Posted 5/31/2004 02:19:00 PM

Subject: The Jewish "Theologian" from Waco

Slightly edited versions of these appear in the Spring 2004 issue of Middle East Quarterly:

Review of
Marc Ellis, ?Out of the Ashes: The Search for Jewish Identity in the Twenty-First Century,? Pluto Press, London, 2002
Reviewed by Steven Plaut

The first hint one has of the real orientation of this atrocious little book, which purports to be a theological re-examination of what it means to be Jewish after the Holocaust, is that the only people Ellis and his publisher could find to endorse the book on the jacket are members of the Terrorism Lobby: Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and their ilk. Not a single Jewish theologian. Nation, the Far Left anti-Jewish American political magazine, recently praised the book?s call for Israel to be eliminated, while expressing dislike for the fact that Ellis thinks religion still has some positive roles to play in the 21st century. Need we say more?
That is about as much a work in theology as is New Age drugs-and-Marxism Tikkun Magazine, a venue where Ellis feels right at home. Ellis is University Professor of American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University, a Baptist School in Waco, Texas. This is the same Waco we all recall as the home of some other peculiar forms of theology. Ellis has a long track record of using his Center there to proliferate leftist agitprop and Israel-bashing materials.
This poorly-written book, the latest in the series of Israel-bashing propaganda tirades published by Pluto Press, is little more than a vicious anti-Israel broadside. The only thing of value that Ellis thinks Jews should derive from their experiences during the Holocaust is an unambiguous denunciation of Israel and total support for the demands and agenda of the Palestinians.
For Ellis, Israel is the embodiment of all that is evil and all that is wrong with Judaism today. His concept of Israel is of a bunch of bullies riding about in helicopters and firing at poor innocent Palestinians for no reason at all (an image repeated ad nauseum in the book). Ellis? Israel is a belligerent selfish entity mistreating and enslaving the Palestinians as part of some sort of grand pursuit of the goals of the Jewish settlers in the ?Palestinian? territories. While I did not test it with a computerized word count, I would wager that the word ?bully? juxtaposed next to ?Israel? is the most common word combination in the entire screed. Ellis apparently has never heard of the Oslo ?peace process? and speaks about Israeli conquest and occupation of the Palestinians as being ?complete?, this a decade after Yitzhak Rabin and Bibi Netanyahu turned most of them over to the PLO?s tender rule.
Ellis makes it clear that he only feels comfortable with his fellow Jews when they are being victimized. When they stand up to defend themselves, they lose their Jewish soul and their legitimate right to exist. In his zeal to delegitimize Israel (he speaks blissfully of the ?post-Israel era?), he goes even further than the ?Rabbis? of Tikkun magazine, which Ellis lists as the greatest of ethical institutions in the Jewish world, and approaches the views of crackpot Norman Finkelstein. Like Finkelstein, Ellis thinks the Holocaust has been utilized by the Jews as a gimmick to grasp power and oppress the poor Arabs. The only real lesson Ellis wishes us to learn from the Holocaust is that Israelis are behaving like Nazis and that Jews who assist the Palestinians in achieving their aims are ethically equivalent to those few Germans who rescued Jews in World War II from the Gestapo.
According to Ellis, Israel?s original sin was to utilize the Holocaust as an excuse to occupy ?Palestinian? land. Israel?s existence is not justified by Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. The only ?massacres? of any Holocaust-relevance are those Israel perpetrates. Jenin and Deir Yassin (neither of which was in fact a massacre) are the moral equivalents of the Holocaust of the Jews, insist Ellis.
Ellis is openly contemptuous of any talk about Jews being in need of any national empowerment. Such things constitute ?Constantinian Judaism?, to use Ellis? term, which is nothing more than conscripting religion to serve the agenda of the militarist state and of those evil malicious ?settlers?. Jews can only fulfill their ethical role in history, which - Ellis is persuaded - is to promote socialism and leftist fads, if they are stateless and suffering. While crying his eyes out over the ?inhumane? treatment of the Palestinians, Ellis never finds time in his discussion of the theological implications of the Holocaust to discuss the mass murder of Jewish children by his Palestinians. Jews certainly have no right to ride around in helicopters to prevent such things.
Nor is he willing to acknowledge that any ?mistreatment? of Palestinians, such as assassinating their leading terrorists, might have anything at all to do with the atrocities committed by the Palestinians. In a book supposedly about the lessons of the Holocaust for the Jews, there is not a single word about the Nazi-like demonization of Jews by the PLO and its affiliates, nor the calls for genocide against Jews.
Ellis rejects even the political positions of Israel?s Far Left. He is contemptuous of claims that Ehud Barak?s offer to the Palestinians at Camp David II in 2000, in which Barak offered the PLO absolutely everything, was generous, not to mention suicidal. The offer did not come even close to what Ellis insists Israel must do, which is to cease to exist. Ellis is a passionate endorser of the ?One-State Solution,? also known as the Rwanda Solution, in which Israel will simply be eliminated as a Jewish state and will be enfolded within a larger Palestinian-dominated state that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan river. This insists Ellis, is the ultimate realization of the Jewish ethic mission.
Ellis? explicit motivation for writing this book is that he got drubbed rather badly in a debate a few years back in New Zealand by Prof. Yossi Olmert, brother of the previous Mayor of Jerusalem. Olmert had the chutzpah to defeat Ellis mercilessly in argument. Hence Ellis opens his book by viciously stating that Olmert is the moral equivalent of Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. He denounces Olmert as a bully because Olmert bested him in the debate. No doubt all of Israel also became a bully because it refuses to adopt the program for self-destruction advocated by this ?theologian? from Waco.

Review of David Grossman?s ?Death as a Way of Life: Ten Years After Oslo?, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, NY, 2003

Reviewed by Steven Plaut


Try to imagine that one of those many people in Britain who had lauded the Munich Accord as a great breakthrough for peace and who were certain Hitler would never violate it had decided to publish his old articles, singling praises for Munich ? printing them after World War II. Or imagine someone republishing his old Op-Eds from the late 1980s about how the Eastern European Soviet system was here to stay ? as a new book in 2003.

Well, if you can imagine such a thing, you have a pretty good picture of David Grossman?s new book. Grossman is one of the more extreme members of Israel?s Literary Left. He has published quite a few novels, and is regarded as a gifted writer of fiction. (Not by me, but then I am only an economist so what do I know about such things.) But Grossman also spends many a waking hour in turning out political agitprop and Far Leftist Op-Eds for the newspapers of Israel, the UK, Germany and France, including some of the worst Israel-bashing outfits.

Grossman suddenly has decided to collect some of these moldy Op-Eds and recycle them as this book, and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux for some incomprehensible reason thought it could make them a few bucks. What we get are almost a score of Grossman?s silliest and worst-written Op-Eds. Even worse, these pieces have been so thoroughly belied and debunked by actual events that one would have expected anyone with a minimal sense of shame to have buried them in his clippings box and never again make public mention of them.

We have Grossman?s early pieces singing the praises of the Oslo ?peace process? and beatifying Yitzhak Rabin for his ?courage? in establishing the foundations for a Palestinian state. Grossman repeatedly celebrates the fact that Arafat has abandoned his ambitions to see Israel attacked and destroyed, and clearly has renounced the so-called Palestinian ?right of return?. Palestinians, insists Grossman, are downright embarrassed when they read the irredentist contents of the PLO?s ?Covenant?. Embarrassed indeed.

Hardly controlling his ecstasy at the Rabin-Arafat handshake, he gushes: ?I have always believed that when Israel agrees to grant this right (of self-determination) to the Palestinians, it will also win it for itself.? How inconvenient for Grossman that Israel spent the past decade granting such a ?right? and got 1300 murdered Israelis in exchange and nonstop war.

Grossman does not feel the slightest shudder when exhibiting for us all his political cluelessness. He reprints his old piece about the Palestinian boy Muhammed al-Durrah killed in a firefight started by the PLO, a piece attacking Israel and Ehud Barak. He neglects to mention anywhere that it has since been learned that the boy was in fact killed by PLO fire. Grossman reprints his appeals to Palestinian writers and intellectuals, ?ALL? of whom ? he insists ? seek peace with Israel (p.22), to condemn the violence. Grossman then sighs when they never do, but fails to contemplate the possibility that these folks just might be ENDORSING the jihadniks and murderers. While the Left?s ?concepts? turn out to have been completely wrong, one after the other, about absolutely everything in the era of the Oslo Euphoria, Grossman just gets irritable and insists Oslo collapsed because the Left was not stubborn enough and militant enough and extreme enough.

After predicting that Prime Minister Ehud Barak would never offer the Palestinians any land in one of the reprinted Op-Eds, Barak then offered the PLO virtually the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, an immediate state, parts of pre-1967 Israel, financial tribute, and East Jerusalem with the Western Wall. Being progressive means never having to say you are sorry. The PLO then launches the ?Al-Aqsa Intifada? in response to Barak?s offer. Naturally, Grossman sees the collapse of Camp David II as somehow all Israel?s fault.

Now while Grossman is possibly the most extremist among Israel?s Literary Leftists, even HE dismisses out of hand any possibility of any Palestinian ?right of return? to pre-1967 Israel. But that is precisely the little detail over which Ehud Barak?s insane offer at Camp David failed! As my teenagers would say, Like Duh. Grossman never draws the conclusion from his own rejection of the PLO?s insistence on a ?Right of Return? that the PLO is seeking war and violence - not coexistence - always was, in spite of its posturing when Rabin was still around. Nor does he ever dwell on the meaning of those polls showing near-universal support among Palestinians for suicide bombings and atrocities against Jews. While throwing a couple of his pieces on the Holocaust into the volume, the only real lesson Grossman has learned from the Holocaust is how unwaveringly devoted today?s Far Left must remain to their delusions.

Grossman, who even today ?understands? why the Palestinians loath Israel (page 7), also ?understands? the PLO when it tries to smuggle in the Karin A ship of terror weapons (in another reprinted Op-Ed, p. 156), and unwaveringly believes that leftists never have to apologize for being wrong about just about everything they say or write. There is one redeeming aspect to this pathetic little book and that is its ability to serve as an interesting personal documentation of the delusions and fantasies of the Israeli Left, which directly produced the Olso Bloodbath.

In the only new part of the book, Grossman writes a bland preface in which he admits he is no journalist at all, and then explains how it is quite understandable that Arabs wish to follow aggressive, bellicose leaders. How embarrassing for Grossman that this was written shortly before the Iraqis took to slapping Saddam?s posters with their sandals.

Posted 5/31/2004 09:38:00 AM

1. The Case against Rachel Corrie:
http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=3735

2. I am as horrified at the murder of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir as
the next Israeli. I disagreed with just about everything Rabin did or
stood for, but political assassination is just about the worst crime
imaginable against a democracy. And yes I find all the nonsensical
conspiracvy theories about the assassination about as believable as
those crackpots screaming that the Mossad really knocked down the World
Trade Center Towers. But having noted all that, I find the
hypocrisy of the Left's new cause, preventing Amir from marrying, to be
among the more nauseating manifestations of Israeli Leftist fundamentalism
these days.

First, let us note that Palestinian terrorists and mass murderers
sitting in Israeli prison are permitted to marry and to have conjugal
visits. I do not know if Eichmann was married at the time of his trial,
but, if he was, he was probably allowed conjugal visits as well.

Second, the very same leftists who roll their eyes in horror every
time I suggest that Israel have capital punishment for Arab terrorists,
who insist that even mass-murdering terrorists have "human rights", and
deserve basic human respect, and who insist that terrorists'
fundamental "rights" deserve
consideration, THEY are the very ones leading the jihad to prevent Yigal
Amir from marrying his betrothed. Putting aside the question of taste in
his girlfriend's choice of fiance, and as horrid as Amir's crime was, let
us bear in mind that Amir murdered one human being. But the terrorists in
Israeli prison who are granted all those perqs - THEY murdered many
hundreds. And while we are on analogies, let us note that no one has
suggested that the Oslo Leftists whose policies produced the murders of
1400 Israelis be made to repent for their folly by barring their
chromosomes from the human gene pool. One might even say, 1400 Yitzhak
Rabins are their victims.

The other curious twist to the Amir court petition to be allowed to
marry his gal is that Amir has repeatedly spoken openly before TV cameras
and reporters in recent weeks, but never once did he give the smallest
indication that he believes any of the lunatic conspiracy "theories" of
UFOlogist and conspiracist Barry Chamish. I guess no one bothered to tell
Amir about Chamish's "theories" that Amir was really just a patsy who
fired blanks and that Shimon Peres in league with the CFR bogeyman were
REALLY behind the assassination of Rabin. Instead, Amir repeatedly
confirms for the TV cameras that, yes, he himself was the assassin of
Rabin, and he killed Rabin for this or that reason. Oh well, Chamish
still has the Zundelsite and the Holocaust Revisionists in his corner on
this.

3. Meanwhile, Israel's selective free speech rules, and the dual justice
system - under which one set of rules apply to leftists and Arab fascists
and another for everyone else, continues to hold. In recent weeks the
Arab Knesset Members have made a series of speeches and statements
in which they libeled Israeli soldiers and officers, compared them with
nazis, accused them of being murderers in cold blood, and so on. The
Israeli Chief of Staff complained before the Speaker of the Knesset about
these Knesset Members, and so now the Israeli mindless Left and its Arab
fascist allies are denouncing the general for anti-democratic behavior
bordering on planning a putsch.

So how many of the Knesset Members in question will now be brought up
on charges of incitement and support for terrorism and racism under
Israel's "anti-racism" law? That is right, grasshopper, not a one.
Charges of supporting racism and terrorism are reserved for really
dangerous people like Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzberg or the Kahanists.

Posted 5/30/2004 10:26:00 AM

1/ Yet another "political scientist" at Ben Gurion University making a
career out of trashing Israel and Jews:
http://www.amin.org/eng/sam_bahour/2004/may19.html

2. I thought this was cute:
A guide to academic newspeak
by a student at Harvard Divinity School, 1989


Gender
Radical feminism

Oppressors
White male heterosexuals

Bias
Basing scholarship on reason and evidence

Patriarchal models
Objectivity, logic, rational discourse, mathematics, science, the Bible,
the U.S. Constitution, family values, motherhood and apple pie

Politically aware
Politically far-left

Being divisive
Deviating from the beliefs of the politically aware (see politically
aware); synonymous with being hostile

Liberal arts education
Political indoctrination

Guilt
Feeling bad about your genes, but not about your actions

Women and men
The forces of good and evil in the dualism of gender (see gender)

Diversity
The gathering together of as large a group as possible of discontents,
deviants and social misfits while excluding, suppressing and bashing
conservatives, Republicans, evangelicals, adherents of historical
religions, serious students and anyone resistant to indoctrination

Sensitivity
Being deferential toward and extraordinarily circumspect around those
included in diversity while gratuitously attacking those excluded from
diversity (see diversity)

Greater diversity
Doing a better job of weeding out those excluded from diversity (see
diversity)

Being exclusive
Providing equal opportunity and equal protection under the law, regardless
of race or sex

Hermeneutics/Deconstructionism
Interpreting texts from the perspective of gender (see gender) with a
rationalization by anyone with a French name

Victims
All those not fitting the definition of oppressor (see oppressors) and
officially recognized far-left groups; does not include refugees from
leftist totalitarian countries, such as Vietnamese boat people, Cuban
immigrants, etc.

Sexism
The discrimination against and stereotyping of women or the failure to
discriminate against and stereotype men

Racism
The belief held by white oppressors (see oppressors) that their race is
superior to that of non-white victims (see Victims) or the failure to
apologize for one's own race if that race should be white; term is not
applicable to non-whites

Moderates
The Sandinistas, Castro, Lenin, Mao, Hillary Clinton and all those who are
politically aware (see politically aware)

Ultra-conservatives/the far right
All those to the right of moderates (see moderates)

Leftists
The empty set; exist only in the rhetoric of ultra-conservatives (see
ultra-conservatives)

Inclusive language
An ostentatious form of new speak which seeks to remove the generic use of
'man' and 'he' (along with common sense and eloquence) from the language,
e.g. "What are persons, that thou art mindful of her/him? and the child of
persons, that thou doest care for him/her?"

Censorship
A good thing when done by politically aware (see poltically unaware), e.g.
punishing owners of baseball teams for alleged comments made during
private conversations; a bad thing when done by ultra-conservatives (see
ultra-conservatives).

Iconoclasm
1. An activity self-righteously pursued by the politically aware; 2. an
activity considered criminal when the icons of the politically aware are
involved (see politically aware)

Iconoclast
One who can dish it out but can't take it

3. Interesting new student group: http://www.studentsforwar.org/

4. Stop Apologizing for Palestinian Dead and Injured!
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085814354867&p=1006953079865

5. Silence of the Lamb Manure:
The Left--Strangely Silent About Iraq's WMD Discovery

Posted by Joe Mariani
Sunday, May 30, 2004


After spending more than a year attacking the Bush administration
daily for its supposed failure to produce the WMDs that
everyone--including the United Nations, as well as most leading
Democrats--believed Saddam had hidden, the left has suddenly gone
strangely silent on the subject. The ''mainstream'' media have been
tiptoeing around the discovery of a 155-mm mortar shell containing Sarin
gas in Iraq, the contents of which have been confirmed. The shell was
used as part of an improvised explosive device (IED) on a road near the
Baghdad International Airport, and exploded as it was being disarmed.

The shell contained three liters of Sarin--nearly a gallon. It was
a type of shell designed to mix chemical components during flight, which
was why the explosion didn't kill anyone (though two soldiers were treated
for exposure). Three liters of Sarin is enough, if the components are
mixed properly, to realistically kill hundreds, and potentially thousands.
A concentration of 100 milligrams of Sarin per cubic meter of air is
enough to constitute a lethal dose for half the people breathing it within
one minute.

This type of chemical warfare shell had never been declared by
Iraq--it was not even known that Iraq had ever made them. The 1999 UNSCOM
report on Iraq reported that thirty binary/Sarin shells were known to
exist, and stated that all had been accounted for. According to UNSCOM,
''Iraq developed a crude type of binary munition, whereby the final mixing
of the two precursors to the agent was done inside the munition just
before delivery.'' Someone actually had to physically pour the components
of the Sarin (or other type of G-series nerve agent) into the shells
before they could be fired. At least, that's how the ones we knew about
worked.

So, a previously-unknown type of artillery shell is found in Iraq,
containing an actual, verifiable chemical weapon. This is front page
news, right? Should we expect apologies from formerly doubting liberals?
Newspapers filled with retractions from prominent Democrats? Conciliatory
visits to President Bush from Jaques Chirac and Gerhardt Schroeder? Not
so fast. Remember: it's an election year. Liberals, Democrats,
terrorists, and appeasers all want President Bush to lose the election so
everyone can get back to business as usual. Terrorists want to get back to
their implacable war against Western civilization, and the others want to
get back to trying to placate them. The media, as long as we let them get
away with it, will only run stories that attack President Bush and
undermine support for him. In fact, liberals already have their spin on
this Sarin find ready to go. The vast majority of them--when you can get
them to admit that the Sarin and the shell are real--argue that it doesn't
matter for one of four ''reasons.''

A. The shell is old, from before the 1991 Gulf War, so it's not what we
were looking for.

Since the cease-fire that suspended the Gulf War depended on
Saddam's handing over to the United Nations ''[a]ll chemical and
biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and
components and all research, development, support, and manufacturing
facilities,'' this shell is precisely what we were looking for, especially
if it predates 1991. This shell and others like it are why the United
Nations passed 17 resolutions demanding that Saddam disarm. No matter how
old it was, it was still lethal. There is no statute of limitations on
weapons of mass destruction.

B. There is only one shell, not a stockpile, so it doesn't mean anything.

This one shell contained enough WMD material to potentially kill as
many people as died on 9/11, all by itself. Is it logical to assume that
this is the only one in existence--or just wishful thinking? The fact is
that we still don't know how much Sarin Iraq actually produced. ''At
first, Iraq told UNSCOM that it had produced an estimated 250 tons of
tabun and 812 tons of sarin. In 1995, Iraq changed its estimates and
reported it had produced only 210 tons of tabun and 790 tons of sarin.''
(Yes, that's tons.) At the very least, it tells us that we haven't nearly
finished looking for the WMDs that Saddam was supposed to surrender, and
didn't. Besides... a shell containing mustard gas was also found. Well,
maybe there were only two WMD shells in all of Iraq.

C. Just because Saddam had WMDs after all, it doesn't mean Bush didn't
lie about them.

As ridiculous as it sounds, this appears to be the instinctive,
defensive reaction of many liberals to this news. They so badly need to
believe that President Bush lied in order to legitimize their hatred of
him that they're capable of this sort of twisted reasoning. The rationale
seems to be that WMDs don't count if they aren't exactly where the CIA
told us they were, as if they couldn't be moved.

D. The terrorists didn't even know it was a chemical shell.

Well, they do now. And they know where they found it, too.

We need to redouble our efforts to stop the terrorists and find
Saddam's WMDs, before they're used to derail the new Iraqi government's
formation. The media's refusal to give this news the coverage it deserves
can only be due to a calculated attempt to reduce American support for our
efforts in Iraq, including that of tracking down Saddam's banned weapons.
The left's deliberate silence on this subject for the purpose of
influencing our election only helps our enemies.

------------

Joe Mariani is a computer consultant from Pennsylvania.

Posted 5/27/2004 04:13:00 PM

1. Spread the Word:

'Arabs for Israel' launch website
'Diversity should not be a virtue only in the USA'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 24, 2004
5:00 p.m. Eastern

2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Recognizing Israel has little support in the world, Arabs and Muslims who
back the Jewish state are developing a new website, ArabsforIsrael.com.

Its developer, Middle East-born author Nonie Darwish, says "now is the
right time for Arabs and Muslims who believe in and support Israel to do
so."

"Israel has few friends at this point in history and I wish to convey to
every Israeli and Jew around the world, that there are Arabs and Muslims,
like us, who support them and wish for their well-being," says Dawish, a
U.S. citizen.


In its statement of principles, Arabs for Israel says it can support the
Jewish state and religion "and still treasure our Arab and Islamic
culture."

"There are many Jews and Israelis who freely express compassion and
support for the Palestinians," the website says. "It is time that we Arabs
express reciprocal compassion and support."

The group says Israel "is a legitimate state that is not a threat but an
asset in the Middle East."

Palestinians cannot move forward, Arabs for Israel says, because "of their
leadership, the Arab League and surrounding Arab and Muslim countries who
do not want to see Palestinians live in harmony with Israel."

"If Palestinians want democracy they can start practicing it now," the
group says. "We stand firmly against suicide/homicide terrorism as a form
of Jihad."

Emphasizing it is not anti-Islam, anti-Arab, confrontational or hateful,
the group says, "We cherish and acknowledge the beauty and contributions
of the Middle East culture, but recognize that the Arab/Muslim world is in
desperate need of constructive self-criticism and reform."

Darwish says last November she spoke at a lecture series at Carnegie
Mellon University called "Arabs for Israel," sponsored by the Young
Zionist Organization of America.

In a lecture entitled "An Egyptian's Journey from Anti-Semitism and
Ethnocentrism to Understanding and Support for Israel," Darwish told of
her childhood in Gaza in the 1950s where she witnessed rising terrorism
against Israel.

Darwish said she had to overcome years of indoctrination into hate and
anti-Semitism.

After her lecture, she said, an Egyptian student objected to her calling
the suicide mass murder of Israelis inside Israel by Palestinians
"terrorism."

"I told her there is no other name for it, and that there is nothing
honorable about it," Darwish said. "Terror is the behavior of desperate
people and Arabs are not and should not act desperate."

She advised another Muslim student, dressed in Islamic attire, "to put
aside the baggage we all came to the U.S. with and get to know a Jewish
student as a human being and fellow student."

"I commented that this is an educational institution in the free world and
this is their chance to learn about issues that are taboo in Arab
culture," Darwish said.

Reaction to the speech was mixed, she said, but she discovered "many Arab
students needed to hear a different message from a person of Arab origin
who supports Israel."

"I believe that many went home with something new to think about," Darwish
said. "Yes, it is OK to be Muslim and Arab and support Israel."

2. Terrorists Have No Geneva Rights

By JOHN YOO
May 26, 2004; Page A16

In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses
of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the
laws of war. Human rights advocates, for example, claim that the
mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002
decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of POWs
under the Geneva Conventions. Critics, no doubt, will soon demand that
reforms include an extension of Geneva standards to interrogations at
Guantanamo Bay.

The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a
deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq
and the war against al Qaeda. It ignores the unique demands of the war on
terrorism and the advantages that a facility such as Guantanamo can
provide. It urges policy makers and the Supreme Court to make the mistake
of curing what could prove to be an isolated problem by disarming the
government of its principal weapon to stop future terrorist attacks.
Punishing abuse in Iraq should not return the U.S. to Sept. 10, 2001 in
the way it fights al Qaeda, while Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants
remain at large and continue to plan attacks.

It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and
the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is
governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the
U.S. and Iraq. President Bush and his commanders announced early in the
conflict that the Conventions applied. Article 17 of the Third Geneva
Convention, which applies to prisoners of war clearly state that: "No
physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be
inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind
whatever." This provision would prohibit some interrogation methods that
could be used in American police stations.

One thing should remain clear. Physical abuse violates the Conventions.
The armed forces have long operated a system designed to investigate
violations of the laws of war, and ultimately to try and punish the
offenders. And it is important to let the military justice system run its
course. Article 5 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs the
treatment of civilians in occupied territories, states that if a civilian
"is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the
security of the States, such individual person shall not be entitled to
claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if
exercised in favor of such individual person, be prejudicial to the
security of such State." To be sure, Art. 31 of the Fourth Convention
prohibits any "physical or moral coercion" of civilians "to obtain
information from them," and there is a clear prohibition of torture,
physical abuse, and denial of medical care, food, and shelter.
Nonetheless, Art. 5 makes clear that if an Iraqi civilian who is not a
member of the armed forces, has engaged in attacks on Coalition forces,
the Geneva Convention permits the use of more coercive interrogation
approaches to prevent future attacks.

A response to criminal action by individual soldiers should begin with the
military justice system, rather than efforts to impose a one-size-fits-all
policy to cover both Iraqi saboteurs and al Qaeda operatives. That is
because the conflict with al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva
Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states
that have signed them. Al Qaeda is not a nation-state, and its members --
as they demonstrated so horrifically on Sept. 11, 2001 -- violate the very
core principle of the laws of war by targeting innocent civilians for
destruction. While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection
under the Conventions (since Afghanistan signed the treaties), they lost
POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal
combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying
the laws of war.

As a result, interrogations of detainees captured in the war on terrorism
are not regulated under Geneva. This is not to condone torture, which is
still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.
Nonetheless, Congress's definition of torture in those laws -- the
infliction of severe mental or physical pain -- leaves room for
interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation. Under the Geneva
Convention, for example, a POW is required only to provide name, rank, and
serial number and cannot receive any benefits for cooperating.

The reasons to deny Geneva status to terrorists extend beyond pure legal
obligation. The primary enforcer of the laws of war has been reciprocal
treatment: We obey the Geneva Conventions because our opponent does the
same with American POWs. That is impossible with al Qaeda. It has never
demonstrated any desire to provide humane treatment to captured Americans.
If anything, the murders of Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl declare al
Qaeda's intentions to kill even innocent civilian prisoners. Without
territory, it does not even have the resources to provide detention
facilities for prisoners, even if it were interested in holding captured
POWs.

It is also worth asking whether the strict limitations of Geneva make
sense in a war against terrorists. Al Qaeda operates by launching surprise
attacks on civilian targets with the goal of massive casualties. Our only
means for preventing future attacks, which could use WMDs, is by acquiring
information that allows for pre-emptive action. Once the attacks occur, as
we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive
ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent
terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death
with al Qaeda. Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon
Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never
contemplated by the Conventions.

This means that the U.S. can pursue different interrogation policies in
each location. In fact, Abu Ghraib highlights the benefits of Guantanamo.
We can guess that the unacceptable conduct of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib
resulted in part from the dangerous state of affairs on the ground in a
theater of war. American soldiers had to guard prisoners on the inside
while receiving mortar and weapons fire from the outside. By contrast,
Guantanamo is distant from any battlefield, making it far more secure. The
naval station's location means the military can base more personnel there
and devote more resources to training and supervision.

A decision by the Supreme Court to subject Guantanamo to judicial review
would eliminate these advantages. The Justices are currently considering a
case, argued last month, which seeks to extend the writ of habeas corpus
to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo. If the Court were to
extend its reach to the base, judges could begin managing conditions of
confinement, interrogation methods, and the use of information. Not only
would this call on the courts to make judgments and develop policies for
which they have no expertise, but the government will be encouraged to
keep its detention facilities in the theater of conflict. Judicial
over-confidence in intruding into war decisions could produce more Abu
Ghraibs in dangerous combat zones, and remove our most effective means of
preventing future terrorist attacks.

Mr. Yoo, a law professor at Berkeley, is a scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute and a former Bush Justice Department official.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108552765884721335,00.html

3. A Jewish Republican Speaks Out:
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/05/16/Politics/Rep-Cantor.Hits.AntiSemitism.By.Sen.Hollings-682987.shtml

4.
"Israel Can't Do Business With Terrorists:
Violence against civilians must be forcibly stopped, not forgiven".

BY EHUD OLMERT
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Monday, June 3, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

State Department envoy William Burns's return to the Middle East promoting
the American-backed regional peace summit tragically coincides with the
resumption of the daily Palestinian suicide bombings. As Israeli civilians
are being murdered in cities all across the Jewish State, the Palestinian
leadership is once again damning these new peace initiatives to failure.
Terrorism is still part of their tactical plan.

Despite all the tough talk, well-wishing and demand for reform, Arafat's
entrenched Palestinian Authority regime is constitutionally unable and
morally unwilling to abandon its violent struggle against Israel.

The majority of the Israeli public had naively accepted the basic premises
of the Oslo Accords when they were signed in the fall of 1993 because we
received a guarantee that the Palestinian police and security forces would
put an end to terrorism and bring about a true peace. Yitzhak Rabin, then
prime minister, assured us that Arafat would personally order the arrest
of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders and eradicate their terrorist
infrastructure. Instead of Israeli troops carrying out dangerous patrols
in Ramallah, Jenin and Gaza, we were promised, the Palestinian forces
would do it for us. In those innocent Oslo days, many truly believed that
terrorism could be fought by proxy and we need merely give Arafat the
weapons to do it.

Over the next few years, that optimism began to dissipate. If anyone in
Israel still had faith in Arafat and his Palestinian security services by
October 2000, the Arab violence that commenced that month put it to rest
forever. The forces under Arafat's command became both the catalyst and
vanguard of the terrorist attacks. Arafat's Fatah Tanzim and Force 17
units were transformed into full-fledged terrorist groups, with their
members competing with Hamas to see how many Jews they could kill.

As the violence accelerated, and as more and more Israeli families were
being destroyed, the new line touted by both our allies and enemies was
that Arafat could not actually assert any influence over the terrorist
organizations. The 40,000 armed guerillas that were brought in from PLO
bases in Tunis, Syria and south Lebanon were now operating without any
restraints against Israel from the Palestinian territories.

The new American plan being presented calls for a reorganization of the
Palestinian security forces with the intention of placing them under a
unified command. The hope is that they will miraculously be transformed
into a law-abiding legion that will root out terrorists. Once again we
Israelis are being assured with a straight face that Arafat and his gunmen
will fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad for us. Israeli troops are currently
being restrained from entering Gaza, while Arafat's forces are supposedly
being given yet another makeover.
Hundreds of members of the Palestinian police forces have engaged in
terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, including American citizens,
during the last 21 months. Israeli security services and our military are
actively hunting these criminals and our Justice Ministry is busy filing
their indictments. Thousands of individuals with PA-authorized guns are
active members of the Fatah Tanzim terrorist group. And barely a day goes
by without another suicide bomber from the Tanzim destroying himself and
innocent bystanders in a public center.

The terrorist leaders and their activists cannot suddenly be forgiven or
pardoned just because a new political initiative is underway. Israel, like
every other Western state, has an obligation to continue to arrest and
prosecute those who sought to advance their unacceptable political goal by
targeting civilians. Justice dictates that there be no clemency for these
rogue police officials.

Many are placing their new hopes on Gaza preventive security service boss
Mohammed Dahlan. Mr. Dahlan, a rising star on the Palestinian stage, is
being presented as the man who can unify all of Arafat's security forces
and bring order to the PA. Word has it that he just returned from a trip
to Washington where he got high marks from the National Security Council.
(Mr. Dahlan denies ever going.) Either way, Mr. Dahlan is the man who has
presided over an ever-fortified terrorist network. Gaza, the home to Hamas
and Islamic Jihad, became a base for some of the most heinous terrorist
attacks unleashed against Israel.

On his watch, Mr. Dahlan permitted Gaza to become a safe haven for the
hundreds of fugitive terrorists fleeing Israeli forces. Among those being
sheltered is his childhood friend Mohammed Dief, a leading Hamas
mastermind with the blood of scores of Israelis on his hands. In the
meantime, Mr. Dahlan's district became the primary launching grounds for
the hundreds of Kessem missiles fired at Israel.

Mr. Dahlan's involvement in terrorism has not been confined to mere
nonfeasance but, rather, gross malfeasance as well. Mr. Dahlan, along with
his assistant Rashid Abu-Shabak, are the primary suspects in the terror
attack on an Israeli school bus in Kfar Darom in November 2000. The
bombing of the bus left half a dozen children maimed, and seriously
injured an American citizen, Rachel Asaroff. In response to this brutal
terror attack on Jewish school children, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak
dispatched Israeli planes to strafe Mr. Dahlan's Gaza headquarters.

In Israel, we are frequently lectured that we must do business with the
unsavory assortment of dictators, strongmen and criminals that surround
us. This, we are told, is the nature of the neighborhood we live in. As
mayor of Jerusalem, I have in my public duties the unfortunate experience
of sitting down with many individuals I do not necessarily like. But the
current thinking that Mr. Dahlan can bring reform and law enforcement to
the Palestinians is totally misguided. No democratic state should ever
allow itself to do business with those individuals who deliberately target
a school bus.

While the State Department and envoy Burns are to be admired for their
determination to forge a peace agreement on Israel's behalf, their
zealousness is beginning to chafe. Seeking a "regional conference at all
costs," and hanging hopes on a reorganized Palestinian security force
under the sole leadership of one who has himself been involved in serious
terrorist attacks sends an unacceptable message.

Criminals such as Mr. Dahlan and Arafat can never be reformed; they must
be eradicated by force.

Posted 5/25/2004 12:44:00 PM

1. Well the numbers are in. Remember how the media invented a mass
murder,
genocide, war crimes story regarding Jenin last year, after which it
turned out only 20 Palestinians people had been killed in the city
battle?

Well, Palestinian statistics are back. The media is whining about how
those insensitive Israelis destroyed "thousands" of Palestinian homes, and
put "thousands" of Palestinian families from Rafah on the streets.

It turns out, only 56 houses were demolished, all because they were being
used to threaten the movement of Israeli patrols along the border with
Egypt and to snipe at Israelis, and most of these housed those very same
ghouls who stole and defiled the body parts of the murdered Israeli
soldiers.

Meanwhile, San Francisco had its annual cinematic Nuremberg rally
recently. Here is an eyewitness report:

In his letter to J, Joseph Abdel Wahed notes the anti-Israel films
shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival and wonders why no
films depicting Israel in a positive light are programmed. This is due
entirely to leftist bias and is the status quo at all major film
festivals, here and abroad. Both in funding guidelines and in exhibition
decisions the film festival scene is dominated by politics. For instance,
the past success of Michael Moore's ''documentary'' (which is really a
mockumentary) ''Bowling For Columbine'', is a testament to the elevation
of propaganda knowingly passed off as truth.

To its credit, the recent Tiburon International Film Festival did
screen, ''The Road to Jenin'', a French/Israeli film, which depicts the
truth regarding the discredited ''massacre'' in Jenin. And also
''Shooting Conflicts'', an Israeli documentary about, among other things,
the friendship between an Israeli and Palestinian news journalist.
However, these films will not be seen at film festivals whose agenda
includes spreading Palestinian propaganda. Unfortunately that includes
the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.


2. Am I the only person around who suspects that Michael Moore is really
Michael Lerner? Why? Well, Moore is not only the most obnoxious Yahoo of
the Pseudo-Literate Far Left these days. He also LOOKS very much like
Michael Lerner. He keeps his head covered, like Lerner, in pretend
religiosity. They both hate Israel and they both hate America. They both
are convinced that the world should get rid of capitalism and replace it
with North Korean style socialist planning for equality. They both hate
Republicans. They both support Palestinian terror. They both hate white
non-Leftists. They both like to pretend they are politically
African-Americans. Has Lerner at last outright converted to voodoo
leftist paganism? WIll Moore's next film, Stupid White Jews, air at the
Tikkun ashram in San Francisco?

Meanwhile, here is Fred Barnes on the tub of leftist lard:

Michael Moore and Me
From the May 31, 2004 issue: An encounter with the Cannes man.
by Fred Barnes
05/31/2004, Volume 009, Issue 36





A FEW YEARS AGO Michael Moore, who's now promoting an anti-President Bush
movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11, announced he'd gotten the goods on me,
indeed hung me out to dry on my own words. It was in his first bestselling
book, Stupid White Men. Moore wrote he'd once been "forced" to listen to
my comments on a TV chat show, The McLaughlin Group. I had whined "on and
on about the sorry state of American education," Moore said, and wound up
by bellowing: "These kids don't even know what The Iliad and The Odyssey
are!"

Moore's interest was piqued, so the next day he said he called me. "Fred,"
he quoted himself as saying, "tell me what The Iliad and The Odyssey are."
I started "hemming and hawing," Moore wrote. And then I said, according to
Moore: "Well, they're . . . uh . . . you know . . . uh . . . okay, fine,
you got me--I don't know what they're about. Happy now?" He'd smoked me
out as a fraud, or maybe worse.

The only problem is none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a
liar. He made it up. It's a fabrication on two levels. One, I've never met
Moore or even talked to him on the phone. And, two, I read both The Iliad
and The Odyssey in my first year at the University of Virginia. Just for
the record, I'd learned what they were about even before college. Like
everyone else my age, I got my classical education from the big screen. I
saw the Iliad movie called Helen of Troy and while I forget the name of
the Odyssey film, I think it starred Kirk Douglas as Odysseus.

So why didn't I scream bloody murder when the book came out in 2001? I
didn't learn about the phony anecdote until it was brought to my attention
by Alan Wolfe, who was reviewing Moore's book for the New Republic. He
asked, by email, if the story were true. I said no, not a word of it, and
Wolfe quoted me as saying that. That was enough, I thought. After all, who
would take a shrill, lying lefty like Moore seriously?

More people than I thought. Moore's new movie attacking Bush was given a
20-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. Moore has
described the movie as breaking new ground and revealing new facts, but
the accounts by reviewers suggest it merely provides the standard
left-wing, conspiratorial critique of the president. Reviewer Lou Lumenick
of the New York Post, who gave Moore's previous movie Bowling for
Columbine four stars, said the anti-Bush film would be news only "if you
spent the last three years hiding in a cave in Afghanistan." Still, I
suppose it's not surprising they loved it in France.

In publicizing the movie, Moore has been up to his old dishonest tricks.
Just before the screening at Cannes, he charged that Disney had told him
"officially" the day before that it would not distribute Fahrenheit 9/11.
Moore said this was an attempt to kill the film. He indicated a newspaper
article had the correct explanation of Disney's decision: "According to
today's New York Times, it might 'endanger' millions of dollars of tax
breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will
'anger' the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush."

Later, in a CNN interview, Moore admitted he'd learned nearly a year ago
that Disney would not distribute the movie. By pretending he'd just gotten
word of this, Moore was involved in a cheap publicity stunt. And it wasn't
the New York Times that said, on its own, that Disney feared losing tax
breaks. It was Moore's agent who was quoted as saying that in the Times.
Disney denied its president Michael Eisner had told the agent of any such
fear. "We informed both the agency that represented the film and all of
our companies that we just didn't want to be in the middle of a
politically oriented film during an election year," Eisner told ABC News.

Where does this leave us? I think it's time for Moore to be held
accountable. In Stupid White Men, he has 18 pages of "Notes and Sources,"
but he offers no evidence for the sham interview with me--no date, no
transcript. How could he, since the interview never happened?

I have just the person to look into Moore's lies and distortions. Al
Franken has taken special interest in public liars, writing a bestseller
called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Al, the Moore case is now
in your court.


Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.


http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/127ujhuf.asp

Posted 5/25/2004 11:02:00 AM

1. Martin Peretz is the editor of the American Liberal magazine New
Republic

Martin Peretz on the Israeli Left:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0504/lonely_crowd.php3
(must read)

2. US university professor trying to keep the Klan off campus:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/05/21/university.klan.ap/index.html
Why not adopt his approach to keep the extremist Left off Israeli
campuses?

3. Brainwashing on Campus
By Marjorie Kehe
Christian Science Monitor | May 25, 2004


Ben Shapiro attended the University of California at Los Angeles and came
out dismayed by much of what he heard and saw. Professors there, he
laments, routinely spouted liberal propaganda and rarely had their biases
challenged. Conservative thinkers, on the contrary, Mr. Shapiro says, were
generally shrugged off as not too bright.
As a columnist for UCLA's student paper The Daily Bruin, he was able to
voice his outrage until, he claims, he was fired for his views.

Now - having already graduated from UCLA at 20 - Shapiro has written
Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth, alerting the
world to what Shapiro sees as the sorry state of U.S. higher education.

Some early readers have already disparaged Shapiro's book - published by a
conservative watchdog group - as an angry rant. But the young author is
clearly not alone in his views, and some suggest that the stir he is
creating is indeed a sign that something is amiss in US academe.

Freshly published - and without the support of a national advertising
campaign - "Brainwashed" has already jumped to No. 28 on Amazon.com's
bestseller list.

Of the about 50 reviews that quickly sprang up on the Amazon site, few
were neutral in tone. Several were derogatory, complaining that the book
contains "not a shred of fact" and directing a cry of "shame on you" at
its author. A few fellow UCLA students wrote that Shapiro's comments did
not tally with their experiences, and one commented that "'The Lord of the
Rings' comes across as more realistic."

But more embraced Shapiro's views, several saying their own college
experiences were very similar - that their conservative views were
discouraged rather than embraced by their unabashedly liberal college
professors.

Unfortunately, such claims are more than just rhetoric, says Greg
Lukianoff, director of legal and public advocacy for the Foundation for
Individual Rights in Education in Philadelphia. In his view, censorship of
conservative views on college campuses is a growing problem that's hard to
ignore.

"I'm a liberal myself, but since taking this job I've been shocked," he
says.

Many U.S. colleges tend to be built on liberal values and are
uncomfortable with students who don't reflect those, he says. This has led
many to adopt "speech codes" that are intended to prevent discrimination
but sometimes end up repressing legitimate forms of free speech.

Mr. Lukianoff says he hears regular reports of campus newspapers airing
conservative viewpoints being destroyed before they can be read.
Conservative speakers are sometimes silenced. At Ithaca College in New
York, he says, when conservative students invited Bay Buchanan (sister of
arch-conservative Pat) to speak, fellow students tried to have them
arrested for harassment.

Similar complaints led to the Academic Bill of Rights, which was
introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and some state
legislatures earlier this year. Conservative activist David Horowitz, who
wrote the bill, said it was intended to protect conservative academics
from discrimination on overwhelmingly liberal campuses.

While widely considered unlikely to pass, the bill has garnered support
from concerned conservatives such as Luann Wright, a San Diego educator
who worried that her son's college professors were promoting an overly
liberal agenda. She established a website - www.No indoctrination.org -
asking college students to share accounts of liberal indoctrination. More
than 100 have responded.

Shapiro complains of similar discrimination at UCLA. He says his
professors were moral relativists who shunned notions of good and evil and
taught students to regard religious and patriotic values with suspicion.

Of US professors in general, Shapiro makes sweeping - and many would say
absurd - charges that they promote atheism, absolute sexual freedom
(including pedophilia and statutory rape, which are crimes), and rampant
environmentalism to the point of urging the annihilation of the human
species.

However, the debate is not new, says Jonathan Knight, director of the
program in academic freedom and tenure at the American Association of
University Professors.

"Faculty are seen as more liberal than the general population," says Mr.
Knight. "They have described themselves that way at least since the
1960s."

He points to William F. Buckley Jr.'s God and Man at Yale, first published
in 1951, which covers similar ground.

And, asks Knight, if overly liberal college professors and administrators
have long indoctrinated students, "how do we explain then that (the U.S.)
is the way that it is" - fairly balanced between liberal and conservative
views?

One of the criticisms leveled against Shapiro is that despite disparaging
elite and Ivy League schools in his book, he will attend one this fall --
Harvard University Law School.

That fact makes it hard, says Knight, to accept either Shapiro's scorn for
elite universities -- or for the UCLA education that helped him gain
admission to America's most prestigious law school.

5. Ethics in the Arab Countries:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13509

6, Morality & realpolitik


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAOZ AZARYAHU May. 25, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How just is the Arab-Palestinian insistence on the right of return?

For some, Shavuot is mainly about cheesecakes. For others, still familiar
with earlier Zionist traditions, it is the festival of the first fruits,
as once enacted in kibbutzim and in elementary schools. For many it
commemorates the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, at the center of which
are the Ten Commandments.

The divine provenance of the Law renders it absolute, unlike the laws
enacted by mortal humans. Yet beyond theology, the power of the
commandments lay in the way they formulated fundamental notions about
justice. Since law and its application is the quintessence of justice, and
in order for them to be interpreted as such, they should correspond with
an instinctive human understanding of justice and moral behavior.

Laws are the rules of the game. And applying the rules of the game is
essential for producing a sense of justice. It is all too human that many
who believe in the rules also assume that these rules mainly apply to
others. It seems that even if everyone sincerely pledges to apply the Ten
Commandments, or at least those which regulate human relationships, the
world will very much look the same.

The problem is in the formulation: "Thou shall not kill" - thou, not I.
The problem is that too often we encounter the premise that what applies
to others does not necessarily oblige me.

Such a selective understanding undermines the moral foundations of
justice. This becomes clearly evident in the case of the so-called right
of return, a powerful moral argument and the precondition for and epitome
of a "just peace" as demanded by Arabs and their enlightened allies.

Since the demand for a just peace is almost universally accepted, it seems
appropriate to scrutinize it.

How just is the Arab-Palestinian insistence on the right to return to the
villages and towns from which they fled or were forced to leave in
Israel's War of Independence?

As repeatedly emphasized by Arabs and their allies, the right of return
for Arab-Palestinian refugees of the 1948 War is about justice, and by
necessity about what is moral - and what is not.

Champions of the right of return claim to address not only the
humanitarian plight of displaced persons who lost their homes in the wake
of the war. They maintain that they intend to rectify wrongdoing, fight
evil, and restore the moral order that allegedly was so bluntly disturbed
by Israel's victory.

As the original sin of the Zionist state, Israel's refusal to accept the
Arab-Palestinian right of return is considered not only a violation of
basic human rights but also a fundamental moral flaw that undermines the
foundation of the Jewish state.

Yet the issue of justice, properly addressed, is very different from the
supposedly hyper-moral case presented by the Arabs and their allies.

TAKING INTO account the notion that every human transaction, be it between
individuals or groups, amounts to a game with specific rules, the issue of
justice is actually about the rules of the game and how these have been
formulated and upheld by players.

The game metaphor does not insinuate that a war - even a just war - is
just a game. War is a cruel matter: It leaves in its wake death and
destruction, loss and bereavement. It is, however, a game in the sense
that its conduct is subject to certain rules both players are well aware
of.

So addressed, the fundamental rule of the 1948 war was a strikingly simple
one: Winner takes all. The Arabs, who defied the right of the Jews for
self-determination, declared the annihilation of Jewish existence to be
their supreme objective. The Jews well understood what this meant in terms
of survival.

Much has been written about the Arab villages and towns that were erased
from the map in the wake of Israeli military victories. However, the
destroyed Arab villages and towns were not free-floating in a moral
vacuum. On the other side of the moral equation are the Jewish settlements
that disappeared from the map during the war. Since this side of the
equation is commonly absent from the discussion, some detailing seems
appropriate.

The list of Jewish settlements includes Beit Ha'arava, on the shore of the
Dead Sea and Atarot and Neve Ya'akov, north of Jerusalem; Kfar Darom, Yad
Mordechai and Nitzanim, which were on the route of the invading Egyptian
army; the four Etzion settlements south of Jerusalem (the residents of
Kibbutz Kfar Etzion were massacred, the survivors of the other settlements
were sent to captivity); the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem
that surrendered to the besieging forces of the Trans-Jordanian Arab
legion; Mishmar Hayarden, which was conquered by Syrian forces.

Some of these settlements were later restored, after Israeli forces
reoccupied them.

The fate of these 11 Jewish settlements demonstrates two very simple
things. One is what the rules of the game were, and how keen the Arabs
were on applying them whenever they could. Wherever an Arab army conquered
a Jewish settlement, this settlement ceased to exist.

Second is the magnitude of Jewish victory. The fact that many more Arab
villages and neighborhoods were erased than Jewish ones is only proof that
the Jews were winning the war, albeit, unlike their Arab counterparts,
they did not always stick to the rules the Arabs applied whenever they
could.

TO SUM UP: The rules of the 1948 war were clear to Arabs and Jews alike.
The Arabs were stricter than the Jews in applying ethnic cleansing, yet
had fewer opportunities to do so. However, it is the principle that
matters, and here the facts are unequivocal: Not one Jewish settlement
remained in Arab-controlled areas.

Furthermore: The persistent Arab demand for the right of return is morally
wrong because it amounts to changing the rules of the game - the same
rules Arabs determined at the onset of the war - after the game was over.

After 1948 the Arabs clearly demonstrated that their only concern was to
rectify their defeat by declaring that the rules of the game they had
applied were not valid. However, the rules of the game further applied to
the Jews. Their right of return was never an issue in the moral equation
formulated by the Arabs.

The right of return so vehemently demanded by Arabs is not a measure of
justice. It is just the opposite. Because changing the rules of the game
after defeat defies any notion of fairness. And without fairness, there is
no justice.

The writer is a geographer at Haifa University specializing in Zionist
culture and national memory.

This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085455475373&p=1006953079865

7. Leftists for Terror:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085023339573&p=1006953079897

8. The latest SLAPP suit? Convicted traitor Mordecai Vanunu just filed a
SLAPP suit against Israel's largest daily Yediot Ahronot and its
reporter/columnist Ron Ben Ishay, for "libeling" Vanunu. Vanunu is
represented by Far Leftist lawyer Avigdor Feldman, who often represents
Arab murderers of Jewish children.

Posted 5/24/2004 08:08:00 PM

Arutz-7 Israel National News, May 24, 2004
PA Terrorists Threaten Pop Star Madonna

10:24 May 24, '04 / 4 Sivan 5764



(IsraelNN.com) International Affairs Correspondent Michael Freund reported
today on new details that have emerged regarding rock star Madonna's
decision to cancel a planned series of concerts in Tel Aviv later this
year.

The UK daily The Sun reports that the pop superstar received a series of
"poison-pen letters" from Palestinian Authority-based Arab terrorists in
which they threatened to kill her and her two young children if she went
ahead with the concerts in Israel.

Though initially determined to go ahead with the performances, Madonna is
said to have changed her mind when the terrorists sent a series of letters
to her Los Angeles office mentioning specific details about her two young
children, seven-year old Lourdes and three-year old Rocco.

A source quoted by the paper said, "The notes were unbelievably scary.
Madonna is a strong woman but she freaked out when her kids were
mentioned."

"At first she was prepared to go on stage anyway and hire extra security,"
the source said. "But she was not ready to take chances with her kids
they are her whole world."

Additional letters sent by the terrorists mentioned several of Madonna's
closest aides as well. "It became clear that these people were not messing
around they even knew intimate details like who her personal staff are,"
the paper quotes the source as saying.

Madonna originally had scheduled three concerts in September in Tel Aviv
as part of her 2004 Re-Invention Tour, including a televised performance
on September 11 to commemorate the third anniversary of the attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

She has not performed in Israel since 1993.

2.
The Van Leer Institute is an extremist Far Left institute financed by
Jerusalem municipality. Take a look at
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/archives/humanitarianpolitics.htm
and also at http://www.ngo-monitor.org/archives/publications.htm

and then consider writing the Jerusalem Mayor about his support for these
people.
He can be reached at
Mr. Uri Lupolianski


Safra Square 1
tel 972-2- 6297717
fax 972-3 6296407
lpuri@jerusalem.muni.il

Posted 5/24/2004 02:03:00 PM

1. A Double Standard on Gaza

WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 24, 2004

Once again the otherwise fractured "international community" has come
together in one of those rare moments of unity, made possible only by the
time-honored ritual of condemning whatever policy Israel is currently
pursuing to protect its citizens from terrorism.

Last Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council criticized Israel's
demolition of homes in Gaza but failed to condemn the Palestinian terror
that brought about the offensive in the first place. The U.S. refused to
lend its support to such an unbalanced resolution but didn't use its veto
power to stop it.

The U.N.'s text must be considered a real showcase of even-handedness when
compared to the statement by the Irish foreign minister who currently
speaks for the European Union. Brian Cowen's comments came after an
Israeli shell accidentally hit Palestinian demonstrators. Mr. Cowen was so
eager to bash Israel that he didn't even bother to check Palestinian
casualty claims. "Initial reports suggest that at least 23 people, many of
them schoolchildren, were killed," he said. In reality, only eight
Palestinians died. Mr. Cowen went on to accuse Israel of "reckless
disregard for human life."

His words bear no resemblance to reality. Israel takes more care not to
harm Palestinian civilians than the Palestinian Authority, let alone
Hamas. In so doing, Israeli soldiers often risk their own lives, as the
death of 13 ground troops earlier this month shows. If Israel really had
such a "disregard" for Palestinians, it wouldn't send its young soldiers
in harm's way but bomb terrorist positions safely from the air.

In contrast to that, the death of Palestinian civilians caught in the
cross-fire appears to be part of the terrorists' strategy. The terrorists,
who deliberately hide among the general population, know that every
civilian death will be blamed on Israel, no matter what the circumstances
and no matter whether the bullet actually came from an Israeli rifle.

Mr. Cowen even had the gall to liken the demonstrators' death to a
Palestinian terrorist attack earlier this month, where members of Yasser
Arafat's Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades shot four children, aged 2 to 11, at
point blank range before the eyes of their eight-months-pregnant mother
before killing her too.

Neither these murders nor any other of the Palestinian terrorist attacks
have ever prompted a single U.N. resolution. As a matter of fact, the U.N.
Security Council has yet to convene to even discuss Palestinian terrorism.

The Israeli operation in Gaza is designed to root out the arms smuggling
in Rafah, which is at the border with Egypt. The whole area is honeycombed
with tunnels that surface in private homes, built often with the open
encouragement of the PA. Just recently, Arafat called on his people to
"terrorize the enemy." The terrorists also use the private houses as
hiding places to attack Israeli soldiers.

The problem wouldn't even exist if the PA fulfilled its obligation to
fight terror instead of colluding with it. Also, the smugglers wouldn't
have it so easy if Egypt, officially at peace with Israel, didn't turn a
blind eye to this problem. Maybe it's time Washington asks Cairo to remind
Americans why they are propping up President Hosni Mubarak's regime with
almost $2 billion a year.

Contrary to popular opinion, international law is on Israel's side. Art.
53 of the fourth Geneva Convention indeed prohibits the destruction of
private property by an occupying power. But Israel's critics as well as
the U.N. resolution fail to quote the text in its entirety. Such actions
are illegal, "except where such destruction is rendered absolutely
necessary by military operations."

Preventing terrorists from firing at Israelis from these houses and
putting an end to the smuggling of explosives and rockets appear to us to
be "absolutely necessary" operations. Particularly as Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon seems determined to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza.
It is the use of civilian structures by Palestinian terrorists for
military attacks which violates international law.

Those really concerned for Palestinian welfare should speak these truths
instead of criticizing Israel for trying to defend itself.

=======================

2. Worth re-posting: Why The Left Hates Israel

By Bruce S. Thornton

FrontPageMagazine

THE DISTASTE FOR ISRAEL EVIDENT in coverage of the current crisis is a
mystery to me. I'm not talking about the Arabs, who have their own obvious
reasons for hating Israel, not the least being that Israel is a living
reproach to Islamic civilization's inability to adapt to the modern world.
The weakness of Islam vis-?-vis a West it once terrified and dominated is
exposed daily by the strength and confidence and prosperity of a tiny
nation dwarfed by the population and resources and armies of its
adversaries.

I'm speaking rather about Israel's critics in Europe and the United
States, where the media's double standard in judging Israel, and their
failure to acknowledge the historical circumstances that have created the
current crisis and explain it, are so commonplace that it usually goes
unnoticed. It is testimony to the bizarre mental universe of many in the
Islamic world that an American media that has made the Palestinians their
pet victims "of color" instead continue to be seen as the puppets of some
Zionist conspiracy.

The answer to this disgust can't be that Israel is as uniquely oppressive
as it is claimed to be, setting aside for the moment the reasons why
Israel has to do what it does. Given the bloodshed, violence, ethnic
cleansing, seizure of territory, and genocidal rampages occurring daily
across the planet, Israel's offences, even if they were as horrible as
their enemies claim, are pretty small beer, and certainly not as
destructive as those of many Arab regimes in the Middle East.

For example, if seizing territory and interfering with national autonomy
and self-determination are such a crime, why isn't the international
community bombarding Syria, which controls Lebanon, with demands to end
the "illegal occupation" and withdraw its thousands of troops? Or if
killing Arabs justifies such criticism, why didn't we have marches in
solidarity with Saddam Hussein's Islamic victims, which must number in the
hundreds of thousands? Or if abusing Palestinians is the specific charge,
why aren't there movements to isolate Jordan, which has probably killed
more Palestinians than the Israelis have?

And of course, what's ignored is that Israel's actions have all been
reactions to unceasing attempts to destroy it. Israel does what it does to
survive, rather than to create an empire or acquire more wealth for a
ruling elite or gain access to precious resources. Some in Israel may
dream of a return to the Biblical borders of David and Solomon's kingdom,
but most Israelis think about the West Bank and Gaza solely in terms of
security. Just compare the number of Israelis killed when Israel
controlled the West Bank to the number killed since the Palestinians have
controlled it, and you'll see their point.

Yet this necessary context for evaluating Israel's actions is usually
ignored or dismissed. Instead Israel is judged by some absolute standard
of behavior never applied to any Third-World country that's not to the
right of Attila the Hun. An obvious reason for this phenomenon is that
Israel is a Western society, and so it is held to the same utopian
expectations for behavior that all Western nations are subject to. That
critics strain out the Western gnat and swallow whole the Third-World
camels of oppression and violence is a continuing scandal.

I suspect that such critics are in reality ethnocentric chauvinists, and
believe the West is superior, more civilized and advanced, and so should
be held to a higher standard. Westerners, in other words, should know
better because they are better.

There's another dimension, though, to this unfair standard. Just imagine
for a moment that Israel was a communist country like Cuba. Do you think
they'd be the evil villains they've been made out to be? You can answer
that question by contemplating the relatively good press that Castro's
regime enjoys. Compared to the obsessive attention paid to every move
Israel makes in defending itself, we hear little outside of Miami about
human rights violations in Cuba, which serve to maintain an autocrat's
power rather than to prevent maniacs from blowing up children. Yet the
same "progressive" Americans who sneak into Castro's island to gape at the
socialist paradise join marches condemning Israeli "genocide."

So Israel is fair game because it's "capitalist," a client of the world's
Great Satan, the United States, the premier colonial and imperial
exploiter of the abused "other." We see here at work the same weird logic
that allows right-thinking leftists to shrug off Communism's 100 million
corpses at the same time they scream about the accidental killing of a
civilian. Not all people's lives, it seems, are equally precious--just
those playing the proper role in the Marxist historical operetta.

Israel is attacked, then, because it is a Western liberal democracy tarred
with the brush of all the West's crimes against humanity. But let's not
forget another obvious point--Israelis are Jews. A residual anti-Semitism
has lately joined up with guilt-fatigue, particularly in Europe. As the
generation responsible for the Holocaust dies off, I think we'll see more
and more Europeans simply getting sick of the whole thing, sick of the
guilt, the reminders of barbarity, the museums testifying to the insane
depths to which presumably civilized people can descend.


In short, they'll want to forget, and the existence of Israel itself, its
determination never again to be a despised and pitied victim, is a
constant irritating reminder that won't let them forget.

3. Anti-Americanism:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20040317.shtml


4. IDF blamed for ruining Gaza zoo
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085281782242&p=1078397702269

5. Arab Anti-Semitism:
http://chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=7548

6. Leftists and "Humiliation":
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13508

7. More on the Ghouls:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13492

8. East Bay Pogroms:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13496

Posted 5/23/2004 10:14:00 AM

1. Better check your calender because it is NOT April 1. Yes, Ariel
Sharon is REALLY proposing that Israel now pay cash bonuses to all those
Rafiah denixens who stole human body parts of murdered Israeli soldiers -
in compensation for their homes being demolished to widen the open zone
separating Rafiah from the Egyptian border. Really!

It is all to make it a little harder for the savages to smuggle
high-powered explosives from Egypt into the Gaza Strip with which to mass
murder Jews. The Israeli army has been flattening the immediate border
vicinity for maybe a city block from the border fence. It has become
known as the "Philadelphia Corridor," named afer me because I am from
Philadelphia. The only difference is I would make the corridor a whole
lot wider, maybe even going all the way to Ashkelon.

Anyway, the idea is to
maintain visibility and make it harder for the PLO to build new tunnels.
Naturally the whole world is aghast, since the right of a Palestinian
fascist to an undemolished house hiding a smuggling tunnel always counts
for infinitely more than the rights of Jewish chiildren to ride buses and
sit in cafes without being blown to smithereens.

The houses in question are homes to those very same ghouls who rushed
from them to defile and steal the body parts of the soldiers who were
murdered in the very same corridor when the PLO planted a large anti-tank
mine there. Ariel Sharon is having one of his attacks of compassion, and
as you know, any time any politician is feeling compassionate it is time
for us all to run to the underground shelters out in the mountains and to
hide our wallets and womenfolk.

Now Compassionate and Caring Arik did not even propose that any
"compensation" to the Rafiah denizens whose houses were knocked down be
taken from the cash Israel hands over to the PLO every month. Putting
aside the absurdity of transferring any money at all to the PLO rather
than handing it to the PLO's victins, those resposnsible for making these
Rafiah people "homeless" are the leaders of the PLO, not Israel or the
Jews. So any cash compensation should be taken from THEIR pockets, and
not MINE! But implementing THAT as an expression of deep caring would
also involve an electrical cranium pulse or two, and that is clearly
beyond the capabilities of Caring Arik.

2. From Caring Arik to True Charity:

Thought for Shavuos week: Mr. Zeev Wolfson came in to work one
morning in his offices at the World Trade Center. Since it was shortly
before Rosh Hashana, the religious New Year, he prepared several envelopes
with checks to send to assorted charities and non-profit educational and
religious institutions in Israel. Upon second thought, he decided that
writing the checks themselves was not quite enough charity for the
Jewish month of Ellul and that it behooved him to walk in person to the
post office to send them off with his own hands, rather than just dump
them on a secretary desk. So he walked to the post office and just as he
finished mailing them, the planes hit the World Trade Center. And tzedaka
or charity once again saved a life. (True story)

3. Some good guys in the Bay Area, at last:
http://www.sfvoiceforisrael.org/photos.htm

4. Strip Teasers for the Left:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-vote21.html

5. From the University of DUH!:
Withdrawal From Lebanon Led To Oslo War
17:00 May 20, '04 / 29 Iyar 5764

A recent Palestinian Media Watch production also concentrates on the results
of Israel's panicky withdrawal - namely, the Oslo War. Quotes are cited:
"In Hizbullah, we learned the Israeli mentality, and it became clear that
they are very cowardly... Israeli public opinion pressured its government
and forced it to retreat." - Hizbullah leader Sheikh Nasrallah, Oct. 2000

"We have to find the way to be rid of this Zionist enemy. The practical
solution came from Lebanon, in the merit of its courageous men... who
relied on undefeatable weapons: the will to fight, against those who are
afraid to fight and who love life." - Al Hayat al-Jadida, on Nov. 12, 2000

The film notes that just as Israel was concluding its retreat from
Lebanon, on May 24, 2000, Al Hayat al-Jadida published a cartoon depicting
an Israeli soldier being attacked by rockets on one side and an Arab boy
throwing rocks on the other, and the caption: "The Katyushas are behind
you, and the rocks are ahead of you; you can either retreat, or retreat."
A poster-sized photo of scared Israeli soldiers was included with the
daily paper.

Only two months after the withdrawal, Arafat made the decision to return
to violence, and two months later, at the end of Sept. 2000, the Oslo War
began. Palestinian spokesmen themselves emphasize that it was the
withdrawal from Lebanon that sparked the violence: The newspaper Al-Ayam,
for instance, wrote in Feb. 2004 that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak
"decided to act unilaterally, retreating in defeat from southern
Lebanon... The result was the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa intifada..."

6. More lessons for the Denizens of Duh!:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085208931556&p=1006953079865

7. Defend the Philadelphians:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085208931668&p=1006953079865

8. No, Poverty is NOT the Cause of Terror:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085023337854&p=1006953079865

9. From the May 20 Late Show with David Letterman, the "Top Ten
Questions on the John Kerry Running Mate Application." Late Show home
page: www.cbs.com

10. "Do you support both sides of every issue?"

9. "Excluding horse, what animal do I most resemble?"

8. "Mind if I pretend you're John McCain?"

7. "Are you related to any Governors who can help rig an election?"

6. "In the vice presidential debate, will you make Cheney your bitch?"

5. "You're not going to trick me into starting a war to help out your oil
buddies, are you?"

4. "Which trait do you find more inspirational: My dour blandness or my
smug arrogance?"

3. "If chosen, would you be willing to change your name to Kenny?"

2. "Any black market botox connections?"

1. "Do you have my back if I pull a 'Clinton'?"



10. The Chomsky Legacy:
http://jamesbowman.net/reviewDetail.asp?pubID=1518

Posted 5/21/2004 06:47:00 PM

Shinui is the Seinfeldian Party of Israel. Why Seinfeldian? Well,
"Seinfeld" has oft been described as a show about nothing, while Shinui is
a political party about nothing. And now it is the environmentalist party
in favor of eliminating all but virtual nature preserves.

Let's step back a bit and fill in the blanks. Contemporary Shinui is
the brainchild of Israeli politician Avraham Poraz. Poraz had started out
as one of founders of an earlier party also known as Shinui, which combined
free-market economic ideas with general civic reform and dovish political
notions.

Later the bulk of the Old-Shinui stalwarts joined together with the
Marxists from the old kibbutz-based MAPAM party and Shulamit Aloni's "RATZ"
party (as in, I could give a "RATZ" ass) to form a new party of the Far
Left, Meretz. Poraz did not tag along, and there is argument as to whether
it was because of ideological scruples or simply that he was not offered a
slot high enough in the MERETZ totem pole. Instead, he stayed on as a
leftover Shinui backbencher in the parliament, where his main cause was
animal rights and the treatment of circus animals, with all the respect
their delicate self-esteem needed. His main parliamentary achievement was
that he shut down the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium as a way to protect the human
rights of the dolphins, evidently sent off as a result for processing into
Purina products.

Seeing political oblivion on the horizon, Poraz had an idea. He would
recruit loud-mouthed anti-Orthodox TV opinionist and newspaper
columnistTommy Lapid, who had been trying to be a leftist and rightist at
the same time, and they would re-engineer Shinui as an anti-religious party
that does not have a clear political position on anything else at
all. They would sign up rejects and failed leftovers from other parties of
the Right and Left, and run for the Knesset. And it worked like a charm.

Israelis vote against parties, not in favor of parties. Since Shinui
was Seinfeldian and represented nothing at all except Orthodox-baiting, it
picked up lots of votes from those disgusted with the Likud-Labor Party
version of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And Shinui became the third largest
party in the parliament, a major cabinet player, and the kingmaker of
coalitions.

Shinui also did well in some of the local elections, often running
together with environmentalist groups as "Green" Parties. It currently
control the Haifa municipality and city council. I voted for them (to get
rid of Mitzna and his machine.)

Tommy Lapid is now official Shinui party Grand Wizard. But what of
Poraz? Well, it seems that the Theodore Herzl of the Seinfeldians in the
Knesset is now Minister of the Environment, one of the few positions it
makes a certain amount of sense in which to place a Shinui leader, given
its alliance with the environmentalist movement.

Which makes this week's outburst by Poraz all the more phenomenal.

Maariv May 21 cites Poraz as having given a talk this week in front of
an assembly of environmentalists and telling them that anyone in Israel who
feels the need to visit nature preserves can just, as far as Poraz is
concerned, go buy an air ticket and then visit them in other
countries. And, if not, he suggested that environmentalists just buy DVD
disks with lots of pictures of nature and open spaces in them. Really.

I have not had such a chuckle from him since his dolphinarium days....

Posted 5/21/2004 04:07:00 PM

1. I realize many of you only read my postings because of the valuable
information in them about rock and roll pop singers. Which is why I bring
you the following updates. Better than MTV, is I! Stevie G overtakes Ali
G.

First, the bovine singer Madonna will not be performing in Israel after
all. After becoming one of those Hollywood sorts taking pop "kabbala"
classes, Madonna considered doing a show in Israel, but has chickened out,
or - if you prefer - heifered out, saying Israel is just too dangerous to
spend there a weekend.

Ah but the really exciting MTV breaking news concerns Aviv Gefen.

SO let's back up a little. Who is Aviv Gefen? Gefen is a
punk-looking, borderline gothic freak, son of Yonatan Gefen, a vet from
the Tel Aviv 60s bohemian scene, long since relocated to New York whence
he writes articles for the little Israeli from the sophisticated Big Apple,
at least for readers of Maariv who - unlike me - do not use his page there
to line the kitty box.

Anyway, Gefen the younger almost went down in history as the
bloke who single-handedly and most
thoroughlly mocked and "dissed" Yitzhak Rabin. He had released a nasty
song that described Rabin as a drunkard and moron, just weeks before Rabin
had the chutzpah to get himself assassinated. Gefen then made a
remarkable metamorphosis. Gefen's most popular song at the time was a
lovely and sad song about a buddy of his who had died in a car crash.
Days after Rabin's murder, Gefen had rewritten the words to his song
entirely, making it a song mourning Rabin, to the annoyance of the family
of the dead friend about whom he had originally written it.

And so began the great mythos of
Aviv-Gefen-National-Official-Mourner-for-Rabin.

Suddenly Gefen is back in the news. Why? Well, ever since his new
gig as official Rabin eulogizer, he has been a typical punk leftist. And
this week (Maariv May 21) he announced that he regards all Jewish
"settlers" in the West Bank and Gaza to be "criminals". He had asked to
appear in that rally last week in Tel Aviv, the one the media decided had
150,000 souls crowded into the square which can at most hold 60,000, but
the organizers refused to grant him mike time. So instead he gave an
interview to Sheli Yachimovich, a far leftist TV talking head who endorsed
the Arab Stalinist Party Hadash in the last election. In the interview,
Gefen described settlers as functions of inverse Darwinian evolution (if
you have seen Gefen's photo, you will realize how deliciously ironic THAT
is). And that the "settlers" have converted God into real estate. (Huh?)

2. Holy Moses. The Left's idea of Moses, that is. And who does the
Left regard as Moses? Or at least one well-known shyster from the Far
Left?
Why, mass murdering nazi Marwan Barghouti, of course, Arafat's Goering.
Barghouti's lawyer, financed by the way by the New Israel Fund, is
Shammai Leibovitz, grandson of extremist leftist professor and philosopher
Yeshayahu Leibovitz, long since sent to the Great Taxidermist of the Sky.
Leibovitz the younger had given an interview last year in which he
announced that his client was a Palestinian Moses, the moral equivalent to
Moses. Barghouti just got himself convicted of mass murder and was
sentenced to five life sentences, which should last until th enext time
Ariel Sharon decided he wants to have a nice peace gesture and prisoner
exchange.

3. No longer simply anti-Semites!
Anti-Americanism at the LA Times:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13468

Posted 5/21/2004 01:56:00 PM

1. Leftist-Islamofascist Axis of Evil in Berkeley:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2004-05-19/feature.html/1/index.html

2. Rutgers delays diploma for pie-throwing student


Published in the Home News Tribune 5/19/04
By SARAH GREENBLATT
STAFF WRITER
RUTGERS: Tomorrow, Rutgers will confer a record-setting 11,146
undergraduate and graduate degrees, but a diploma bearing the name Abe
Greenhouse will be missing.


A University College senior who has fulfilled the requirements for a
bachelor's degree, Greenhouse will not receive his diploma until Dec. 31.
The delay is the result of a disciplinary action Rutgers took after
Greenhouse threw a pie in the face of Israeli Cabinet minister Natan
Sharansky during a campus visit last fall, the student's lawyer said.

"His degree is being held until the end of the calendar year," attorney
Leon Grauer said. "It really hurts him economically and professionally."

Because of the delay, Greenhouse won't be able to tell prospective
employers that he has his degree until January, Grauer said.

Greenhouse, 26, also has been charged by Rutgers police with "tumultuous
behavior" that created a public inconvenience or alarm in the Sept. 18
incident.

A pro-Palestinian activist and leader of Central Jersey Jews Against the
Occupation, Greenhouse hit Sharansky squarely in the face with the pie
moments after the Israeli official entered a packed lecture hall to kick
off a series of events organized by Rutgers Hillel.

Sharansky -- after disappearing briefly to get cleaned up -- made light of
the incident, commenting on the "good cakes" available in New Jersey.

In the meantime, Israeli security guards attacked Greenhouse, breaking his
nose, knocking his teeth out of alignment and giving him a black eye and a
fat lip, for which he was treated at Robert Wood Johnson University
Hospital, according to court papers.

While Greenhouse declined to comment on the matter, Grauer said the
university overreacted to the incident.

"I don't know how, under any reading of the law, placing a pie in
someone's face can be deemed creating a public alarm," Grauer said. "If he
ran through a public assembly with a smoke bomb, he'd be creating a public
alarm. But this is a pie."

Grauer sought to bar the university from taking disciplinary action and
have the criminal charges dismissed, but state Superior Court Judge Mark
Epstein denied those motions.

"Mr. Greenhouse was not punished for anything he said," McCormick said in
an e-mail message. "He was disciplined for assaulting someone in the face
with a pie. Others within the community are criticizing the university
because, in their view, Mr. Greenhouse's punishment was too mild. To my
mind, the discipline issued was appropriate."

http://www.thnt.com/thnt/story/0,21282,966488,00.html

3. The Gaza Paradox

By MICHAEL B. OREN
May 21, 2004; Page A10

JERUSALEM -- The father of an Israeli soldier recently killed in Gaza
blamed his son's death on Ariel Sharon and his refusal to evacuate the
Strip. The same day, paradoxically, another grieving father whose son died
in the same battle denounced Sharon for his very willingness to withdraw.
These pained accusations followed a turbulent two weeks that began with
the murder of a pregnant Jewish woman and her four daughters by Gaza
gunmen on the same day Sharon's own party rejected his Gaza detachment
plan, and concluded with Palestinians brandishing the body parts of
Israelis soldiers killed in Gaza. The trauma of these events has riven
Israeli society between the two irreconcilable positions expressed by the
bereaved parents. The right believes that the best way to fight terror is
to maintain Israel's occupation of Gaza and the beleaguered Jewish
settlements there, while the left claims that terror will only end with
Israel's complete evacuation and the renewal of talks with the
Palestinians. Both sides, however, are tragically and disastrously wrong.

Threatened with destruction since its birth, Israel exists thanks to an
unwritten agreement between the State and its citizens. Israelis allow the
State to send them off to battle, and perhaps to die, but only when a
solid majority of them believe that their vital security is at stake. If
most Israelis consider a confrontation unnecessary or avoidable, they will
simply refuse to fight. Such is the situation in Gaza today where a
commanding majority of the population is no longer willing to risk their
-- or their children's -- lives defending 7,500 settlers from the million
Palestinians surrounding them. They do not regard Gaza as part of their
spiritual and historical homeland, nor see how Israel can remain within
the densely-populated Strip and retain its Jewish and democratic
character. By insisting on perpetuating the status quo in Gaza, then, the
right threatens to undermine the implicit pact that binds Israeli society
-- which enables the State to survive.

The left, on the other hand, holds that the recent deaths of 13 Israeli
soldiers in Gaza were a direct result of the government's settlement
policy and its refusal to seek Palestinian partners for peace. The 13,
however, died not defending settlements but destroying tunnels used to
smuggle explosives into Gaza, and the factories that produce Qassam
rockets. Those explosives killed 10 Israelis in a suicide-bomber attack on
the coastal city of Ashdod, and the rockets have struck Jewish towns and
villages outside of the Strip. Israel's withdrawal from Gaza will do
nothing to lessen these threats -- on the contrary, it will almost
certainly enhance them, enabling the Palestinians to acquire even deadlier
missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv.

Further escalation would result from resuming talks with Arafat and his
Palestinian Authority. Arafat, who publicly congratulated the Hamas
"martyrs" of Gaza and called for a million more like them to liberate
Jerusalem, has also stressed the need to drive Israel forcibly from Gaza
and deprive it of a peaceful pullout. Any attempt to grant the PA
responsibility for security in Gaza will likely repeat the experience of
Bethlehem, on the West Bank, where a similar experiment led to the last
two suicide bombings in Jerusalem and 18 Israeli dead. Both of the bombers
came from Bethlehem.

Clearly, Israel cannot remain in Gaza but neither can it negotiate a
phased withdrawal. The evacuation that the bulk of Israelis demand,
therefore, can only be accomplished unilaterally while acting to maintain
Israel's deterrence power. Israel will also have to reserve its freedom to
frustrate weapons smuggling into Gaza by land and by sea, and to strike at
terrorist targets inside the Strip. Though proposals have been raised for
deploying international peacekeepers in Gaza, such a force will surely
lack the mandate and the means for effectively rooting out terror, and
will probably serve to shield the Palestinians as they continue firing at
Israel. Someday a Palestinian leadership may emerge that is capable of
ensuring a quiet border, but until it does, there can be no substitute for
preserving Israel's ability to defend itself, by itself, from Gaza.

* * *
One can only sympathize with the anguish of fathers who have lost their
sons in Gaza -- I, too, have a son serving in the territories -- but that
compassion must not obscure Israel's course. At all costs, Israel must
avoid repeating its hasty retreat from Lebanon in May 2000, which
emboldened the Palestinians to launch their terror war four months later.
Rather, Israel must withdraw from Gaza but in a way that cannot be
interpreted as a victory by the Palestinians and that allows the IDF to
continue operating freely. The challenge Israel now faces in Gaza is thus
similar to America's in Iraq: how to pull out gradually, prudently, all
the while maintaining the message that terror will never go unpunished.

Mr. Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is the author
of "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East"
(Oxford, 2002).

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108509423959017491,00.html

4. The Guilty Left: http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=3703

5. In the Mideast, lies are truth and vice versa:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13487