Should We Drink Bibi's Kool-Aid?

by Rob Muchnick - US Director, Manhigut Yehudit
October 6, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu stood in the UN a few days ago and gained the accolades of the “good people” of the world with his speech. Bibi was called “Israel’s Churchill” for his erudite denunciation of the Iranian Ahmadinejad and all those who “gave him a hearing”. He has been crowned as the new “great statesman” and the “true conscience” of the world. But does he really deserve these accolades? Is he really standing up for the Jewish People? Is he “our Churchill”?

About the Iranian madman and his worldwide supporters, Netanyahu said, “To those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace!”

Bibi grabbed the moral high ground with this verbal attack, every word of which is true. Very well said, Mr. Netanyahu. But...

As many besides me have no doubt noticed, Bibi often says things that sound wonderful to the right-wing, proud Jewish ear but he never acts according to these words, and in most cases he leaves huge loopholes in which he can turn left through.

Let’s look more closely at his UN speech. Bibi mentioned that the Jewish People are 3,500 years old and are entitled to a state in their ancestral homeland. By using this phraseology, he is trying to evoke in our minds that he is saying that the Land of Israel was given to us by G-d, which of course it was. He wants the right-wingers (most Israeli Jews) to think he is one of them. Even one Rabbi I know well “knew” that Bibi said that Israel belonged to us because it said so in the Tanach – when of course Bibi said no such thing. Later in his speech, though, Netanyahu spoke about wanting “peace, as all Israelis do”. Of course all Israelis want peace - who doesn’t want peace? However, what Bibi is really saying is that he wants to continue the obviously failed “peace process” even though there is a direct correlation between the amount of land that Israel cedes to her enemies and the number of Jews who are murdered in terror attacks. So by not actually saying that G-d gave us the Land of Israel - and by not even mentioning G-d one time in his speech - he can still give away our precious homeland while appearing to be a right-winger.

Now let’s look at Bibi at his most easily-proven hypocritical. He rightly stated his case against the Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, but why is he trying so hard to create a “palestinian” state headed by the equally Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Abbas? Abbas’ own college thesis denied the Holocaust! Why does Bibi bemoan the Iranians threatening to annihilate the Jewish State while strengthening Abbas, who has never backed away from his calls to annihilate the Jewish State? Abbas’ own “moderate” party, Fatah, only a few weeks ago publicly stated that they will never give up their struggle to destroy Israel and that no one should believe anything to the contrary which they say in English. This fits right in with the PLO’s 1974 Phased Plan to destroy Israel in stages. This Phased Plan calls for the Arabs to take whatever lands that they can get from Israel through negotiations and to use that land as a base from which to launch their final genocidal assault on what’s left of Israel. By the way, this Phased Plan was authored by Mahmoud Abbas. Of course, if anyone thinks that Abbas has changed, at the Fatah conference he reiterated that he would never recognize Israel as a Jewish State. Since his oft-stated goal is to flood Israel with 5 million Arabs presently in refugee camps – kept there as pawns by their leaders, of course he would recognize Israel if it had a Muslim majority.

If that’s not bad enough, Abbas clearly has some kind of personality disorder. On the one hand, he denies the Holocaust. However, on the other hand, his mentor (and his partner Arafat’s mentor) was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al Husseini who personally raised two divisions of Muslim soldiers for SS units and is said – by a high-ranking Nazi - to have put the idea into Hitler’s head to murder all Jews instead of just evicting them.

Bibi calls for the world to stand against Ahmadinejad. Good. But Bibi shook the hand of the Jew-murderer Arafat. And Bibi now shakes the hand of the Jew-murderer Abbas. One of the few in Israel who condemns Bibi for trying to give our Holy Land to these genocidal anti-Semitic maniacs is Moshe Feiglin – the head of Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership), the largest faction in the Likud. Moshe ran against Bibi for head of the Likud party at the last election in 2007 and Bibi refused to shake the proud Jew Feiglin’s hand at the end of the campaign! Later, during the Likud election of 2008 to determine its Knesset list, Bibi risked his party’s victory - and his own political future - to keep Feiglin out of the Knesset by completely unethical, probably illegal and certainly dubious means. This cost the Likud over 10 seats in the Knesset, but Bibi publicly said he was happy to keep Moshe out. In Bibi’s eyes, Feiglin’s “crime” is to actually be loyal to Eretz Yisrael, Am Yisrael and to the G-d of Israel instead of just paying lip-service to them.

People love how Churchill stood up to the Nazis, but why do we conveniently forget that he barred Jews from reaching the shores of British-controlled Eretz Yisrael to escape Hitler - thereby condemning hundreds of thousands if not millions of Jews to their fates in the ovens of the German crematoria? I am not in any way saying that Bibi has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Jews on his hands as Churchill does, but Bibi is setting up - or letting be set up - the path to the next Holocaust. What a disgrace.

Bibi stood in front of the world last week and held up the construction plans of Auschwitz which were actually signed by Heinrich Himmler. But Bibi Netanyahu himself is pushing Israel along the path of creating a state in our biblical heartland for the self-professed ideological descendants of Himmler, Hitler and all the Nazis.

We cannot afford to be fooled by Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetoric, no matter how easy and appealing it is to be transfixed by it. It is nothing but a canteen filled with poison kool-aid for a thirsty soul in the desert. We must find the canteen filled with water. We must choose life. We must choose the proud, Jewish path. We must work to ensure Israel has Authentic Jewish Leadership from a man like Moshe Feiglin. We must choose to stand on our own, to accept G-d’s plan for us, and then we can start to perfect the world in the Kingdom of the Almighty.

ROB MUCHNICK is the U.S. Director of Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership). The largest faction inside Israel’s Likud party, Manhigut Yehudit and its president, Moshe Feiglin, strive to restore Jewish values, pride and integrity to the State of Israel. For more information, visit www.JewishIsrael.org .