This is hands down the best election commercial I’ve seen so far.

Netanyahu is a kindergarten school teacher with an unruly class made up of his former coalition partners.

Of course, you can always look at it as saying that Netanyahu is unable to control the class, and it’s his fault.

Either way, its definitely an original ad.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Sunday with a delegation of more than 100 government officials and heads of leading Japanese global companies.

Representatives of major Japanese companies also will arrive in order to evaluate economic opportunities in Israel.

The two prime ministers will discuss advancing efforts to expand bilateral cooperation.

Israeli companies will exhibit technological developments, some of which are designed for use in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Other issues due to be discussed include encouraging the establishment of R&D centers in Israel and the exchange of industrialists’ delegations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this evening (Saturday, 17 January 2015) has issued the following statement:

“Israel rejects the absurd decision of the ICC prosecutor.

It’s absurd for the ICC to ignore international law and agreements, under which the Palestinians don’t have a state and can only get one through direct negotiations with Israel.

The rules of the ICC are clear:

No state

No standing

No case.

It’s absurd for the ICC to go after Israel, which upholds the highest standards of international law. Our actions are subject to the constant and careful review of Israel’s world-renowned and utterly independent legal system.

But this decision is even more preposterous given that Israel is legitimately defending itself against Palestinian terrorists who routinely commit multiple war crimes. They deliberately fire thousands of rockets at our civilians, while hiding behind Palestinian civilians whom they use a human shield.

And here’s the ultimate folly of this decision –

It is the democracy of Israel, a world leader in fighting terrorism, which is to be hauled to the dock in The Hague, while the terrorist war criminals of Hamas are the ones who are going to be pressing the charges. I won’t be surprised if ISIS, al-Qaida and Hezbollah follow suit. See, Hamas has already announced that they will join their Palestinian partner, President Abbas, in filing complaints against Israel as a result of this decision.

So we see here something truly tragic.

The lofty goals of the ICC are being turned upside-down.

The court was founded to prevent a repeat of history’s worst crimes, foremost among them the genocide of six million Jews.

Now the Palestinians are cynically manipulating the ICC to deny the Jewish state the right to defend itself against the very war crimes and the very terror that the court was established to prevent.

Thank you.”

Four pre-election polls published Thursday night and Friday morning show varying results, but two of them reveal that the popularity of Labor-Livni has grown by a solitary seat in the Knesset. Nevertheless, Israel’s establishment media are reporting the trivial news as if there is a rush of support for the left.

Polls are not  meaningless, but when a party registers one seat more or one less from week to week, it is virtually insignificant, numerically as well as statistically when taking into account the margin of error in small samples.

That has not stopped Israel Radio, known by the misnomer in English as the Voice of Israel, from promoting the results of this week’s poll as a victory for the “Zionist camp,” a label now claimed by everyone except for Neturei Karta.

Similarly,  three television polls show that the lead party is the “Zionist camp,” whose list of candidates likely to be elected includes those who want to turn over all of Judea and Samaria as well as half of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority, which has said that no Jew will be allowed to live there.

The same poll trumpeted by Israel radio also shows that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has a 4 percentage lead over Labor party leaders Yitzchak Herzog and Tzipi Livni when voters are faced with the question of who should be Prime Minister. However, Rafi Smith, who carried out the poll, said this is insignificant because of the margin of error, which apparently does not apply to results in favor of the left.

But that was the secondary headline.

The big news, according to Israel Radio, is that Herzog-Livni is now leading the Likud party by two seats instead of one.

The gap is 2, 4 and 1 in three polls on television channels 2, 10 and 1.

More significant is that Herzog-Livni still have no chance to form a coalition government without an ungodly collection of Meretz and Yisrael Beiteinu or Yisrael Beiteinu and Haredi parties.

After adding up all the numbers, the picture has not changed from last week or even last month: There are two camps: the anti-Netanyahu parties of Labor-Livni, Meretz and Yesh Atid, headed by Yair Lapid; and the pro-Netanyahu camp of the Likud and the Jewish Home, which according to all polls is holding stable with 16-17 mandates.

The most significant changes in the numbers relate to Yisrael Beiteinu, which has been in a clear trend of a decline in the past month. The four polls give the party 5, 6 and 7 seats, far less than when the current Knesset was dissolved.

After taking into account small differences in poll results for the other parties, Kulanu, headed by Moshe Kahlon, Yesh Atid, Meretz and Shas are not moving up or down significantly.

Eli Yishai, who split from Shas and formed his own party, still is on the borderline of being shut out of the Knesset.

There are other very significant indications: If Labor-Livni picks up any more seats, it will be at the expense of Meretz or Yesh Atid, and vice-versa. If Kulanu attracts more voters, they likely will move over from Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beiteinu and possibly the Likud.

There still are two months left before voters go to the polls, and Israel Radio and most of the television channels will try to convince voters that Herzog and Livni have the best chance to win.

If the combined party comes out on top, President Reuven Rivlin will have little choice but to give it the first crack at forming a government, which brings back to mind the elections five years ago.

Belgium Jewish’s schools shut down Friday, Chabad cancelled  a public Friday night dinner, and several Jews have stopped going to synagogue in the wake of Thursday’s counter-terror raid that ended with Belgian police killing two terrorists but still looking for others.

A Jewish school in Amsterdam also shut its doors Friday.

Jews fear a repeat of last week’s savage attack on a kosher deli in Paris, where four Jews were murdered and several others were held hostage until police stormed the store and ended the siege.

Belgium’s Joods Actueel reported that schools in Brussels and Antwerp were closed on Friday based on intelligence information from officials, including the Mossad, that it was “too dangerous” to allow children to go to school.

“We were informed that we are a potential target and therefore take no chances, said Isi Morsel, head of the organizing power of the largest Jewish school Jesode Hatora.

He is confident that schools will be able to re-open on Monday.

Confidence is the last thing Jews in Belgium, if not in all of Europe, have these days.

Belgian police have said that guarding Jewish’s schools does not mean they can prevent terror because they are not equipped,  with the proper weapons and training to challenge the animals from ISIS and other Islamic radical barbarians.

The director of the Rabbinical Center of Europe (RCE) thinks that perhaps Jews could take up the slack by arming themselves with guns.

RCE director Rabbi Menachem Margolin, director general of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE) and the European Jewish Association (EJA) wrote to European Union officials “We hereby ask that gun licensing laws are reviewed with immediate effect to allow designated people in the Jewish communities and institutions to own weapons for the essential protection of their communities, as well as receiving the necessary training to protect their members from potential terror attacks.”

A Jewish cartoonist was among the victims of attack by radical Islamists on the Charles Hebdo offices in Paris last week, and four Jews were gunned down in the attack on a kosher deli in Paris two days later.

And Rabbi Margolin wants to allow Jews to carry guns?

That would mean terrorists, armed with assault rifles and prepared by months of military training, would be able to add a few pistols to their arsenal after killing their Jewish victims who would barely be able to pull their pistols out of holster before being sliced by machine-gun fire.

Perhaps Rabbi Margolin thinks that Belgian Jews are in the Warsaw Ghetto and are living in underground sewers, needing guns to fight off the Nazis.

Or perhaps he thinks that fighting terrorists is like a cowboys and Indians movie.

The recent attacks in France “have revealed the urgent need to stop talking and start acting,” Rabbi Margolin wrote.”Right now Jews do not feel safe.”

Right now?

Jew in Europe felt safe last month, or last year?

Hundreds of Jews, from Israel and elsewhere, wear a hat and not a kippa in the streets of many European cities because they are afraid of being spat on, beaten, robbed and killed.

Rabbi Margolin also wrote, “People are afraid to come to synagogue. People are afraid to go to Jewish schools.”

“[The police] are not doing enough, for sure. We just need more. The best solution is having at least two police officers at each Jewish institution, 24 hours a day. Until that happens we need to be able to feel secure in other ways” and allowing Jews to carry guns would “allow our people to feel protected.”

He is not talking about training Jews with assault rifles and counter-terror tactics, or even a bit of karate.

Knesset Member Tzipi Hotovely has been put back into a higher spot on the Likud candidate list, making it more likely she will be re-elected following a recount of the votes in the Likud primary elections last week.

Another recount is probable since Hotovely now has a lead of only 11-19 votes over former MK and minister Avi Dichter, who according to the first recount beat Hotovely by 55 votes for the 20th place on the party list.

The next five places on the list are reserved for sectors, regardless of the voting results, meaning that Dichter now is the 26th place.

Likud primary elections almost always never pass without questionable practices and mishaps. This time around, it simply may be that someone doesn’t know how to count, and if that is the case, woe to Israel if the same person becomes the Finance Minister.

The new recount is good news for the Likud because Hotovely is very popular among national religious voters, while Dichter is identified with the classic Likud wheelers and dealers whose ideology blows with the wind and the smell of power.

The entire Hotovely-Dichter see-saw may be superfluous because Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu still has the privilege of choosing one of them as his own preference for the 23rd place on the party list.

However, the way the polls are going, even Hotovely, in the 20th place, cannot be sure of a seat.

Three polls by different Israeli television channels give the Likud between 20 and 25 seats in the Knesset elections, to be held March 17.

If Hotovely holds on to her slim lead, she might be able to attract more voters, all at the expense of the Jewish Home.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following remarks at his meeting with AIPAC leaders on Wednesday, Jan. 14:

“I think the war against terror will not succeed if it’s founded on hypocrisy, and I’ve yet to hear any world leader condemn the comments by Erdogan, not one.

“Now he said that Israel should not have been represented in the march in Paris, and the reason he gave, was our actions to defend our citizens against the thousands of rockets hurled at our cities by the terrorists of Hamas.

“I believe his shameful remarks must be repudiated by the international community, because the war against terror will only succeed if it’s guided by moral clarity. That means that the terrorists and their supporters must be condemned, and those fighting terror, like Israel and the United States, must be supported. It’s as simple as that. And I think we’re going to be tested by these issues of moral confusion versus moral clarity and courage versus cowardice again, and again, and again.

“This is not a one-shot battle.”