As election results go passing By,
Worldwide Turbulence on the Rise,
Turbulence Assured in Next Knesset,
Turbulence assured in World Economy,
Turbulence assured in American Politics,
Turbulence assured in BIBLE Eschatology,
Seems like a good time to accept HIS Rest!
February 11, 2009
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
I Timothy 4:1,2 – Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; [2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
II Timothy 3:1-4 – This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
[2] For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, [3] Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, [4] Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
SEEMS TO BE A GOOD TIME TO REST WITH US WHO BELIEVE CHRIST IS THE ONLY ANSWER TO ALL THE TURBULENCE.
II Thessalonians 1:7-10 – And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, [8] In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: [9] Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; [10] When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.
I Corinthians 2:2,5 – For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. [5] That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
I Corinthians 1:18 – For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
Matthew 11:28-30 – Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
John 5:40 – And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.
Begin Excerpt from Arutz Sheva
Soldiers’ Vote May Swing the Elections to a Tie
Shevat 17, 5769, 11 February 09 04:18
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(IsraelNN.com) Voters gave Kadima 28 mandates in the next Knesset, one more than Likud, with almost all of Tuesday’s ballots counted but not including votes of diplomats and soldiers, whose votes will be counted on Wednesday and Thursday.
Their ballots are equal to five mandates.
Following is the current number of estimated MKs for each party following the counting of 99% of the available votes:
Kadima 28
Likud 27
Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) 14
Labor 13
Shas 11
United Torah Judaism (UTJ) 5
Ichud Leumi (National Union) 4
Jewish Home 3
Meretz 3
Arab parties 12
The votes of the armed forces usually tilt to the nationalist and religious parties, and are likely to create at least a tie and may even put Likud in the lead.
The votes of diplomats overseas and soldiers changed the results in the last election by taking one Knesset seat away from Kadima. The number of Arab MKs also will likely be reduced after the soldiers’ ballots are counted.
Kadima, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, pulled ahead of the Likud by one MK, in a surprise finish.
The biggest losers are the Meretz and Labor parties, while Arab parties are currently projected to place
three more legislators in the Knesset than they currently have.
The Likud has the potential backing of 64 MKs, and the chances of Livni’s forming a national unity government appeared nil after Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman spelled out his conditions that it would not join a
government that does not want to bring down the Hamas government in Gaza. The party also strongly favors pledging Israeli citizens to a loyalty oath, a move that Kadima rejects.
Livni has declared victory by virtue of apparently winning the most mandates, but Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu and Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman each said that the votes for the nationalist and religious parties clearly give them the right to control the next government.
Begin Excerpt from Jerusalem Post
Analysis: Election arithmetic puts Bibi in the driving seat
February 11, 2009
David Horovitz , THE JERUSALEM POST
For all the confusion prompted by the near parity of Kadima and the Likud in Tuesday’s election, and even before final adjustments necessitated by Thursday’s release of soldiers’ votes and the complex surplus-vote distribution, one of the most critical pieces of arithmetic is straightforward.
And it shows that notwithstanding Kadima’s victory claims, and its leader Tzipi Livni’s insistence that the people of Israel have given her their backing, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu can reasonably hope to build a narrow coalition majority with “natural” allies, and she cannot.
This puts Netanyahu firmly in the driving seat on the road to becoming prime minister.
And it places Livni – even though she led her party to far greater success than some of its own optimists had anticipated, and thus cemented her leadership hold – in the back seat. He can probably block her; she probably can’t block him.
That is not to say that Netanyahu has a smooth ride ahead. It may yet be eased a little when those last votes are calculated.
Precedent suggests that the soldiers’ votes are unlikely to boost the center-left; they might well lift the right, and perhaps Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu, with its emphasis on a shared burden of national service. And Kadima foolishly signed a surplus-vote agreement with the Green Party, which failed to clear the Knesset threshold, so it has nothing to gain there.
But Netanyahu was speaking from the heart during the election campaign when he said he wanted to head a wide government, with a range of Zionist parties from across the political spectrum. He doesn’t want to have to rely on a narrow coalition, vulnerable to internal pressures and perceived both domestically and abroad as intransigent as regards progress with the Palestinians.
Even forging that narrow coalition will be fraught with complications. As the first meetings of potential coalition allies began on Wednesday, the difficulties of finessing the conflicting demands were manifest.
Chiefly, a narrow Likud-led coalition requires the fierce secularist Lieberman and the Torah-driven Shas to put aside fundamental differences that go to the root of Jewish nationhood.
At the same time, Livni is showing absolutely no sign of being receptive to the notion of a unity partnership with Netanyahu in which Kadima is the junior player; after all, she is claiming to have won the elections.
And Ehud Barak – outflanked by the Kadima election strategists who persuaded much of Labor’s voting base to switch to Livni in order to thwart Netanyahu – has already announced that Labor is headed for the opposition.
Despite having lifted the Likud from a dismal 12-seat showing in the 2006 elections, therefore, Netanyahu has good cause to lament the votes lost, especially to Lieberman, in the final stages of this campaign.
The advantage is still with him, but building the framework for a viable coalition will be immensely complicated.
Hence, for a start, the selection of the wise, experienced former justice minister Ya’akov Ne’eman to coordinate his coalition negotiations. Ne’eman, it will be recalled, has particular expertise in seeking common ground amid conflicting approaches to the interface between religion and state – precisely the fraught territory where Shas and Israel Beiteinu will have to be reconciled if Netanyahu is to construct his “blocking” coalition.
Begin Excerpt from DEBKAfile Special Report
Kadima’s lead over Likud shrinks to one place, spelling unstable government
DEBKAfile Special Report
February 11, 2009, 1:08 PM (GMT+02:00)
Nearly 100 percent of counted votes from Israel’s general election Tuesday, Feb. 10, awards Tzipi Livni’s Kadima 28 Knesset seats (out of 120) – only one place ahead of the 27 polled by Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud. He heads a right-of-center bloc of 64 seats to the 56 polled by the center and left. This means Livni cannot form a government without Likud and defense minister Ehud Barak’s Labor (13), unless her scant win is solidified by the still uncounted military votes.
Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Israel Beitenu came in third with 15, pushing Labor, the state’s founding party, down to fourth place. The ultra-religious Shas polled 11 seats, Torah Judaism 5 and New Left Meretz crashed to 3 on a par with Bayit Yehudi, National Union.
The military vote is expected to boost the right-wing Israel Beitenu and Likud. While the former has made a spectacular showing, neither Kadima nor Likud has garnered enough of the vote to promise Israel stable government for a full four-year term with parliamentary support for new policies.
The Arab Israeli parties Raam-Taal polled 5 seats, Hadash (communists) 4 and Balad three.
Livni has invited Likud to join a broad national unity government, while Netanyahu is bidding for a narrow, right-wing government and trying to co-opt Labor and Kadima later.
Lieberman, who holds the balance, says his party will decide which way to go in the coming days.
He favors a right-wing national government but rules out a partnership with Shas whose leader vilified his party.
If Livni, 50, does manage to horse-trade her way to forming a coalition government, she will be Israel’s second woman prime minister after Golda Meir.
Foreign minister in the outgoing administration, a lawyer, former justice minister and Mossad staffer, Livni is untested in the two dominant popular concerns, security and the failing economy. An advocate of peace talks, she is generally considered a naïve negotiator and over-influenced by foreign colleagues and international opinion. Her campaign was a highly personal one, which kept her unimpressive list of candidates well in the wings.
Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu cut deep into Netanyahu’s right-of-center Likud and the religious parties, in the same way as Livni’s relatively new Kadima sliced chunks off the traditional constituencies of defense minister Ehud Barak’s Labor and the left-wing Meretz.
Netanyahu, 59, lost his early margin as frontrunner by miscalculating the strength of his rivals. Unlike Livni, he refrained from throwing himself into the rough and tumble with the grass-roots voter and relied on the Internet to carry his message. The deal he cut early on with the unpopular Barak boomeranged against Likud.
Netanyahu and Barak are both former prime ministers.
Netanyahu known as Bibi, campaigned on a clear ticket: No nuclear arms for Iran, no repartition of Jerusalem, no concession
of the Golan and an end to Hamas rule of Gaza.
His term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999 ended with his defeat by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, a former chief of staff and foreign minister.
As finance minister from 2001-2005 under Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu is credited with turning around the economy, blighted by the Palestinian uprising, and fostering years of dramatic growth.
Lieberman, 50, who was born in Moldova, founded his party with the support of former Russian immigrants but also won strong backing in this campaign from young soldiers across the board with his strong security message and slogan: “Lieberman understands Arabic!” One condition for his joining a government is a commitment to end Hamas rule of the Gaza Strip once and for all and zero tolerance for terrorists.
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