Time for a change

What is wrong with us?  Or rather: what is wrong with our government?

Everyone in the world, every individual and every company and every group you can think of, takes others into account when they act.  Whether it is out of caring or out of fear, out of ambition or out of friendship, we act according to the world around us.  We recognize the actions of others and anticipate possible future actions they may take.  Sometimes we do this well, and sometimes we do this poorly.

Why does the government of the State of Israel always have to do it poorly?

What does our government care about?  Apparently, they care about what the UN and other countries will say about us.  And honestly, that seems to be all.  They don’t care what we, the people who sent them to the Knesset to represent us, want or need.  The only time our opinions matter at all is during election campaigns, when they can tell their constituencies comforting lies, so that when those voters go to the ballot box, they can feel good about electing the same people who lied to them last time.

The Israeli public wants the terror stopped.  Not just lessened, but ended.  They want to be able to go to a mall without having to walk through a metal detector and have their bags searched.  They want to be able to travel around their own country – to say nothing of their own capital city – without having to be worried about bloodthirsty savages murdering them.

But our government doesn’t care.  They truly don’t.

If the UN were to condemn Israel for allowing terrorists to murder Israeli citizens (in some topsy turvy reality where the UN thought that was a bad thing), then we’d see some action by the government of Israel.  But when it comes to the citizens of Israel – those whom they are meant to represent, and those whose interests they are meant to serve and protect – they simply couldn’t care less.  Their actions show it.

Here is what we know.  We know that every time Israel capitulates to the terrorists, the violence increases.  Yet this government has (predictably) capitulated by removing the metal detectors outside the Temple Mount.  It has even removed the cameras that were supposed to replace the metal detectors (as if cameras were ever a reasonable replacement).  They promise that more advanced cameras will be installed in another six months, but we know they have no such intentions, and that even if they did, a six month “open season” is an invitation to the terrorists to attack.

The Arab world screamed bloody murder about a “change to the status quo”.  But where was the leader who would stand up and say that bringing assault weapons onto the Temple Mount was the change to the status quo.  Where was the leader who would stand up and say that the status quo is irrelevant in any case.  The Temple Mount was the holiest place in the world to Jews centuries before Muhammed was even born.  The insanity of recognizing any Muslim claim whatsoever to the Temple Mount has done nothing but encourage the terrorists in their ambition to capture it and to throw us out.

Would things be different if a party other than the Likud were in power?  It depends.  If Labor were in power, they would likely do the same things that the Likud is doing (or not doing) right now.  But it might be better for us.  The Likud as an opposition party would organize enormous demonstrations against the government.  They are very fierce when they have no power to act.  When they are in power, however, they are a national tragedy.

There is one party that understands that the government is the servant of the people.  That violence and terror must be ended no matter what the rest of the world thinks about it.  That this is our land, and that the Temple Mount is ours, and only ours.  That it is only through an uncompromising policy that views the good of the Jewish People in its land as paramount that we will ever end the crippling terror that has traumatized generations of Israelis.

That party is the Zehut Party, under the leadership of Moshe Feiglin.

Zehut is not a party that operates on a piecemeal basis, like other parties, which have a handful of positions that they use as election propaganda and mostly forget when the elections are over.  Zehut has a platform that covers every area of our national life.  All stemming from a basic set of principles.  That the Land of Israel belongs entirely and solely to the People of Israel.  That government is meant to be the servant of the public, and not its master.  And that those who make war against us must be categorically and decisively defeated.  Not reduced through some sort of compromise that allows them to continue making war against us, but defeated, once and for all.

There are 27 Zehut members who are running in the Zehut primaries in September, and I am proud to be one of them.  Men and women from throughout Israel, from all walks of life.  Religious, secular, left wing, right wing.  Categories which have been used for decades to divide us, but which have no real significance.  And before the next national elections, the 15 candidates in our primaries who received the most votes will be presented to the entire State of Israel, and every Israeli citizen who is eligible to vote will be able to vote on the order in which those 15 will appear on the Zehut party list for the 21st Knesset.  These open primaries, the first in Israel’s history, will demonstrate our commitment to represent all Israelis.

We represent all the people of Israel, and not merely one sector.  We know that the Israeli public has had enough of the national nightmare of unceasing threats to our lives.  Threats from rockets and threats from knives and threats from assault weapons.  Economic threats and political threats from enemies and from friends.  Our only goal is to free Israel from terror and from government overreach into our personal lives.  To make Israel the Jewish State it is supposed to be, and to stand proud and undeterred by those who would see us fall.  To restore liberty, purpose, and a sense of identity to the Jewish State of Israel.