Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
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Tuesday, July 15, 2003
1. The Jerusalem Foundation has now un-invited Ebonic "poet" LeRoi
Buckwheat Jones. Probably thanks to all you who e-blitzed them.
2. A few days ago Israel arrested a Irishman who had entered Israel as
part of one of those delegations of the so-called "International
Solidarity Movement". The ISM is a communist organization that openly
supports Palestinian terrorism and calls for Israel to be destroyed. It
sends in "activists" to try to prevent Israel from taking military action
against the murderers and terrorists and to stage anti-Israel
provocations. The two Moslems who bombed the Mike's Place bar in Tel
Aviv, killing several, came in under the guise of ISM "activists. Israel
arrested the Irishman under suspicion that he was an IRA explosives
expert.
Today's press reports that it was mistaken identity. The Irishman
is not an IRA terrorist but only an ISM terrorist.
3. Truman and the Jews
By William Safire
New York Times | July 15, 2003
A 5,500-word diary in President Harry Truman's handwriting, unnoticed for
decades, recently turned up at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo.
Three pages were mysteriously loose and interleaved in the journal.
On these detached and reinserted pages was this entry: "6:00 P.M. Monday
July 21, 1947. Had ten minutes conversation with Henry Morgenthau about
Jewish ship in Palistine [sic]. Told him I would talk to Gen[eral George]
Marshall about it."
On that day, news reached the world that 4,500 Jewish refugees seeking
entry to Palestine aboard the ship Exodus 1947 had been seized by British
soldiers. These "displaced persons" had been placed on three vessels
ostensibly headed to nearby Cyprus for detention until permitted entry to
the Holy Land, where other Jews waited to welcome them. Instead, the
homeless families, including a thousand children, were encaged on decks
being taken back to a hostile Europe.
"He'd no business, whatever to call me," Truman wrote. Morgenthau, who had
served as F.D.R.'s treasury secretary, was telephoning Truman as chairman
of the United Jewish Appeal, and had an obligation to get through to the
president to stop this further atrocity.
"The Jews have no sense of proportion," wrote the incensed Truman after he
hung up, "nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought a
thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they
stayed." These refugees were welcomed in Oswego, N.Y., just after the war,
and Truman saw political implications in Gov. Thomas E. Dewey's support
for Jewish immigration: "When the country went backward and Republican in
the election of 1946, this incident loomed large on the D[isplaced]
P[ersons] program."
Then the president vented his spleen on the ethnic group trying
desperately to escape from Europe's hatred: "The Jews, I find are very,
very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles,
Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP as long as the Jews
get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or
political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or
mistreatment to the under dog."
After equating the cruelty of Jews with that of Hitler and Stalin, Truman
waxed philosophic about ingratitude: "Put an underdog on top and it makes
no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management,
Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who
remember their past condition when prosperity comes."
Truman wrongly assumed that the plight of all of Europe's displaced was
the same ignoring the "special treatment" Hitler had inflicted on the
Jews of the Holocaust, resulting in six million murdered, genocide beyond
all other groups' suffering. The homeless survivors now faced sullen
populations of former neighbors who wanted no part of the Jews' return.
This diary outburst reflected a longstanding judgment about the ungrateful
nature of the oppressed; in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, he repeated
that "Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as
intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were
underneath."
Did this deep-seated belief affect Truman's policy about taking immigrants
into the U.S., or in failing to urge the British to allow the Exodus
refugees haven in Palestine? Maybe; when the National Archives release was
front-paged last week in The Washington Post, historians and other
liberals hastened to remind us that the long-buried embarrassing entry was
written when such talk was "acceptable." The director of the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum dismissed it as "typical of a sort of cultural
anti-Semitism that was common at that time."
For decades, I have refused to make such excuses to defend President Nixon
for his slurs about Jews on his tapes. This is more dismaying.
Lest we forget, Harry Truman overruled Secretary of State George Marshall
and beat the Russians to be first to recognize the state of Israel. The
private words of Truman and Nixon are far outweighed by their pro-Israel
public actions.
But underdogs of every generation must disprove Truman's cynical theory
and have a duty to speak up. I asked Robert Morgenthau, the great
Manhattan D.A., about Truman's angry diary entry, and he said, "I'm glad
my father made that call."
4, What the Supreme Court Left Out
By Nat Hentoff
Village Voice | July 14, 2003
In the 1978 Bakke casethe first Supreme Court decision on affirmative
action in college admissionsthe Court was severely divided (4-4) on
whether any racial preferences were constitutional under the "equal
protection of the laws" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The decisive vote was by Justice Lewis Powell, who ruled that race could
be taken into account, but only among many other factors. In his long,
carefully nuanced decision, Powell emphasized that race could not be the
deciding factor.
On the rather frail reed of this one justice's opinion, affirmative action
in college admissions has been challenged, sometimes successfully, in
lower courts, and twice has been voted down, by initiatives, in California
and the state of Washington.
But after 1978, the Supreme Court of the United States did not speak again
until June 23, 2003, when it ruled in two University of Michigan casesone
involving the law school (Grutter v. Bollinger), and the other the
undergraduate schools (Gratz v. Bollinger).
The use of racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate admissions
(Gratz) was struck down because of Michigan's mechanical use of specific
additional points of advantage for "underrepresented" applicants. A black
applicant, for example, received 20 points just for being black.
However, in the law school case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in her
deciding ruling in the 5-4 decision, stressed that the "plus factor"as
Lewis Powell had called itwas narrowly tailored to provide a compelling
constitutional interest. The minority applicants were individually
interviewed and their "holistic" records were examined, and so, she
emphasized, the process was "flexible enough to consider all pertinent
elements of diversity in the light of the particular qualifications of
each applicant."
Opponents have condemned affirmative action throughout college admissions
as an unconstitutional "quota system." But the law school policy, Justice
O'Connor assured the nation, is not a quota system.
Ignored in O'Connor's rulingand in all the extensive media coverage of her
resounding decision I've seenis the plain fact that the University of
Michigan's law school admissions policy directly contradicts Lewis
Powell's definition of a "plus factor" in Bakke. Giving an advantage to
the underrepresented could not, he said, assure the admission of "some
specified percentage of students" of a particular race. That would make
race a "deciding factor."
When Grutter v. Bollinger was in Federal District Court, Judge Bernard
Friedman had declared the law school's admissions policy unconstitutional
because it used "race to ensure the enrollment of a certain minimum
percentage of underrepresented minority students [making] the current
admissions policy practically indistinguishable from a quota system. . . .
"The law school," Judge Friedman continued, "has an unwritten policy of
constituting each entering class so that at least 10-12 percent are
students from underrepresented minority groups. . . . [Therefore,]
students of all races are not competing against one another for each seat,
with race being simply one factor among many which 'may tip the balance'
in particular cases." (Emphasis added.)
In her decision, overruling Judge Friedman, Sandra Day O'Connor did not
specifically mention all of Judge Friedman's findings of fact in the very
admission records that the University of Michigan had submitted to his
court. O'Connor is a conscientious jurist, and I cannot imagine her not
having read the Federal District Court decision in this case, particularly
its findings of fact.
In many editorials and other commentaries congratulating O'Connor for
keeping alive and strengthening the principles of "diversity" established
by Lewis Powell (her mentor on the Supreme Court) in his Bakke swing vote,
none of them citednor had sheJudge Bernard Friedman's very pointed
reference to Powell when Friedman ruled the law school's policy
unconstitutional:
"The reservation of some seats for applications of particular races, and
the attendant lack of competition for those seats, was the principal
reason [in 1978] Justice Powell found [University of California at] Davis'
quota system unconstitutional." (Emphasis added.)
In her decision vigorously affirming the constitutionality of the law
school's racial preferences, Justice O'Connor wrote that the plan placed
the underrepresented applicants "on the same footing for consideration"
with all the others, "although not necessarily according [them] the same
weight."
But that's OK, she added, because those applications were individually
considered. Giving them places over white or Asian American applicants was
just a legitimate "plus factor," as authorized by Lewis Powell.
However, let's look at the University of Michigan Law School's own
records. I don't expect that Justice O'Connor reads the Voice, but it's
possible that one of her clerks looks at The New York Times' references to
very high-profile pending cases.
In a March 14 column ("Left Out of Affirmative Action"), I cited reporter
Jacques Steinberg's February 2 New York Times story, saying that in 1999,
the University of Michigan Law School "accepted only one of the 61 Asian
Americans, or 2 percent, who were ranked in the middle range of the
applicant pools, as defined by their grades and test scores, according to
court filings. The admission rate for whites with similar grades and
scores was 3 percent. But among black applicants with similar transcripts,
22 out of 27, or 81 percent, were offered admission." (Emphasis added.)
If Justice Lewis Powell had seen undergraduate or graduate school records
with those comparative numbers of the admitted and rejectedin the context
of a quota systemhe would, on the basis of his "plus factor" ruling in
Bakke, have declared those admissions policies clearly unconstitutional.
And they are!
But Justice Sandra Day O'Connor knew how she wanted this case to be
decided. And so, the record has been "tailored"though not so narrowly.
There were over 300 amicus briefs in these two University of Michigan
cases.
But how likely is it that O'Connor failed to read at least the brief by
Kirk Kolbo, the lawyer of record for the plaintiff in Grutter v.
Bollinger? Judge Friedman's findings of fact, as cited above, were
extensively quoted in Kolbo's brief. But the many media stories I've seen
about this "landmark" decision did not mention that either.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Web Page on the Mikey: www.masada2000.org/selfhate.html
see also http://www.masada2000.org/leftists.html
Monday, July 14, 2003
NEW JERSEY'S BIGOT LAUREATE
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
October 13, 2002
Imamu Amiri Baraka vows to "go to the Supreme Court" if the New
Jersey Legislature and Governor James McGreevey carry out their threat
to revoke his appointment as the Garden State's poet laureate or block
the $10,000 stipend that goes with the title. It isn't the money, he
says. "Right now the most important thing to me is to disprove this
lie that I'm anti-Semitic."
Now why would anyone think a cold thing like that about Amiri
Baraka? And yet a lot of people *do* think it, especially since his
recent appearance at the Dodge Poetry Festival, where he read a screed
titled "Somebody Blew Up America." Its theme -- I think -- is that
Baraka hates white Republicans (he compares Rudy Giuliani to David
Duke) and black Republicans ("Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for / Who
doo doo come out the Colon's mouth"). But the people he really can't
stand are -- well, Jews:
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
That wasn't the poem's only reference to Jews. An earlier stich
asks,
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion.
Baraka is offended that anyone could interpret that as anti-Jewish.
For one thing, he avers, "everything said about Israel in the poem is
easily researched." Which is true, if "research" means trolling
through Islamist or neo-Nazi web sites. ("Israelis at the Trade Center
had been warned before the attack. . . . There could be no doubt that
there had been a prior warning for many Israelis" -- David Duke, at
www.davidduke.com/writings/howisraeliterror.shtml).
Second, complains Baraka, "if you criticize Israel, they . . . call
you anti-Semitic." See, if he'd said 4,000
*Jews* were tipped off, that would have been an anti-Semitic canard.
But why should he be labeled a Jew-hater just because he claimed that
4,000 *Israelis* were in on the plot?
Nobody was fooled by this sophistry. Among those who condemned
Baraka was his predecessor as New Jersey's poet laureate, who was on
the four-person committee that selected the new laureate in May and
acknowledges pushing hard for Baraka to get the nod. "I was shocked at
the stupidity" of Baraka's poem, Gerald Stern told The New York Times.
"Lies never serve good and there was hate in it." Yes, there was, but
should that really have come as a shock? "Somebody Blew Up America,"
after all, was published in October 2001, seven months before Stern was
lobbying for Baraka to succeed him. The stupidity, lies, and hate were
there for all to see long before the Dodge Poetry Festival. Hadn't
Stern bothered to read Baraka's big post-9/11 opus before recommending
him?
In fact, forget post-9/11 -- hadn't Stern or anyone else on the
committee bothered to read *any* of Baraka's outpourings over the past
35 years? It isn't exactly a secret that the man's oeuvre is
chock-full of racism, violence, and anti-semitism:
Smile, jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you
love me, jew. . . .
I got the
extermination blues, jewboys. I got
the hitler syndrome figured.
-- from "For Tom Postell, Dead Black Poet"
We want poems
like fists beating niggers out of Jocks
or dagger poems in the slimy bellies
of the owner-jews. . . .
Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland. . . .
Look at the Liberal
Spokesman for the jews clutch his throat
& puke himself into eternity. . .
Put it on him, poem. Strip him naked
to the world! Another bad poem cracking
steel knuckles in a jewlady's mouth.
-- from "Black Art"
Atheist Jews double crossers stole our secrets. . . . They give us to
worship a dead Jew and not ourselves . . . . Selling fried potatoes
and people, the little arty bastards talking arithmetic they sucked
from the arab's head.
-- from "Black People"
In 1980, Baraka claimed to have overcome his hostility to Jews.
Rather, he wrote in "Confessions of a former Anti-Semite," he should be
understood as anti-Zionist. "Zionism is a form of racism. It is a
political ideology that hides behind the Jewish religion and the Jewish
people, while performing its negative tasks for imperialism." As for
Jews, he made it clear that the ones he approved of were those who
weren't *too* Jewish. He praised "the movement among middle-class Jews
to become straightup Americans," and said that "shedding their
'Jewishness' represents a progressive trend."
To be sure, it isn't only Jews (or "Zionists") who draw Baraka's
bile. When Rutgers University denied him tenure in 1990, he spat
poison at the tenure committee, denouncing its members as "Ivy League
Goebbels," "white supremacists," and "powerful Klansmen," whose
"intellectual presence makes a stink across the campus like the corpses
of rotting Nazis."
Then as now, Baraka threatened to go to court. Within months,
however, he had left Rutgers for good. Alas, New Jersey won't be as
lucky this time around.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
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Sunday, July 13, 2003
I know that most of you will think that this is just one of those
Purim-style spoofs I sometimes surrender to my worse instincts and send
out to keep you on your toes. But I am afraid it is for real. The
Jerusalem Foundation, in close link with the Municipality of Jerusalem,
has indeed extended an invitation to the Tawana Brawley of American
pseudo-poetry, the fanatic anti-Semite, Leroi Jones. I guess Adolph
Hitler was not available on such short notice.
Leroi, or Buckwheat as I prefer to call him, was born into a middle
class black family in Newark, acted white by going to Rutgers and Howard
University, and even served in the US military for three years. His first
wife was none other than one Hettie Cohen, which may help explain his
later conversion to rabid Jew-hatred. He then decided to become a
limousine slummer and make-pretend hommes boy. My guess is he could not
breakdance if his life depended on it. He changed his name to Amiri
Baraka, converted to Islam in 1968, and became the official poet of
America's Afrofascists and communists (that latter love him since he also
is a Minstrel Marxist).
His poetry is little more than crude obscenity and racism and mind-numbing
crayon rantings, unworthy even of the better toilet stall walls in your
hommes town. Leroi is well known for his nazi views regarding Jews and
his assertion that the Zionists were the real terrorists who blew up the
World Trade Center.
Across the seas, the Leroi Jones groupie of Israel is Natan Zach. A
charter member of Israel's radical Literary Left, one of the most extremist
pro-Palestinian poets of Israel, and some-time lecturer at the University
of Haifa. Zach is evidently now serving as the consigliore of the
Jerusalem Foundation, and as such he could not think of a better idea than
inviting Leroi Buckwheat Jones to be honored by the City of Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Foundation should be added to your personal list of
institutions to be given coal in its stocking this year.
The Jerusalem Foundation operates the Mishkenot Shaananim complex, some of
the most fascinating buildings from the 19th century Jerusalem, once
frontline structures fired upon daily by the Jordanian troops (before
1967), since then gentrified and yuppie-fied and used to host guest
cultural icons in Jerusalem. People like Saul Bellow and Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn have been hosted there and honored, as have many other
cultural luminaries. More generally, the Jerusalem Foundation seeks to
raise money for cultural events and do-gooding in Jerusalem, although
tends towards politically correctness.
Anyways, the Foundation hired Zach as a consultant and Zach suggested
bring old Buckwheat Jones over to the Holy Land to tell the Jews how
inferior they are racially, how justified the suicide bombers are, how
on-the-mark Hitler was, and how Israel needs to be destroyed. The
Jerusalem Foundation is insisting this is the first they ever heard about
Leroi's anti-Semitism, never mind that the state of New Jersey stripped
him of his "State Poet and his Middle Finger Show It"
award last year after some
Jersey loonies gave Leroi the coveted award.
Here is the Jer Posts story about this, followed by the Jerusalem
Foundations web page through which you can compose your on Gangsta Rap
lyrics and email them to the directors.
Jerusalem Post Jul. 3, 2003 Anti-Israel US poet invited to Jerusalem
festival By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
American poet Amiri Baraka, who was stripped of his title of New Jersey's
poet laureate for writing a poem saying Israel had advance knowledge of
the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, was invited to the Jerusalem
Foundation's Mishkenot Sha'ananim center to take part in this fall's
International Poets Festival.
Baraka set off a furor last year with his poem "Somebody Blew Up America,"
which states that Israel was involved in the terror attacks. It includes
the lines: "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told
4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?/Why did
Sharon stay away?"
Jerusalem Foundation spokesman Amnon Be'eri said Wednesday night that
Baraka had been invited by Natan Zach, the Israeli director of the
International Poets Festival, but was apparently rebuffed.
Be'eri said that Zach was "unaware" of any Baraka poem that linked Israel
with the 9/11 attacks.
The spokesman for the Jerusalem Foundation said that "if it becomes clear
that there is a grain of truth to what you are saying, then the foundation
will cut off all contact whatsoever with the poet."
The bizarre Israeli connection to the infamous poet emerged just as New
Jersey state lawmakers voted to eliminate the position of poet laureate
altogether, after it became clear that New Jersey law did not give the
governor or the state legislature the power to fire Baraka.
He was named poet laureate last July.
Immediately after the poem was read, Gov. James E. McGreevey, like
outraged Jewish leaders, called for the poet's resignation, and froze
Baraka's $10,000 stipend. As a last resort, when it emerged that he could
not fire Baraka, and Baraka refused to resign, McGreevey urged the state
legislature to abolish the post, a move that it completed in Trenton on
Tuesday.
The Assembly approved a bill that passed the Senate in January. McGreevey
intends to sign the bill, according to a spokesman.
After Tuesday's vote, Baraka said he would sue the state for violating his
First Amendment rights, and for slander.
"Very few of those people have even read that poem," Baraka said. "I can't
have a differing opinion about a foreign state?"
Democratic Assembly woman Linda Greenstein, a sponsor of the bill, said
Baraka stepped over the line. "Baraka certainly has the right to write his
poetry," she said. "But Baraka used the position as a jumping off point
for his own political motives. All under the umbrella of his position as
New Jersey's poet laureate."
Democratic Assemblyman William Payne disagreed, arguing that while
Baraka's views should be condemned, the position of poet laureate should
not be abolished.
"This legislation flies in the face of New Jersey being an enlightened
state," Payne said. "This is a position that is very, very valuable." AP
contributed to this report.
Background on Leroi Jones:
http://www.adl.org/anti_semitism/baraka_words.asp and
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=3799 and
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,76374,00.html
Jerusalem Foundation Home Web Site:
http://www.jerusalem-foundation.org/home.php
"Poet Laureate? Why Not Anti-Semite Laureate?"
By Jack Engelhard
Frankly, I did not know we had our own poet laureate. I thought it was a
national thing. But jeepers creepers (see, I can rhyme, too) we've got one
right here in New Jersey, and Amiri Baraka is his name.
This 'poet,' who used to be named Leroi Jones until he became a Muslim,
has written something that has caused quite a stir.
Here...why not let him tell it since he's a poet and I'm not:
Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
I know you're hungering for more. Be patient.
Further on somewhere, Poet Laureate Baraka also makes the same accusation
against President Bush and other Americans, namely that many Jews and
Christians knew about the Islamic catastrophe beforehand. One thing's for
sure -- and I wish I could say this in rhyme -- Amiri Baraka stayed away.
He's here, isn't he? Maybe he's the one, the only one, who knew it was
coming.
But that's neither here nor there. (Is that free verse that I just did?)
The point is that Amiri Baraka speaks for New Jersey. I do not know what
constituency he represents, but he is our poet.
This is official.
My dictionary defines "poet laureate" as follows: "A poet acclaimed as the
most excellent or most representative of a locality or group."
So there it is, Amiri Baraka is ours to have and to hold till death do us
part. (Say, I'm getting to be a regular Robert Browning, though to be
exact, Amiri Baraka gets to keep his title for two years, not till death
do us part, but the poetry in that is irresistible. Also, to be factual,
he's been asked to step down. No way, Jos.)
Alas (alas is a very poetic word), he has been called anti-New Jersey,
anti-American, and anti Semitic.
Question: Do all states have a poet laureate? Or is it only New Jersey?
Someone please look that up. I'm busy.
Anyway, let's assume the answer is yes. In that case, why not have an
Official Anti-Semite representing each state. Maybe even a National
Anti-Semite as well.
We all know what's going on. The president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers,
noted the alarming trend of anti-Semitism sweeping the country, especially
in the corridors of academia.
Surely, then, each state must have at least one poet who can speak for all
his, or her, fellow anti Semites, and same goes for a national
anti-Semite.
I can name a few who'd be right for the national job, but I don't need the
aggravation. But you're free to make your own list.
Why should only we be so lucky? I mean those of us in New Jersey.
There'd be no problem gathering candidates -- what with so many
universities across the nation embracing Palestinian terrorism, and so
many professors, and poets, demanding a boycott of Israel. No, this is
simple. Qualified anti-Semites exist everywhere from campus to campus. All
they'd need to do is rhyme like Amiri Baraka.
Here's more from his poem:
"Who put the Jews in the ovens and helped them do it Who said America
First and ok'd the yellow stars?"
I know what you're thinking: Who needs Shakespeare, right?
Now, I'm no expert at this, but I gather that a Poet Laureate's job is to
write poetry for special events, like the inauguration of a ship, or a
shopping mall.
What would our Anti-Semite Laureate do? He'd fashion poetry suitable for
riots, like the one that happened in Canada when Palestinian thugs
wouldn't allow Bibi Netanyahu to speak at a university.
Okay, that's Canada, but the same happens here every day. Terrorists, and
those who love them, now, generally, have the American Campus all to
themselves. Students and professors at Berkeley, Tufts, Cornell,
Princeton, the University of Texas, the University of Michigan, Harvard
and 50 other universities are in a rampage, calling for their
administrators to boycott companies that trade with Israel. Jewish
students are being harassed and attacked from coast to coast.
The 1960s (up to a point) were all about peace. Amiri Baraka comes from
that era, that generation of Peter, Paul and Mary, and Bob Dylan and the
rest of them that vowed to change the world into a place of justice and
tolerance. Amiri Baraka drank from the milk of the 60s.
We all know what happens to milk when it stays out too long.
Do we need this? Do we need an official anti-Semite to represent each
state -- and the nation? Of course.
Because...to get back to the dictionary's definition of a poet laureate,
here's the benefit, nay, the need for an Anti-Semite Laureate, with one
minor word-change:
"An anti-Semite acclaimed as the most excellent or most representative of
a locality or group."
Poetry used to be about love.
Now...how many words rhyme with "hate."
If you run this piece, please include the following byline: Jack Engelhard
is the author of the international bestseller "Indecent Proposal" (ComteQ
Publishing) and is completing his latest novel, "The Uriah Deadline," a
fictional thriller involving Mideast news manipulation. His columns can be
read online at http://www.comteqcom.com/jackcolumn.php and he can be
reached at JackEngelhard@ComteQcom.com
This was posted by a Ben Gurion University prof on a different chat list,
re-posted here:
Let me tell you
about a little experience I had today. Before entering the Opera House to
watch
the opera Nabuko, we decided to visit the Tel-Aviv Museum of Arts. Going
down to
the first floor we found ourselves in an exhibition by David Wakstein
called
"Explosion".
While I don't regard myself qualified to judge the artistic quality of the
paintings, I would like to give you a few examples of the works of art:
A map of the world and on it hands engraved with a Star of David and blood
dripping from them. A Star of David combined with a Swastika. Two red
canvasses,on one of them two small circles with the Star of David, on the
other
a small circle with a Swastika. I happen to remember that this masterpiece
is
called "settlers".
As the above-mentioned examples show, the artist seems to be deeply
influenced
by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer and
the
internet sites of the Hamas.
This raises the following question: since the Palestinian Authority has,
as
required by the Road Map, promised to reduce hate incitement, should we
not ask
the same of the municipal Art Museum of Tel-Aviv?
Isn't there a double standard if we criticize and protest against the BBC
for
showing their movie on Israel's nuclear program, the Egyptian TV for
broadcasting the artistic movie Rider without a Horse or the PA for
publishing
in its newspapers artistic cartoons showing Sharon eating small children
for
breakfast, and at the same time exhibit similar material at Tel-Aviv
Museum?
Friday, July 11, 2003
Here's a pic of Peres and Sharon joined at the head.
Hope it posts properly.
1. Israel's Path to Self-Destruction
By Myles Kantor
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 11, 2003
Until recently, Israel has been among the most vigilant nations standing
against terrorism, but its stance since the implementation of the Road Map
has caused it to implement self-defeating policies. Take for instance this
missive from Israels Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated May 5:
Israeli security forces arrested today Suleiman Abu-Mutlak, a senior
commander of the Palestinian Preventive Security service who is behind the
November 2000 attack on an Israeli school bus in Kfar Darom in which
Miriam Amitai, 35, and Gavriel Biton, 34 were killed, and several
schoolchildren were seriously injured, the Jerusalem Post reported. Three
children from the Cohen family, Yisrael, 7, Tehila, 8, and Orit, 12 were
maimed in the attack. Abu-Mutlak is also one of the heads of the Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
On July 3, Israel released 33 Palestinian prisoners as part of the road
map to peace with the Palestinian Authority. Abu-Mutlak was among them.
The Cohen childrens mother, Noga Cohen, said:
My three children lost their legs... I don't understand how they can
release such a person who murdered two residents and took the legs of
childrenWhat do I tell my children? I always assured them that the
government of Israel would ensure their safety...I don't know how I am
going to explain to them now. Why are we allowing terrorists to control
our lives, why?
On July 4, 1975, Ahmed Jbarra murdered 14 people and wounded 62 by placing
a refrigerator filled with explosives in Jerusalems Zion Square. Israel
released Jbarra in June, who is now a special adviser to Yasser Arafat.
The Israeli cabinet voted on July 6 to release hundreds of other
prisoners. Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr called this an
insufficient step, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad have conditioned their
cease-fire on the release of all prisoners. (Islamic Jihad claimed
responsibility for a July 8 suicide bombing that murdered one Israeli.)
We are ready to carry out the most powerful and dangerous military attacks
inside Israel and in the settlements, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
threatened on July 6, the same day it stormed a courthouse in Ramallah and
murdered a Palestinian on trial for collaboration with Israel.
Palestinian Authority cabinet member Hisham Abdel-Razak said:
If Israel does not decideto release Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian
Authority will resign from the road map. This is the most important issue
for us. Israel must decide on principle that they will release all of the
prisoners and implement the decision gradually. If this is not done then
there will not be negotiations, no road map.
If these are partners for peace, Saudi Arabia is a refuge for homosexuals.
The prisoner releases extend the policy of terrorist empowerment
established by the Oslo Accords in 1993; it was Yitzhak Rabins government
that installed Yasser Arafats tyranny and armed his goons, facilitating a
hospitable regime for terrorists and inculcation of Jew-hatred in
Palestinian youth.
This was idiocy at best and complicity in effect. Ironically, Rabin said
after the July 1975 massacre during his first administration:
The terrorist organizations, headed by Yasser Arafat, were quick to claim
responsibility for this bloodshedThis is the act of those whose principles
are designed to liquidate Israel and deny sovereign Jewish national
existence. The murder at Zion Square must serve as a grave warning
against dangerous illusions as regards the aims of the terrorist
organizations. The killers at Zion Square and those who sent them, the
heads of the terrorist organizationswho were so quick to claim, with their
characteristic vainglory, full responsibilitytestify to the true
intentions of these organizations. Hence, we must continue to firmly
adhere to Israel's policy of not entering into any negotiations with the
terrorist organizations. The only language they understand is that of the
sword, and it is in that language that we shall talk to them.
The day after Israel released Abu-Mutlak, Attorney General Elyakim
Rubenstein indicted Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg for incitement to racism,
punishable by five years imprisonment. The indictment centers on a book
published in 2001 where he claims Arabs have no right to live in Israel
and are culturally inferior to Israelis.
On July 7, Rubenstein ordered an investigation of rabbis in settlements.
At a June conference, these rabbis stated, Anyone who has the ability to
curb the implementation of the road map and does not do so is in violation
of the Biblical commandment: Neither shalt thou stand against the blood of
thy neighbor [Leviticus 19:16].^ Rubenstein will decide after the
investigation whether to charge them with incitement to rebellion.
Its OK to support the PLO in the Jewish State, but articulate Judaic views
and you may be prosecuted.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharons government persecutes its most Zionist
citizens while freeing its most anti-Semitic criminals. If Israel seeks
to destroy itself, its on the right track.
2, Subject: Who are the Palestinians?
Useful overview of the topic that is nicely written as well.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33506
3. From the apartheid barttle:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8861
4. As you know Israel's Leftists have been rallying against the Hatikva
ANthem because it makes references to the yearnings of the Jewish soul.
That, of course, violates the delicate hypersensititivies of Arabs, unlike
- say - all those crosses on all those flags in EUrope, in which Arabs are
ALSO a minority. Singer-bimbo Ahinoam Nini refused to mouth the "J" word
when she sand Hatikva at some event. This is the same bimbette who had no
problems singing Ave Maria at a reception for the Pope, by the way.
Well, we thought it might be refreshing to print here the English
translation of the horrid racist unsensitive Hatikva, and right after it
the words to the current Palestinian "anthem", also in translation:
Hatikvah, Israeli National Anthem
As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the
heart,
With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion.
Then our hope - the two-thousand-year-old hope - will
not be lost:
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
****
Palestinian National Anthem
My country, my country
My country, the land of my grand fathers
My country, my country
My country, my nation, the nation of eternity
With my determine, my fire and the volcano of my
revenge
The longing of my blood to my land and home
I have climbed the mountains and fought the wars
I have conquered the impossible, and crossed the
boarders
My country, my country, the nation of eternity
With the resolve of the winds and the fire of the guns
And the determination of my nation in the land of
struggle
Palestine is my home, Palestine is my fire, Palestine
is my revenge
and the land of eternal
My country, my country, the nation of eternity
I swear under the shade of the flag
To my land and nation, and the fire of pain
I will live as a guerrilla, I will go on as guerrilla
,
I will expire as guerrilla until I will be back
My country, my country, the nation of eternity
Thursday, July 10, 2003
The Ariel Center for Policy Research
Policy Paper No. 22, 1998
Executive Summary
The Jewish people has known the phenomenon of self-hatred unlike any other
people. This attribute has principally been associated with
assimilationist Jews, particularly German ones, and it has a long history.
Furthermore "Israeli anti-Semitism" appears a paradox because this
self-hatred was thought to belong to the Exile: those attempting to
identify with the surrounding Gentiles had to prove their new identity by
hating their former brethren. Zionism was supposed to heal this
psychological pathology but among the Radical Left classic Jewish
self-hatred recurs - in their hatred of the religious community and
particularly the Haredi part of it.
The roots of Israeli anti-Semitism lie firstly in the failure of Israel,
after fifty years and five wars, to provide security (it is still the most
dangerous place in the world for Jews). Secondly, the crumbling of the
Soviet Union removed the mental and spiritual foundation of the Israeli
Left (much of its thought-world stemmed from elements in Communism).
Thirdly, the religious community generally, and the Haredi community in
particular, have a power of faith and an authenticity, quite different to
the cultural emptiness of the secularist Jew.
"Black ants" (Ran Cohen, Knesset Member), "black forces" (author and
journalist Yoel Marcus), "They are greedy, domineering, evil and
primitive, immoral, parasitical and power-hungry" (Shulamit Aloni told the
Knesset). Thus have the "ultra-orthodox" Haredi been described by many
among the Israeli Left intellectual elite which professes above all to
espouse the cause of equality, democracy and tolerance. Such hate the
notion of racism. There is no group of people in the world against whom
these humanists would cast the derision or scornful slander which they
save to use scurrilously against a section of their own people. It is
unthinkable that in any democratic state the most vicious of anti-Semites
would dare utter expressions equaling the racist Judeophobic hatred
uttered by certain Israelis in their own country.
One of the most vicious of Israeli anti-Semitic expressions, recalling,
sometimes even replicating, Nazi propaganda, is the comparison of Haredim
to parasites, blood-suckers of the secular population. The terms
"parasite" and "blood-suckers" have so deeply embedded themselves into the
consciousness of sections of the secularist community that the metaphor,
at a certain point, has merited a "scientific" explanation. It has become
real.
The central element of the Socialist-Zionist ethos, which had a major
influence on shaping the "new Jew", was the concept of "the Religion of
Labor". This concept soon metamorphosed from the Tolstoyan naivet? of A.D.
Gordon, the grandfather of the Jewish pioneers, to the doctrinaire
harshness of historical materialism and the class struggle ideology. The
basic claim was that anti-Semitism arose from the improper social
structure of Jewry in Exile, the "inverted pyramid" concept. In a normal
society, the productive section of the population made up the wide base of
the pyramid whereas at the top were found the "parasitical elements".
Among the Jews, supposedly, the top was wider than the base. The curse of
the Jewish inverted pyramid was, therefore, the cause of anti-Semitism.
Socialist Zionism sought to turn the pyramid over, to set it on its base
and thereby remove the malediction of anti-Semitism from the Jew. Viewing
the Jew as a "non-productive" parasite, as did Zionist-Socialism, was an
anti-Semitic principle that Jewish Marxists absorbed wholly from Karl Marx
himself; and Hitler borrowed from Marx his enunciation of the parasitic
Jew.
Even if some justification could be found for the use that Socialist
Zionism made of this anti-Semitic element in its bitter struggle with the
effects of the Exile on the Jew, it should be remembered that in reality,
it had nothing to do with the true picture. As Yehezkel Kaufmann
repeatedly demonstrated, the socio-economic stratification of Exile Jewry
was no different from that of the non-Jewish society surrounding them. If
the percentage of Jews in the professions of enterprise and finance was
above their part in the general society, this stemmed from objective
reasons, and in any case, was a major contribution to the economies of the
countries they lived in.
This variety of anti-Semitic propaganda was fed by the Marxist economic
doctrine which was eventually to fail, economically and socially. But the
lie took root. The anti-Semitic principle remained; at times dormant but
always seeping up, sporadically breaking out until it took bloom in the
Jewish State itself following the Six Day War, and more aggressively, in
the 1980s and 1990s with the growth of the Haredi parliamentary
representation in the Knesset.
"Israel is a ghetto, albeit better armed than the Warsaw ghetto and in a
better economic condition than the Lodz ghetto, but there ends the
difference". This remark, attributed to General (Res.) Benny Peled, former
Air Force Chief Commander, is a cutting criticism of the State of Israel,
likened to an Eastern European Jewish township, a shtetl, its leaders
likened to members of the community synagogue board. But Peled unwittingly
revealed another, graver truth: the bitter failure of Zionisms attempt
(very heroic it must be stated) to release Israel from the curse of
anti-Semitism. Not only did anti-Semitism not "disappear immediately" but
the State of Israel became the focus for Jew-hatred. During the states
short history, a brief period in the Jewish peoples long chronology, it
has faced those who sought to destroy it and has had to maintain the
largest army in the world in proportion to population. Israel has referred
to the intervals between these conflagrations, marked by vicious Arab
terrorist attacks from within and wars of attrition from without, as
"peacetime".
The rapid proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the region
evokes nightmares of gas chambers, as demonstrated by the mass flight of
Israeli citizens from population centers during the Second Gulf War. This
factor -when combined with the Nazi character of Arab Islam, which does
not hide its intentions and preparations for Israels annihilation - gives
a macabre note to Abba Ebans descriptive phase for Israels 1967 frontiers
Auschwitz borders. This all adds up to the difficult choice Israel faces:
to live by the sword or not to live at all.
This cruel alternative demands powers from the depths of ones being, a
demand which the Israeli Left cannot meet. With the double collapse of
socialism and Zionism, the Left is left facing the ruins of its faith and
raison detre. It must have a new messianic challenge, otherwise, it will
find itself discarded, useless, on the trash heap of history.
The comprehensive de-Zionization that started among Israels elites
depended a great deal upon the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with
racism. This was legitimized among the radical left and then among wider
circles which refer to themselves as the "Zionist Left", by identification
with that accusation. Israeli historical revisionism, especially the
writings of the "new historians" such as Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, and
particularly Ilan Pappe, presents Zionism in the spirit of that UN
resolution. The "peace process", a euphemism for the destruction of the
state of the Jews, is at the very same time, the reason for existence of
the Jewish Left, a chillingly illustrative of the verse "your detractors
and destroyers will issue forth from you".
While the Arab enemy becomes the ally of the Left, all who stand in its
way are sworn rivals threatening its existence. Such is the religious
community, particularly Gush Emunim, whom the Left vilifies
vituperatively. The settling of Judea and Samaria, is a double threat to
the Left, essentially and pragmatically. Judea and Samaria, as well as
Jerusalem, are the cradle of the Hebrew nation, and thereby the reason
behind Zionism. Any longing for or link to these areas represents a threat
to the trend of alienation of the Left from both Zionism and Judaism. A
thriving Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria puts in doubt the
establishment of a Palestinian Arab state - the very core belief of
Arafats Jews. The combination of both these realities becomes the
"obstacle to peace", a Judeophobic epithet which has obtained
international consensus, and which the Left has taken as a fundamental
political principle.
Paradoxically, the more the Haredi community has become involved in the
states politics, the more the almost xenophobic suspicions of it have
resulted in unrestrained verbal assaults. The language has even suggested
death: Naomi Hazan (MK) has declared: "Only if we succeed in getting rid
of this terrible evil, of the taking over of our lives by the black demon,
can we nurture all that is good in the state". The idea is that these,
particularly because of their attire, cause anti-Semitism. Aesthetically
this is the more obvious because of the Israeli heat and bright sun. Even
in an age when youth culture has made evading military service
fashionable, the Haredi community is attacked for its use of religion for
self-interest. Yet the fuss is all the more disproportionate considering
the demoralization and overall draft evasion in the IDF over the last
decade.
The Jewish anti-Semite, lacking identity, a cast off of Western
civilization, finds consolation for himself - at best - in American
sub-culture on one hand, and in anti-Semitic activity on the other: any
attempt to deny national heritage leads to spiritual decay and cultural
prostitution. Hence the attempt, so to speak, at "uprooting the
blood-sucking parasites from the heart" will involve uprooting the heart
itself.
i
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
1. Ah pity the poor Anti-Semitic Bash-Israel lobbies this week. One of
their main calling cards has always been the USS LIBERTY episode. In the
middle of the 1967 Six Day War, the USS LIberty was sitting where it
should not have been, probably collecting intelligence, and was fired on
by Israeli planes. This triggered a host of Chamish-like conspiracy
theories and was the blood libel best loved by the anti-Semitic lunatic
skinhead and tattoo
Right. Well, yesterday the US released classified documents and it turns
out the US has known all along that Israel's version of events was
correct. Israel fired on the ship in error in the heat of battle, not
knowing whose it was.
SO the anti-Semites will just have to come up with a new blood libel
these days, you know - like Jews drinking blood for Passover or occupying
Arab lands.
See http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/315934.html
2. A suicide bomber blows up a civilian home in a moshav, and day
afterwards Israel announces that it is certainly not going to allow the
terrorists to destroy the wonderful "Hudna ceasefire" Israel is
unilaterally observing. Gosh, what a surprise.
3. Haaretz July 9 reports that, since the start of the so-called Al-Aqsa
intifada three years back, the PLO and its affiliates have fired no fewer
than 2500 rockets or mortars into the civilian Jewish areas of the Gaza
Strip. Any
one of those rockets could destroy a home in a direct hit. They are
highly inaccurate, which increases their terror value.
And they constitute 2500 bases for Israel tearing up the Oslo Accords
and Road Map and invading the "Palestinian" zones and imposing R&D=
Re-Occupation and DeNazification. The Palestinians under OSlo are
prohibited from even possessing weapons heavier than a rifle, yet have
fired 2500 rockets at civilians.
Of course the 2501st rocket that will soon fall will be a complete
and total surprise for Israel's leaders, but not a reason for abandoning the
Hudna ceasefire.
I suggested years ago that the "settlers" in the Gaza Strip and West
Bank be provided with their own heavy artillery, napalm shells,
helicopters, B-52s and other weapons, and then - whenever the PLO shoots
at them - they could return fire on their own while Israel shrugs it
shoulders and says it just cannot locate the people shooting back.
4. Thought for the week. Now that Sharon is considering releasing from
prison EVEN Hamas and jihad bombers, has it occurred to any Likud leaders
that no one in Israel would be now debating how many hundreds of
Palestinian murderers to release as part of the "Hudna" if Israel had
years ago adopted capital
punishment for terrorists and so they had all been transformed into Purina
products?
5. I wonder if those surgeons specialized in separating the Siamese twins
in Singapore could be brought to Israel to separate Ariel Sharon from the
ideas of Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin.
6. Contender for the Award of Dumbest Prof on Campus?
Dr. Ron Shoham, a lecturer in Middle East Studies at Hebrew
University, writes an Op-Ed column in Haaretz on July 9, 2003 in which he
insists that if Israel simply pulls out of the Gaza Strip unilaterally,
this will neutralize the Hamas and Jihad and produce tranquility.
I guess Shoham had stepped out of the room for a bathroom break when
Israel already repeatedly pulled out of the Gaza Strip under Oslo, and the
result was 2500 rockets on civilians plus suicide bombers plus other
amusements. Oh, and Shoham has tenure.
7. Fast Current Events Quiz. What is wrong with this picture? Bibi
Netanya, Israel's Finance Minister, proposes reforming Israel's banking
sector to produce competition and remove conflicts of interest due to
excessive non-banking powers of the bank cartel.
Answer: The last and best time to have introduced banking and capital
market reform in israel, to break the banking cartel and strip the banks
of their non-banking powers and affiliates, was in 1996. At that time the
Israeli government still held the bulk of the stock shares of Israel's
three leading banks, which it had bought up as part of the Bailout of
speculators in 1983 - the Likud's earlier economic fiasco, and could have
done anything it wished with them. Including breaking up the banks into
smaller units and selling off their non-bank holdings.
But it did absolutely nothing to reform the banks and capital markets. And
guess whose decision it was at that time to do the abolute nothing? Prime
Minister Bibi Netanyahu, the Wye's Man of Chelm, of course.
8. Deomcracy and Secularism anyone?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8812
10. French Toast:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8813
Tuesday, July 08, 2003
Old-time Plaut-listers know that these postings regularly refer to those who discover in special bouts of serendipity that Oslo is not a peace process as ?graduates from the University of Duh?. In recent months a number of prominent Duhster grads have emerged and some have even expressed their serendipity on the Op-Ed pages of Haaretz. Interestingly, several of these include people who had been among the initiators of those wonderful joint ?Arab-Jewish? peace dialogues for cooperation and peace.
The latest to do so is one Aharon Lish, writing in Haaretz on June 29, 2003. Lish is a retired professor of Middle East Studies from Hebrew University and had been a charter member of several bleeding-heart forums for Arab-Jewish understanding. Like all such ?forums?, the ?understanding? invariably consists of leftist Jews and fascist Arabs reaching ?understanding? that the anti-Israel demands of the Arab world must be met. The genre is even more familiar in those countless joint Jewish-Arab endorsements of Israel?s destruction from outside Israel.
In any case, as part of these civics services, Lish was participant in a forum sponsored by the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University. This particular one was held on May 28, 2003. Lish reports on the content of the ?dialogue? in detail in his Op-Ed piece. He had previously been one of the enthusiasts for such ?dialogues?, particularly as leader in the ?Siccui? Forum. Siccui was devoted to full equality and niceness for all Israeli Arabs.
Needless to say, the ?dialogue? at Truman was one in which the Arab members made extremist demands involving the annihilation of Israel. Lish was particularly incensed by the speech by one Dr. Asad Ghannam, who had previously served in and been the director of the ?Siccui? Forum, together with Lish. Ghannam is a buddy of the infamous Ilan Pappe, in the papers this week for backing that Oxford University prof who refused to accept an Israeli medical student into his program because the Israeli is a Jew. Pappe thinks such ?selection? directed against Jews is wonderful because Israel is an evil entity in need of annihilation. (Pappe also endorses all those overseas boycotts of Israel and Jews).
Ghannam is yet another academic extremist from the University of Haifa, in the same political science department from which Pappe rants. Ghannam?s presentation at the conference was a long-winded endorsement of the Rwanda solution to the problem of Israel?s existence. He demanded that Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state and be replaced by a ?bi-national? state in all of Mandatory Palestine but with an Arab majority and ruling class, stripped of all of its Jewish symbols (flags, anthems). You see, Ghannam thinks the existence of a Jewish state with its own immigration rules is a moral atrocity, unlike those 22 Arab states with their Islamofascist rules and discrimination against non-Moslems, in some of which owning a Christmas tree is a capital offense. Ghannam does not want ?civil equality? between Arabs and Jews as in one-person, one-vote, but rather ?national parity?. According to that, the Jews and Arabs each select their own national institutions to repre
sent
them, except of course the Arab ones are the ones with the power to rule.
This is not the first such call by Ghannam for Israel to disappear. Lish cites several of his previous Op-Eds in which he makes similar wishes, including Haaretz Feb 22, 2001 and Nov 11, 2001. In the second piece, he openly endorses Arab violence against Jews in order to achieve these high-minded moral ends.
Prof. Lish is the latest, although hardly the youngest, graduate from the University of Duh.
Should you wish to tell the Haifa University officials what you thing of the fact that they employ a political science faculty member (on second thought, make that TWO poli sci faculty members) who openly call for violence against Jews and for the annihilation of Israel, give them an e-buzz at:
http://multimedia.haifa.ac.il:16080/manage/html/html_eng/english_index.html
---------------------------------
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Monday, July 07, 2003
Subject: Israel's "Hudna" Capitulation
1. The New ?Road Map? is in many ways worse than the original Oslo fiasco. Ariel Sharon is increasingly likely to go down in history as even a more destructive and foolish leader than the original Oslo junta.
Why is the Road Map so foolish? For one, it comes AFTER a decade of Oslo. It is based on all of the old Oslo delusions and stupidity and games of make-pretend. But Peres and Beilin at least could claim the right to benefit from the ?doubt? because they were venturing into the unknown and were testing a new path, one that the rest of us knew was foolish and destructive but still was open to doubt before being tested.
Sharon has none of that working for him. Sharon is implementing the ?Road Map? after the past decade provided daily empirical proof that all of the ?thinking? behind Oslo was wrong and that Oslo was a ?process? for producing Israeli national suicide and not peace. Oslo was based on trying to achieve victory through Israeli weakness and defeatism. It was based on the belief that Islamofascist terror could be eliminated through demonstrations of goodwill and willing ness to compromise, by niceness instead of harshness. Terror could be ended not through armed victory and suppression of violence but by payoffs to those performing the violence.
Oslo was based on the principle that the most effective way to disarm Arab terrorism and fascist aggression against Israel was by rewarding Arab violence, by behaving in ways that broadcast weakness and destructibility, by proving over and over that Israel is afraid to use force against its tormentors. It was based on the idea that Israeli cowardice is the highest form of valor, that Israeli self-debasement is the highest form of patriotism. It was based on the idea that if war is ugly, it can only be ended by pretending that it does not exist. It was based on the belief that Kodak moments with murdering terrorists and posturing for peace with Palestinian war criminals for the media constitute a peace process.
Hardly surprising, Oslo produced a massive escalation of Arab atrocities and violence, with around 1300 post-Oslo murdered Israelis. Oslo produced the most massive world assault on Israeli legitimacy in history, this in spite of the promises that by cooperating with the barbarians and making peace offerings and goodwill gestures, Israel was buying for itself legitimacy. Oslo was all about Israel blowing up its own deterrence powers voluntarily and partially disarming itself, in the hope that the Arabs would prove good sportsmen and respond with gentlemanly quid pro quos. Oslo was based on Israel making peace while the Arabs made war. It was performed under the slogan of ?Land for Peace?. The only problem was that it was the Israeli leaders talking about swapping land for peace, not the Arab leaders. The Arab leaders spoke of Israel giving up land as an Arab victory, as an Israeli capitulation, as part of the Plan of Stages leading to Israel?s removal and annihi
lation.
The Arabs insist they seek a Rwanda solution, where Israel ceases to exist and is replaced, in stages, with a ?bi-national state? in which one of those two ?bi? nations while face a Rwanda fate.
Oslo was based on a complete denial of reality and the attempt to achieve peace by leading the entire country of Israeli into a world of infantile fantasy. It is the Hogwarts version of peace making. Back in 1993, many an Israeli might still be convinced that the fantasy could turn out to be real because there really is a school of sorcery behind that train platform. By 2003 we have had 3,600+ days of proof that each and every Israeli goodwill concession produces more Arab violence, more attacks on Israeli legitimacy, more world anti-Semitism, more Arab intransigence.
When the Labor Party leaders released imprisoned Arab terrorists in the 1990s, there was as yet no proof ? other than common sense - that these released people would simply re-enlist in the terror brigades and murder Jews. There was still the pretense that these would renounce violence, suppress the Hamas and Jihad terrorists, and establish a PLO constabulary that would fight terror and protect Jewish lives. By 2003 no one can possibly believe any of that unless they are on the most dangerous psychedelic drugs. Yet here we have Ariel Sharon - once again - buying a three month ?ceasefire? by releasing terrorists from prison. And not even a ?ceasefire?, but a Hudna. Where Sharon agrees to the national debasement of having Israel beg for a ?Hudna?, a charged Arabic term from the Koran referring to a temporary ceasefire agreed to by Moslems while they rearm and re-organize for the coming battle and showdown, one where Moslems are determined to violate the Hudna an
d attack
the moment they feel they are in a position of strength.
The Labor Party leaders at least went through the pretense of getting the terrorists released from prison to sign oaths that they would henceforth not engage in violence. But not the Likud leaders of Sharon?s government. No one is even bothering to pretend. The Labor leaders at first at least could argue that Israel should comply with Oslo because there had not yet been a track record of PLO violations proving the PLO would never comply with anything. Sharon has no such claim to grace.
Sharon?s figleaf is that he will only be releasing terrorists who ?do not have blood on their hands?, and as the Arutz7 commentator Adir Zik says, this is simply because they showered it off while in prison. There is no difference between a terrorist who actually fired or detonated and one who provided him with logistics support or was his commander or otherwise participated in terrorist atrocities. EVERY terrorist has blood on his hands. EVERY terrorist released will engage in murder of Jews, Sharon is ?buying? a ridiculous one-sided ceasefire with the blood of Jews. There has not been an hour go by since the announcement of the ?Hudna? without more Palestinian violence and attacks on Jews.
Yet Sharon meets with the PLO?s make-pretend ?Prime Minister? and male bonds with him and gladhands and poses for the cameras. Abu Mazen is a Holocaust-Denying Nazi. He is as up to his ears in Jewish blood as Arafat himself. His only real function is to allow the US and EU to pretend that the Palestinian Authority has been reformed and is no longer a Third World kleptocracy under the direct personal command and control of Arafat. The very same ?Al-Aqsa martyrs? and Tanzim brigades commanded by Arafat and Abu Mazen murder Jews, while Sharon holds ?peace talks? with their commanders and grants them appeasements.
Ariel Sharon makes a mockery of the notion that Israel?s raison d?etre is ?Never Again?, the making sure that Jews will never again suffer from nazi anti-Semitism and genocidal anti-Jewish racism. Instead, Sharon holds talks with the Nazi-wannabes and offers concessions, releases the SS men from prison, begs for a Hudna while the murderers rearm, promises lands for the Gauleiters, releases funds to finance the Wehrmacht.
The entire world sits back and laughs at the Jews. The Palestinians blow up buses of Jewish children and the Prime Minister of the Jews runs to meet with those who are responsible for the crimes, pretending they are NOT the real terrorists, shakes their hands, gives them gifts. The PLO fires rockets into Jewish civilian homes and Sharon congratulates it for working for peace and says that the PLO should be granted its own state in the Jewish heartland. PLO gunmen murder Israeli civilians every day and Sharon urges Abu Mazen to catch the murderers and bring them to justice. PLO school texts scream for genocide of Jews while Sharon pretends he is engaged in peace dialogue with the book publishers. The PLO ?arrests? terrorists, who are back on the street in hours, and Sharon peacocks about claiming that at long last the PLO is complying with its obligations and really really trying.
There is no doubt that, at least in part, Sharon?s pusillanimous behavior is due to American extortionism and threats. Bush wants a ?peace process? to defang Islamofascism. But a leader is someone who sometimes has to do unpopular things. Samson was willing to give up his own political career to prevent a greater tragedy. Israel will not survive unless it draws a line and tells even the United States, in the most polite and friendly tone, Sorry but No. There are lots of things we are willing to do to help out the US but committing national suicide is where we draw the line. You can growl and sanction us as much as you wish but we are not going to do it.
Ariel Sharon is not behaving like the Samson he was once thought to be but as an Israeli Chamberlain. Like Bibi Netanya, he ran as Churchill and instantly morphed into a cowardly appeaser after taking office. The Likud of Sharon is no different from the Likud of Netanyahu in 1996, the Wye?s Men of Chelm. It is the Me-Too-Labor Party.
Shimon Peres was on radio this week crowing about how he and his policies had taken over the Likud, I guess like those space pods do in those science fiction films. Peres bragged that the Likud is a party with no ideology or game plan at all, which Peres regards as a great victory for him. He was proud as punch that the dilemmas into which he and the Oslo junta had thrust the country are so bottomless and overwhelming that no Likud government is capable of extracting Israel from them.
2. Anti-Semitic Axis of Evil:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8768
3. Sharon?s People say ?We Won the Intifada?? Well, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=2471
---------------------------------
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Saturday, July 05, 2003
Here is a thought. You know how every time a suicide mass murderer
blows up some Jews, the whole world demands to know what the "underlying
causes" of the atrocity are?
And you know how suddenly there are waves of suicide bombers in all sorts
of other places beside Israel? A crew of suicide murderers blew up the
Moscow music festival. Suicide bombers attacked people in Pakistan
recently. They have been active in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Suicide
bombers struck Bali and Morocco.
So what is the "underlying cause" of all those atrocities?
The answer is simple. The underlying cause of the many suicide bombing
atrocities outside of Israel is simply the fact that the suicide bombings
inside Israel have been rewarded. Under the pressure from the entire
world to appease the bombers, Israel has proved to the world that suicide
bombing works, that it pays. Want to get something? Send out some
suicide bombers and you will be rewarded with whatever you want.
It was only after Israel proved that suicide bombing pays that the
Islamofascist Jihadists expanded and escalated and applied the proven
method elsewhere.
You cannot argue with success.
Friday, July 04, 2003
1. Yigal Tomarkin is Israels official Sculptor of Junk. He is a
geezer and vintage member of Israels bohemian artsy-shmartsy set, who
specializes in spouting Far-Leftist anti-Orthodox poppycock and in
building rusting eyesores all over the country. His art looks like
something taken from the back lot at Sanford and Son.
We have had many an occasion to comment on the aging Junkster in the
past. First, Tomarkin is famous for saying that when he watches Orthodox
Jews walking about he can really understand why the Nazis wanted to murder
all the Jews. His art has triggered mass protests by Israelis demanding
that it be removed from their streets lest it lower their property values.
But perhaps the most theatrical Tomarkin affair was one in which
Tomarkin was involved in the theft of a statue from a town square in
Europe, which turned up in Tomarkins own studio after he had altered it.
Haifa's weekly Kolbo July 4, 03 carries an interview with the
Michaelangelo of junk, and reveals some other juicy tidbits from his bio.
Two years ago Tomarkin got involved with the cops because he had been
smacking around his misses, choked her, and threatened to kill her. At
one point he took a pistol and pointed it at his own head and threatened
to make her watch his transformation into a Tomarkin sculptured original.
Tomarkin claims the Israeli Secret Service put his wife up to bringing the
charges as part of some sort of Chamishite conspiracy against him.
The Attorney General indicted him for all this, but last week
cancelled up on grounds that the couple claimed they had resolved things.
Tomarkin is 70 and the Misses is 42.
Tomarkin however is angry that the police gave him back his guns
after making them impossible to fire. Personally, I think they would
make a far more aesthetic sculpture than anything else he has rusted up.
2. Suleiman Abu Mutlak is the new poster boy for the Road Map. He is
a mass murderer and a monster. He ordered the bombing of a bus in the
Gaza Strip in 2000 in which two people were killed. That however is not
what made the incident most memorable. Abu Mutlak's attack wounded three
children from the same family, the Cohen children, who were on that bus,
two of whom had limbs
blown off. The Cohen children became the symbols of the complete failure
and criminality of the Oslo politicians.
So where is Abu Mutlak today? He is strolling the avenue and
sipping espresso. Ariel Sharon has decided to order him released as part
of Israel's new Munich appeasements, part of the Road Map. Mutlak is out
enjoying a potluck. You see, he is earmarked for a new military position
in the "Palestinian government" of Abu Mazen, the make-pretend Prime
Minister of Palestine, and the Likud appeasers are pretending that he will
act against the Hamas and Jihad if he is released.
And when Abu Mutlak goes back to his hobby of blowing up Jewish
children, everyone will be totally amazed and surprised, because it will
be entirely unexpected.
See below:
3 Children Injured for Life
and
Tonight Their Terrorist Goes Free!
By Harvey Tannenbaum
It was a cool morning in November 2000 as the school bus was leaving Kfar
Darom. Although the bus was bulletproof, the children felt protected in their
morning ride to school.
Ophir and Noga Cohen said goodbye to their 3 children, Yisrael, Orit, and
Tehila, as they left for work and the 3 children climbed into their bulletproof
bus.
Unbeknownst to the children and their school teachers on the bus, Mohammed
Dahlan and Suliman Abu Motlik, two chief terrorists were waiting near the bus
path with RPGs and anti tank rockets to attack the school bus.
The terrorists knew that this bulletproof bus would not withstand the RPGs
and rockets which the two terrorists propelled onto the school bus.
Minutes later on that morning in November 2000, Orit and Tehilla Cohen, the
children were without one leg and one arm from Dahlan and Motlik terrorists'
attack on their school bus.
Two school teachers on the bus were killed instantly, and Yisrael Cohen, the
brother was injured as well.
Three children from the same family were maimed for life.
After two years of physiotherapy and prosethics, the two girls were learning
to walk again with their new 'legs and feet.'
The IDF risked its soldiers to capture Suliman Abu Motlik who was imprisoned
until tonight, when Sharon sneaked in a quick release to please Abu Mazen and
George W. Bush.
Last night, after the Road Map photo ops of Abu and Arik last week, the Kfar
Darom community received 4 mortars, one of which injured 4 Kfar Darom
residents, including a 14 year old teenager, a friend of the Cohen children.
Tonight, Dahlan is free and is called the 'Defense Minister' of the PLO while
his co terrorist, Suliman was freed today from prison.
The Cohen children watched on TV, their parents spoke on national radio
tonight, and one could only sit back and watch Tehilla, Orit, and Yisrael, with
their prosethic legs and feet wipe away their tears as three years later, they
are old enough to understand and see the killers of the children's teachers, and
the terrorists responsible for maiming these 3 children walk freely.
Can anyone explain what has happened to Israel?
Can anyone explain the freedom of terrorists to children who walk slower, do
things differently, and will have the nightmare of their school bus being
blown up by RPGs and missiles with them for the rest of their lives?
Harvey Tannenbaum
Israel
Cannot Explain it To the Children
"Erets Yisrael Le'Am Yisrael"
(The Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel).
Am Yisrael Chai
(The People of Israel Live)
Ms. G. Goldwater
Switzerland, Geneva
iii44@aol.com
Internet Correspondent and Commentator
http://goldwater.mideastreality.com/
You may freely forward this information, but on condition that you send the
text as an integral whole along with complete information about its author,
date, and source.
Will Egypt Expedite Arming Terrorists Via Terror Highway? BIGGEST ACTION
ALERT <<<<< HIGH ALERT ACTION NEEDED
Bush's Joke of the day - hour - or month - ?
Bush on Abu Mazen: "incapable of lying", Dhalan "like that young man " <<<
it's not a joke he means it - frightening
Click here: Israel don't miss to know reality from Israel
VAT - Victims of Arab Terror International
pipeline_of_hatred - Slide Show
"There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs love their
children more than they hate Israel."
Golda Meir
OUR ENEMIES ... Enemies of the Jewish People and Israel
http://www.ourenemies.org/
"For the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped."
Psalm 63:12
"Peace isn't simply an absence of war;" said Ronald Reagan, "it's the
presence of justice."
The History And Meaning Of Palestine And Palestinians
You can make a difference by helping this project:
info in this link
http://goldwater.mideastreality.com/unrwanow2.html
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing." - Edmund Burke
A lesson to be learned from all of the Palestinian lies.
As Abraham Lincoln said:
"You can't fool all of the people all of the time"
"You don't need (a) good memory when all you speak is (the) truth."
Mental Health Warning: the so-called Liberal/Socialist "news" media have been
known to cause memory loss, mass confusion and psychosis. Should symptoms
occur, apply large doses of reality, faith and common sense
Thursday, July 03, 2003
Yesterday Yossi ("Mr. Call-Me-Ishmael") Sarid announced that he would
no longer seek to lead the Israeli Left and implied he might soon leave
politics altogether. He has been the Chief Commissar at left-wing Meretz
ever since Shulamit Aloni was set out to pasture.
I thought that in light of these dramatic events, I should re-post an
old posting which concerned Meretz organizing a convention of pork sellers
in Israel, to promote pork sales in Israel. Really
For those who missed it earlier, this inspired the following song:
To Meretz To Meretz, To Buy a A Fat Pig,
Home Again Home Again, Jiggety Jig.
To Meretz To Meretz, To Buy a Fat Hog,
Home Again Home Again, Jiggety Jog.
To Meretz To Meretz, To Buy a Young Shoat,
Home Again Home Again, Ready to Vote.
To Meretz To Meretz, to buy a fat sow,
Stir fry it with scallions, I'd like a Peace Now.
To Meretz To Meretz, to buy a crisp chimp,
Sautee it with butter and serve it with shrimp.
To Meretz To Meretz, to buy an old horse,
We'll send him to the Knesset like Caligula of course.
July 3, 2003
COMMENTARY
The Anti-Americans
By FOUAD AJAMI
America is unloved in the alleyways of Nablus and Karachi, and in the
cafes of Paris: The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press came
forth last month with news of anti-Americanism in foreign lands. Its
Global Attitudes Project, directed by the pollster Andrew Kohut, and
chaired and advised by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, told
us that the "bottom has fallen out" of support for America in the Muslim
world, that the rift has widened between Americans and Europeans. From 20
countries, pollsters returned with what they took to be evidence of a
growing animus toward the U.S. Only 1% of Palestinians think "favorably"
of the U.S.; the numbers are not much better in Jordan and Pakistan.
Turkey, once reliably anchored in the Pax Americana, is now of a piece
with its neighbors: only 15% of Turks now report positive views of the
U.S. Leave the Muslim lands behind, and this anti-Americanism has infected
other places and peoples -- all the way from South Korea, where American
power underpins Korean security, to France and Russia.
Americans ache to be loved in foreign places, and now the world denies us.
But a mix of partisanship and naivete runs through this survey. Consider
this leading question and the trail it opens: What's the problem with the
U.S.?, the pollsters ask. Is it "mostly Bush," or "America in general," or
both? Not surprisingly, President Bush is the culprit in France and
Germany (74% attribute their anti-Americanism to him).
* * *
What does all this mean? What are we to make of the hatred in Egypt, for
instance? Vast American treasure has been invested there, thousands of
that crowded country's citizens have made it to America's shores and
escaped destitution. But we are never benevolent in Egyptian eyes, and a
kind of generalized anger toward America has taken hold there.
"Nations follow the religion of their kings," an Arab expression has it.
The anti-Americanism of Egypt is the malignant strain that leaders wink
at. You can't rail against Hosni Mubarak; so anti-Americanism is the
permissible politics. Where the dream of modernism atrophies, as it has in
Egypt, and a culture of abdication settles in, a people are easy prey to
any doctrine that absolves them of responsibility for their own world.
Anti-Americanism is the placebo. There is no need in a culture of this
kind to ask the crowd for consistency, to query the academic who does well
by American foundation grants why he harbors such hate for America. The
Pew pollsters fall for a legend and an evasion that those who rail against
America often put forth to pretty up their anti-Americanism: It is not
individual Americans they hate, but the United States! This is pure
sophistry, but the pollsters report it as credible sentiment.
Consider Turkey next. It is odd among the Turks, this anti-Americanism. In
their modern history, the Turks have been serious and empirical, not given
to the cluster of sentiments that give anti-Americanism its potency in
France or among the intellectuals of the Third World. Years ago, Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk pointed Turkey westward, gave it a dream of renewal and
self-help, and distanced it from its Arab-Muslim hinterland. But that was
then, and now Kemalism has come apart. The secular, modernist dream in
Turkey has cracked; and anti-Americanism blows Turkey's way from the Arab
lands, and from Brussels and Berlin.
The fury of the Turkish protests against America's war plans in Iraq had a
pathology all its own. It was nature imitating art: The Turks burning
American flags, superimposing swastikas on portraits of President Bush,
went at it, it seemed, in the hope that Europeans (real Europeans, that
is) would take Turkey into the fold. The American presence had been benign
and benevolent in Turkey. Americans have been Ankara's advocates in the
European councils of power, and have been free of the Turkophobia just
beneath the surface of European life. But suddenly this relationship that
served Turkey so well was no longer good enough. The "soft" Islamists
(there is no such thing, we should know by now) hacked at the Pax
Americana; secularists averted their gaze and let stand this new
anti-Americanism. Pollsters calling on the Turks found a people in
distress, their economy on the ropes, their polity in an unfamiliar world
beyond the simple certainties of Kemalism.
Running through the Pew survey is the explicit assumption that it had been
better for America before the "unilateralism," and our campaign in Iraq:
We called up this anti-Americanism. But leave the false empiricism of
these numbers, and there is nothing new in Amman, and Cairo, and Paris. No
one said good things about America in Egypt in the 1990s, either. It was
then that the Islamists of Egypt had taken to the road, to Hamburg and
Kandahar, to hatch a monstrous conspiracy against the U.S. And it was
then, during our fabled stock market run, when globalizers were
celebrating the triumph of our economic model over the protected versions
in places like France, when anti-Americanism became the uncontested
ideology of French public life. We were barbarous, a threat to their
cuisine, to their language. Our pension funds were acquiring their assets.
We executed too many criminals. All this during a decade when we were told
that we were loved abroad.
Much has been made of the sympathy that the French expressed for America
in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, and of the speed with which
America presumably squandered that sympathy. Much has been made of that
editorial in Le Monde, "Nous Sommes Tous Americains" -- We Are All
Americans -- penned after Sept. 11. But it took the paper precious little
time to revoke the sympathy it had expressed on Sept. 12. To maintain
France's sympathy, and that of Le Monde, we would have had to turn the
other cheek to al Qaeda, and engage the Muslim world in some high
civilizational dialogue. Anti-Americanism flatters France, and gives its
unwanted Muslims a claim on the political life of a country that knows not
what to do with them.
* * *
"America is everywhere," Ignazio Silone once observed. An idea of it, a
fantasy of it, hovers over distant lands. In the days that followed the
attacks of Sept. 11, a young Palestinian gave expression to the image
America holds out in places where its shadow falls: the boy passing out
sweets in celebration of America's grief wondered aloud as to the impact
of the bombings on his ability to get a U.S. visa. He felt no great
contradiction. He had no feeling of affection or loyalty for the land he
yearned to migrate to. He grew up to the familiar drums of
anti-Americanism. He had implicated America in his life's circumstances.
You can't reason with his worldview. You can only wish for him deliverance
from his incoherence -- or go there, questionnaire in hand, and return
with dispatches of people at odds with American policies. You can make
foreigners say the sort of things about America you wanted to say
yourself. It is an old literary trick. Everyone knew that Montesquieu's
"Persian Letters" were indeed Parisian letters, a writer's device to
chronicle France's foibles in the early 18th century. His "Persians,"
Rhedi and Usbek, spoke of France. It is our American pollsters we hear
speaking to us through those Turks and Arabs and Frenchmen who, on cue,
were ready to speak of America's alienation from the rest of the world.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins, is a contributing editor at U.S.
News & World Report.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105719212421504100,00.html
2. See also http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8718
3. Rewarding the Dull:
www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8716
4. Martin Peretz on Terror Cheerleaders:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8723
Terrorist Fellow-Travellers
By Martin Peretz
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | July 3, 2003
Every failed revolution in modern times has had its fellow travelers, a
phenomenon hard to define but easy to recognize. Picasso was one;
Jean-Paul Sartre, another; FDR's vice president, Henry Wallace, a third.
Two, three decades later, Susan Sontag would also put her words to work
for the brutal engineers of soul and society.
There were literally tens of thousands of these influentials in the United
States and elsewhere in the West. And the revolutions of the left did not
have a monopoly on fellow-traveling. In the 1930s, there were lots of
fellow travelers of Nazism, too: Charles Lindbergh, Ezra Pound, the duke
of Windsor and many others.
Many fellow travelers went exuberantly from one decaying communism to
another, seriatim, from the Soviet Union to the People's Republic of China
to Castroite Cuba and Vietnam and then to Sandinista Nicaragua, never
quite realizing they would soon feel the need to move on again.
But move on they would, armed as always -- as author David Caute put it --
with their usual arsenal of "bifocal lenses, double standards, a myopic
romanticism."
Of course, there is now no world revolution into which these deluded folk
can vest their ardors, as yesteryear's fellow travelers did when extolling
the nonexistent -- but exemplary -- democratic virtues of Stalin's Russia
or of some other transformatory idyll. Only certified kooks are in the
business these days of changing the nature of man.
So the present-day romantics, who at home typically despise the idea of
the nation-state and the realities of national interest, are left with
often contrived and almost always murderous nationalisms to adore. The
nationalism du jour is Palestinian nationalism.
It was the British political historian David Pryce-Jones who, I think,
first made the analogy between the old fellow travelers and the new,
between those who romanticized the Soviets and those who now romanticize
Palestinian (and Islamic) terrorism.
Not that all Palestinians are terrorists, not at all, although polls show
an overwhelming proportion of them to be supporters of terrorism. But
terrorism happens to be the defining paradigm of the Palestinian cause.
Thus it is terrorism that is being supported by the American and British
university professors who demand that their institutions divest from
companies invested in Israel. And it is terrorism that is being supported
by scientists and other academics who propose institutional and personal
boycotts of Israeli intellectuals.
In any case, the political pilgrims from abroad drawn to the Palestinian
cause seem, almost unfailingly, to be lured to those whose very vocation
is terror.
Take, for example, the International Solidarity Movement, a
nongovernmental organization ensconced in Gaza. The two British Muslims
recruited by Hamas who blew up Mike's Place, a blues pub in Tel Aviv,
moved in and out of Israel from the territories with remarkable ease,
aided by ISM activists.
On its own Web site, the ISM admits to supporting the Palestinian right to
"legitimate armed struggle." This did not keep much of the press from
calling the organization "pacifist." Not surprisingly, Linda Gradstein,
Jerusalem correspondent for NPR (now widely known as National Palestine
Radio), is one of these. On "All Things Considered," she blithely
characterized ISM as "committed to nonviolent resistance." Well, it
cannot, after all, be committed to both. And it isn't. Its activities are
dovetailed with the needs of Hamas. It stages media events for the murder
militias, and sometimes its own volunteers get hurt -- or even killed, as
one American was by an Israeli bulldozer. The best you can say of them is
that they are gulled. But this is not bravery; it is stupidity.
Unlike the deluded men who fought in the International Brigades during the
Spanish Civil War and thought they were putting their lives on the line
against Hitlerism while they were actually risking their lives for
Stalinism, there are no such daydreams available to the partisans of
Palestine.
Let us concede, as I do, that the Palestinians need a state. But let us
also concede that, had not the Palestinians started a bloody insurrection
in the midst of negotiations with Israel during the fall of 2000 and
turned that into a Walpurgisnacht of unrelenting terror, they would
already have a state and be on their way to as robust an independence as
they could manage -- contingent only on the peacefulness of their borders.
But why should the cause of independent Palestine resonate with idealists
and international moralists? After all, there are dozens of historic
nations and peoples, some more numerous than the Palestinians, who are
stateless and powerless in the world. There are, living among the Arabs
themselves, the Berbers and the Kurds, who have no established political
power. Even in Europe, where the nation-state was born, there are nations
deprived of independence. Do they and the more numerous stateless peoples
of Asia and Africa not merit solidarity and support for independence? What
is so special about the Palestinians?
Actually, nothing. Except that their neighbors are the Jews. There is
certainly no reason to believe that independent Palestine will be an
ethical advance over the other long-independent and, at best, autocratic
states in the Arab world, some of them barbarisms.
The truth is that no one who has had a real hearing among the Palestinians
has ever articulated a vision of Palestine that is premised on an idea of
social justice, a new relationship between the classes, among the clans
and tribes, between the sexes. Believe me, Palestine will not be a
democratic state because Palestine is not a democratic or tolerant
society. This is in devastating contrast to the Zionist enterprise that
had true ideals about how human beings and political difference were to be
treated, ideals that were turned to realities.
The contrast is not an abstraction. We've had nearly a decade of
Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza and, between 1976 and 1982, six
years of Palestinian rule over southern Lebanon to judge this empirically.
There is no mystery about how its courts are run and how its press is
manipulated and terrorized. No one actually imagines an independent
judiciary or a truly free and competitive press in Palestine. Even though
Palestinians work enormously hard, there is no animating dream of what a
productive and fair economy would look like. What one sees way in the
future is a corrupt corporatism engineered by those who hold political
power.
Palestine will soon have its political expression in statehood. On the
night it happens, gunshots will echo throughout the Arab streets -- to the
rest of the world, a peculiar way of celebrating. Still, it will be a
celebration. And on the long morrow, there won't be much disenchantment
because nothing truly fundamental will have ever been promised or even
envisioned.
Dictatorship will settle its rule onto independent Palestine, as it had
during the long struggle. Civil strife will follow, and likely another
dictatorship will replace the first.
And the borders of Palestine will not be still. But, by then, the fellow
travelers of the Palestinian revolution will be gone, some of them on to
other causes, most of them (like the veterans of the 1960s) nursing their
heady memories for retelling to their children. Heady memories...and lies.