Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
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The Left is Having Conniptions over Being Monitored and Exposed:
http://counterpunch.com/makdisi10182007.html
"Academic colleagues, get used to it," warned the pro-Israel activist Martin Kramer in March 2004. "Yes, you are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you've also posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at night."
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2535 (see web page
for links)
Gilad Atzmon is not exactly a household name in Israel. He is an Israeli
ultra-leftist who lives in England, where he works as a saxophone player.
He is also one of the worst anti-Semites on the planet. He is on record
calling for burning down synagogues. He is so openly anti-Semitic that
most British anti-Semites and anti-Zionists want nothing to do with him
and consider him an embarrassment. When some British Trotskyites invited
Atzmon to toot his horn at their event, they were loudly denounced by
other members of the British moonbatocracy. Atzmon is widely considered to
be a Holocaust Denier, and openly insists that the world needs MORE
Holocaust Deniers. He proclaims the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to
be factual and reliable. So naturally the leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine
Counterpunch adores him and runs him and his fulltime Italian Neo-Nazi
groupette.
Now the media in Germany this week are buzzing about the conviction of one
Sylvia Stolz for Holocaust Denial. She had been the lawyer for convicted
Neo-Nazi and Holocaust Denier Ernst Zendel, who was jailed in Germany
after being deported from Canada. DW-World reports:
'Judges in the western city of Mannheim sentenced lawyer Sylvia Stolz to
three and a half years in prison on charges that include inciting racial
hatred, and barred her from practicing law for five years. Stolz made the
remarks in 2006 while representing "historian" Ernst Z.ndel, who was
handed a five-year prison term in Germany last February for repeatedly
disputing the Holocaust as a historical fact. The 44-year-old also signed
a motion during Z.ndel's trial with "Heil Hitler" and shouted that the lay
judges deserved the death penalty for "offering succour to the enemy" --
leading the court to dismiss her."
Atzmon played a crucial role in the trial of Stolz. She 'read a newspaper
article to the court about the appearance of world renowned Israeli
artist, Gilad Atzmon in Bochum. In a public statement, Atzmon is quoted as
having said that the written history of the Second World War and the
Holocaust are a .complete forgery, initiated by Americans and Zionists..'
Even more details appear on the Holocaust Denial web site based in
Australia, run by the so-called "Adelaide Institute," arguably the worst
Neo-Nazi group on the planet. Its site praises Atzmon and reports:
'A total revision of history worldwide is beginning as an insurrection
against Jewish world dominance. As a result of this, the demand of the
German Reich for reinstatement of its ability to function will be
acknowledged. The realization of historical revision will then be
inevitable. A few days ago, on 27 November 2005, Gilad Atzmon introduced
the most radical blow that has as yet been struck against the political
indoctrination forced on us. This is to be found in Exhibit No. 1 .
Because he is himself a Jew and highly esteemed worldwide, his words carry
especial weight. In his appeal to the Germans he is quoted as follows: .In
Israel, one is imprisoned if one disagrees with official opinion.. This is
particularly true with regard to the past. In his books, Gilad Atzmon
attempts to .rearrange this past.. He describes the historiography of the
Second World War and Holocaust, so familiar to us, as a complete
falsification invented by Zionists and Americans. He shows that the real
enemy was not Hitler but Stalin. The Germans must finally realize this and
stop feeling guilty -- and above all, to stop feeling responsible. .It is
You who are the victims. Atzmon says. He reminds the Germans that the
bombing attacks on German cities took place because the Americans had
plenty of bombs and wanted to use them; the same happened in Vietnam and
now in Afghanistan and Iraq. He reiterates that the true evildoers of our
time are George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Ariel Sharon. (Source:
Ruhrnachrichten (News of the Ruhr,) Bochum, Tuesday, November 29, 2005
'The breach opened by Gilad Atzmon makes it possible to get a new
understanding of what Konrad Adenauer, the first Federal Chancellor of the
Federal Republic of Germany, related in his Memoirs - Exhibit No. 6 -
about the physical genocide against the German people in 1945....A few
days after Atzmon's statement, a second powerful blow struck the Holocaust
religion. In Mecca, the most important pilgrimage site in the Muslim
world, the Iranian head of state Ahmadineschad publically acknowledged
that he is a holocaust denier and proposed a highly logical solution to
the Jewish question.'
Finally, it is worth noting that an Israeli need not be a leftist to
collaborate with the Neo-Nazi Adelaide Institute and indeed one is the
star of their web site. Conspiracy "inventor" Barry Chamish, best known
for composing fictional "theories" about the Rabin assassination and for
his "discoveries" concerning UFOs, regularly publishes his "articles" on
the Adelaide Institute Holocaust Denial web site. So Atzmon has good
company there.
An appetite for self-destruction
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s32s35&SecId=35&AId=57392&ATypeId=1
11/01/2008
By Melanie Phillips
Beyond the grandstanding over President Bush.s visit to Israel this week,
there is an even more important concern than over what America may be
pushing it to do. This is Israel.s own attitude towards its identity and
history and, by extension, its right to exist at all.
Among the Israeli intellectual elite, the instinct for national
self-destruction reaches near-hallucinatory levels.
A recent research paper by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, which wondered
why, unlike other armies, Israeli soldiers did not rape women under their
occupation, claimed that this was because IDF troops viewed Arab women as
sub-human. This absurd piece of malice was awarded a teachers. committee
prize by the Hebrew University.
Clearly, Nitzan should have interviewed Ha.aretz editor-in-chief David
Landau, who was reported as telling US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
at a dinner last September that the Israeli government wanted .to be
raped. as it was a .failed state. that needed a US-imposed settlement.
Such grand guignol flights from reason can only deepen respect for the
strategic genius of Yasir Arafat.
He understood that while Jews would unite against conventional attack,
they wouldn.t cope with the psychological pressure of being turned into
international pariahs through a falsified colonial narrative of
oppression.
But even he could hardly have foreseen the extent to which Israeli
intellectuals would so completely invert their own history, and swallow
the fiction that the Middle East impasse is over the division of the land
and that Jewish possession of that land is illegitimate.
This series of untruths has now coalesced into an axiomatic assumption
that Jerusalem must be divided, as stated by Israel.s Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert in an interview in the Jerusalem Post last weekend.
But as Dore Gold authoritatively documents in his important book The Fight
for Jerusalem, the Jews have a unique and overwhelming claim to Jerusalem
which is central to the unique nature of the Jewish state.
It is no accident, therefore, that this pressure to divide Jerusalem comes
at a time when the Jewishness of Israel is being openly called into
question. Olmert says that a .two-state solution. is essential to preserve
Israel as a Jewish state. But the Arabs themselves have now ruled out a
Jewish state altogether.
Olmert insists nevertheless that Mahmoud Abbas accepts Israel as a Jewish
state .in his soul.. Olmert clearly possesses truly wondrous psychic
powers, displayed even as members of Fatah associated with Abbas.s own
security apparatus were murdering two Israelis on a hike near Hebron.
The West believes that dividing Jerusalem is the fairest solution. But
when were aggressors ever thus rewarded at the expense of their victims,
even while they continued their century-old war as the Arabs are doing?
Why doesn.t Israel put the record straight? Why doesn.t it remind the
world of that same world.s conclusion back in 1920 that the Jews had a
unique claim to the entire land of Israel, including Jerusalem? Why
doesn.t it recall how, when Jordan illegally occupied east Jerusalem until
1967, it desecrated Jewish holy sites, ripping up Jewish gravestones on
the Mount of Olives to use them for latrines?
Why doesn.t it tell the world that the Islamic claim to Jerusalem is not
so much religious as political . and that, as Gold states in his book,
since the capture of Jerusalem is seen as the precursor to the fall of the
entire West, the division of the city would recruit untold additional
numbers to the global jihad?
It doesn.t do so for two reasons. First, it still fails to grasp that the
real battleground is composed not of rockets and human bombs but of ideas.
And second, much of its intellectual class has come to believe the
mendacious propaganda of Israel.s enemies.
In Israeli schools and on campus, there is widespread ignorance of Jewish
history and of the indissoluble bond between the religion, the people and
the land which constitutes Jewish identity.
When Israel.s Education Minister issues a textbook for Israeli Arab
children that teaches them the Arab propaganda line that the 1948 War of
Independence was a naqba, or catastrophe, something has gone badly wrong
with the foundations of Israeli self-belief.
The real reason Israel doesn.t fight the battle of ideas to defend Jewish
history and identity is that increasingly it is repudiating them. The
Arabs thus don.t need to do much to bring about the end of the Jewish
state. The Jews will do it for them.
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist
2. Anti-speech SLAPP suits . not only in Israel:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F5AACF88-0C2A-44B3-9E2D-549192C8579A
3.
http://www.davidproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=65&Itemid=97
The "Radical Professors" bellow
4. Columbia University's groupies of Iran:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=307F47AD-1F1B-4C4C-B048-975FB452FA0F
5. Campus Free Speech:
January 17, 2008
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Papal Inquisition
January 17, 2008; Page A16
American universities aren't the only places where politically incorrect
speakers are silenced nowadays. This week in Rome, of all places, Pope
Benedict XVI found himself censored by scholars, of all people, at one of
Europe's most prestigious universities.
On Tuesday the pontiff canceled a speech scheduled for today at Sapienza
University of Rome in the wake of a threat by students and 67 faculty
members to disrupt his appearance. The scholars argued that it was
inappropriate for a religious figure to speak at their university.
This pope's specific sin was a speech he gave nearly 20 years ago in
which, they claimed, he indicated support for the 17th-century heresy
trial against Galileo. The censoring scholars apparently failed to
appreciate the irony that, in preventing the pope from speaking, they were
doing to him what the Church once did to Galileo, stifling free speech and
intellectual inquiry.
One of Benedict's favorite themes is that European civilization derives
from the rapprochement between Greek philosophy and religious belief,
between Athens and Jerusalem. In the speech he wasn't allowed to give, the
pope planned to talk about the role of popes and universities.
It is a pope's task, he wrote, to "maintain high the sensibility for the
truth, to always invite reason to put itself anew at the service of the
search for the true, the good, for God." La Sapienza -- which means
"wisdom" -- was founded by one of the pope's predecessors in 1303. Another
unappreciated irony.
6. January 17, 2008
COMMENTARY
Liberal Hatemongers
By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
January 17, 2008; Page A16
A politically progressive friend of mine always seemed to root against
baseball teams from the South. The Braves, the Rangers, the Astros -- he
hated them all. I asked him why, to which he replied, "Southerners are
prejudiced."
The same logic is evident in the complaint the American political left has
with conservative voters. According to the political analysis of filmmaker
Michael Moore, whose perception of irony apparently does not extend to his
own words, "The right wing, that is not where America's at . . . It's just
a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist in the politics
of hate . . . They are hate-triots."
What about liberals? According to University of Chicago law professor
Geoffrey Stone, "Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own
truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others." They
also "believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of
difference." Indeed, generations of academic scholars have assumed that
the "natural personality" of political conservatives is characterized by
hostile intolerance towards those with opposing viewpoints and lifestyles,
while political liberals inherently embrace diversity.
As we are dragged through another election season, it is worth critically
reviewing these stereotypes. Do the data support the claim that
conservatives are haters, while liberals are tolerant of others? A handy
way to answer this question is with what political analysts call "feeling
thermometers," in which people are asked on a survey to rate others on a
scale of 0-100. A zero is complete hatred, while 100 means adoration. In
general, when presented with people or groups about which they have
neutral feelings, respondents give temperatures of about 70. Forty is a
cold temperature, and 20 is absolutely freezing.
In 2004, the University of Michigan's American National Election Studies
(ANES) survey asked about 1,200 American adults to give their thermometer
scores of various groups. People in this survey who called themselves
"conservative" or "very conservative" did have a fairly low opinion of
liberals -- they gave them an average thermometer score of 39. The score
that liberals give conservatives: 38. Looking only at people who said they
are "extremely conservative" or "extremely liberal," the right gave the
left a score of 27; the left gives the right an icy 23. So much for the
liberal tolerance edge.
Some might argue that this is simply a reflection of the current political
climate, which is influenced by strong feelings about the current
occupants of the White House. And sure enough, those on the extreme left
give President Bush an average temperature of 15 and Vice President Cheney
a 16. Sixty percent of this group gives both men the absolute lowest
score: zero.
To put this into perspective, note that even Saddam Hussein (when he was
still among the living) got an average score of eight from Americans. The
data tell us that, for six in ten on the hard left in America today,
literally nobody in the entire world can be worse than George W. Bush and
Dick Cheney.
This doesn't sound very tolerant to me -- nor especially rational, for
that matter. To be fair, though, let's roll back to a time when the far
right was accused of temporary insanity: the late Clinton years, when
right-wing pundits practically proclaimed the end of Western civilization
each night on cable television because President Clinton had been exposed
as a perjurious adulterer.
In 1998, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were hardly popular among conservatives.
Still, in the 1998 ANES survey, Messrs. Clinton and Gore both received a
perfectly-respectable average temperature of 45 from those who called
themselves extremely conservative. While 28% of the far right gave Clinton
a temperature of zero, Gore got a zero from just 10%. The bottom line is
that there is simply no comparison between the current hatred the extreme
left has for Messrs. Bush and Cheney, and the hostility the extreme right
had for Messrs. Clinton and Gore in the late 1990s.
Does this refute the stereotype that right-wingers are "haters" while
left-wingers are not? Liberals will say that the comparison is unfair,
because Mr. Bush is so much worse than Mr. Clinton ever was. Yes, Mr.
Clinton may have been imperfect, but Mr. Bush -- whom people on the far
left routinely compare to Hitler -- is evil. This of course destroys the
liberal stereotype even more eloquently than the data. The very essence of
intolerance is to dehumanize the people with whom you disagree by
asserting that they are not just wrong, but wicked.
In the end, we have to face the fact that political intolerance in America
-- ugly and unfortunate on either side of the political aisle -- is to be
found more on the left than it is on the right. This may not square with
the moral vanity of progressive political stereotypes, but it's true.
Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public
Affairs and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is
the author of the forthcoming book "Gross National Happiness."
8. Obama and Farrakhan:
http://thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a2220/News/National.html
Ah Haaretz, the Palestinian newspaper printed in Hebrew, the home of
Gideon Levy and Amira Hass who never met an Israeli deserving of being
defended from terrorists, the newspaper whose idea of pluralism is running
one non-leftist item for each 100 leftist ones, the "newspaper" that lets
its anti-Zionist ideology infiltrate the news, the medium that makes
Pravda under Brezhnev look truly diverse. (Levy is so openly anti-Semitic
that he just won the "European-Mediterranean Prize for Cultural Dialogue."
My guess is that Ernst Zundel will get it next year.) Haaretz' editor
David Landau recently urged the United States to "rape Israel" (his words)
into capitulating to Arab demands, in effect calling on the US to
extinguish Israeli sovereignty. Interestingly, Haaretz is also
fanatically anti-American, and loves to reprint articles by American
leftist journalists and by Eurotrash about how evil America is.
Take today's paper. Please
The banner headline concerns the assassination yesterday of Husam a-Zahar,
the 22 year old terrorist son of a senior Hamas terrorhoid, one Mahmoud
a-Zahar. A second offspring of the senior terrorhoid had been recycled by
Israel back in 2003. Other Palestinian terrorists were also killed in
Gaza yesterday in a day of uncharacteristically active military activity
by Israel, responding to the sniping murder of an Ecuador volunteer worker
on a kibbutz near Gaza inside Israel's pre-1967 border line and to the
daily barrages of Qassam rockets on Sderot. Haaretz wants Qassam rockets
fired out of the West Bank at Netanya and Tel Aviv and that is why it
wants Israel to withdraw to its 1967 Green Line borders and then let in a
million "Palestinian refugees," so Israel will be transformed into the
third Arab state in historic Palestine.
Haaretz' Hebrew banner headline today is "Because of the killing of
A-Zahar no deal for the Release of Gilad Shalit will be Imminent."
Got that? Gilad Shalit is the Israeli soldier kidnapped by the savages in
Gaza a year and a half back. There has not been the slightest progress in
getting him released nor the slightest hint from the Hamas that he is even
still alive. But Haaretz spins the killing yesterday of the son of the
terrorist chief as a folly by Israel, where Israel itself is now to blame
for the failure to get Shalit released! You know, the Hamas was just
about to release him. In fact, every time Israel undertakes any military
action, the Arabs were just about to make peace with Israel but Israel
spoiled things, or so Haaretz would have you believe.
To drive the point home, just under the headline, Haaretz runs two photos
side by side of crying children: one is a kid in Sderot in shock from the
Qassam rockets landing near her, and the other is a Gaza Arab kid upset by
the noise of the explosions that recycled a-Zahar. In Haaretz eyes the
two are moral equivalents. When Israel kills Hamas terror leaders to put
a stop to the countless rockets being fired at Sderot civilians, this is
the moral equivalent of firing at those civilians in the first place.
After all, both actions make loud noises and scare kids.
Another headline is that 11 Jews families have moved into an "Arab
neighborhood" in Jerusalem, Haaretz reports, a place where they obviously
do not belong and have no right to be. Haaretz thinks half of Jerusalem
should be exclusive "Arab neighborhoods."
If a gated community in the US were to adopt a policy to deny residence
entry to illegal Mexican migrants Haaretz would be running lurid headlines
denouncing them for racism. Haaretz also runs weekly articles attacking
kibbutzim and small closed Jewish communities in the Galilee whose
membership committees do not admit Arabs as members for any reason. When
the Druse in Peki'in in the Galilee launched a pogrom against the handful
of Jewish families living there to drive them out, Haaretz "understood"
their grievances. Jews have lived in Peki'in without interruption since
Roman days.
2. Israeli Self-Abasement
By Kenneth Levin
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=3B471F2D-569D-47FE-A4C3-E098D1077150
Arab Belligerence, Israeli Self-Abasement
________________________________________
By:Kenneth Levin Wednesday, January 9, 2008
________________________________________
"... Hand in hand, arm in arm, we will protect your land, Palestine...
"The land is Arab in history and identity
"Palestine is Arab in history and identity...
"From Jerusalem and Acre, from Haifa and Jericho and Gaza and Ramallah
"From Bethlehem and Jaffa, from Beersheva and Ramla,
"From Nablus to the Galilee, from Tiberias to Hebron."
These lines, translated by Palestinian Media Watch, are some lyrics of a
song played many times daily on Fatah-TV, the television outlet of
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.s party, beginning about six
weeks before the Annapolis conference in late November.
The song, in declaring Israeli cities, and by implication all of Israel,
to be properly "Arab" and "Palestinian," repeats the message drummed out
incessantly by Palestinian Authority media, mosques and schools, whether
under the presidency of Yasir Arafat or Abbas.
That message asserts Jews have no historical connection with the land of
Israel, are merely alien usurpers, that their state and their presence in
the land is a crime, and that it is the duty of every Palestinian to kill
or expel the intruders and destroy their state.
For almost an entire generation of Palestinians, exposure to media,
mosques and schools has meant indoctrination in these claims.
Surely, an Israeli leader meeting with Palestinian counterparts has no
higher responsibility than to challenge them publicly on their sponsorship
of hate-education and incitement. It is the Israeli government.s duty to
unmask the murderous hypocrisy of Palestinian leaders talking "two-state
solution" and "mutual recognition" in speeches to Western audiences while
militating for a single, Arab, state in all the land when talking in
Arabic, through their organs of indoctrination, to their own people.
One would expect an Israeli leader to recognize the obvious: that only by
bringing the pressure of public exposure to bear on Palestinian promotion
of hatred and mass murder can there be any possibility of curbing the
incitement.
Only if Palestinian leaders are prepared to encourage reconciliation
rather than a war of extermination in their messages to their people can
there be any hope of movement toward genuine peace.
And yet Israeli leaders are virtually silent. In his speech at Annapolis,
Prime Minister Olmert demanded "an end to the terror, incitement and
hatred." But he named no party as responsible for incitement, referred to
President Abbas only as "my friend" and said nothing of indoctrination by
Abbas.s own party organs, indoctrination that is hardly a sign of
"friendship" but serves rather to assure a future of more war, not peace.
Not once did Olmert say what must be said, something of the order of:
"President Abbas, we would like nothing more than to be able to negotiate
with you a settlement that assures peace and prosperity for both our
peoples as they go their separate political ways. But that goal will
remain beyond reach as long as you continue to urge on your people to
pursue our annihilation."
Similarly, much was made by Israeli officials of the attendance at
Annapolis of Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, as though this were an
indication of Saudi movement toward recognition of Israel.s legitimacy. In
his speech in Maryland, Olmert said of the Saudis only, "I value [the 2002
Saudi] initiative, acknowledge its importance and highly appreciate its
contribution."
But Saudi government media are likewise filled with demonization of Jews
in the crudest terms, with children praised for parroting anti-Jewish
aspersions and Saudi audiences taught the necessity of expunging Israel.
Why did not one Israeli leader at Annapolis state the obvious to those
Saudis present: that, again, there cannot be peace when you are
indoctrinating your people, including your children, to believe that Jews
are evil, an infestation that must be eradicated?
Why did Foreign Minister Livni choose to criticize the Arab potentates at
Annapolis primarily for their refusal to shake her hand? Why did she
choose to address the personal insult, and its indirect slap at Israel,
but did not see fit to challenge them on the more profound and dangerous
insult of those leaders inciting their publics to rejection and murderous
hatred of Jews?
Likewise, Egypt was once more cast by Israel.s representatives as a model
peace partner. Olmert declared, "The peace signed between Israel and
Egypt... is a solid foundation of stability and hope in our region. This
peace is an example and a model of the relations which we can build with
Arab states."
Yet since the signing of the Camp David peace accords between Israel and
Egypt nearly three decades ago, the government in Cairo has increased the
anti-Israel and indeed anti-Semitic message of its official media. For
example, earlier this year Israel.s peace partner broadcast on
government-controlled television an interview with a "scholar" who
affirmed that Jews do indeed use the blood of gentile children in the
preparation of Passover matzah.
Some months prior to the broadcast, an article written by the chief Mufti
of Egypt and published in Egypt.s major government newspaper, Al-Ahram,
made the same assertion. Is it not obvious that Israeli leaders have both
a moral and pragmatic obligation not to let such vile demonization of Jews
pass when they meet with Egyptian officials?
The pattern of Israeli leaders skirting this essential issue, or alluding
to it only in broad generalities while holding no one responsible for
anti-Israel and anti-Jewish indoctrination, was repeated by Foreign
Minister Livni in her speech at December.s Paris Donors Conference
organized to raise funds for the Palestinians.
On the same day as the Paris conference and the following day, the IDF
struck at terrorist groups in Gaza involved in rocket and mortar attacks
into Israel. Abbas, through his spokesman, condemned the Israeli strikes,
which reportedly killed eleven terrorists, as a "terrible crime." Terms he
has used to characterize similar actions by Israel over the past two years
include "heinous massacre," "crime against humanity," and "barbarous
slaughter."
While criticizing Hamas and other Gaza groups, particularly to Western
audiences, for their incessant bombardment of Israel, his message to his
own people is largely vilification of Israeli responses against those
perpetrating the cross-border terror and virtual silence about the
terrorist provocations.
Why has not the Israeli prime minister or foreign minister publicly
confronted Abbas and told him it is hard to take seriously his
condemnations of anti-Israel terror and commitment to end it, or his
insistence that he desires genuine peace, when he is telling his fellow
Palestinians essentially that those targeted by Israel for their
cross-border attacks are innocent victims of Israeli aggression?
Does Israel.s becoming a normal state mean today.s Israeli leaders simply
accepting their people.s defamation and denigration, letting the
inflammatory rhetoric pass in silence, out of gratitude for Arab leaders
deigning to sit in the same room with them? Does it mean emulating the
behavior of Jewish leaders when Jews were at best tolerated inferiors in
Europe and the Arab world?
Beyond the demonization, the anti-Jewish indoctrination, the words, are
the deeds. In the days leading up to Annapolis, members of Abbas.s police
plotted to kill Prime Minister Olmert and succeeded in murdering an
Israeli in a drive-by shooting. Egyptian forces continued to allow Hamas
to smuggle arms and explosives into Gaza and to send its members for
terrorist training in Iran and return to ply their new-learned skills
against the Jewish state. And the Saudis continued to both finance
Islamist forces targeting Israel and boycott the Jewish state, even though
they pledged to end the boycott as a condition for their being admitted in
2005 to the World Trade Organization. But nothing of this passed the lips
of Israel.s leaders at Annapolis.
To the contrary, Olmert.s administration reportedly withheld from the
media, until after the Maryland meeting, the news that the drive-by
killing a few days earlier was the work of PA police. Israel.s leaders
were apparently concerned that revealing the truth about the murderers
would spoil the atmosphere in Annapolis.
In a similar vein, according to recent news accounts, the Olmert
government has refused, despite the urging of the IDF, to share with key
members of Congress videotapes of Egyptian forces helping Hamas terrorists
cross into Gaza and smuggle arms and explosives across the Sinai-Gaza
border. Israeli leaders are said to be worried about offending Egypt. They
have embraced this stance even though such Egyptian collusion with Hamas
is a violation of numerous agreements between Egypt and Israel and greatly
increases the threats to Israel.
In late December, Foreign Minister Livni, who had come under sharp
criticism for Israel.s withholding the tapes from Congress, finally made a
public statement criticizing Egyptian failure to stop Hamas smuggling as
"dismal and problematic." But Livni did not point out that Egypt.s
behavior is a contravention of its Camp David treaty obligations to Israel
as well as of specific agreements that accompanied Israel.s permitting
additional Egyptian forces along the Gaza border for policing duties.
Nor did she note that the Egyptian violations represent a grave danger to
Israel. Rather, she explained the problem with Egypt.s behavior as its
"detract[ing] from the ability of the pragmatic forces in the Gaza Strip
and Judea and Samaria [her ludicrous characterization of Mahmoud Abbas and
his Fatah party] to control the territory."
When Egyptian officials subsequently slammed Livni for not knowing what
she was talking about, and even accused Israel of fabricating the tapes
showing Egyptian forces aiding Hamas smuggling, the Israeli response was,
once more, virtual silence.
Such behavior by Israeli leaders, particularly silence in the face of Arab
defamation and incitement, is nothing new. Illustrative are the responses
of Defense Minister Ehud Barak to various events during his premiership.
In the Austrian elections of October 1999, Joerg Haider.s far right
Freedom Party did unexpectedly well, and Barak expressed concern and
called for a struggle against fascism and neo-Nazism. Four months later,
when Austria.s president agreed to the formation of a coalition government
that would include Haider.s party, Israel recalled its ambassador from
Vienna.
During these same months, Syria.s state-controlled media ran several
stories with anti-Semitic themes. One such, in late November, regurgitated
the blood libel, the claim that Jews use the blood of gentiles for their
religious rituals, which was also the theme of a popular book by Syria.s
defense minister, Mustafa Tlas (The Matzah of Zion, 1984). Two months
later, in late January, 2000, an editorial in Syria.s leading newspaper,
Tishreen, a mouthpiece for the Assad regime, focused on denial of the
Holocaust while insisting that Israeli policies are worse than those of
the Nazis.
By any measure, Arab anti-Semitism is a much greater threat to Israel, and
to Jews generally, than the Freedom Party in Austria. Yet Barak remained
silent on the Syrian libels. His most notable comments regarding the
Syrian government during this period was his characterization of Syrian
strongman Hafez al-Assad as "a courageous leader."
Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi, contrasting Barak.s responses to events
in Austria and in Syria, observed: "[Barak] is afraid of reminding the
Israeli public about the nature of the regime to which he proposes
yielding the strategic Golan Heights in exchange for a peace likely to be
as trustworthy as Tishreen.s sense of history."
Obviously, many Israeli leaders delude themselves into believing that the
defamation, the incitement, the hate-indoctrination are not really all
that important. They prefer to believe that Israel can negotiate
agreements and that peace can ensue despite Arab governments teaching
their people that their faith and their honor oblige them to pursue defeat
of the Jews and the annihilation of their state.
These Israeli leaders choose to construe the proper path, in the interest
of pursuing peace, to be gratitude for any sign of recognition from the
Arab side, and avoidance of broaching unpleasant facts when speaking with
Arab interlocutors, especially in public, even as those interlocutors
almost invariably slander Israel on such occasions.
How absurd, and dangerous, that there are Israeli leaders who choose to
believe, despite everything the other side says, and does, and inculcates
in its young, that sufficient Israeli concessions will turn reality on its
head and win "peace."
How absurd, and self-destructive, that they refuse to acknowledge the
truth that presently, and for the foreseeable future, the Palestinians and
most of the Arab world are not prepared to recognize Israel.s legitimacy
and give it genuine peace, whatever Israel.s concessions. Indeed, the Arab
world does not recognize the rights of any minorities within its midst,
whether religious or ethnic.
Genocidal campaigns that have taken the lives of two million Christian and
animist blacks in the southern Sudan and tens of thousands of Muslim
blacks in Darfur and some two hundred thousand Kurds . a Muslim but
non-Arab people . in Iraq, have all proceeded with broad support from Arab
regimes and their populations. So, too, has the suppression of the
language and culture of Berbers in Algeria and Kurds in Syria.
The Arab world is not about to make an exception for, of all people, the
Jews, recognizing their right to a state in however small a part of that
vast territory . stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf . that
Muslim Arabs consider exclusively theirs.
Israel cannot oblige the Arabs to give it peace. To be sure, this truth is
unpleasant. But it does not serve Israel.s interests to pretend the
reality is otherwise.
It does not advance the nation.s well being when its leaders genuflect to
the other side.s hypocritical expressions of interest in peace, averments
made mainly for the sake of Western consumption and indeed to increase
Western pressure on Israel.
Rather, it serves the state to have its leaders explicitly acknowledge,
and confront, Arab demonization, incitement, and hate-indoctrination .
that is, Arab dedication to the opposite of peace.
One might retort that insisting on recognition of unpleasant truths will
not serve to moderate Arab policies.
But only by doing so can Israel convey to the world the true challenges
posed by its enemies . challenges that preclude for the present any
possibility of genuine peace. Only by doing so can it cast the light of
public scrutiny on the steps necessary from the other side if there is to
be movement toward an end to the conflict. And only by doing so will
Israel be acting like a normal nation.
Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian and author of "The Oslo
Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege" (Smith and Kraus, 2005), now
available in paperback.
3. Differentiating Between Blind Hate And Honest Criticism
By: Phyllis Chesler
4. Poland to prosecute historian for telling the truth:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3493844,00.html
5. And you thought you had heard the last of DePaul?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=EF4FE3A1-BB7B-4698-97A3-8170F7B44911
6. A REAL Peace Program:
Arrest and Prosecute this Occupier of Palestine
by Steven Plaut
7 Shevat 5768, 1/14/2008
Every time I hear about the Argentine-born anti-Israel anti-Jewish
terrorism-justifier conductor Daniel Barenboim, I like to contemplate a
nice place in which to insert his baton.
Barenboim has a long history of slavishly servicing the forces of
Palestinian fascism. When he is not busy playing Wagner for the Germans,
he denounces Israel from just about every venue that comes his way, down
to and including Columbia University, while celebrating his personal guru
Edward Said.
Barenboim's latest prank has been to accept citizenship in the
terroracracy-in-the-erecting, "Palestine." The Jerusalem Post reports:
' Barenboim, who had been playing regular concerts in the PA - the only
renowned Israeli musician to do so - said he was honored by the
gesture...."I hope that my new status will be an example of
Israeli-Palestinian coexistence," said Barenboim as he received the new
passport at the end of a concert he played in Ramallah.'
Now I know what you are thinking and that is that this makes Barenboim an
occupier of Palestine, in fact - a settler, and as such he should be just
as entitled to the many forms of execration, prosecution, demonization,
indictment, violent arrest by police on horses, and other forms of
persecution that other Israeli settlers of what Barenboim regards as
"Palestine" enjoy every day. Even better, since all those far-Leftist
professors in Israel celebrate and promote terror attacks on Jewish
settlers as legitimate Palestinian "resistance," they should immediately
demand that Barenboim be included in the target.
To the Right: Barenboim serenades the late
Professor of Terror Edward Said.
Me? I propose that we supply Barenboim with a new Preparation H baton.
2. Feminazis: http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/AntiSemi/12564.htm
3. More Jihad from Sapir College:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3493016,00.html
Arab lecturer forbids student from wearing Star of David
Sapir College instructor who gained notoriety when he refused to teach a
student wearing an IDF uniform in spotlight once more after student claims
he barred display of Israeli flag in his classroom, berated her for
wearing Star of David necklace.
Sapir College is a hotbed of far-left radicalism and Arab fascism. It
lies in the outskirts of Sderot and has itself already been hit by Qassam
rockets. Large segments of its faculty no doubt cheer every time a rocket
lands in Sderot.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BF9C3AA2-8B51-4960-9E77-12C418DD6BEA
The Oxford Union's Destructive .Debate.
By Alan M. Dershowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | 1/11/2008
In October of 2007 I wrote an obituary for the Oxford Union. This
student-run group purports to be one of the most distinguished debating
societies in the world. Yet its debates have become more one-sided, more
absurd, and more trivial than most bar room brawls.
The scheduled debate that led me to write the October obituary was
supposed to be on the following proposition: .This house believes that
one state is the only solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.. Nothing
wrong with that (other than that no one would dream of proposing a similar
topic with regard to India-Pakistan-Bangladesh or any of the other divided
states in the world today).
The problem was with the debaters selected by the Oxford Union to defend
the two-state solution, which is synonymous with Israel.s right to exist.
One of the speakers selected to represent the pro-Israel side was Norman
Finkelstein, who was recently fired from DePaul University for his lack of
scholarship and his ad hominems against pro-Israel writers (including me).
The other debater selected to represent the pro-Israel side refused to
appear with Finkelstein on the same side and so the debate was cancelled.
Now the Oxford Union has gone even further. It has scheduled a debate on
January 24 on whether Israel has the right to exist. Both speakers on the
supposed pro-Israel side are virulent Israel-haters and strong supporters
of Palestinian terrorism.
One is Norman Finkelstein, who is currently joining hands with the
Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, whose goal is the military destruction
of Israel. Finkelstein supports Hezbollah and says that this terrorist
organization .represents the hope.. He has previously regretted not being
more supportive of Hezbollah in its military attacks on Israel. And he
was selected to be one of the two pro-Israel advocates. With friends like
these.
The other invited speaker is just as bad. He is a philosophy professor
named Ted Honderich, who believes that the Palestinian terrorists have .a
moral right in their terrorism against Israelis.. He analogizes Israel to
Apartheid South Africa, which he of course said did not have a right to
exist. Yet he too has been selected to speak on behalf of Israel.
The Oxford Union had it within their power to select a genuine advocate of
Israel.s right to exist, since even in England there are a few of those.
I know, because I have been getting outraged letters from Oxford students,
alumni and ordinary citizens about the forthcoming debate. For example,
one of Great Britain.s most distinguished lawyers and writers is Anthony
Julius. He could make an effective case for Israel.s right to exist, as
could many other prominent individuals.
But at the Oxford Union, the only debate permitted is over the means used
to end Israel.s existence; whether Israel should be destroyed by
Palestinian suicide bombers, by Hezbollah rockets or by some other means.
This is not a public debate. It is a public execution.
2. More Olmert of the First Amendment:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124882
Even More of the Olmert First Amendment:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124867
3. No more pullouts:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3492314,00.html
4. Arab fascist Ahmad Tibi finds some racism:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3492422,00.html
5.
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-solve-counterpunch-nation.html
Friday, January 11, 2008
How to Solve the Counterpunch-Nation Problem via the "One Magazine
Solution"!!
Columbia University Jihadist Navasky, seeking a Rwanda Solution for the
Problem of Israel's Existence
We have this amazing idea for how to deal with the Far-Left neo-Stalinist
anti-Semitic web magazines Counterpunch and The Nation. It is called the
"One-Magazine Solution".
The idea is that Counterpunch, The Nation, and Jewish Press merge and then
continue to operate as a single web magazine under the hegemonic control
of ourselves, while the Counterpunch and Nation writers and editors would
be assured minority rights (fair trials for treason). Well, except for
those Counterpunchers born outside the US, like Alexander Cockburn, who
would be expelled back to the countries whence they came.
Now before you accuse me of ingesting the same substances as the editors
of Tikkun Magazine, let me explain. The Neofascist Left, and by that I
mean the extremist Left best represented by Counterpunch and "The Nation"
(or - as I prefer to call it - The Moonbatnation) have in recent years
been demonstrating a refreshing candor and openess when it comes to their
anti-Semitism. Unlike so many others, they do not pretend that they simply
oppose Zionism but-got-nothing-against-dem-Joos-as-such-mind-you.
Specifically, they are entirely open about the fact that they want to see
Israel destroyed. They call it the "One State Solution," also known as the
Rwanda Solution, in which Israel will be enfolded into an Arab Palestinian
Islamofascist Third World Kleptocratic State, encompassing all Israeli
territory, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The Jews would be assured
minority status in this Arab-majority entity, and so would be treated
almost as well as the Copts in Egypt or the Kurds in Iraq or the southern
Sudanese are today.
Now, how come Israel is the only country on the planet that these folks
demand be destroyed, you ask? It is very simple. Israel is the only Jewish
country and the Neofascist Left hates Jews. Sometimes the Lefties pretend
they want Israel destroyed because they claim it is a "discriminatory" or
"immoral" country, but no one thinks they really believe that. Israel is
by far the least discriminatory and immoral country in the Middle East and
the state of human rights in Israel is at least a thousand times better
than in the next-best state in the Middle East.
In recent years, Counterpunch has run quite a few articles opposing the
"Two State Solution" and endorsing the "One State Solution". The
"Two-State Solution" to the Middle East conflict should in fact be more
correctly termed the "Twenty Four State Solution," meaning 22 Arab states,
Israel, and the new terror state these people want the "Palestinian" to
run.
As envisioned in the "Road Map", the Arabs would add to their twenty two
existing states, holding land almost twice the area of the United States,
and yet another state, a twenty-third Arab state to be called Palestine,
the second Arab state to be erected in the territory of historic Palestine
(the other one being named Jordan), while the Jews would keep their one
tiny statelet with land smaller than New Jersey for at least another month
or two.
That is the Bush Road Map plan. But the Neofascist Left insists that this
"Road Map" solution is too generous to the Jews and too stingy to the
Arabs. Their preferred solution is to turn the Levant into Rwanda and
resolve the ethnic conflict the same way the Rwandans did.
"The Nation", always trying to out-jihad Counterpunch and bypass it in the
Anti-Semitism Tournament of the Left, has also long endorsed the Rwanda
Solution, er - we mean - the "One-State Solution" in which Israel would be
destroyed, and of course that would have nothing at all to do with the
fact that Israel is the only country the Jews have on earth. The Germans
called it the Final Solution. None of this of course has stopped the
Columbia School of Journalism, located in that Columbia Madrassah on the
Upper West Side, from turning the school's web site over to the control of
"The Nation's" Uber-Moonbat editor and publisher, the Jew-hating,
Castro-loving Victor Navasky.
the university altogether if the faculty do not abandon their strike for
better pay. (See http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/943155.html)
You realize what this means?
If the Hebrew University campus is completely shut down, how will
anthropologists there conduct research showing that Jewish soldiers do not
rape Arab women because they are too racist againt Arabs!
2.
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2008/01/guru-of-ben-gurion-universitys-gordon.html
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The Guru of Ben Gurion University's Gordon Touting Terror in Lebanon
Norman Finkelstein, the anti-Semitic ex-professor, was in Lebanon this
week rubbing fangs with the Hizbollah terrorists. He had been sitting
around his rent-controlled apartment near Coney Island trying to figure
out how to entertain himself now that DePaul University in Chicago joined
the list of academic institutions that regard Finkelstein as a fraud, a
liar, and as a pseudo-scholar.
Finkelstein, widely regarded as a Neo-Nazi and often regarded as a
Holocaust Denier, goes to Lebanon regularly to show his support for
Hizbollah terrorism against Israel. There he gave talks in which he
celebrated the fact "that the Lebanese resistance inflicted a historic and
well-deserved military defeat on the invading foreign army and its chief
supporter." (Meaning - on Israel and its children.) While in Lebanon he
met with senior Hizbollah terrorists to show his solidarity with them.
Noah Pollak describes Finkie thus:
"It is normal to say that Finkelstein.s are the views of a self-hating
Jew. But by all appearances, the man does not hate himself, and in fact
views his role as that of a hero - a brave truth-teller fighting against
the imperial forces of Zionism and Americanism. Finkelstein is a hustler
and a coward because he trades off his Jewishness to lend credibility to
starkly anti-Jewish rhetoric. It.s time we stopped calling Finkelstein a
self-hating Jew and started calling him what he actually is: an
anti-Semite."
In Haaretz he is cited as saying:
"I think that the Hezbollah represents the hope. They are fighting to
defend their homeland."
Finkelstein is now involved in a one-man campaign on behalf of anti-Jewish
genocidal terror. But what of his number-one Israeli academic supporter?
Neve Gordon, a radically anti-Israel far-leftist instructor in political
science at Ben Gurion University, has devoted much of his career to
celebrating and promoting the writings and views of Norman Finkelstein.
Gordon, seen in the picture with another of his gurus, has ethically
compared Neo-Nazi Finkelstein to the Prophets in the Bible.
Neve Gordon, in turn, has been conducting a campaign on behalf of Norman
Finkelstein, promoting him and his views and denouncing DePaul University
for firing him. Gordon went so far as to claim that Finkelstein could get
tenured at his own school, Ben Gurion University (BGU). BGU officials
repudiated the claim that a pseudo-scholar like Finkelstein could get
tenured at Ben Gurion University by turning out anti-Israel hate
propaganda!
The problem is that in a sense Gordon was correct. Anti-Israel
propagandists and anti-Semitic pseudo-scholars indeed CAN get hired,
promoted and granted tenure at Ben Gurion University!
3. More on Israeli Guilt by way of Innocence:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7677
4. Seeds of hate:
5. Kosovo in the Galilee:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3491040,00.html
6. Karl Marx writing to Engels:
'The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I'm glad to say, is leaving at the end of
this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged
speculation. The chap would sooner throw money down the drain than lend it
to a "friend," even though his interest and capital were guaranteed. In
this he bases himself on the view that he ought to live the life of a
Jewish baron, or Jew created a baron...
'It is now quite plain to me - as the shape of his head and the way his
hair grows also testify - that he is descended from the negroes who
accompanied Moses. flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal
grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and
Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must
inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow.s importunity is
also nigger-like.'
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.htm
More Marxism:
Karl Marx, .The Russian Loan,. New York Tribune, January 4, 1856:-
'Thus we find every tyrant backed by a Jew, as is every Pope by a Jesuit.
In truth, the cravings of oppressors would be hopeless, and the
practicability of war out of the question, if there were not an army of
Jesuits to smother thought and a handful of Jews to ransack pockets.
'The fact that 1,855 years ago Christ drove the Jewish money-changers out
of the temple, and that the money-changers of our age enlisted on the side
of tyranny happen again chiefly to be Jews, is perhaps no more than a
historical coincidence. The loan-mongering Jews of Europe do only on a
larger and more obnoxious scale what many others do on one smaller and
less significant. But it is only because the Jews are so strong that it is
timely and expedient to expose and stigmatize their organization.'
7. January 9, 2008
DOW JONES REPRINTS
Bush's Mideast Muddle
By MICHAEL OREN
January 9, 2008; Page A14
George W. Bush's visit to Israel today -- the first of his presidency --
has many Israelis confused. Is he coming to advance the peace process
begun six weeks ago at the Annapolis Summit, that 83% of Israelis see as
fruitless? Or is he aiming to fortify Israel against a mounting Iranian
nuclear threat that American intelligence services claim no longer exists?
The visit spotlights the blurring of the administration's Middle East
policies, leaving many of its friends -- Israel included -- confused.
Israel's bafflement is deepened by the fact that Mr. Bush's agenda departs
from a more than 30-year tradition. Unlike Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and
Bill Clinton, all of whom visited Israel, Mr. Bush will not address the
government on the grounds that that would obligate him to speak before the
Hamas-dominated Palestinian Parliament.
Mr. Bush also abandoned the protocol of receiving the head of the Israeli
opposition, in this case Benjamin Netanyahu, who will likely be Israel's
next prime minister. And while Mr. Bush's predecessors came to Israel
following diplomatic achievements -- Nixon after the separation of forces
in the Yom Kippur War, Mr. Carter after the Camp David Accords, and Mr.
Clinton after the Wye River Memorandum -- Mr. Bush has none to his credit.
Further bewildering for Israelis is the fact that Mr. Bush's policies
previously seemed unequivocal. He repeatedly affirmed America's support
for Israel's identity as a Jewish state, and so ruled out the Arabs'
demand for the resettlement of millions of Palestinians within Israel's
pre-1967 borders. He further recognized the reality of Israeli settlements
in the West Bank, and insisted that any agreement take that reality into
account.
Most importantly, Mr. Bush had reversed the once-sacrosanct formula
through which the Israelis first ceded territory to the Arabs and only
then received peace, insisting that the Arabs first eschew terror and
recognize Israel's existence before regaining land. The president upheld
Israel's right to defend itself, while stressing the Palestinians' duty to
dismantle terrorist infrastructures and abjure violence. "The Palestinian
people must decide that they want a future of decency and hope," he
declared last July, "not of terror and death."
Since Annapolis, however, much of this paradigm has been jettisoned. Mr.
Bush hasn't reconfirmed Israel's status as a Jewish state, and failed to
comment when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice compared the
Palestinians' plight to that of African Americans in the Alabama of her
youth -- implicitly likening Israelis to Southern racists.
The administration has also denounced settlements as "obstacles to peace,"
while ignoring the Palestinians' reluctance to clamp down on terror. Freed
from their Road Map commitments, Palestinians can now proceed directly to
the "Go" of statehood without paying a fine for infractions.
The administration's policies on Iran have also become chaotic. A mere
week after 49 countries and organizations rallied in Annapolis against
Iran's production of nuclear weapons, the National Intelligence Estimate
(NIE) concluded that Iran had suspended efforts to acquire those arms. The
NIE report undermined both military and diplomatic options against Iran.
Americans may be relieved that there was no need to destroy Iranian
reactors, and foreign contractors delighted that sanctions against Iran
were superfluous, but for Israelis having just forged an international
consensus against Iranian nuclearization, the report was disastrous. The
president to whom they had looked to take the lead in defending against
Iran's genocidal tendencies was suddenly rendered impotent.
No wonder Israelis are stumped. While the old George Bush deemed the end
of terror as imperative for peace and the containment of Iran as the
prerequisite for eliminating terror, the new George Bush focuses on
Israeli settlement-building and hesitates to confront Tehran. It is
uncertain which of the two is visiting Israel today and what policies he
may pursue.
The president nevertheless has little leeway. Facing an investigation into
the abortive Second Lebanon War that might force his resignation, Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in no position to make concessions to
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose popularity on the West Bank is
dwindling. The two could not even agree to meet trilaterally with Mr.
Bush. At best, the president can bestow another blessing on continued
Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Regarding Iran, Mr. Bush might assure Israelis that the NIE has not tied
his hands, and that the U.S. will back efforts to safeguard Israel's
survival. That message might, in turn, be conveyed to the Gulf States --
Mr. Bush's next stop -- that were no less dismayed by the report.
Presidential visits are always characterized as "historic," but Mr. Bush's
trip to the Jewish state is marked by a lack of momentousness.
Cross-signals and contradictory policies have clouded a celebration for
one of Israel's firmest friends. Israelis will greet Mr. Bush exuberantly,
but his departure may leave them grappling with terror largely on their
own.
Mr. Oren is senior fellow at the Shalem Center and the author of "Power,
Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present" (W.W.
Norton, 2007).
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119984146243176521.html
8. January 9, 2008
DOW JONES REPRINTS
Defining Diversity Down
January 9, 2008
The world gets more competitive every day, so why would California's
education elites want to dumb down their public university admissions
standards? The answer is to serve the modern liberal piety known as
"diversity" while potentially thwarting the will of the voters.
The University of California Board of Admissions is proposing to lower to
2.8 from 3.0 the minimum grade point average for admission to a UC school.
That 3.0 GPA standard has been in place for 40 years. Students would also
no longer be required to take the SAT exams that test for knowledge of
specific subjects, such as history and science.
UC Board of Admissions Chairman Mark Rashid says that, under this new
system of "comprehensive review," the schools "can make a better and more
fair determination of academic merit by looking at all the students'
achievements." And it is true that test scores and grades do not take full
account of the special talents of certain students. But the current system
already leaves slots for students with specific skills, so if you think
this change is about admitting more linebackers or piccolo players, you
don't understand modern academic politics.
The plan would grant admissions officers more discretion to evade the ban
on race and gender preferences imposed by California voters. Those limits
became law when voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996, and state
officials have been looking for ways around them ever since. "This appears
to be a blatant attempt to subvert the law," says Ward Connerly, a former
member of the University of California Board of Regents, who led the drive
for 209. "Subjective admissions standards allow schools to substitute race
and diversity for academic achievement."
One loser here would be the principle of merit-based college admissions.
That principle has served the state well over the decades, helping to make
some of its universities among the world's finest. Since 209,
Asian-American students have done especially well, with students of Asian
ethnicity at UCLA nearly doubling to 42% from 22%. Immigrants and the
children of immigrants now outnumber native-born whites in most UC
schools, so being a member of an ethnic minority is clearly not an
inherent admissions handicap. Ironically, objective testing criteria were
first introduced in many university systems, including California's,
precisely to weed out discrimination favoring children of affluent alumni
ahead of higher performing students.
The other big losers would be the overall level of achievement demanded in
California public elementary and high schools. A recent study by the
left-leaning Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at UCLA, the
"California Educational Opportunity Report 2007," finds that "California
lags behind most other states in providing fundamental learning conditions
as well as in student outcomes." In 2005 California ranked 48th among
states in the percentage of high-school kids who attend college. Only
Mississippi and Arizona rated worse.
The UCLA study documents that the educational achievement gap between
black and Latino children and whites and Asians is increasing in
California at a troubling pace. Graduation rates are falling fastest for
blacks and Latinos, as many of them are stuck in the state's worst public
schools. The way to close that gap is by introducing more accountability
and choice to raise achievement standards -- admittedly hard work,
especially because it means taking on the teachers unions.
Instead, the UC Board of Admissions proposal sounds like a declaration of
academic surrender. It's one more depressing signal that liberal elites
have all but given up on poor black and Hispanic kids. Because they don't
think closing the achievement gap is possible, their alternative is to
reduce standards for everyone. Diversity so trumps merit in the hierarchy
of modern liberal values that they're willing to dumb down the entire
university system to guarantee what they consider a proper mix of skin
tones on campus.
A decade ago, California voters spoke clearly that they prefer admissions
standards rooted in the American tradition of achievement. In the months
ahead, the UC Board of Regents will have to decide which principle to
endorse, and their choice will tell us a great deal about the future path
of American society.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119984049867076451.html
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2008/01/olmert-star-wars-program.html
Saturday, January 5, 2008
The Olmert Star Wars Program
Peace through Collisions
Most of us were under the impression that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had
no idea whatsoever about how to stop the near-daily missile attacks on
Israel by his peace partners. This - in addition to having no idea
whatsoever about how to deal with other forms of terrorism, how to run the
country, how to defend Israeli interests, how to deal with the American
government, and how to deal with just about everything else.
But I have discovered that Olmert actually has an ingenious missile
defense strategy he is planning to implement for Israel. You will kick
yourself when you realize that you had not figured it out on your own!
I uncovered it when the Katyusha missile fired from the Gaza Strip landed
NORTH of Ashkelon a few days ago. I was sitting there contemplating having
spent the entire summer of 2006 being bombarded in Haifa by Katyusha
missiles (among the 4000 fired at northern Israel), fired from Lebanon as
a direct result of Ehud Barak's pusillanimous turning of southern Lebanon
over to the Hezbollah savages in 2000. One Hezbollah rocket reached
Hadera. The Qassam and Katusha missiles are also getting more
sophisticated by the month, with ever longer range!
And then it hit me. Eureka!
Pshita! It is the Olmert version of Star Wars!
Olmert is simply waiting until the Katusha missiles from Gaza can reach
the same areas of Israel as the Katyusha missiles from Lebanon, and then
he will just sit back and watch, as each set of Katyushas collides and
knocks out the other set of Katyushas, neutralizing one another and
protecting the Land of Israel!
It is better than video games!
2. WHAT imminent deal with the PLO?
http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/14945/
3. There is a web site that collected documentation of the assault
against freedom of speech by the Israeli political elite and the Israeli
Left during the late 1990s and early 2000s. It includes quite a few old
posts of mine, plus a lot of other material. You might find it of
interest. It is at:
http://www.primechoice.com/philosophy/shelp/speechisrael.htm