RANT: SNAKE EYES

   

Itamar Ben-Givir Minister of National Security. Israel 2022-2026

THESE DAYS, while more and more of us struggle to balance our busy work lives with our families, friends and community engagements, it’s good to know there’s at least one country that can boast “Mission Accomplished!” in walking that thin line between the personal and the public. And that’s Israel, of course.

There has been much in the news lately about genocide, ethnic cleansing, and  apartheid levels of social injustice within the state of Israel. Well, when you’re calling people names, a tried-and-true nursery rhyme comes to mind: “Sticks and stones may break bones, but names will never hurt me.” I think Israel, throughout its short history as a nation, has had to bear the brunt of cowardly name callers, ne’er-do-wells and peanut gallery claptrap bloviators. Its recent interventions in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Lebanon and Syria are done to finally reallocate lands that have always belonged to Israel, with claims going back to before the birth of Christ (and that’s quite the slam-dunk of a land claim if you ask me!)

STILL, Israel—ever a sticker for legalities—has long held its claim to all the territory “from the river and sea” in abeyance while Palestinians made up their minds to which countries they will emigrate, solving a host of problems for everyone concerned. Thus Israel’s nudging the Gazan population (and increasingly in the West Bank’s and East Jerusalem’s) to move on, and after seventy-eight years, it’s time enough, hence the Jewish state’s interventions into Hamas-controlled Gaza, and in the West Bank its support of Israeli settlers who encourage entrenched Palestinian farmers and herders and village enclaves to begin their exodus into nearby Jordon.

Under the brilliant leadership of PM Benjimin Netanyahu, dastardly Hezbollah in Lebanon is being methodically pushed back away from Israel’s borders. And southern Syria is becoming a bulwark against any aggressions from Türkiye. Finally, Israel, with its stalwart ally the United States, is succeeding to tamp down on the far side of the Persian Gulf perhaps its greatest foe, Iran. Stay tuned for further announcements from that arena.

But, while all these big movements and foundational changes are occurring in the Levant, it behooves us to also take note of those smaller actions and activities occurring within the future Israeli state.

A GOOD EXAMPLE of individual actions and an exemplar par excellence of true Israeli patriotism is someone we’ve met before, Israel’s Minister of Security (and ‘godfather of the West Bank’), Itamar Ben-Givir. Whether it’s arming Zionism’s brave warrior-settlers who daily act to reclaim the lands of Judea and Samaria (formally the West Bank); or in his role of overseer of Israeli prisons, seeing to it that there’s no more mollycoddling Palestinian detainees who, as everyone knows, are enemies of the state and deserving of the treatment they receive while in prison; or in his proposals for Egyptian crocodiles to man moats around prisons, especially those prisons that are filled with Palestinians dissidents, putting the kibosh on any escape plans* such dangerous radicals might cook up; or else his timely legislation (yet to be taken up by the Knesset) that mandates Palestinians found guilty of terrorism  will automatically face a death sentence by hanging with no chance for parole or reprieve. Heck, why should Israel use taxpayer money to feed and house squatters and mooches, and potential terrorists who would otherwise work towards the destruction of Greater Israel?

 

I THINK IT’S FAIR TO SAY that Ben-Givir and his policies and practical reforms will gain more support from the Israeli public. In Israel’s Knesset, his party Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power) currently has 6 seats in the 120-seat parliament. It is slated to win eight in next month’s elections, though it remains to be seen how the rest of Israel’s parliament shakes out and whether or not Ben-Givir can maintain his power base in forthcoming coalitions. Let us hope so. Minister Ben-Givir is an excellent example of modern Israel’s leadership class, as well as representing a growing swath of Israeli citizenry, and we would do well to watch his influence on Israeli politics going forward.¹  

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE _____________________________________

* PLEASE NOTE that such a regime, with moats and such, are also a low cost “Green” tech proposal. It’s a virtuous circle, whereby Palestinian terrorists who attempt to break out of prison and swim the moats to their imagined freedom, will be captured and eaten by the reptiles whose scat becomes nourishment for the aquatic vegetation growing around the prison. It’s a natural, ‘nature’s own’ recycling system. And Ben-Givir’s proposal has garnered for the minister the prestigious Our Green Land’s “Environmentalist of the Year (2026) Award”. Cudeos to Minister Ben-Givir!

1. OVER 74% Of ISRAELI JEWS favour PM Netanyahu’s foreign policy even if his personal approval rating is in the mid-thirties. 54% are in favour of expelling Palestinians from Gaza and 56% percent are in favour of expelling Arab citizens of Israel.

 

“Other studies showed similar overall trends. In a poll for Channel 13 in early February, almost immediately after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his plan for Gaza, 72 percent of Israelis supported the plan "to exile Palestinians" – the wording used in the announcer's description of the poll. That's a national average; among Jews, it would be close to Sorek's 82 percent (since very low support from Arab citizens on all related questions drives down the total average). A Channel 12 survey found 69 percent supported the plan, with similar wording about removing Gazans. Once again, although not published, the Jewish portion of those samples would likely have been around the 80 percent mark.” (Haaretz, 8 June 2025)

 

    EVOLUTION

 

 

RANT: SLIDING DOWN A SLIPPERY SLOPE

  

A SHORT NOTE ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING seems to be going faster and faster these days, one example being the rapid deterioration of the United States, with its hollowed-out industrial base (all those jobs and businesses going over seas to low wage countries) and the incredible debt burden now standing at over twenty trillion dollars and nearly a trillion per year in interest payments! As well, the decline of the dollar as the global currency of trade, once a given in the decades following WWII is on the ropes. Now, more and more countries are using local currencies to evade the financial strictures^* imposed on them by the United States and its 'weaponized' dollar. 

👉The system of global trade and finance, brought into being during the 1944 Bretton Woods¹ summit where the post war years were envisioned and shaped, that system is over, as many commetators suggest. It's another data point exposing the failing American empire as it loses it financial mojo, along with its vaunted military might, as seen with its current military fiasco venture in the Persian Gulf. Again, the emperor or the empire has no clothes and everyone can see behind the curtain whose really in charge.

MOST TRAGICALLY, and most costly in blood and treasure (on all sides) was the “War on Terror” begun in in the  shadow of 9/11 during the Bush presidency. America spent trillions of dollars over nearly two decades in failed wars of choice halfway around the world. The cost of these wars has all but bankrupted the country.

  

AS WE GO FORWARD, marching bravely towards our imagined future, we fail to realize that the carpet of the past behind us is rolling up ever faster, what with nuclear Armageddon or the climate crisis increasingly at pace with our forward march. And when we finally see, too late of course, that the past is catching up to us, we then sprint forward in a desperate attempt to outrun the consequences of our actions. Eventually we’ll either run out of carpet or be rolled up entirely and thrown into the dustbin of history unless we heed the lessons of those who have gone before us whereby civilizations of one sort or another, large or small, do indeed come to an end, strangled to death by hubris or willful blindness, or both. 

And endings are rougher than beginnings because there is a lot to lose empire-wise. People and politicians cling to things that are precious to them and hold fast against the winds of change as they scour away everything, or most everthing, that remains entrenched and unwilling to change.  The question is: Will we remain victims of the coming changes or will we adapt and change ourselves? Only time will tell.

 

SOME SAY, tongue in cheek mostly, that the next species to emerge into sentience and roam the world will be racoons (Procyon lotor), a mammalian example of creatures that can survive in most environments, especially where there are garbage bins to tip over. Personally, I’d like to see whales, another mammalian, especially friendly Grays (Eschrichtius robustus) or giant Blues (Megaptera novaeangliae), take the lead on things as they leap forward into conscious self-awareness—though maybe they’re already there, aware of themselves, aware of us as they patiently wait in deep ocean waters for the handoff, so to speak, from Homo sapiens when we crash and burn and go down the tube, nuclear Armageddon or the climate crisis being the top two contenders that may bring about our demise. (There are more waiting in the wings, of course). 

👉Thus, we race desperately forward to our imagined future, not heeding the looming consequences stemming from our actions, both past and present, that doggedly follow us. We will need to endure those consequences, to reap what we have sown, and pay our debts in the decades ahead, debts to the world we share with so many living beings (plant and animal alike). We must pay our debts to fellow humans we have abused, past and present. We must pay our debts to the environment, to our world and to Gaia, and those debts must be paid in full. 

  

Cheers, Jake. _______________________________________ 

 

* “The Bretton Woods Agreement was a 1944 pact that set up a new global system of fixed exchange rates tied to the U.S. dollar and gold.” (Investopia) Bretton Woods is in the state of New Hampshire.

 

1. One example being the United States using “sanctions” which are illegal under international law because they have been imposed unilaterally by the US and not approved by the United Nations or other international regulatory bodies. 

👉Currently, some thirty countries (Canada, too!) are under sanctions of one sort or another imposed on them by the US administration, which, in the end primarily benefit rich oligarchs at the expense of the rest of us. {Nice. Ed.] 

Nearly one-third of the world's population, nearly 2.8-billion people are under US sanctions, which is an extraordinary number and a symptom of American hubris and the blind faith most of its citizens and elites share, namely that their country acts as a benign entity in its role as “global hegemon”, a role that was activated in the early 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and the “Cold War” ended, leaving the door open for America to emerge as the world’s sole “superpower”. Today, that role is being challenged by an increasing number of countries that also are turning their backs on the US dollar and the heavy hand of the United States that imposes its order as ‘top dog’ in the world. 

 

                                               AT THE CLINIC WITH A JOB TO DO

(Gratuitous sexual humour. Enjoy.😏)