And, they're off!

When I was a kid growing up in Miami, the local stations carried the horse races live from the local tracks. Every morning, when they were running, you could hear the bell ring as the horses left the gate. Well, over in the Galilee, we heard the bell as the horserace began.

First move out of the gate, Obama addresses AIPAC. There is Obama stating that Jerusalem is the undivided, and never to be divided, capital of Israel.

Now, just in case you had an Orwellian moment and forgot, dividing up Jerusalem has been the essential feature of the 1999 and 2000 US peace efforts during the Clinton administration, to say nothing of refusing to acknowledge that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. In fact, Clinton ate alive two PMs trying to seal a deal that would split, again, Jerusalem.

Obama, however, is trying to do an end run around McCain who the rank and file Israeli respects as I noted when McCain came acallin' earlier this year.

More to the point, this is really about Hillary and Bill. It was Hillary, afterall, that first stated openly the two state solution approach, to say nothing of her performance with Mrs. Arafat. The whole push to divide up current Israel and delegitimize the Jerusalem suburbs is entirely a Clinton administration agenda.

So has been the not so subtle move to delegitimize the entire state of Israel. In true 1984 Orwellian fashion, the entire history of the Middle East is being rewritten to say nothing of certain events in WWII. To this end, the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com is to be praised for carrying one of the best summaries of the problem in print in recent memory: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121019679929074973.html?mod=opinion_journal_federation

Regardless of the elections in November, Israel will have its own elections in the fall. The fact is that the whole area is shifting to the right in the fall. Anything in November is going to strengthen Likud since the tide is already rising to the right. No matter who it is cooking the statistics, and how loud the media shouts to the contrary, the results are always the same +/- 2 seats--Netanyahu with 28 (plus or minus a seat or two) with Labor. Kadima is in the tubes.

The fact is that this Knesset has been about robbing the treasury. Special interests are every where and the reason the government has not falllen, something that would have been unthinkable five years ago, is because the factions in the ruling coalition don't want to give up the gravy train. 2006 fatal war was due to the 2005 elections when the Retiree's Party opened the bank (hotly seconded by the Law Students and University Faculty bloc). Only this month, has the government been building, Burma Road style, a four lane highway connecting the Northern Frontier with the rest of the world (in 2006, the only route north to Kiryat Shemona was a narrow two lane road aways jammed and washboard smooth). This is probably the reason Barak did not get the tanks rolling last month--there was no National Highway to move that amount of materiel northward.

The entire issue of supply and support for the IDF has not been confronted. Monies paid out to the Welfare State has meant that National Security and basic IDF supplies (like bedding and underwear) does not exist. It's pathetic and most Israelis are pissed. Add to this a very real anger at the ultra right rabbinic bloc (my sect ain't there) and the groundswell has yet to measured accurately.

Of course, we are approaching the Festival of Weeks, Pentacost. I am giving my first lecture/sermon/teaching (in English) on the message of Inclusiveness for this Holy Day. Among the traditional themes for this Festival is the joining together of the Learned with the Not-So-Learned as well as one of my favorite topics--idol worship. Maimonides states that anything that comes between God and man is a Graven Image. It is clear to see that the Learned can come to see their academic achievements as a kind of idol worship; it is not so easy to see that those who feign ignorance (as in "I don't believe you" or "I didn't know that" or "big deal") are also guilty of idol worship.

This is where the world is, the US and Israel, today with both extremes blinded by their patent righteousness unwilling to include the other in their calculations.

Something more to pray for.