‘Comforting the Mourners of Zion’

BARUCH DAYAN HAEMETH

Melbourne community head, Rabbi Michael Mandel, the father of the head of Machon Shilo, Rabbi David Bar-Hayim was niftar from this world.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim can be seen euloigizng his father at the funeral at the following link:
Rabbi Bar-Hayim will be sitting sitting Shiva in Jerusalem at Rechov Chaim Vital 11/17, Givat Shaul on Yom 3 and Yom 4.
Shiva Times:
Yom 3:
Shacharith: 07:15
Mincha: 16:30
Arvith: 17:30
Hours to be menachem avel:
10:00- 13:30
16:00- 21:30
Yom 4:
Shacharith: 7:15
Mincha: 15:00
Hours to be menachem avel:
10:00-14:30

The First Zehut Conference

SAVE THE DATE – First Zehut Conference

By Moshe Feiglin

Dear Members of Zehut,

Preparations for the first “Zehut” conference have gone into high gear. The date of the conference has been set for 2 Adar 5777 (28.2.2017) and it will take place, God willing, at “Hangar 11” at Tel Aviv port.

The purpose of the conference is to awaken the political heart of the movement, and to present it in an open and respectful manner in the public eye.

Zehut is not an empty vessel serving a personality. If in the past, the role of a party name was to express the essential quality and message of the parties, these days, it is just the opposite; to hide qualities and messages. The founder of the party is the message, and his/her personal magic is the only quality. The role of a name is to sound nice, to express nothing, to bypass the intellect, and to allow everyone to throw their aspirations onto the personality.

Not so for Zehut. When we left the Likud, we rejected the recommendations of political advisors and did not take advantage of our momentum to artificially rush into the current Knesset. We insisted on creating a real political movement – a movement of a real idea, real members (not merely statistics), and real political processes – which would connect the idea and the people.

For almost two years, we have worked diligently to create the precise framework, sharpening our message and connecting to people. The name of the movement and its platform express an absolute change of direction on the political scene in Israel.

Now that we have a substantial political framework, with a real idea and real members, the time has come to launch a real political process and to celebrate – literally – the beginning of the political connection of Israel with its identity, its purpose, and its message.

The “Zehut” conference will be a very joyous occasion and will express the birth of truly new politics – the politics of liberty. We have specifically chosen the Port of Tel Aviv as the location of the event, and not one of the usual places, reminiscent of public conferences, and the stench of tasteless and underhanded political machinations.

To begin with, members will be asked to approve the election of the chairman of the movement. Next, the members of “Zehut” will be asked to approve the final language of the platform that has been put together by the membership and the platform committee. Finally, members will be asked to approve the primaries process by which the list of the movement’s candidates for the Knesset will be determined.

The “primaries” method, as it has been applied in Israel, calls to mind an old joke attributed to Bismark. “Politics is like a sausage. You want to eat it, but you don’t want to know how they made it…” The smell arising from the “sausage” of primaries in the Israeli version, the foul odor of coerced party signups, “deals”, and tricks, have turned the internal democracy of the parties in Israel into a farce. They have paved the way for parties based on a single person and lead to the death of ideology. “Zehut” is going back and purifying Israeli politics from the filth that has become stuck to it. There will be no dirty democracy and no “clean” dictatorship.

Continue reading

From The Jewish Leadership Blog, here.

נגד ריבית דציבור

חובותיו האבודים של אליעזר פישמן הם כ-5.5 מיליארד שקל. כולם שואלים איפה היה “הפיקוח” של בנק ישראל? זו אשליה לחשוב שבנק מרכזי מסוגל לפקח על בנקים. קיים כלי פיקוח אחר שיכול באמת לפקח על בנקים.

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איתן אבריאל, עורך “דה מרקר” קורא לחקור את בנק ישראל בגלל פשיטת הרגל הגדולה של אליעזר פישמן. מעריכים שזו פשיטת הרגל האישית (רק “אישית”?) הגדולה בתולדות מדינת ישראל. חובותיו של פישמן הם בסדר גודל של 5.55 מיליארד ש”ח, מרביתם לבנקים, הכסף הזה אבוד.

השאלה הגדולה היא איך הגענו הלום? איך נפלנו לבור עמוק כל כך? מדוע לא טופל העניין קודם? איפה הבנקים? איפה בנק ישראל (המפקח על הבנקים)?

כל אחד ידע, כבר לפני 10 שנים, שאליעזר פישמן פושט רגל, ואינו מסוגל לכסות חובותיו. למרות זאת המשיכו הבנקים לתת לו אשראי ולדחות את פירעון חובותיו מבלי לפעול למימוש הביטחונות (שמן הסתם כלל אינם מספיקים). עכשיו גם מתברר שהבנקים לא הקפידו לדרוש ולבדוק שיש בטחונות לאשראי שנתנו לפישמן. פישמן ובני משפחתו המשיכו לנהל עסקיהם ולמשוך משכורות עתק במשך 10 שנים, לחיות כמו מלכים בווילה בסביון, ולנסוע במטוס פרטי. לך תדע כמה כסף הם העלימו במשך 10 שנים אלה. פשיטת הרגל שהוכרזה רשמית כעת, הוכרזה רק בגלל תביעה של מס הכנסה. ללא תביעה זו היו הבנקים ממשיכים לגלגל את חובותיו של פישמן בלי סוף.

אומרים שמנהלי הבנקים פחדו מפישמן היות שהוא היה הבעלים של “גלובס” והיה יכול לפרסם עליהם דברים לא מחמיאים. זה לא תירוץ. כל מנהלי הבנקים האחראים על ההפסד הגדול צריכים להתפטר, יחד עם הדירקטורים שלהם. במקום זה מפטרים אצלנו מנהלי בנקים רק בגלל הטרדות מיניות… צריכים לחקור ולפרסם ברבים מי אישר את האשראי לפישמן, מה השיקולים והביטחונות שהיו (אם בכלל). מתעורר חשד כבד לשחיתות ולמניעים לא כשרים, אחרת קשה להסביר מה שקרה.

במערכת בנקאות נורמלית הפסדי הבנקים הם בעיה של הבנקים ובעליהם, לא של הציבור, חוץ מבעיות של הונאה פלילית שבטיפול מערכת אכיפת החוק. אם הבנק מפסיד כסף רב בגלל החלטות עסקיות שגויות דינו לפשוט את הרגל ולהיסגר, תוך שבעליו מפסיד את הונו.

אצלנו אין מערכת בנקאות נורמלית – יש מערכת בנקאות “גליציאנית” – מערכת בנקאות מנוהלת על ידי בנק ישראל (קרי: המדינה). בנק ישראל מונע פתיחת בנקים חדשים, מונע תחרות בתחום הבנקאות ומנהל את הבנקים הקיימים ביד רמה. את הפסדי הבנקים הוא מטיל על הציבור בצורה זו או אחרת, בשם “יציבות הבנקים” הקדושה. לא מניחים לבנקים לשאת בתוצאות כישלונותיהם וליפול, כמו שקורה במערכת נורמלית, אלא מכסים את הפסדיהם מהקופה הציבורית.

המשך לקרוא

מתוך אתר קו ישר, כאן.

Socialism: Just the Facts

The Dirty Secrets of Socialism

(Or, The Purpose of Political Correctness)

Parents of college-age children are finally catching on to the cultural Marxist PC scam.  Cries of “insensitivity” every time a conservative or libertarian speaker appears anywhere near a college campus; “safe rooms” equipped with play dough, soft music, and videos of frolicking puppies; the endless accusations of “racist/sexist/homophobe” aimed at all non-leftists on campus; and widely-publicized episodes of vulgar, ignorant, x-rated, “students” screaming their heads off at conservative campus speakers have exposed the real purpose of political correctness:  censorship of any and all non-Marxist ideas. It’s not about fighting racism, sexism, etc.; it’s about censoring the ideas of freedom.

Today’s college students have been –and are being – trained to be intolerant, totalitarian-minded, communist thugs.  All for a mere 50 grand a year at even mediocre institutions of “higher education.”

This all began after the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late 1980s. Socialists never give up on their dream of ordering their fellow human beings around, plundering them with taxes, and enriching themselves in the process.  Very few of the twentieth-century socialist ideologues ever admitted that they were disastrously wrong, or apologized for providing aid and comfort to the likes of Stalin, Mao, and Castro.  Instead, they and their intellectual descendants have worked tirelessly to invent a virtual socialist reality – at least in the minds of America’s youth – while censoring all dissenting opinions.  Socialism’s dirty secrets must never be revealed to America’s youth, lest they revolt against the giant lying machine known as “higher education.”  (There are a few exceptions, of course, but most of academe is now dominated by the totalitarian, cultural Marxist Left).

What are socialism’s dirty secrets that must be kept from America’s youth?  Let’s examine a few of them:

  1. Socialism has always and everywhere been an economic disaster, and every honest scholar knows this. After seventy years of socialism, the Soviet economy was barely 5% of the U.S. economy, despite the false assertions of pro-socialist economists like Paul Samuelson, who wrote in the 1988 edition of his famous textbook that the Soviet economy would exceed the U.S. economy by the year 2000.
  2. You cannot fix socialism with smarter government planners or plans. Socialism cannot work because the rational economic calculation is impossible without private property, free-market prices, the profit-and-loss market feedback mechanism, and economic freedom in general.
  3. The ostensible goal of socialism – egalitarianism – is at war with human nature because all human beings are unique in thousands of different ways. The only kind of “equality” that socialism has ever created is equality of misery and poverty.
  4. Socialism generates far more societal inequality than economic freedom does. In all socialist societies the politically-connected elite live lives of luxury while nearly everyone else is equally impoverished.  In democratic socialist Venezuela today the economy has been ruined by socialism while the daughter of the late Hugo Chavez, the father of Venezuelan socialism, is reportedly worth $4.5 billion.
  5. The worst kind of people – the most immoral, corrupt, cynical, uncaring, and brutal – rise to the top under socialism because socialism is all about forcing people to abandon their own plans for their own lives and complying with mandatory government plans instead. It is no accident, in other words, that socialism is associated with such violent thugs as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao.
  6. Fascism was just another variety of socialism. The word “Nazi” was an acronym for national socialism. The German socialists distinguished themselves from the Russian socialists by calling their variety of socialism “national” as opposed to “international.”
  7. It is a myth that Scandinavian socialism has been successful. Swedish capitalism was extremely successful in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The Swedes began living off of the fruits of capitalist prosperity by adopting a version of democratic socialism in the 1950s.  As a result, there was not a single net new job created there from 1955 to 1995.
  8. Nineteenth-century socialism was “government ownership of the means of production,” but it now includes the welfare state progressive income taxation and the strangulation of capitalism with regulation and taxation. The welfare state has destroyed the work ethic of millions; destroyed millions of families; caused a 400% increase in out-of-wedlock births in America since 1960; and transformed millions into lifelong beggars and wards of the state.
  9. Government-run healthcare systems – medical care socialism – is like all other government enterprises in that it operates with all the efficiency of the Post Office or Department of Motor Vehicles and all the compassion of the IRS. Anything as important as medical care should never be put in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.
  10. The worse pollution problems on the planet for the past century or more have been in the socialist countries, as documented by books with titles like Ecocide in the USSR.  After the collapse of socialism the world learned that, in addition to being economic basket cases, socialist countries were also ecological cesspools.

These are but a few of the well-documented truths about socialism that are rarely, if ever, mentioned on college campuses.  They are among the main reasons why the cultural Marxists have erected so many instruments of ironclad censorship on college campuses.  They are why institutions like the Mises Institute – and all the scholars associated with it — are so reviled by them, for they provide their students – and anyone else – with a source of alternative economic education, an education based on sound economics and based in reality.  Mises wrote in Human Action of how the socialists of his day were at war with economics, for economic common sense threatened their totalitarian plans.  Today’s socialists hope to never even have to respond to sound economic arguments and facts at all by simply censoring them out of existence.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.