An Issue of Sovereignty

During the 1950s the USA pursued a policy of interference in the governance and occasional elections in South and Central American countries it feared might fall under communist control.  The affected countries became known as Banana Republics, a term coined forty years earlier.  The 1971 hit comedy “Bananas” directed by, and starring, Woody Allen was a spoof on this ill-conceived policy.  For the past two months I couldn’t stop thinking about this failed US policy, because it is my view that our recent election was as much about exercising our own independence as it was choosing a direction for our future.  Luckily for the country, we asserted our sovereignty despite the pre and post election monkey chatter from our own pathetic Fifth Estate (the “independent” media).

Most people think this election was about choosing who should lead our next government – Yitzhak Herzog or Binyamin Netanyahu.  But most people are wrong.  This election was a race between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama.  If you put the election in this context it is rather simple to understand what transpired.

I had friends who chose to vote for Yitzhak Herzog.  When I asked them why, the replies ranged from “six years is enough” through “anyone would be better than Netanyahu”.  But I didn’t ask them why they weren’t voting for Netanyahu.  I asked them why they were voting FOR Herzog.  No one answered because they couldn’t.  Because being the son of a former Israeli President and the grandson of a former Chief Rabbi does not qualify you to take on one of the most difficult leadership roles in the world today.  This was not a man on par with former Labor leaders such as Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak or even a Golda Meir.  What made people think that Herzog had what it took to run this most difficult country?  Sound familiar?  We all know the story of how a former US Senator with only two years of experience and a previous four years in the Illinois State Legislature convinced a US electorate he was qualified to be the leader of the free world by running a campaign “anyone but Bush”.  That’s right.  Obama’s campaign staff were experienced and loved this type of campaign.  Cast your opponent as the cause for all evil in the world and even Donald Duck could win an election.  And our chattering monkeys echoed this strategy on a daily basis, almost like puppets.

The Obama campaign staff was so convinced this strategy would work that funds along with Jeremy Bird, Obama’s former national campaign manager, arrived in Israel from the USA to manage the V-15 campaign.  This foreign funded campaign was not taking sides (“wink”, “wink”) in the election and campaigning on behalf of Labor.  No, they just launched the campaign they knew how to orchestrate – blame the incumbent for everything wrong in the world. Innocent, right?  Sound familiar?

That brings us to the “get out the Arab vote” campaign.  Don’t get me wrong.  I think it is great that the Arab population voted in such large numbers.  I would be happier if we had 100% voter turnout all over the country.  But investigations are beginning to show that the money for this effort came from overseas.  Reports suggest that money flowed from the US State Department through a US non-profit to an Israeli based NGO which funded this effort.  Are we a Banana Republic?  Sound familiar?  In his younger years, Obama was a Chicago civil rights attorney running a voter registration drive in exclusively African American neighbourhoods of Chicago that successfully sent 200,000 new voters to help then Presidential contender Bill Clinton carry the state of Illinois.

The tactics and strategies played out by those opposing Netanyahu are too close to those used by Obama in his successful campaigns to be a coincidence.  It may not have been Obama’s signature on the checks funding V-15 or One Voice, but do not be naive enough to think that elements of his campaign staff and their collaborators in the far left of the US Jewish Community had nothing to do with the foreign funded efforts in this election.  I, for one, hope that after a new government forms the principal of foreign funding of election activities is fully investigated.

So we succeeded to avert becoming a Banana Republic, President Obama is furious for losing and the monkeys, after recovering from shock, continue chattering.  But now their ire is not isolated to Netanyahu.  More than one has asserted, in trying to understand how they just “got smacked across the head”, the reason for the election turnabout was those “sephardim”.  This, unfortunately, only exposes their elitism and racism.  They would much prefer to go to Washington and kiss the ring of Il Capo, Godfather Obama, asking for his forgiveness than “kissing an amulet”.  As for me, I was born ashkenazi in the USA, converted to be sephardi long ago and am happily kissing amulets when the urge arises while living in the Sovereign State of Israel.