last thing he needs is for Israel disrupt it.

Making Deals with Putin Never Ends Well

Bibi Netanyahu responded to Putin’s summoning of the Israeli ambassador with these words: “Our policy on the subject will not change,” declared Netanyahu. “If there is a feasibility from an intelligence and military standpoint – we attack and so it will continue.”

Yet, it was Bibi himself who insisted that he had struck a deal with Putin.  The changing parameters of that deal, which shift by the day show how ridiculous it is to toy with KGB directors turned Presidents.  Bibi is a good chess player and out-foxed Obama for eight years, but Putin is a champion at it and despite Bibi’s tough talk he knows Israel is becoming cornered.

In December of of 2015 I wrote this concerning the embracing of Russia as a partner for Israel:

“a regionally strong and globally ascendant Israel should not run to embrace a looming Russian Bear just yet. Especially a Russia that is purely pragmatic and whose leaders do not share the biblical values that have made Israel function beyond the realm of pragmatism. These values in many ways have made the dream of an Israel that went from persecuted to global leader a reality far more than the tactical pragmatism of Putin. We have to remember that as much as we want to be accepted by a strong Russia, Putin himself lives in a world of tactics and tactics can change if Mother Russia needs them to. In other words an alliance with Russia will only happen if it is good for Russia and its length will only last if it is good for Russia.” 

Putin’s shifting tactics have finally caught up with Israel’s strategic needs.  In the next phase of the Syrian and expanding Levant conflict, the Israeli government would do well not to rely on earthly kings for security and perhaps take the time to put their trust in the only King that truly matters.

THE END OF PALESTINE

Israel has the opportunity to reclaim its nation.

Palestine is many things. A Roman name and a Cold War lie. Mostly it’s a justification for killing Jews.

Palestine was an old Saudi-Soviet scam which invented a fake nationality for the Arab clans who had invaded and colonized Israel. This big lie transformed the leftist and Islamist terrorists run by them into the liberators of an imaginary nation. Suddenly the efforts of the Muslim bloc and the Soviet bloc to destroy the Jewish State became an undertaking of sympathetically murderous underdogs.

But the Palestine lie is past its sell by date.

What we think of as “Palestinian” terrorism was a low-level conflict pursued by the Arab Socialist states in between their invasions of Israel. After several lost wars, the terrorism was all that remained. Egypt, Syria and the USSR threw in the towel on actually destroying Israel with tanks and jets, but funding terrorism was cheap and low-risk. And the rewards were disproportionate to the cost.

For less than the price of a single jet fighter, Islamic terrorists could strike deep inside Israel while isolating the Jewish State internationally with demands for “negotiations” and “statehood.”

After the Cold War ended, Russia was low on cash and the PLO’s Muslim sugar daddies were tired of paying for Arafat’s wife’s shoe collection and his keffiyah dry cleaning bills.

The terror group was on its last legs. “Palestine” was a dying delusion that didn’t have much of a future.

That’s when Bill Clinton and the flailing left-wing Israeli Labor Party which, unlike its British counterpart, had failed to adapt to the new economic boom, decided to rescue Arafat and create ”Palestine”.

The resulting terrorist disaster killed thousands, scarred two generations of Israelis, isolated the country and allowed Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other major cities to come under fire for the first time since the major wars. No matter how often Israeli concessions were met with Islamic terrorism, nothing seemed able to shake loose the two-state solution monkey on Israel’s back. Destroying Israel, instantaneously or incrementally, had always been a small price to pay for maintaining the international order.

The same economic forces that were transforming the world after the Cold War had salvaged “Palestine”. Arafat had lost his sponsors in Moscow, but his new sugar daddy’s name was “Globalism”.

The Cold War had been the focus of international affairs. What replaced it was the conviction that a new world tied together by international commerce, the internet and international law would be born.

The demands of a clan in Hebron used to be able to hijack the attention of the world because the scope of the clash between Capitalism and Communism could globalize any local conflict. Globalization was just as insistent on taking local conflicts and making them the world’s business through its insistence that every place was connected. The terrorist blowing up an Israeli pizzeria affected stock prices in New York, the expansion prospects of a company in China and the risk of another terrorist attack in Paris. And interconnectedness, from airplane hijacking to plugging into the international’s left alliance of global protest movements, had become the  best weapon of Islamic terrorists.

But now globalization is dying. And its death may just take “Palestine” with it.

A new generation of leaders is rising who are actively hostile to globalization. Trump and Brexit were the most vocal rebukes to transnationalism. But polls suggest that they will not be the only ones. The US and the UK, once the vanguards of the international order, now have governments that are competitively seeking national advantages rather than relying on the ordered rules of the transnational safety net.

These governments will not just toss aside their commitment to a Palestinian state. Not when the Saudis, Qataris and countless other rich and powerful Muslim countries bring it up at every session.

But they will be less committed to it.

45% of Americans support the creation of a PLO state. 42% are opposed. That’s a near split. These historical numbers have to be viewed within the context of the larger changes sweeping the country.

The transnationalists actively believed that it was their job to solve the problems of other countries. Nationalists are concerned with how the problems of other countries directly impinge on them without resorting to the mystical interconnectedness of everything, from climate change to global justice, that is at the core of the transnational worldview.

More intense competition by Western nations may make it easier for Islamic agendas to gain influence through the old game of divide and conquer. Nations facing terrorism will still find that the economic influence of Islamic oil power will rally the Western trading partners of Islam against them.

But without the transnational order, such efforts will often amount to little more than lip service.

Nationalist governments will find Israel’s struggle against the Islamic invaders inconvenient because it threatens their business interests, but they will also be less willing to rubber stamp the terror agenda the way that transnationalist governments were willing to do. The elimination of the transnational safety net will also cause nationalist governments to look harder at consequences and results.

Endlessly pouring fortunes into a Palestinian state that will never exist just to keep Muslim oil tyrants happy is not unimaginable behavior even for a nationalist government. Japan has been doing just that.

But it will be a less popular approach for countries that don’t suffer from Japan’s energy insecurity.

Transnationalists are ideologically incapable of viewing a problem as unsolvable. Their faith in human progress through international law made it impossible for them to give up on the two-state solution.

Nationalist governments have a colder and harder view of human nature. They will not endlessly pour efforts and resources into a diplomatic black hole. They will eventually take “No” for an answer.

This won’t mean instantaneous smooth sailing for Israel. It will however mean that the exit is there.

For two decades, pledging allegiance to the two-state solution and its intent to create a deadly Islamic terror state inside Israel has been the price demanded of the Jewish State for its participation in the international community. That price will not immediately vanish. But it will become easier to negotiate.

The real change will be on the “Palestinian” side where a terrorist kleptoracy feeds off human misery in its mansions downwind of Ramallah. That terror state, conceived insincerely by the enemies of the West during the Cold War and sincerely brought into being by Western transnationalists after the Cold War ended, is a creature of that transnational order.

The “Palestinian Authority”, a shell company of the PLO which is a shell company of the Fatah terrorists, has no economy worth speaking of. It has foreign aid. Its diplomatic achievements are achieved for it by the transnational network of foreign diplomats, the UN, the media and assorted international NGOs. During the last round of “negotiations”, Secretary of State John Kerry even attempted to do the negotiating on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in the talks with Israel.

Take away the transnational order and the Palestinian Authority will need a new sugar daddy. The Saudis are better at promising money than actually delivering it. Russia may decide to take on the job. But it isn’t about to put in the money and resources that the PA has grown used to receiving from us.

Without significant American support, the Palestinian Authority will perish. And the farce will end.

It won’t happen overnight. But Israel now has the ability to make it happen if it is willing to take the risk of transforming a corrosive status quo into a conflict that will be more explosive in the short term, but more manageable in the long term.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, in stark contrast to rivals on the left like Peres and on the right like Sharon, is not a gambler. The peace process was a big gamble. As was the withdrawal from Lebanon and the expulsion from Gaza. These gambles failed and left behind scars and enduring crises.

Unlike the prime ministers before and after him, Netanyahu has made no big moves. Instead he serves as a sensible steward of a rising economy and a growing nation. He has stayed in office for so long because Israelis know that he won’t do anything crazy. That sensible stewardship, which infuriated Obama who accused him of refusing to take risks, has made him one of the longest serving leaders in Israeli history.

Netanyahu is also a former commando who participated in the rescue of a hijacked airplane. He doesn’t believe in taking foolish risks until he has his shot all lined up. But the time is coming when not taking a risk will be a bigger risk than taking a risk. Eventually he will have to roll the dice.

The new nationalist wave may not hold. The transnational order may return. Or the new wave may prove darker and more unpredictable. It’s even possible that something else may take its place.

The status quo, a weak Islamist-Socialist terror state in Ramallah supported by the United States, a rising Muslim Brotherhood terror state in Gaza backed by Qatar and Turkey, and an Israel using technological brilliance to manage the threat from both, is already unstable. It may collapse in a matter of years.

The PLO has inflicted a great deal of diplomatic damage on Israel and Hamas has terrorized its major cities. Together they form an existential threat that Israel has allowed to grow under the guise of managing it. The next few years may leave Israel with a deadlier and less predictable struggle.

“Palestine” is dying. Israel didn’t kill it. The fall of the transnational order did. The question is what will take its place. As the nationalist wave sweeps the West, Israel has the opportunity to reclaim its nation.

Originally Published in FrontPageMag.

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Is Donald Trump Ready to Shatter the Mythical “Palestinian” Narrative?

If the sources coming out of the White House are accurate, President Donald Trump seems to be ready to take on the made up “Palestinian” narrative.  In the latest volley aimed at destroying the “Palestinian’s” use of UN bureaucracy to create a defacto state, the US scuttled the naming of former PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad as a UN special envoy to Libya.

“The United States was disappointed to see a letter indicating the intention to appoint the former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister to lead the U.N. Mission in Libya,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in a statement opposing the selection of Fayyad. “For too long the U.N. has been unfairly biased in favor of the Palestinian Authority to the detriment of our allies in Israel.”

“The United States does not currently recognize a Palestinian state or support the signal this appointment would send within the United Nations, however, we encourage the two sides to come together directly on a solution,” Haley said in a vast departure from Obama administration rhetoric. “Going forward the United States will act, not just talk, in support of our allies.”

In a continued transformation of American policy just before Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meeting with President Trump, sources in the White House claim that Trump will not use the phrase “two-states” or pressure Israel over construction in Judea and Samaria.

Whether due to Trump’s circle of friends, son-in-law, or just a good sense of right and wrong, the President seems to be ready to jettison decades of US policy in favor of backing Israel’s claims to its Biblical Heartland.

Why Now?

The Trump administration sees the world in black and white.  Either you are with the USA or against.  This is why Trump wants to pick his team of allies so to speak and build his foreign policy off of that. Furthermore, he never truly bought into the “Palestinian” victimhood complex. Trump does not like whiners and for him that his what much of the Arab world represents.  True, he needs the “moderate” Sunni states to take on Iran, but they need the USA far more than the USA needs them.

After Wednesday, the world is about to witness the collapse of the world’s only made up people.

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