Steven Plaut |
Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university. |
Friday, August 31, 2012
1. Lynch Bin
There is the old quip that it is not news when a dog bites a postman, but it is news when a postman bites a dog. The principle is on display in recent days in the countless screaming media headlines over the "lynch" of Arabs in Jerusalem by Jews. Never mind that all involved (except for one alleged participant) are teenagers. The headlines in Israel are calling it a lynch (see http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4274106,00.html) and of course these are being aped in the anti-Israel foreign media. There is some argument over just what happened. A group of bored Jewish teenagers, some as young as 12, were evidently hanging about in downtown Jerusalem and perhaps looking for trouble. (The one exception was a 19 year old, not a minor and so now under arrest.) Possibly some passing Arab teenagers made flirtatious or obscene comments to the girls in the group. The boys then attacked and beat the Arabs. The "attackers" were street punks, one sporting a mohawk haircut. One Arab was injured. So what are we to make of this? The same media that are turning purple with rage and screaming for retribution over this "lynching" never had very much to say a few months back when a group of Haifa Arabs who were NOT teenagers attempted to lynch some Jewish soldiers out of uniform who were NOT teenagers, nor when the Arabs involved went scot free. From the massive interest the Western media are showing in this "incident" you would think that teenage hoodlums of various ethnicities never ever get into street fights in any other countries in hot weather. Haaretz has a long track record of filling the paper with "reports," many of them fictional, of Jews (particularly settlers) attacking Arabs or vandalizing Arab property, while downplaying or refusing to mention acts of Arab violence. If Haaretz had been operating in 1938 you would have learned that Germany was filled with attacks by Jewish hooligans against poor innocent German victims and that Kristallnacht was an anti-Christian pogrom by Jews. Let me translate the comments by Kalman Liebskind in today's Maariv on this whole story. 'The insane obsession with what is being dubbed the Jerusalem "lynch" has by now been blown completely out of proportion. This is NOT because we should regard the actual incident lightly but because countless incidents at least as violent are completely ignored by the media. 'These days some graffiti on an Arab gravestone is international headline news, while the nonstop vandalizing and desecration of Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives gets nary a mention. When a Jew strikes an Arab in anger this is a banner headline. Dozens of Molotov cocktail bombs thrown at Jews by Arabs every day are never mentioned. The excuse is supposed to be that Jews attacking Arabs are news, like a man biting a dog. But I have two responses to that. 'First, If that is the real reason, then I want to hear it said unambiguously on the news and in the media. The fact that the Arabs are the violent side of the conflict is a matter about which the media refuse to speak. Second, the media are supposed to be an intermediary link between reality and the consumer. So when 1000 attacks against Jews by Arabs are never reported, while one single attack by Jews against Arabs is the focus of the front pages for two weeks, readers will understand that the violent side in the Middle East conflict is the Jews. One cannot overstate the importance of this bias. If the media were to report accurately the dimensions of Arab terror, the Israeli public would be demanding immediate military action against Gaza. When the public is unaware that this terror exists, the public is indifferent. 'Oh and one more thing worth noting. Even with all the press attention to the Arab victim of street hooliganism in Jerusalem, the simple fact of the matter is that Arabs can walk about freely in the "Jewish areas" of Jerusalem. Try to ask the cable TV technician who made a wrong turn into Issawiya (Arab neighborhood next to the Hebrew University) how he felt being attacked, and then ask on which page the incident was reported.' (SP - or the Hebrew University students who similarly were beaten by a lynch mob in the same place last year) 2. From the Wall Street Journal: August 30, 2012, 7:34 p.m. ET Germany's Circumcision Police Here's an idea: Send an international delegation of rabbis and imams to seek arrest in protest. SHMULEY BOTEACH There was a head-spinning moment in Germany last week: News emerged that a rabbi had been criminally charged for performing his religious duties. Rabbi David Goldberg of northern Bavaria, who shepherds a 400-member community, is the first person to run afoul of a ruling by a Cologne judge earlier this year that criminalized circumcision, a basic religious rite. There is some precedent outside of Germany for such a ruling. In 2001, a Swedish law sparked a protest from Jews and Muslims by requiring that a medical doctor or anesthesia nurse accompany registered circumcisers, and that anesthesia be applied before the procedure. The law is still in effect. In 2006, a Finnish court charged a Muslim mother with assault for circumcising her baby, and this was followed by a Jewish couple being fined for causing bodily harm to their son. The Muslim mother wasn't ultimately punished, and in 2006 the Finnish Supreme Court said her actions weren't criminal and religious circumcision not a crime. In the United States, a San Francisco ballot initiative tried last year to make circumcision an offense punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison; it failed to get enough votes. (In Germany, the Cologne judge seems not to have not yet specified punishment for violations.) The ban by the court in Cologne, however, is the most troubling. For decades Germany has been an example of how a nation can take responsibility for its previous crimes. It is very moving to see Germany's Holocaust memorial in Berlin, just two blocks from the country's parliament. But the circumcision ban deserves universal scorn. The American and European rabbinate should lead a delegation of mohelim (ritual circumcisers) to Germany to seek arrest for civil disobedience in protest against government persecution. I would join them and call upon Islamic imams to stand with us. Does the German government really want to get into a public battle over whether they are better guardians of the health and welfare of Jewish (and Muslim) children than their parents? The Los Angeles Times recently cited a study predicting that as the number of circumcisions goes down in the U.S., the cost of health care will steadily climb. Eryn Brown reported that "If circumcision rates were to fall to 10% . . . lifetime health costs for all the babies born in a year would go up by $505 million. That works out to $313 in added costs for every circumcision that doesn't happen." Why? Because circumcision has been proven to be the second most effective means—after a condom—for stopping the transmission of HIV-AIDS, with the British Medical Journal reporting that circumcised men are eight times less likely to contract the infection. The New York Times echoed these findings in an Aug. 27 report that projected "declining U.S. circumcision rates could add more than $4 billion in health care costs in coming years because of increased illness and infections." The story focused on the American Academy of Pediatrics updating its 13-year-old policy on circumcision and declaring that the health benefits of circumcision—in reducing chances of HIV infection and other STDs, urinary tract infection, and cancer—outweigh the risks. While the Germans decry the barbarity of circumcision for men, they also overlook the benefit to women who are the men's partners. Male circumcision reduces the risk of cervical cancer—caused by the human papillomavirus, which thrives under and on the foreskin—by at least 20%, according to an April 2002 article in the British Medical Journal. While some attempt to equate male circumcision with female clitoridectomy, the comparison is absurd. Female circumcision involves removing a woman's ability to have pleasure during sexual relations. It is a barbarous act of mutilation that has no corollary to its male counterpart. Judaism has always celebrated the sexual bond between husband and wife. Attempts to malign circumcision as a method of denying a man's sexual pleasure are ignorant. Judaism insists that sex be accompanied by exhilaration and enjoyment as a bonding experience that leads to sustained emotional connection. We Jews must be doing something right in the bedroom given the fact that, alone among the ancient peoples of the world, we are still here, despite countless attempts to make us a historical footnote. A German judge may think he is a better guarantor of Jewish well-being than Jews themselves. No thanks. Rabbi Boteach's books include "Kosher Jesus" (Gefen, 2012) and "Kosher Sex" (Doubleday, 1999). He is a Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress from New Jersey's ninth district. (Afterword by SP - I personally prefer that the problem of laws against the bris in Germany be dealt with by pointing out that no self-respecting Jew could possibly live in Germany today in the first place. Even visiting it is something I think Jews should avoid.) Thursday, August 30, 2012
1. I think this is one of the funniest things I ever read:
http://www.seattleactivism.org/events/event6522.htm The "Seattle Activism" group of anarcho-fascists held (and I am not making this up!) a "Rachel Corrie Pancake Breakfast and Meetup" If you think I am pulling your leg, open the link. 2. Reposting (response to the "My Name is Rachel" propaganda play that is being staged all over the anti-Jewish world) http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9346 My Name is Horst? From Prof. Steven Plaut Rachel Corrie was an American member of the International Solidarity Movement killed in 2003 in Gaza by an IDF bulldozer, whose driver did not see her standing in its way to prevent demolition of an Arab home. Since the parents of Rachel Corrie are in the process of suing Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces for the suicide death of their clueless daughter, it occurred to me that Rachel Corrie's real role in history is not appreciated by most people. It is to serve as the Horst Wessel of the anti-Israel Left. Let me explain. Horst Wessel was an idealistic young German active in the Bismarck Youth organization, a nationalist youth group Their "martyrdom" was in fact a pathetic death due in large part to their own stupidity in post-WWI Weimar Germany. That group was too tame for him and so he decided to join the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party, in 1926, when he was 19 years old. Like Rachel, he wrote poems and music, and he played the oboe. One of his poems was called "Raise High the Flag." In 1930 when he was 23, he got into a dispute with his landlady, whose husband was a communist party leader. Probably in response, on January 14,1930, Wessel was shot in the face by Albrecht Höhler, an active member of the local Communist Party. Wessel died in hospital on 23 February. The murderer was sentenced to six years imprisonment and was later himself murdered by the Gestapo. The communist party denied it was involved in Wessel's death and insisted Wessel was killed only because of the rent dispute. The Nazi Party however decided that Wessel would make a brilliant martyr figure, and his tragic death could be exploited as political ammunition to promote the agenda of the party. Goebbals and Goering organized a giant show funeral for him. Wessel was commemorated in memorials, books and films. Nazi newspapers compared him with Jesus. The German navy named one of its training ships for him. The "Horst Wessel Song," based on Wessel's "Raise High the Flag," became the official marching song of the Nazi Party. It was sang and played also for party recruitment purposes. Nazi youth made pilgrimages to Wessel's grave site. [For more on the song see this: http://www.george-broderick.de/ns_docs/ns-horst_wessel_lied.doc ] The British fascists changed the words slightly and used the melody as their own marching song. Horst Wessel was obviously the Rachel Corrie of the anti-Jewish movement almost 80 years before Rachel Corrie played a similar role. In both cases, their "martyrdom" was in fact a pathetic death due in large part to their own stupidity. In both cases the death of a naive young person involved in extremist politics was exploited by the pro-terrorism groups to which they belonged. In both cases the "martyrs" were beatified by those seeking the murder and annihilation of Jews. The only appropriate response to the staging of the anti-Semitic propaganda play, "My Name is Rachel," in theaters around the world would be now to stage a new play: one entitled "My Name is Horst." Wednesday, August 29, 2012
1. The amazing (updated) story of Two-Gun Cohen:
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/the-amazing-saga-of-two-gun-cohen/2012/08/29/ The Amazing Saga Of Two-gun Cohen By Steven Plaut Jewish Press August 31, 2012 In November 1947, the United Nations was considering the creation of a Jewish state in parts of Western Palestine and a new Arab state in the other parts. The hopes of the Jews rested in large part on China. The five-member Security Council had to approve putting the resolution before the General Assembly, but China, one of the five, was threatening to veto it. The head of the Chinese delegation was approached by a hero of the Chinese campaign against the Japanese during World War II, a man who had been a general and senior adviser to President Sun Yat-sen. The general persuaded the delegation to abstain. The Security Council voted approval and the Partition Resolution was sent to the General Assembly, where it passed. Modern Israel came into existence. The general who persuaded the Chinese not to oppose the resolution was not Chinese himself – but, in fact, a Jew born in Poland in 1887. Morris Abraham Cohen was brought to London from Poland when he was still a toddler and grew up in the impoverished East End of London. By the time he was 12 he had become a skilled boxer and a pickpocket. He quickly amassed a police arrest record and his family sent him to reform school until he was 16. Once released, he went to Canada to work on a farm in rural Saskatchewan, near some Indian reservations. The farming bored him; he preferred work as a carnival barker and con man. This got him arrested yet again and he did some jail time. While wandering the Canadian West he became friendly with the local Chinese. Cohen liked Chinese cuisine (what Jew doesn't?) and the Chinese outlook on life. One day Cohen wandered into a Chinese eatery and realized the owner was being robbed. Cohen beat the robber to a pulp. The Chinese were so impressed, they embraced Cohen as one of their own. He joined the local chapter of nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen's political movement and started to pick up some basic Chinese. Cohen raised funds for Sun's movement and helped procure arms. After serving in World War I as a Canadian soldier, Cohen headed off in 1922 to China with plans to work as a railroad developer. But once in Shanghai he found work as a writer on the English-language newspaper associated with Sun Yat-sen's movement. The Chinese called him Ma Kun ("clenched fist"), which was as close as they could get to Morris Cohen. He procured arms for a warlord of Canton in the 1920s and was adviser to Wu Tiecheng, the Canton police chief who later became mayor of Shanghai. Cohen began to serve as part of Sun's guard force, and eventually commanded the entire 250-man presidential bodyguard unit. Always armed, Cohen managed to defend Sun from more than one assassination attempt. After Cohen was wounded in his hand while driving off one group of assassins, he started carrying a second pistol and local Westerners immediately dubbed him "Two-Gun" Cohen, the nickname he carried with pride for the rest of his life. Eventually he was appointed head of the Chinese secret service. His sidekick was another Jew, an anti-Soviet Russian named Moses Schwartzberg who had been part of a plot to assassinate Lenin in 1918. (Schwartzberg was the model for the James Bond character later developed by Ian Fleming - SP) Because of the importance of the Schwartzberg-Cohen pair, Yiddish became one of the three languages of the Chinese secret service, after Mandarin and English. Schwartzberg would later organize a regiment of 1,200 Jewish volunteers to fight for Israel in its War of Independence. After Sun Yat-sen died, Two-Gun Cohen was named commander of the Chinese 19th field army. He worked for a while for Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek. He led Nationalist troops in fighting against both the Japanese and the Chinese communists. He was the only European ever to serve as a Chinese general. When the Japanese invaded China in the 1930s, Cohen worked for British intelligence. Just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong was invaded by the Japanese. Two-Gun got Sun Yat-sen's widow out safely on one of the last planes to escape. Cohen himself was captured by the Japanese and thrown into the Stanley Prison Camp, where he was beaten and mistreated. After the war he lived in Canada, where he helped the Zionists obtain arms for Israel's War of Independence. He eventually returned to England, where he died in 1970. On his tombstone in Manchester his name appears in English, Hebrew, and Chinese characters. His funeral was attended by representatives from both Chinas, which were still at war with each another. It was the only thing in the world on which they could agree. There is a special entry about Two-Gun in the Spy Museum in Washington. Two books have been published about Two-Gun's life. Rob Reiner (the "meathead" from the Archie Bunker show -- SP) is working on a movie about Two-Gun. Two-Gun's cousin, the journalist Marion Dreyfus in New York City, tells me her family still has many scrolls and silks that Two-Gun sent them from China. She found a plaque on the wall of the Shanghai synagogue commemorating Two-Gun as one of the ten most important Jews in Chinese history. When Cohen returned to Manchester after the war, he and his cousins went into the raincoat business, the weather in England being ideal for such a venture. Two pistols and a Chinese generalship notwithstanding, Two-Gun was a proud Jew – and he could even get you a raincoat wholesale! 2. If anyone is feeling just a smidgen of pity for the Corrie parents and their terrorist daughter, I think you will be cured of that if you read what the Corrie's lawyer, the one they selected and hired, has just said. Lawyer for Corrie family on PA TV in July: Nazi Germany's founding was legal but Israel's founding was theft Lawyer Abu Hussein: "Nazi Germany was a state based on the rule of law for a short while... the State of Israel was founded from the start on robbery and theft" by Itamar Marcus Yesterday, an Israeli court ruled that Rachel Corrie's death was a "regrettable accident," but that Rachel Corrie "chose to put herself in danger." Rachel Corrie was killed when she was run over by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, at a time when Israel was working to curb terrorist activity in the area. Corrie's family sued Israel for "wrongful death." The family's Israeli Arab lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said in a statement to the press: "It's a black day for activists of human rights and people who believe in values of dignity. We believe this decision is a bad decision for all of us - civilians first of all, and peace activists." [NY Times, August 28, 2012] Palestinian Media Watch is releasing a statement made by the Israeli Arab lawyer last month that shows his attitudes towards Israel in general. In a Palestinian Authority TV interview, Abu Hussein said Israel's founding was worse than the founding of Nazi Germany because "Nazi Germany was a state based on the rule of law for a short while," whereas "the State of Israel was founded from the start on robbery and theft." He also called Israel a "giant monster" and indicated that people should take action against Israel: "We all want to step on its head, but talking is not enough. Everyone has their role." The following is the transcript of Abu Hussein's interview with Israeli Arab actor, Mohammad Bakri, who hosts the weekly PA TV show: Hussein Abu Hussein, Israeli Arab lawyer: "Nazi Germany was a state based on the rule of law for a short while and it found refuge in the law. [However,] the State of Israel was founded from the start on robbery and theft of a nation's homeland. Actually, the correct and true legal definition of what happened to the Palestinians is homeland theft... We suffer from a great injustice from the giant monster. This monster attacks us daily and bites into our flesh in the Negev, the Galilee, the Triangle [region in Israel], Jerusalem, and the occupied territories, the West Bank and Gaza. Every day it bites into our body." Mohammad Bakri, Israeli Arab actor (who was cleared of libel charges by leftist Court judges in Israel): "I want to step on the head of this monster." Hussein Abu Hussein, Israeli Arab lawyer: "We all want to step on its head, but talking is not enough. Everyone has their role." [PA TV (Fatah), July 2, 2012]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/steven-plaut/a-just-verdict-in-the-rachel-corrie-case/
A Just Verdict in the Rachel Corrie Case Posted By Steven Plaut On August 29, 2012 @ 12:10 am In FrontPage | No Comments It is now official. Rachel Corrie, the patron saint of the pro-terror radical Left and its Islamofascist allies, essentially committed suicide in order to assist Palestinian terrorists. She was not killed by Israel. Israel had no particular reason to want her dead (as opposed to deported). The Haifa District court just tossed out a petition by the clueless parents of Corrie. They had sought damages and a court proclamation that Israel was at fault in their daughter's death. Instead, Judge Oded Gershon made it very clear that Rachel Corrie, the US-flag-burning groupie of Islamofascism, was responsible for her OWN death. She intentionally placed herself in harm's way in order to interfere with Israeli military anti-terror operations in Gaza. She did so in a place where Palestinian terrorists had fired at Israeli troops just hours earlier. The Israeli troops were there to destroy smuggling tunnels beneath residential buildings, tunnels used to smuggle in explosives, missiles, and other weapons. Things used by the Gazan terrorists to murder Jewish children and other living things. Corrie had been sent to Gaza as part of a Solidarity-with-Genocidal-Hamas-Murderers delegation organized by the pro-jihad "International Solidarity Movement" or ISM. The ISM openly endorses Palestinian mass murder of Jews and has collaborated with terrorists, including in hiding their weapons and sheltering wanted murderers. The ISM notoriously hosted two terrorists the day before they murdered several Israelis at the "Mike's Place" tavern in Tel Aviv in 2003. Corrie entered Gaza to serve as a human shield for Hamas mass murderers. On March 16, 2003 she decided to play chicken with a large Israeli earth mover. The irony is that the driver would have stopped and capitulated to Corrie's shenanigans if he had seen her. But he did not and struck her. She later died while in Palestinian medical facilities, probably due to medical incompetence by the staff. There have been rumors that her bulldozer stunt was designed to draw Israeli soldiers out in the open to be targeted by Palestinian gunfire. Since then the totalitarian Left and neo-Nazis have beatified Corrie. She is the darling of the Iranian Holocaust Deniers. A ridiculous theater play has been making the circuits proclaiming Corrie a victim, rather than an accomplice of terror. She is celebrated by David Duke and the neo-Nazis, as well as the neo-Stalinist Left. The most lasting images of Corrie was of her face contorted with rage and as she burned an American flag. When Reuters reported that Palestinians "honored" her after her death in a "symbolic funeral" by flying U.S. flags, James Taranto from the Wall Street Journal remarked that if Corrie were still alive, no doubt she'd have burned the flags. Even the far-Left Mother Jones magazine considers her a dangerous and deluded little twit. The Israeli army investigated the death and concluded that Corrie had effectively committed suicide. The Haifa court agreed. Later other ISM activists were injured when they put themselves in the middle of firefights, started when the PLO would fire on Israelis, and – like Corrie – they were injured. One other died trying to protect those terrorists from Israelis shooting back. In the case of the death of ISM member Tom Hurndall, the ISM led a worldwide campaign to demonize the soldier who shot him. Ironically, it turned out the soldier who shot Hurndall was an Arab Bedouin patriot living in Israel and serving in the Israeli military. Corrie's parents have been serving as a SWAT team of Israel bashing and as apologists for their daughter's terrorist comrades and for her behavior. They frequently come to Gaza to show their support for the same Hamas terrorists their daughter served. Ironically, on one occasion the terrorists kidnapped the Corrie parents, but then quickly released them when it became clear that they were far more valuable assets for terrorism while they run about free. The Corrie lobby has never had any interest in any of the Rachels, Jewish women named Rachel, who were victims of the Palestinian terrorists assisted by Rachel and her ISM friends. And there have been quite a few of those. The Corries have been leading the jihad against the Caterpiller company because it sells equipment to Israel. When the Corrie parents began their legal assault against Israel here in Haifa where I live, I published the following "greeting" to them. I reprint here a small excerpt, which is still relevant: The city of Haifa is still recovering from the trauma of the summer of 2006, when it, along with the rest of northern Israel, was targeted by thousands of Katyusha rockets, fired from southern Lebanon by Hizbullah terrorists. Haifa has also been targeted by several suicide bombers who carried out mass murders against civilians in buses and restaurants. Now Haifa is about to become the victim of yet another indignity. It is to be the scene for a legal assault by the parents of Rachel Corrie…. You (the parents) have stated, "She (Rachel) had been working in Rafah with a nonviolent resistance organization, the International Solidarity Movement, trying to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes and wells." Homes and wells, huh? Well, she was not. Rachel was trying to prevent the demolition of tunnels used to smuggle weapons for Palestinian terrorists seeking to murder Jewish civilians. … Your daughter was in a war zone as a belligerent, on behalf of a movement of Arab fascists seeking to destroy Israel and murder as many Jews as possible. .. You demand that we feel your pain at the loss of your daughter, yet your daughter conscripted herself as an accomplice for those seeking to murder my children. You feel no pain for the scores of martyrs in my own city of Haifa murdered by those same terrorists. Your write, "Clearly, our daughter has become a positive symbol for people." I am afraid you are mistaken. Your daughter has become a symbol for dangerous foolhardiness. She essentially committed suicide as an empty gesture to assist murderers and terrorists. You want the world to mourn for your daughter, who died while working with monsters out to murder our children. On the pages of anti-Semitic propaganda web magazines you denounce Israel, but you do not have a single word of sympathy for the families of the thousands of innocent Israeli victims of the terrorists with whom your daughter chose to ally herself. On behalf of the citizens of Haifa, all of whom your daughter's Hamas friends are trying to murder, I remain, Steven Plaut Saturday, August 25, 2012
I can't resist occassionally introducing you to some of the best in
Israeli music. Allow me to introduce you to Shlomo Bar and his amazing song about his native village in the Atlas mountains of Morocco. The melody has become so popular in Israel that many synagogues have adopted it and incorporated in in prayers (Ashkenazi and Sephardic). First, read the lyrics (in English translation): http://www.hebrewsongs.com/song-kfartodra.htm KFAR TODRA THE VILLAGE OF TODRA Here in the village of Todra in the heart of the Atlas mountains They would take the child that reached the age of five They would put a crown of flowers on his head in our village of Todra A crown would be put on his head when he reached the age of five. All the children in the street would put on a party for him When he turned five in our village of Todra Then the "groom of the celebration" (who turned five in our village of Todra) would be taken to the synagogue The alphabet would be written on a wooden board in honey from A to Z (aleph to taf) All the honeyed letters would call to him: "lick us, friend" So the torah in his mouth would be as sweet as the taste of honey In our village Todra that is in the Atlas mountains. You can see Shlomo Bar himself perform the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j_R9N4CilY For a haunting performance of the song by Greek (non-Jewish) singer Glikeria, open http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCUYtwH7fq0 You can also see him perform the traditional Yeminite song version of the religious song Dror Yikara here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1pvMEKPcX4&feature=related
1. So after being warned that it would only produce disaster, Israel
bombed the nuclear facilities being constructed in Iraq and only good came from it. And then after being warned that it would only produce disaster, Israel bombed the nuclear facilities being constructed in Syria by North Korea and only good came from it. So after being warned that it would only produce disaster, is there any reason to believe that Israel bombing Iran will result in anything but good coming from it? 2. A few times a year, the "Women of the Wall" orchestrate incidents at the Western Wall. They are a group of feminists, some with ties to radical leftist NGOs. They wear Tallis and Tefillin and hold services in the women's section. The Rabbinic authorities who supervise the affairs around the Western Wall have conniptions. I have commented on this before but let me just sum up my position. Basically all involved are silly and all involved are at fault. First, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with women putting on a tallis or tefillin. It is not prohibited. The commandments involving these do not explicitly exclude women. There are references to women putting on tefillin in the Talmud. While over time these became regarded as commandments for men only, there is no reason why a woman cannot perform an optional activity for which women are exempt, such as praying three times a day. At the same time, I do not believe the "Women of the Wall" are motivated by more than a desire for a confrontation, provocation and headline. I do not believe they are motivated by deep spiritual needs to wear a tallis. And I think the ultra-Orthodox men who foam at the mouth when they see the provocation are at least as silly as the feminists. Let them stay in the men's section and keep their eyes off what is going on in the women's section. The fact that there is even a women's section at the Wall just reinforces what I was saying about women allowed to do things for which they are not deemed commanded. But all of the above silliness pales in comparison with the preachy idiocy coming from the media and the politicians about all this. All of these chant that the problem at the Wall is insufficient tolerance for pluralism and diversity. Oh, really? Well, just a couple of hundred meters from where all this is taking place one finds an infinitely WORSE form of intolerance, violence, and pigheaded bigotry, all operating with the blessings of the Israeli government. Not a single media talking head nor politician has had a single word to say about the intolerance towards Jews who seek to visit the Temple Mount. Not a single bleeding-heart preacher of tolerance has had a word to say about the arrests - I am not spoofing you, I do mean ARRESTS - of Jews who enter the Temple Mount and move their lips. Lip moving by Jews is prohibited by the Moslem "authorities" who control the Temple Mount. Israel has turned control of the Temple Mount over to them. They claim to fear a drive-by pray-in by Jews visiting the Mount. Saying the SHMA TISRAEL there is a crime. But the prohibition on freedom of speech for Jews goes beyond this. In recent days, a group of religious Bnei Akiva youth planned a march in the Old City of Jerusalem (not on the Temple Mount), in which they would chant and wave banners saying "The Temple Mount is in Our Hands." That slogan was the official announcement by a general in the middle of the Six Day War in 1967, when the IDF took the Temple Mount. Two weeks ago the police prohibited speaking that slogan or waving such banners in Jerusalem, claiming it was "racist" and "anti-Arab." So let us get this straight! Arabs shouting of "Massacre the Jews" and "In blood and spirit we will redeem thee Palestine" is protected speech in Israel, but a youth group chanting of "The Temple Mount is in Our Hands" is prohibited "racism." All those bleeding hearts so upset about the "intolerance" shown towards the Women of the Wall have had not a single word to say about this. The problem of course is 45 years old. When Israel took East Jerusalem in 1967, the Labor Party-led government at the time decided to turn control over the entire Temple Mount to the Moslems. The Temple Mount is the holiest site for Jews. That is right, the Mount and not the Western Wall. The Wall gets its holiness only from the fact that it is positioned next to the Temple Mount. At most the southern corner of the Temple Mount, where the Al Aqsa Mosque is situated, is holy for Moslems. The rest of the Mount is not. The Islamists deny there were ever Jewish Temples on the Mount, which is a bit comic because the ONLY reason the Al-Aqsa Mosque was erected there was precisely BECAUSE the Temples had stood on the Mount and because the site was holy for Jews. The "Dome of the Rock" is not a mosque at all and should have been removed back in 1967. The Moslem "authorities" have systematically destroyed artifacts uncovered on the Mount and have engaged in vandalism, in part to destroy evidence of the Temples and Jewish presence in Biblical times. The Israeli government has sat back in pusillanimous silence as the Moslems perpetuate apartheid against Jews on the Temple Mount. The result is suppression of freedom of speech, with the Israeli police and authorities serving as accomplices of anti-democratic Islamic radicals. So I hereby cyber-chant: "The Temple Mount is in Our Hands." To the Attorney General: Come and Arrest Me! 3. Everyone knows of the wonders of Israeli high-tech and scientific breakthroughs. But I wanted to draw your attention to "Metallo-Therapy," a high-tech bio-med company that is developing cutting-edge methods for fighting cancer. The founder and CEO of the company holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from Ben Gurion University. One important detail you should know. The founder and CEO of this company is an Arab woman, Dr. Amal Ayoub. (I think she is Christian, she grew up in Nazareth.) You can see this interesting write-up and photo here: http://israel.usembassy.gov/wsh.html and also this: http://forward.com/articles/156811/breaking-the-biomed-glass-ceiling/ Oh that dang-awful Israeli apartheid! 4. This is a riot. This item was listed on E-Bay as: Unique Vintage Navajo Moose 925 Sterling Silver Pendant, Marking 0.8 grams I guess the seller from Texas doesn't know Hebrew. To see the Navajo moose, go here: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/110050/navajo-moose-jewish-spirit-animal and http://us.shalomlife.com/culture/17806/ebay-user-mistakes-jewish-symbol-for-vintage-navajo-moose/ Friday, August 24, 2012
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/michael-widlanski/how-leftist-jews-make-terror-kosher/
How Leftist Jews Make Terror Kosher Posted By Michael Widlanski On August 24, 2012 Lenin joked that capitalists would sell him the rope by which he would hang them, and Muslim terrorists may be making the same joke about Jews whom they target. Jews are among the biggest defenders of Arab-Islamic terrorists and those who help finance their efforts, help advance their political goals and help hide their real aims. Jewish lawyers, clergy, politicians, journalists have taken a prominent role trying to stop interrogation or surveillance of alleged terrorists, while working to block probes of radical mosque speakers and Islamic funding programs that may aid groups like Al-Qaeda and Hamas or support their agenda. To some people, this may seem natural, because Jews often fight for causes, lead political movements—from Communists to Neo-Cons—choosing to help the "underdog" in almost any argument, even when the underdog seems to hate Jews. But Jews are also usually the first target of terrorists and tyrants, and so, it seems a bit incongruous when Jews—consciously or not—seem to be helping terrorists or those who aid terrorists, for example: * Over the last eight years, The New York Times, owned by the Sulzberger family, ran many articles exposing sensitive elements of US surveillance programs and bank monitoring plans that thwarted terror plots. The Times also relentlessly attacked, in editorials and features, US interrogation of terrorists as "torture"; * The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other legal lobbies—where Jews are leading members—have toiled tirelessly to win for foreign-born terrorists (who are NOT soldiers or local car thieves) not only the status of uniformed prisoners of war but even the constitutional rights of US criminals; * New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Jew who leads the biggest Jewish metropolis in America, has supported building a mosque or Islamic center near the site of the World Trade Center destroyed on 9-11 by Muslim terrorists, though most New Yorkers oppose the Islamic project; * The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and prominent Reform rabbis denounced five congressmen as Islamophobic and McCarthyist for asking about possible Islamic penetration of and influence on US government agencies, including the armed services, the State Department and the Department of Justice. This kind of penetration is not a McCarthist mirage, but a real fact of life. The man who trained Osama Bin-Laden's bodyguards—Maj. Ali Muhammad—also trained special ops units for the Pentagon. And there are many other examples. ADL and Reform Jewish leaders said that questioning the goals or methods of groups such as ISNA (The Islamic Society of North America) or CAIR (The Council on American Islamic Relations) was "conspiratorial" and "prejudiced." "It's likes someone who says there's a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world," asserted Rabbi David Saperstein, a Reform Jewish leader, and he condemned "the Islamophobic effort to discredit and delegitimize the Muslim community." Saperstein and ADL referred to five House members: Michelle Bachmann (R-MI), Trent Franks (R-Ariz ), Louis Gohmert (R-Texas), Tom Rooney (R-Fla,.), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) who sent letters with questions to the Inspector-Generals of several government agencies. The five congressmen said they had not accused anyone of crimes but rather raised questions about undue influence from Islamic lobbyists (some of whom were named in US probes), about lax security clearances, and seeming lax government precaution against radical Islamic penetration of the US security community. ADL said the congressmen should "stop trafficking in anti-Muslim conspiracy theories." ADL leader Abe Foxman strongly defended the Obama Administration's Department of Justice (DOJ), which closed major cases against what US government attorneys themselves called Muslim terrorist front organizations. Neither ADL nor the Reform Jews recalled that Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) were also critical of US policy regarding radical Islam, and their Senate Homeland Security committee issued a 61-page report that said the Fort Hood shooting, in which 13 died, could easily have been prevented. Meanwhile, Obama's DOJ now stresses fighting hate crimes against Muslims, under directives from Attorney General Eric Holder and his assistant, Thomas Perez, though there were five to six times more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chair of the House Homeland Security committee, also criticized Attorney General Holder, in April, for stopping indictments of suspected money transfers to Islamic terrorists as part of the Holy Land Foundation case. So, why is the ADL defending the Obama Department of Justice that puts out a special effort to stop "hate crimes" against Muslims, when there six times as many hate crimes against Jews? Why is ADL going out of its way to help a Justice Department that helps Muslim front organizations? Why is the Reform Jewish leadership saying that anyone who asks sensible questions about Islamic penetration of US government institutions is a McCarthyist conspiracy monger? After all, the reform rabbis and the ADL are NOT the second coming of William Kunstler, the Jewish lawyer who never passed by a radical cause. One suspects that it has less to do with conviction than in striking a pose, trying to seem liberal and tolerant—even to terrorists and those who help them. Beyond the political positions, the Jewish defenders of Islamic groups argue that harsh treatment of suspected terrorists or their backers is unseemly and is actually another victory for the Arab-Islamic terrorists. "Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans," said Mayor Bloomberg as he backed the mosque at the 9-11 site. "To cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that." One can almost hear Lenin joking about "useful idiots." Dr. Michael Widlanski, an expert on Arab politics and communications, is the author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat published by Threshold/Simon and Schuster. He was Strategic Affairs Advisor in Israel's Ministry of Public Security and teaches at Bar Ilan University. Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here. Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/michael-widlanski/how-leftist-jews-make-terror-kosher/ Sunday, August 19, 2012
1. Happy Elul! As you probably know, the word Elul is traditionally
thought to be an acronym for the expression from the Song of Songs: Ani L'dodi V'dodi Li. It means I am of my Beloved and my Beloved is mine. It is thought to sum up the relationship between God and the Jewish people. Anyway it occurred to me that this year there might be a whole new interpretation of the word "Elul" with a new acronym. I am afraid it is in Hebrew, but you may be able to figure out what it means: "Ani L'Romney V'Ha-Teepshim L'Obama" = Elul 2. Haaretz has a new official editorial policy. The editor has decided that no longer will the paper allow use of the expressions "The War of Independence" or the "War of Liberation" to refer to the events of 1948-49 during which Israel emerged as an independent state. Instead, all writers in the Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew will be required to use the expression, "The War of 1948." These instructions come from the one whom I think we should all refer to for now on as the Putz of 2012. 3. So Iran says it would "welcome" an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities so that it can then wipe Israel off the map? All this coming from a country whose most famous cultural contributor and historic figure is Haman!! Well, I have posted this before but I think a re-posting might be timely: End the imperialist colonialist occupation !! Liberation now!! Now that the heads of Iran are openly calling for Israel's annihilation, and Iran's "president" suggests that Europe create a Zionist state some place inside Germany or maybe in Alaska, I think we should all promote a REAL solution to the problems of the Middle East and end the illegal occupation. I refer of course to the illegal Iranian occupation of lands that properly belong to the Mongols. Meaning all of Iran. True, Iran was conquered or liberated from the Persians by the Mongols militarily starting in 1219. Iran then became a legitimate part of the Mongol homeland. Tamerlane, who was part Mongol, also ran the place. All in all, the Mongol liberation of Persia lasted for two and a half centuries, not much different from the length of the period of Arab rule of "Palestine," after which Iran was "lost" to Turkic tribes. I guess that means the Turks also have a legitimate claim to a homeland there! Now if the fact that some Arab armies once conquered the Land of Israel is thought to confer upon them rights of sovereignty and even statehood, why should not the Mongol conquest of Iran do the same? After all, Iran was once a Mongol state, as recently as 550 years ago, whereas the last time the Land of Israel was an Arab Palestinian state was, well, never. Not only should Mongol rule be restored to Iran as the only legitimate rulers of the place, but these days the Mongols make far better neighbors than do the ayatollahs. The Mongols have no nuclear plans and have never met with the pagans from the Neturei Karta. The Mongols would surely put the Persian Gulf petroleum to better use than do the Holocaust Deniers in Iran these days, like developing yak milk production capacities. So, I say, end the illegal occupation once and for all. Liberate Iran from the imperialist colonialist occupation of the Iranians! Restore it to its proper owners – the Mongols! Biladi biladi! Biladi ya ardi ya arda al-judoud Fida'i Fida'i (That is the Mongolian song of national liberation: Its lyrics continue: "Az der rebe zingt Zingn ale chasidim Az der rebe tantzt Tantzn ale chasidim." Alas, I do not know enough Mongolian to tell you what it means.) 4. Bibi bashing: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4269917,00.html 5. Jewish anti-Semites: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12069#.UDDHRKD85vo 6. Peace Now founder finds something more dangerous than Hamas and Iran: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/HebrewU%20-%20Amiram%20Goldblum%20-%20messianic%20Judaism.htm And that is not his ONLY discovery: http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/HebrewU%20-%20Amiram%20Goldblum%20-%20nose%20picker.htm Saturday, August 18, 2012
The entire Israeli Left has by now morphed into a "Solidarity with
Iran" movement. It seems to be united over little else besides its desire to see Iran get nuclear weapons. Almost every single Op-Ed in Haaretz and half of its news stories these days are devoted to lobbying AGAINST any possible Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. A petition by 300 of Israel's "intellectuals" just called upon Israeli pilots to refuse to participate in any Israeli strike against Iran. Among those signers was the ex-Dean of the Law School at Tel Aviv University, a chronic contender for a Supreme Court judgeship, Prof. Menachem Mautner. No doubt this will earn him a seat on the Court as the next Likud appointee, Perhaps he thinks his law school building will be invulnerable to nuclear weapons. The new Dean of Law at the Hebrew University, Prof. Yuval Shany, who is active in Far Leftist groups like Betselem, has just expressed the opinion that it would be "illegal" for Israel to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. I would like to see him call the police if Israel does! Meanwhile, one sheep after another, Israeli "intellectuals" and "academics" churn out the same "argument" for sitting back and letting Iran get its nuclear weapons. If I had a dime for every leftist claiming that it would actually be in Israel's own interests to have an Iran with nuclear weapons, I could retire. Their argument is always the same: since the US and Russia never actually used their nuclear weapons against one another during the Cold War, this PROVES that the theory of "mutually assured destruction" holds. And since this theory must be true, then the pair of Iran and Israel both having nuclear weapons MUST mean that neither will use them, and so peace and tranquility will prevail. Never mind the use of weapons of mass destruction throughout the 20th century by pairs of countries who both possessed them (think of mustard gas!). In other words, the Left is so convinced that its "theory" is correct that it is willing to wager a second Holocaust of Jews to test it out. Of course if they are wrong and Iran DOES use its nukes to incinerate the Jews, those leftists will not be around to have to apologize. I had a very strange dream last night. I thought I would relay it to you. In the dream, Yossi Beilin comes out with a new peace idea. "Suppose all the Israeli Jews simply convert to Islam," he proposes in my dream. "In that case Iran would have no reason at all to USE its nuclear weapons against the Israelis!" "What a remarkable idea," chimed in Zehava Galon, chief of Meretz, "Now why didn't I think of that myself." Within days the idea was endorsed not only by the central committee of Meretz, but also the entire leadership of "Peace Now" backed the idea. That was enough to get Haaretz to run the peace program on its front page, and on every one of its other pages, including the sports pages. Hundreds of university professors held mass street conversions to Islam, while nearly all the poets and novelists in the country joined them. "Let us go through the motions of converting if it will prevent a nuclear war," insisted A.B. Yehoshua. A few dozen leftist activists who had never been circumcised offered to have the procedure done to them if this would allow a nuclear war to be averted, and Yuli Tamir suggested that circumcisions could be done on women who are new converts to Islam as well. Leftist court judges ordered the government to adopt the plan. A crescent replaced the menorah on the lawn in front of the Knesset. Radio and television broadcasts were ordered to be brought into line with the new national identity and agenda, although it turned out that very little actually had to be changed in them. Israel joined the Arab League and the Labor Party renamed itself the Levantine Moslem Brotherhood. Newly elected Prime Minister Shimon Peres gave as his opening speech an appeal to Iran for friendship for the newest Moslem country. "We share the religion of peace," cried Hajj al-Shimon. And it was one year after the entire Israeli population had converted to Islam when the country was blanketed by Iranian-launched nuclear missiles. When the reports of the attacks were brought to President Obama, who was running for his third term as president, he demanded to know how it was possible that Iran attacked Israel after all the Israelis had converted to Islam. Simple, explained his national security advisor Rashid Khalidi. It did not work because those idiot Israelis converted to Sunni Islam! It was at that point that I awoke and said Mode Ani. Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Middle East Non-Solutions
By Steven Plaut The mantra crops up almost everywhere. "You Israelis must make a choice between two alternatives," it goes. "You have two simple choices. You can either annex all of the 'occupied territories' and grant equal Israeli citizenship to all of the Palestinians there, in which case Israel will no longer be a Jewish state. Or you can agree to a two-state solution, in which Israel continues to exist alongside a Palestinian Arab state. Simple. Make your choice!" The posing of these two "choices" for Israel is part of the campaign to convince Israelis that there is no alternative to the "Two-State Solution." The first "alternative" is often dubbed these days the "One-State Solution" by its anti-Israel advocates. Israel and its Jewish population would be enfolded within a larger Arab-dominated Islamic state. A better term for this is the "Rwanda Solution." It is little more than a recipe for a second Holocaust of Jews, a Nazi-style final solution, in which the Middle East conflict would end because the Jewish population of the Middle East would be exterminated. But the "Two State Solution" is little better. The creation of a "Palestinian" state "alongside Israel" would not solve anything and would not end the conflict. To the contrary, it would be the opening round for a major escalation in the conflict and the launching of an all-out war by "Palestine" against the rump Jewish state, a war in which "Palestine" would be joined and backed by the entire Arab world and much of the non-Arab Moslem world. Like rump Czechoslovakia after Munich, the remaining Jewish mini-state would be the target for aggression and irredentist belligerence, manifested in rocket and missile attacks. The thousands of rockets that were fired at Sderot and the Negev after the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will appear as a child's game by comparison. Let us note that neither the "One State Solution" nor the "Two State Solution" are solutions to the Middle East conflict. Neither would resolve anything. There is no Two State Solution, only a Two-State "solution." There is also no such thing as a "One-State Solution," at least if one means by that the granting of Israeli citizenship to all those claiming to be "Palestinians." So how must Israelis respond to the diktat that they choose either the one or the other? They must answer NEITHER. The insistence that Israelis choose between these two non-solutions is in fact nothing more than the newest manifestation of anti-Israel aggression and bellicosity. There is a real problem with the debate over "solutions" to the Middle East conflict. The only way to resolve the Middle East conflict is to stop the pointless quest for defining "solutions." For more than 20 years everything that has gone wrong in the Middle East was because of the search for "solutions" and is the ultimate reason why the conflict has not been resolved. Israelis cannot formulate and propose "solutions" to the Middle East conflict for the exact same reason that the Western allies could not have proposed or formulated any "solution" to the ambitions of Germany in the late 1930s. No solution would have satisfied those ambitions and none could have appeased Hitler. The quest in the 1930s for "solutions" resulted in years of delay, during which Germany re-armed and support for Hitler within Germany solidified. Similarly, no "solution" could have prevented the assaults against Pearl Harbor, Malaya, and the Philippines by Imperial Japan. The only solution to those conflicts was Western victory. "Solutions" are magical panaceas sought by lazy, shallow, and impatient minds. No "solution" of any sort offered by Israel can resolve the Middle East conflict because the Arab world has no interest in seeing the conflict resolved. The entire Oslo "peace process" initiated by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres was based upon the belief that peace can be achieved by pretending that war does not exist. Its axiom was that if the leaders of Israel insist loudly enough that there is no war at all going on, then there will be peace. Never mind what the Arabs are saying. The Middle East conflict also has nothing to do with territory. The Arab countries already control territory nearly twice that of the United States (including Alaska), while Israel is smaller than New Jersey. The architects of the "peace process" argued that possession of territory twice the size of the US without the Everglades-sized West Bank is a recipe for endless war, but if Israel just turns that Everglades-size zone over to the "Palestinians," all will be peaceful. 22 sovereign Arab states have produced war and barbarism, but creating a 23rd Arab state as a "Two-State Solution" will produce peace. No peace solution is possible with an adversary who has no interest in making peace. And there is nothing that Israel can do, no package of concessions and goodwill measures it can proffer, that will change this fact. The 100% Israeli unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip produced the nazification of Gaza under a Hamas regime, along with thousands of rockets being fired into Israel by Gazan terrorists. There is not the slightest doubt that any erection of a "Palestinian state" in the West Bank will result in far worse. Now if Israelis refuse to embrace the above two pseudo-solutions, insists the Left, then Israel will end up as an "apartheid regime." One in which "Palestinian Arabs" live under endless Israeli "occupation" and control, but without Israeli citizenship, without the right to vote. It is always amusing to hear whining about the absence of the Palestinian right to vote in Israeli elections, especially when it comes from the very same people who do not care that Arabs have no free elections anywhere else in the Middle East. And never mind that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is NOT an apartheid regime. Essentially the insistence that Israel must choose one of the two pseudo-solutions, or else it will morph into an "apartheid regime," amounts to the belief that Israelis are better off allowing their country to be annihilated rather than risk becoming the targets of name-calling. In reality, the most productive way to seek to resolve the Middle East is to take as the starting point the list of what is ruled out, what must never be. No "solution" to the Middle East conflict is possible if it involves creation of an Arab "Palestinian" state, and none is possible if it involves "Palestinians" being granted Israeli citizenship. BOTH of these nonstarters must be ruled out absolutely. Once that is understood, any proposal based upon those two NEVERS can be taken into consideration. The immediately implication is that Israel must remain in the West Bank, and the "Palestinian" population there will neither be granted Israeli citizenship nor national sovereignty. The United States occupied Okinawa for decades, and American national historic and cultural roots did not originate in Okinawa. Indeed American armed forces STILL fill that island. There is no time limit on how long Israeli "occupation" can last, and the very word "occupation" is actually a misnomer. In any case the Israeli presence in the West Bank is sui generis and not comparable to any other case of "occupation." So if West Bank "Palestinians" will neither be granted Israeli citizenship nor national sovereignty, what can they be offered? The original "peace proposals" offered by Israel in the 1970s and 1980s spoke about limited local autonomy. Had the Palestinians played their cards right, they could have enjoyed as much freedom and prosperity under local autonomy as do Puerto Rica, Guam, and American Samoa. But the Israeli Labor Party lost patience with the idea after a few years and decided to frog- leap to an instant "Two-State Solution." It imported Yassir Arafat's stormtroopers into the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and proclaimed its "recognition" of the "Palestinian people." There is indeed another "solution" for West Bank "Palestinians" unhappy with the two NEVERS defining conflict resolution. They can leave. There are those 22 sunny Arab states, plus lots of other Moslem states, whither any unhappy West Bank "Palestinian" can move and live amongst his kin. After all, Jews unhappy with life in Argentina, France or Hungary do not demand the annihilation of those countries but merely the right to move to Israel. The fact that the "Palestinians" prefer Israeli "occupation" over blissful residence in these alternative countries states volumes about just how badly treated the "poor suffering Palestinians" really are. The "Palestinians" find these constraints on their options distasteful? Too bad! Part of adulthood means coming to terms with the fact that, as in Mick Jagger's words, "You can't always get what you want." What the "Palestinians" and their apologists want is the annihilation of Israel and a second Holocaust of Jews. And they are not going to get what they want. Monday, August 13, 2012
With all the chatter in Israel and elsewhere about whether, when
and how to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities, I thought that the very best global political and strategic commentary on the situation actually comes from Tuco the Mexican bandit, played by Jewish actor Eli Wallach, in the classic movie, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." As you recall, Tuco is in his bathtub filled with soap foam when the assassin comes in and starts telling Tuco how long he has been hunting him and why. Tuco shoots him from within the foam and proclaims: "If you are going to shoot, shoot. Don't talk!" (You can see the scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCB3fnXDzew ) Saturday, August 11, 2012
I suppose that it has been noticed in cyber-circles that I have not
had anything at all to say about the Olympics. That is not a coincidence. I am an irritable curmudgeon and a fussbudget geezer, and I must confess that I have never found anything interesting about sports of any sort. You of course need not agree with me, but do not try to persuade me of the excitement in sports, because it would just be a waste of your time. I hate sports. I refused to participate in them when I was a camper in Zionist summer camps back in the Olde Country, nor later when I was a counselor. Except for the prospect of making 50 cent betting profits, I never took any interest in the baseball World Series back when I was a whippersnapper. In the 1970s, when I was a graduate student at the Hebrew University, the other students would invariably ask me after the weekend if I had seen the game, and I would ask them if they meant a chess match. That usually was enough to get them to stop talking to me. I have never seen the attraction of a bunch of sweaty men chasing a plastic ball across the grass. I have on occasion posted my suggestion that soccer hooliganism be dealt with by laws requiring that all sports reporting be in Latin. Just like I think that no newspaper that carries horoscope advice can be taken seriously about anything, so I have serious doubts about any newspaper that has more than 2 inches of news print about sports. In the past I have timed my visits as a tourist to major cities for the week of some major sporting event, so that I could be sure that the museums I wanted to visit would be empty. When I buy a newspaper or get one for free (a lot in Israel are now free), I carefully dump the sports section in the trash before walking off, lest anyone suspect me of reading it. All of which takes me to the nostalgic feature in this past weekend's Israeli newspaper, Makor Rishon. You will be relieved to hear that Makor Rishon does not have any sports pages (as far as I know - it is possible my brain simply tunes out when I stumble across them). It is also the main newspaper of the Zionist Non-Left in Israel. This weekend's paper carried an interesting look back in time to the Israel of the 1950s, and I thought I would paraphrase it for you in English. The story is part of a column by Hagai Segel, one of Israel's better columnists. It begins with the observation that Israeli athletes were not particularly good at bringing home Olympic medals back in the 1950s and 60s either. But it was a different era, a different world. The star of the country, the equivalent of the focus of paparazzi obsession, was one Amos Chacham. His fame came from the fact that he was the champion of the 1958 international Bible contest. All the newspapers "kvelled" over him. The Prime Minister Ben Gurion followed every round in the competition and was openly cheering for Chacham. When Menachem Begin was driving around the outskirts of Jerusalem, he happened to spy Chacham. He ordered his driver to stop, and he jumped out to shake Chacham's hand and tell him how much he admired him. Begin then quickly slipped away because he was afraid that the paparazzi would photograph them together and Begin would be accused of cynically exploiting the popularity of the Bible contest winner (it was election season). The scandal sheet Haolam Hazeh, at the time a sort of Israeli National Enquirer that later moved to the far Left and went bankrupt, proclaimed Chacham its man of the year. It ran a cartoon of Chacham as an athlete lifting bar bells, on both ends of which were Bibles. The international Bible contest in Jerusalem in which Chacham excelled attracted international attention. It was open to non-Jews. The Pope gave a special prayer and blessing for success of the Italian team. Protestant and Catholic churches throughout Europe prayed for the success of their own representatives. Chacham, who passed away last week, was 37 years old at the time. He made short shrift of the foreign non-Jewish competitors, but ran up against serious challenges from the other Israeli contestants. They included teachers, academics, mathematicians and rabbis. The father of the Israeli atomic energy project was in the audience, following every question and answer. One of the toughest challengers was also the oldest contestant, a 67 year old repairman of sewing machines. 460 Israelis participated in the contest. The first prize was a box of books worth 500 lirot (or about 200 dollars). A mathematician who participated in the contest, one Dr. Baruch Ben-Yehuda, was later offered the job of Minister of Education. I think the best thing about him was how he responded when a young A.B. Yehoshua, today the leader of Israel's pro-Palestinian Literary Left, proposed that none of the more "nationalist" parts of the Bible be taught in Israeli schools, and that in particular the sections that refer to Jews as a chosen people be deleted. Ben-Yehuda dismissed A.B. Yehoshua's idea as "self-abasement bordering on mental illness." I think the writings of A.B. Yehoshua's, who also led the recent campaign to subject book prices in Israel to bolshevik controls, should be confined to the sports pages. (To be read with Google translation software from the Latin.) Friday, August 10, 2012
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2379
No more monopoly over education by Dror Eydar One must read the embarrassing letter written by the Committee of University Heads (which includes the heads of all seven of Israel's research universities) to the Israel Defense Forces' GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon to understand exactly who is at the helm of our country's higher education, and how essential and urgent it is to open up this exclusive club to fresh new members. In its letter, the committee argues that it is problematic for an IDF officer to decide to grant university status to an educational institution (in this case, the Ariel University Center in Samaria), but at the same time, the committee urges the same officer to make a decision not to approve the university status. One of the parties involved told me recently: "This is tantamount to an attorney telling a judge, 'My client did not murder his parents, but if what the prosecution is saying is true, I'm asking you to show leniency to my client because he is an orphan.'" It is very interesting that all of a sudden Rivka Carmi, the president of Ben-Gurion University and the chairwoman of the committee, is asking a military figure to intervene in the shaping of Israel's higher education. It is ironic that the so-called enlightened ones are suddenly pinning their hopes on militarism as a life saver. Here is an infuriating historic moment: the establishment of the Council for Higher Education's Planning and Budgeting Committee. On May 17, 1977, the conservative camp won the general election, assuming leadership of Israel for the first time after 50 years of left-wing hegemony (since 1931). On June 20, 1977, Menachem Begin was sworn in as prime minister. In the interim, the Left was in hysterics and launched a frantic effort to cement its other strongholds outside the government. On June 6, three weeks after the election and two weeks before the new government was sworn in, the leftist interim government deviously transferred authority over the higher education budget (and more) from the government's hands into the hands of the Planning and Budgeting Committee, or, in other words, into the hands of the academic establishment. In short, anything to prevent the Likud savages from gaining control over higher education as well. Now do you understand why no new universities have been established since? (The last Israeli institution to be granted the status of a university – Haifa University – was established in 1972.) Now do you understand why Israeli academia is, in large part, a political fortress opposite any conservative government? Do you understand why the quest for Ariel's university status is not just about a university in Samaria but also a struggle for academic freedom and freedom of independent thought within Israel's academia? If you try to be hired at any of Israel's universities with a conservative (right-wing) resume, you will find that even if your academic achievements outrank those of your leftist colleagues, the underlying test question will be whether or not you belong to their exclusive club. Does this remind anyone of the current situation in the Israeli media or in the Israeli justice system? There is reason for that. Academia, the media and the justice system are the three leftist strongholds that the conservative camp is having trouble infiltrating. But their immunity will not last forever. The leftist hegemony is beginning to crumble on all three fronts, and all three strongholds are heading toward extensive pluralism and healthy friction between opposing viewpoints. The Committee of University Heads knew for seven years that the institution in Ariel was seeking university status. But a week before the decision to grant it university status, suddenly they jump up and say, "It doesn't meet the criteria." Where have they been for seven years? The truth is that in all the years since the establishment of Israel there have never been any such criteria. If such criteria for the establishment of universities had been in place, Ben-Gurion University would never have been established in 1969, nor would Haifa University. Who decided to establish new universities over the years? It was the government, and only the government. And it was the government that decided to grant university status to the school in Ariel now. In the history of Israel, never has a university been established without any opposition from the existing universities that preceded it. I spoke with someone who attended the committee that decided on the establishment of Tel Aviv University in the 1950s. He told me about the fiery opposition voiced in that forum by Hebrew University's Professor Ben Zion Dinur: "Degrees will roll around freely," he reportedly said. "Woe to higher education." Ironically, only Ariel actually met the strict criteria that were instituted especially for the occasion. Pay close attention to the individuals who manned the evaluation committee that examined Ariel's academic activity: Nobel Prize laureate Professor Robert Aumann (Hebrew University); Professor Amos Altshuler (Ben-Gurion University); Professor Meir Wilchek (Weizmann Institute); Professor David Hasson (Technion); the late Professor Yuval Neeman (Tel Aviv University); and Professor Daniel Sperber (Bar Ilan Univeristy). How is Emanuel Trajtenberg, the chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee, or the Committee of University Heads more authoritative than these renowned professors, who determined that Ariel did in fact meet the necessary criteria? What do the former know that the latter have yet to learn? One of Israel's most veteran professors, who was involved in the establishment of previous universities, said to me: "You want to know why there is opposition? They want monopoly. That is all. Everything else is excuses, including the budget issue. These are just empty arguments to hang onto. They want monopoly." In conclusion: Ariel University will flourish as Israel's eighth university and pose a profound Zionist challenge to the old academic establishment.
This past week the world commemorated the dropping of the atomic bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The following was posted in 2005, 7 years ago, during the similar week: Counterpunch Discovers Terrorism by Steven Plaut Posted Wednesday 3 August 2005 Counterpunch has been the leading American web magazine supporting most forms of terror. But all of a sudden it runs a piece denouncing the "Worst Terror Attacks in History" by one Norm Dixon. The worst terror attacks? At Counterpunch, then No, of course not 9-11! Maybe the Red Terror that left tens of millions dead? No, grasshopper, not in a magazine operated by Alexander Cockburn, son of a communist agent and hater of all things American (who died a few days ago -- SP). So what were the world's worst terrorist attacks? The US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course. The only thing that upsets Dixon and his Counterpunch publishers about 9-11 is that American "warmongers" are "exploiting" it to do evil. Now the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were among the most humane acts in human history. They saved many millions of Japanese civilian lives, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of lives of Allied soldiers, which were about to be lost in the invasion of the Japanese main islands. I believe that all Asians, especially Japanese, should celebrate the saving of those lives by having parties and picnics on Hiroshima Day. I can think of no other pair of events that saved so many human lives. The Far Left has always claimed that the US dropped those bombs out of sheer cussedness and racism. That is because the Left cares nothing about hundreds of thousands of dead Allied troops. After all, most of them were white! Dixon cites the lunabrit leftist New Scientist magazine as saying how two historians now claim that "the US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was meant to kick-start the Cold War [against the Soviet Union, Washington's war-time ally] rather than end the Second World War.' Some other pro-terror Bash-America professors agree. Gosh, how persuasive. Dixon also cites Truman's chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, as having written in his memoirs that "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.' And so the bombs were not necessary. Someone just forgot to tell the Japanese high command at the time, who were still convinced that inflicting large losses on the Allied forces would lead to a military stalemate or victory for Japan. The Islamofascist kamikazis are not the only kamikazi protesters against occupation that the Left loves. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed far, far fewer people than did the bombings of Tokyo and German cities using conventional weapons. Or does Dixon consider those events terrorist attacks as well? We are pretty sure the German invasion of Czechoslovakia would be considered - by the thinkers at Counterpunch - to be legitimate defense against occupation. So who is this Dixon clown anyhow? He spends most of his time writing pro-terror and anti-American articles for the Australian web rag "Green Left Weekly." It is a communist magazine that features on its cover a cartoon of Che Guevara. It also runs the Swedish Holocaust Denier neo-nazi who calls himself "Israel Shamir." John Pilger raises cash for it, so need we say more? No, Dixon sees nothing inconsistent in his failure to write against the terror operated by the totalitarians in Cuba who still wave Che Guevare banners. In fact, the "Weekly" runs weekly toady pieces singing the praises of the Cuban Gulag. It also supports the Ba'athists in Iraq who like to remove heads of Western civilians. In "Green Left Weekly" he has written articles celebrating the pro-terror International Solidarity Movement, accomplices of Palestinian terrorists. He has crayoned numerous pieces about how Africa is poor because white Westerners are racists. So, I guess, cheering Japanese imperialist aggressors and defending them against American occupiers is entirely consistent for Alexander Cockburn's newest recruit. Thursday, August 09, 2012
1. You can tell that things are really REALLY going well in Israel
when Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper printed in Hebrew, reports that Israelis by and large despise the Left. Which of course does not stop the Haaretz spin that fills the paper. The banner headline at the top of page 1 of today's Hebrew Haaretz reads, "The majority of the public holds leftist points of view but detests the Left." You can see the watered down English version here: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/think-tank-reviving-israeli-left-a-ten-year-project.premium-1.456919# The story is based on a public opinion survey conducted by a Far-Leftist propaganda group, which Haaretz calls a think tank. The propaganda group is called Molad - The Center for Renewal of Democracy. It was run until recently by arch anti-Zionist Avraham Burg. Burg is a vile scumbag who compares Israel with Nazi Germany (see http://stevenplaut.blogspot.co.il/2009_02_01_archive.html ). Involved in shady business "deals" in Israel, he moved to France years ago, but continues to try to undermine Israel from a nice safe distance. This Molad hired one Jim Gerstein to run a public opinion survey for it and Haaretz describes him as a leading pollster from America. In Haaretz' words, he is "a leading American pollster who worked for Ehud Barak during the then-Labor politician's campaign for prime minister." Well, knowing a thing or three about American public opinion surveying, I had never heard of Comrade Gerstein. It turns out he is a "pollster" for Tablet, the hippy leftist Jewish magazine best described as Tikkun-Lite. He spends the rest of his time working for "J Street," whose "J" we all know stands for "jihad." (See http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/18983/the-pulse-taker ) Well, Gerstein is about as serious a pollster as I am a ballerina. But the story is still noteworthy because even his "poll" finds that Israelis hate the Left. He claims to find that 63% of Israelis have a solidly negative opinion of the Left (it is not clear if Gerstein included Arabs in his survey). Left bashing is even stronger among young Israelis. And what about the Haaretz headline, claiming that most Israelis actually hold leftist opinions? Well, you can comb the entire article and you will not find anything that backs this headline "inference" by the newspaper of the thinking jihadist. The poll does find that most Israelis think the current government does not have solutions for the country's socioeconomic problems, and that the parties of the Right tend to promote their own interests over national interests. But that hardly means that Israelis are leftists. Hell, I agree with THOSE statements, and I have been accused of making Attila the Hun look like a liberal. The Haaretz "news" story is accompanied by a long whine by Yossi "Call me Ishmael" Sarid, printed as a news story, here: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/marketing-the-truth-has-never-been-easy-for-israel-s-left.premium-1.456931 As you see, Sarid complains that the Left has had trouble "marketing the truth," which of course shows that he still thinks that the Left tells the truth about things. He concludes that it is not the Left's fault that it is hated. Whose fault is it? The dingo who et his baby? 2. The Anti-Semitic Left http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=280574 Wistrich on 'the Left, the Jews and Israel' By ISI LEIBLER 08/08/2012 Candidly Speaking: Wistrich's analysis of the linkage of these revolutionaries with the Left's contemporary abandonment of Israel is a major intellectual and scholastic achievement. Robert Wistrich, Hebrew University professor of European and Jewish History and director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of anti-Semitism, has just published his 29th book titled From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel. It is an impressive tome of over 600 pages and follows his monumental seminal work A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, published in 2010 and now recognized as the definitive work on the world's oldest hatred, and an indispensable text for scholars. In a fascinating preface to his new book, Wistrich provides a brief autobiographical sketch. His father had originally been a supporter of the illegal Polish Communist Party in pre-war Krakow but became alienated from Stalinist communism after being arrested by the NKVD. He and his wife, who had experienced bitter Polish anti-Semitism, survived the Holocaust by fleeing to Kazakhstan, where Wistrich was born. He was educated in England, and to use his words, was "radicalized" in grammar school and later at Stanford University. He first visited Israel in 1961, returning in 1969 when he was appointed editor of the left-wing Israeli journal, New Outlook. However his passion for the Jewish state led to a parting of the ways with the Israeli far left. Robert became increasingly engaged in academic scholarship related to anti- Semitism, received a senior appointment at the Hebrew University, and is now recognized as the world's foremost scholar in the field. From Ambivalence to Betrayal is a historic review and analysis of the abandonment of the Jewish people by the left from the early 19th century until the present. It also relates to the extraordinarily disproportionate number of socialist thinkers and leaders who were of Jewish origin and seeks to explain what motivated so many of them, in the course of their utopian and futile efforts to "repair the world," to abandon their people and their heritage and frenetically seek to deny their kinsmen the right to self-determination. The introductory essay is a brilliant overview of the contemporary Jewish political arena viewed in the context of the concurrent rise of Zionism, Communism, anti-Semitism and Nazism. It focuses strongly on the hypocrisy of the existing left, which has become obsessed with demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state. Wistrich demonstrates the extent to which today's radical anti- Zionists, despite purporting to represent the left, often share the identical obsessions and delusions concerning the alleged malignant influence of the Jews in the modern world as classical fascist anti-Semites. Wistrich provides fascinating and innovative insights on left-wing revolutionaries. He skillfully relates the connection of "the prefigured 19th century sea-bed of anti-Semitic socialism found in Marx, Fourier and Proudhon, extending through to the orthodox Communists and 'non-conformist' Trotskyites to the Islamo-leftist hybrids of today who systematically vilify the so called racist essence of the Jewish State." His analysis of the linkage of these revolutionaries with the left's contemporary abandonment of Israel is a major intellectual and scholastic achievement and provides an intriguing insight into the sources of the far left's current application of double standards and anti- Israel venom. WISTRICH REVIEWS in depth the attitude towards the Jews adopted by many of the great socialist revolutionaries of Jewish origin like Karl Marx, Bernard Lazare, Moses Hess, Ferdinand LaSalle, Karl Kautsky, Victor Adler, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Bruno Kreisky, Isaac Deutscher and others. His chapter on Leon Trotsky, entitled "A Bolshevik's Tragedy," is a masterful essay which breaks new ground on this extraordinary, charismatic Jewish revolutionary who desperately sought to repudiate his Jewish origins. Yet, despite achieving the reputation of being "the most intransigent of revolutionary Bolsheviks," Trotsky was ultimately forced by Stalin into assuming the traditional Jewish role in society and became reviled as the scapegoat for the failures of the Revolution. Wistrich highlights the fact that many of today's anti-Jewish Jews inherited the mantle of the 19th and early 20th century anti-Semitic Jewish radical revolutionaries. Yet he stresses that these renegade Jews have vastly exceeded the anti-Semitic tirades of their predecessors and even to the extent of allying themselves with reactionary clerical zealots and jihadists, who represent the antithesis of their purported world outlook. He points to their public support and endorsement of terrorists and religious fanatics, noting that even the most extreme early anti-Jewish revolutionaries like Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg or Trotsky "would never have remained silent about Shari'a law, censorship, female genital mutilation, honor killings, suicide bombings, or making the world safe for Allah's rule," and rarely resorted to outright racist outbursts like their current successors. Nor would they have gone to the extreme of allying themselves with those explicitly committed to our physical destruction. Wistrich asserts that Holocaust inversion, now a major component of the Left's effort to besmirch Israel, while initially introduced by British historian Arnold Toynbee who referred to Zionists as "disciples of the Nazis," was in fact institutionalized as the "Zionist- Nazi" nexus at the Prague Trials orchestrated from Moscow. He reminds us that it was post-war Jewish Marxists who encouraged the left's current paranoia and "anti-racist" racism against Israel. As an example he quotes the Polish-born Jewish biographer of Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher, who already in 1967 described Israel as the "Prussia of the Middle East" and a bastion of "racial Talmudic exclusiveness and superiority." It was the Soviets who, in 1975, succeeded in passing a UN resolution bracketing Zionism and racism. While this was ultimately rescinded in December 1991, it remains today the central plank in the Arab-leftist efforts to criminalize Israel and brand it as a state engaging in war crimes. The concluding chapters review the anti-Zionist myths, many of which seem to have been directly replicated from Nazi propaganda and are today enthusiastically promoted by the Marxist Islamist alliance who regard Israel as the "Jew of the nations" fulfilling a dark preordained fate as an eternal scapegoat. Wistrich relates to the quasi-religious belief of these groups that "the world will only be 'liberated' by the downfall of America and the defeat of the Jews. This chiliastic fantasy has today emerged as a notable point of fusion between the radical anti-Zionist left in the West and the global jihad. Revolutionary anti-Semitism has become an increasingly important factor in cementing the anti-capitalist populism, much as it was during the birth pangs of modern socialism over 150 years ago." This is a magisterial work, providing a comprehensive understanding of the origins of the most pernicious challenges currently facing the Jewish people – especially those originating from the enemy within. It will be especially valuable to those directly engaged in the struggle to neutralize the evil efforts against Israel by the left-Islamic alliance and its acolytes of Jewish origin. 3. Semantic perversion: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12028 4. Environmental terror: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/158720 5. Syria is not the only place with beleaguered Alawites. It is not well known but there is a village of Alawites on Israel's border with Lebanon, in Israel's liberated Golan Heights. It is called Ghajar or Rajar. It has been the focus of some political conflict - Lebanon claims the village belongs to Lebanon, Israel - says not. The village has been split since the dark days of Ehud NeBARAKnezzer Barak, with half officially in Israel. Villagers from both halves have Israeli citizenship, although some also have Lebanese passports. The locals want to remain in Israel, what with all the nice meals and jobs and all that they enjoy as Israelis. Problem is that some of the villagers are demonstrating their solidarity with the Asads and the Syrian Alawite junta by engaging in terrorism and espionage. See this: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/158707 So how about we in Israel help out the suffering Syrian population by sending them some nice Alawites to help clean up the rubble?
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