Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
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1. Well, Amir Peretz is picking up political rejects and jetsam even
while many of the establishment Labor Party people are making moves
toleave. The latest recruit is none other than communist TV-radio
hostess Sheli Yachimovich. Why communist? Well, in recent elections she
endorsed the Stalinist pro-terror HADASH party, which has never gotten
around to renouncing Stalin's terror.
Sheli is the main target of ridicule on Israel's leading humor TV show
these days Eretz Nehederet. She says she is joining the Peretzites
because she thinks they represent "social democrats," and if you think
that Stalin was a social democrat then you should be joining Simpleton
Sheli. The feminizts were upset when the TV comedians made funny of
Sheli, using a character to represent her as - well, coyote ugly. SHeli
is 45 and is a flaming feminizt. She used to write for the Marxist
Al-Hamishmar newspaper before it went bankrupt (it had gone into mourning
when Stalin died, running as its banner headline: "The Sun of the Nations
has Set"). She pretends to be an intellectual and writes book reviews in
the press.
2. Hitler's Victory:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47615
3. What Arab Moderates?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1132475644288&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
4. Execution is the Answer!
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20349
5. Sexy Jihad:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20321
CBC jihads against Israel:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20320
1. Concerning Sharon's new party - see
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1132475636811&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
That pretty much sums everything up.
Meanwhile, for those of you confused about Shimon Peres joining Sharon's
new "Kadima" party, the problem is that you are not looking at things
properly. The party really should be named "Kadima La-Churban" (Onward
to Destruction).
Israeli politics, you see, has long been little more than an episode from
the Simpsons TV show. Mister Burns, as you will realize the moment you
look closely at him, has always been Shimon Peres. His nerdy sidekick
Smithers is, or used to be, Yossi Beilin. Homer Simpson himself is Ariel
Sharon, a man who believes in nothing and stands for nothing but feeding
his beer belly.
There are several Simpsons episodes where Homer and Mr. Burns team up
with one another. Now
Marge Simpson's two hag sisters are clearly BOTH Shulamit Aloni. You can
tell from the cigarettes. Moe of Moe's Bar seems to be a character
played by Bibi Netanyahu although a minority view has him being played by
Avishay Braverman. The town drunk Barnie has grown a large moustache and
has taken over the Labor Party, although some say that it is really
Tommy Lapid and that Amir Peretz has shaved and is really playing
Bapu the fast food owner. As you see, Israeli politics are so
confusing. Bart Simpson himself seems to be Moshe Feiglin.
Haim Ramon is playing the comic book store guy.
Now doesn't that make a hell of a lot more sense than what YOU were
thinking?
2. The Megalomania of the Assimilationist Liberal (Asslib) Jewish
Establishment in the USA:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles_print.php?article_id=5010
3. Atrocities at DePaul:
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=83
4. Canada:
http://chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=18106
5. Not sure if this is for real:
Michael Jackson to build a mosque in Bahrain
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/009146.php
Western Resistance suggests that Jacko is doing this to cover himself
after getting caught in a ladies' loo, headscarf and all, in Bahrain.
"Jackson to build a mosque in Bahrain," from the Khaleej Times, with
thanks to Fjordman:
MANAMA . World..s top pop singer Michael Jackson,, who recently settled
down in Manama has donated a huge amount of money, the figure was not
disclosed, for building a state-of-the-art mosque near his luxury palace
in the Bahraini capital, according to his spokesman. The proposed mosque
would be designated for learning the principles and teachings of Islam, as
well as teaching of English language, for which high-standard teachers
would be brought from United States under his personal supervision, the
spokesman said.
Jackson did so as a token of appreciation to the Bahraini people, who
welcomed him and treated him as if he was one of the citizens of their
country....
It is noteworthy that Germain Jackson, the brother of Michael had embraced
Islam at the beginning of 1990s, and he was one of former Jackson Five
band and the solo singer[.]
Germain had felt his brother Michael has great interest and study of
Islamic books, the tolerance of Islam and his dealing with Arab and Muslim
personalities since long years. The most prominent among those figures is
Prince Al Waleed bin Talal and the Bahraini royal family.
6. Intifada ad Infinitum:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20323
7. Keep track of academic sedition in Israel. Visit
www.israel-academia-monitor.com !
Amir Peretz's new sidekick is "Professor" Avishay Braverman, president of
Ben Gurion University for almost as long as Kaddafi has been president of
Libya.
Peretz is already boasting that his anti-productivity
quasi-bolshevik "ideas" have the
backing of an academic heavyweight - Braverman.
Academic heavyweight?
I did a literature search to see what "academic" work Avishay Braverman
has ever done. What I found was that he co-edited a book on agricultural
economics with Joseph Stiglitz (this would not count as an academic
publication at any serious research university - it is an anthology that
contains one paper co-authored by Braverman), he did a few reports
for the World Bank in agricultural economics (neither would these), has
one contribution to a volume of proceedings from a conference on
agriculture (neither would that), and he published a paper in a
Brazilian journal in Portuguese:
TI: Custos e beneficios da estabilizacao de precos agricolas no Brasil.
(With English summary.)
AU: Braverman,-Avishay et-al
SO: Pesquisa-e-Planejamento-Economico. August 1991; 21(2): 227-52
According to the computerized bibliography Econlit, the authoritative
data base for research in economics, this last one is the only
publication in a "refereed" journal that he has and IT is in Portuguese
(and so does not count). In research
universities, only refereed journal publications in English form the basis
for academic achievement (at least in economics). In short, Braverman's
academic record is essentially a blank slate. What wonder then that
academic standards at Ben Gurion University have been trashed, at least
for far leftist anti-Zionists, while Braverman ran the show!
From www.israel-academia-monitor.com
Professor Kenneth Mann in 'The Apartheid Law in Israel: A Seminar on the
Occupation Law and Israel.s Military Courts'
The Apartheid Law in Israel: A Seminar on the Occupation Law and Israel.s
Military Courts
The Apartheid Law seminar offers a unique opportunity for lawyers, law
students, media professionals and political activists to hear first hand
accounts and analysis from the predominant figures in the field.
We believe that the cooperative investigation of the Apartheid law . an
issue which has been absent from public discourse in Israel . will
consequently lead to public discussion and to civil action.
The seminar is comprised of 8 bi-monthly sessions . conducted in Hebrew -
beginning 8th of November, taking place in Daila, Queen Shlomzion 4,
Jerusalem.
Session 1: The judicial framing of the Israeli occupation in the OPT . an
international perspective . Attorney Michael Sfard
Tuesday, 8.11.05 at 19:30, Daila.
Session 2: The right for representation in criminal law in Israel .
overview
Prof. Kenneth Mann, Tel Aviv Aviv University
Tuesday, 22.11.05 at 19:30, Daila.
Session 3: Occupation Law . The military law code
Attorney Leah Zemel (communist party member and lawyer for terrorist
murderers)
Tuesday, 6.12.05 at 19:30, Daila
Session 4: Administrative Detention and Secret evidence
Attorney Tamar Peleg, The Society for the Protection of the Individual
Tuesday, 20.12.05 at 19:30, Daila
Session 5: Legal Representation in Military Courts
Attorney Sahar Francis, Adameer
Tuesday, 3.1.06 at 19:30, Daila
Session 6: The Bureaucracy of the Occupation . a detailed examination
Attorney Limor Yehuda, ACRI and Attorney Yael Berda
Tuesday, 17.1.06 at 19:30, Daila
Session 7: A Panel of Palestinian Ex-Prisoners
Tuesday, 31.1.06 at 19:30, Daila
Session 8: A Study Tour of the Military Court in Offer Camp
Time and date to be finalized.
Concluding Session . Thinking Together . Palestinian and Israeli lawyers,
presenting personal perspectives and possibilities for the future.
Time and date to be finalized.
http://www.newsfromwithin.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=306&Itemid=1&lang=ISO-8859-1
1. The head of Israel's most extremist university, Ben Gurion University,
is a leftist named Avishay Braverman. Braverman is by training an economist,
although before coming to BGU most of his career was outside academia, at
the World Bank. Under his long regime as President of BGU, entire
academic departments at BGU
were established in which no non-leftist opinion could be expressed. The
political science department there operated with its own Disloyalty Oath,
in which no Zionist was welcome. BGU under Braverman
collected perhaps the largest number of anti-Israel extremists and
seditious radicals of any
university in Israel, many openly calling for Israel to be destroyed.
Academic standards were trashed as far leftists, some with laughable
academic records, were hired, promoted, and granted tenure at BGU.
Now Braverman the economist has teamed up with Amir Peretz the mustachioed
trade union leftist, now heading teh Israeli Labor Party and seeking to
restore it to its 19th century ideological roots, a man whose entire
outlook is anti-economic and 19th century marxism. And at his right hand
is Braverman, about to end his rule at BGU and clearly trying to position
himself for a cabinet slot in any Peretz government. Peretz, whose own
literacy is somewhat dubious, clearly sees having a professor on his team
as greatly important: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/649945.html
2. Oslo as mental illness:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20222
3. Psychologists for Jihad:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20265
4. Israel's Judicial Tyranny:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1132053877195&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
1. The Timothy Leary of the Hebrew University
Allow us to introduce you to Professor Benny Shanon, professor of
cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University (see
http://pluto.huji.ac.il/~bshanon/ ). While having once been a serious
psychologist with a distinguished academic record, since 1997 the good
professor has spent most of his energy on promoting psychedelic drug use,
and doing a bit more than dabble in getting high himself.
Haaretz weekend magazine Nov 25, 05 devotes a long piece to the professor.
Seems that he discovered a cousin of LSD used by South American Indians,
named Ayahuasca while trekking about Ecuador and Brazil in 1993. He
dropped acid, er- I mean Avahuasca, more than a hundred times. He was
chairman of the psychology department at the Hebrew University at the
time.
He advocates use of psychedelic drugs and insists that their use is simply
not well known in the West. I guess he has never been to my high school
in Philadelphia nor to the parks near the Berkeley campus. Shanon does
not believe in the subconscious and insists that anyone can learn all
there is to know about their psyche if they trip out on dope enough. I
guess Shanon belongs to the Mikey-Lerner-Tikkun school of psychology. It
goes without saying that the good Prof. Shanon is also a far leftist. See
http://www.dasbistro.com/pipermail/clarkgreen/2003-April/001218.html and
http://www.jerusalemites.org/appeal/7.htm and
http://www.emjournal.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ap03036.html
We can understand why Shanon's ideas are so popular among the anti-Zionist
Campus Left at the Hebrew University. After all, one really needs to be
stoned to believe in ideas of leftists. But why are Hebrew University
donors funding this Timothy Leary on Mt. Scopus?
2. Mikey Jackson does not only abuse children:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/649270.html
3. Please check out http://www.iconoclast.ca/mainpage.html
Subject: Hebron Arabs Sick of "Anarchists"
I am translating parts of the article that appears at
http://www.inn.co.il/news.php?id=130800 (in Hebrew on web site)
The Arabs of Hebron are Sick of Anarchists
In recent days officials of the "Palestinian Authority" have coordinated with
the Jewish community of Hebron attempt to bring to an end the activities of
leftist extremist "anarchist" activists from all around the world who have
congregated in order to assist the Israeli Far Left in its activism, supposedly
on behalf of the Arabs of Hebron.
The collaboration began due to the arrival of the "anarchists" in the city of
Hebron. Local Arabs in Hebron claim that the same anarchists who supposedly
are trying to assist them are in fact behaving in a provocative and offensive
manner, in violation of the moral and religious norms and standards of respect
upheld by local Hebron Arabs, and especially undermine the morals of local
youths.
According to testimony from a number of local Arab eyewitnesses in the city,
the anarchists have been attempting to incite local Arab youths against their
own religion and beliefs, as well as exposing them to drugs and sexual
depravity. In an interview for the local paper "Kol Hair", the father of one
of the many local youths injured in the unrest organized by the anarchists
complained, "These anarchists come here and all the time undermine the
education we give our youths. At first we took them in with hospitality; after
all, they claimed they wanted to help us so why kick them out? But very
quickly they outraged me with their behavior."
In order to expel the anarchists fromthe town, local Arab and Jewish leaders in
Hebron have come to terms and settled differences, including agreements to
place observers on thestreets of Hebron. Both local Jews and Arabs hope that
these observers will replace the foreign "anarchists", supposedly in town to
serve as observers.
The spokesman for the Jews of Hebron confirmed that any new replacement
observers will be Arabic-speaking and acceptable to local Arabs. He added that
the international "anarchists" came to Hebron come from Western cultures
steeped in sexual ludeness and permissiveness, as well as sexual perverseness
and drug use. "Their presence in Hebron serves to inflame violence because
they are seeking to create provocations and encourage violence." ... He
mentioned an incident where Israeli soldiers seized an Arab woman who had just
tried to stab them, but a group of anarchists attacked the soldiers to free the
woman.
In recent days, Jewish organizations from Israel and from overseas have been
coming to Hebron to confront the international "anarchists" who have besieged
the town. The Jews have been investigating the motives and purposes of the
"anarchists" in coming to Hebron and are supporting and encouraging the Israeli
troops who have to deal with the attacks by the leftist "anarchists".
1. The Left Hates, Just Hates:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20274
2. Non-PC Feminists enrage the Left:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20249
3. KURT VONNEGUT: MOONBAT
A formerly great writer goes off the deep end: US author lauds suicide
bombers. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)
ONE of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as .very
brave people. and used drug culture slang to describe the .amazing high.
suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up.
Kurt Vonnegut, author of the 1969 anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five,
made the provocative remarks during an interview in New York for his new
book, Man Without a Country, a collection of writings critical of US
President George W. Bush. Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr
Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of
defending terrorism.
But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it
was .sweet and honourable. to die for what you believe in, and rejected
the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.
.They are dying for their own self-respect,. he said. .It.s a terrible
thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It.s like your culture is
nothing, your race is nothing, you.re nothing..
Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World
War II veteran, said: .I regard them as very brave people, yes..
He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman.s
1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On the Iraq war, he
said: .What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight
back..
Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an .amazing high.. He said:
.You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it
must be an amazing high.. Friday, November 18, 2005
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog
4. Amnesty International's Crime against Humanity:
http://www.spectator-online.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/11/18/437e456c84821
5. Clinton moving to Nevada:
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=10333786&src=eDialog/GetContent
6. Treason in Joysey:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/kouri/2005/11/nj-college-professor-advocates-death.html
(Copy of the "yesh Gvul" brochure offering $750/Month for IDF soldiers who
refuse service in Judea and Samaria available for perusal or faxxing -dsb)
http://www.israelnn.com/print.php3?what=news&id=93321
18:18 Nov-20-05 / 18 Cheshvan 5766
Police Open Investigation into Left-Wing Groups Offering Incentives to
Refuse IDF Service
Sunday, November 20, 2005 / 18 Cheshvan 5766
(IsraelNN.com) Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan has instructed the
police to open an investigation against members of the extreme-left 'Yesh
Gvul' organization due to suspicions that they are offering monetary
incentives for young people who agree to refuse to serve in the IDF.
In response to an inquiry by investigative journalist David Bedein, Nitzan
wrote: "After considering the matters, I have decided to instruct the
police to open an investigation into allegations of committing crimes of
incitement to draft-dodging and refusal."
Bedein had made the inquiry claiming that there is particular severity to
the fact that the group is offering monetary incentives and support to the
refusers.
==============
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=11379
Financing Desertion in Israel
By David Bedein
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 18, 2003
Next Wednesday night, an Israeli organization funded by an American Jewish
organization will be organizing an all day teach-in in the heart of Tel
Aviv to convince high school students not to join the Israeli army and to
convince Israeli soldiers to desert the Israel Defense Forces. The theme of
the "teach-in": Israel's soldiers are "war criminals."
All this occurs after the PLO orchestrated over 20,000 terror attacks over
a period of three years that have resulted in the cold blooded murders of
more than 900 men, women and children throughout Israel.
Meanwhile, the Hizbullah organization gnaws at Israel's border with its war
of attrition in the north, moving into the positions that the Israeli army
unilaterally withdrew from under the Beilin/Barak left wing government's
hasty retreat from Lebanon in May 2000. And, at the same time, tens of
weapons smuggling tunnels are being dug along Israel's long southern
frontier with the collusion of Israel's neighbor to the south, Egypt.
As a result, the Israel Defense Force has been forced to spread its small
army to conduct operations in order to preempt terrorists by locating,
arresting and neutralizing potential killers where they plan potential
terror attacks, while at the same time guarding and patrolling two very hot
borders.
While the IDF operations are taking place, a group of Israelis with support
from a Jewish group in the US have been conducting a well-financed campaign
to encourage IDF troops to desert their units.
I write this not only as a journalist, but also as the father of Noam, an
Israeli soldier who serves as a sergeant in an IDF combat unit that
operates in an isolated and sensitive area of operation where he risks his
life every day.
My wife and I and our five other children look forward to welcoming our
oldest son home whenever he can get away for Shabbat. Noam arrives home
exhausted and, like the other young men and women his age serving in the
army, he appreciates the support that he gets from the "home front" - our
community and his own family.
Yet at every train station and bus station that Noam passes through he is
"greeted " by paid professionals who distribute leaflets to IDF soldiers to
encourage them to desert from their units, offering to pay them to do so.
The leaflets that Noam picks up describe Israeli soldiers as "war
criminals" and are financed through a Jewish organization in my home
community of Philadelphia in the United States.
That organization is the Shefa Fund.
As their website at www.shefafund.org proudly states, the Shefa Fund
provides funds to the "Courage to Refuse" campaign, which proclaims that it
will pay for any IDF soldier for the time that he might spend in prison and
for any legal expenses involved in refusing to serve. A recent
investigative TV program which aired on Commerical Station Channel Two in
Israel showed how the "Courage to Refuse" campaign had set up a counseling
service in the center of Tel Aviv known as "New Profile", which counsels
young Israeli men and women on how to avoid Israeli army service altogether.
Page seven of the annual Shefa Fund report also proudly states that the
Shefa Fund has most recently allocated funds to the Courage to Refuse
Campaign. This has enabled the Israeli draft desertion campaign to take out
ads, distribute leaflets at army bases and at bus stops, and to hire a PR
firm to further incite IDF troops to desert their units. Instead of calling
themselves "deserters", these soldiers call themselves "refusenicks," a
term reminiscent of the struggle to save Soviet Jews who were refused exit
visas from the Soviet Union in the 1970's and 1980's. Copying the tactics
of the struggle to free Soviet Jewry, the Shefa Fund has now launched a
campaign for Jews in the US to "sponsor" deserters from the IDF and to
glorify them in their hometown communities in the US.
Needless to say, all this undermines the morale of the IDF by accusing
Israeli soldiers of conducting war crimes against an Arab population which
harbors terrorists and which encourages and celebrates the murder of Jews,
even women and children.
The Shefa Fund has responded to these reports by distributing a letter in
which it states that "as a matter of policy, we do not distribute flyers on
buses or at points where soldiers are returning from the front. "Courage To
Refuse," in fact, works only with reservists, not with soldiers who are
under compulsory service. These organizations do not encourage desertion,
and do not pay anyone to recruit members or to refuse military service."
The Shefa Fund also claims that "Yesh G'vul" and "Courage to Refuse" do not
encourage desertion from the Israeli military, despite the fact that this
is precisely what both organizations do by distributing letters, leaflets
and internet messages every day in praise of IDF reservists and new IDF
inductees who desert their IDF units rather than engage in the pursuit of
PLO terrorists who escape to safe havens in Judea and Samaria (the West
Bank), Gaza and Jerusalem.
Throughout the past year, Yesh Gvul and Courage To Refuse have held
countless rallies in honor of young inductees to IDF compulsory service who
are now sitting in prison for deserting their units rather than pursuing
PLO killers in the West Bank and Gaza.
So much for the Shefa Fund claim that they are "only working with reservists."
The Shefa Fund also claims that "Yesh G'vul and Courage To Refuse conduct
activities that are legal", despite the fact that Yesh G'vul, as an
Israeli-registered Non-Profit Organization, #58-039186-0, was disbanded as
a non-profit organization on December 31, 1997 because of "financial
irregularities" and remained disbanded until June 2002 when it was
established as a profit-making corporation, listed in the Israel Corporate
Registrar, #51-325106-6.
According to the Israeli law, it is a felony for Yesh G'vul to solicit or
to receive funds, from Israel or from abroad, from the time it was
disbanded as a non-profit organization until the time it was registered as
a corporation. Even more important, it is illegal to encourage Israeli
citizens to engage in the felonious act of desertion from the IDF.
Since the Shefa Fund asserts that neither Yesh G'vul nor Courage To Refuse
pay Israeli soldiers when they desert the IDF, it would seem that the Shefa
Fund's leaders did not read the websites of Courage To Refuse at HYPERLINK
"http://www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp" www.seruv.org.il in which Courage
To Refuse announced until recently, both in Hebrew and in English, that it
would pay deserters for "the time that they spend in jail" to cover their
mortgage, tuition, rent and day-care for their children - benefits which
are much more than an IDF soldier would get from the Israeli government's
meager "national security" allowance during IDF regular or reserve service.
Imagine what would happen if the IDF paid the tuition, mortgage, rent and
day-care for its soldiers while they are on reserve duty?
The current "Yesh G'vul" brochure offers a flat $750(US) a month for anyone
who is jailed for desertion from the IDF.
The Shefa Fund has therefore created the first financial incentive system
to make it profitable for an Israeli soldier to desert the Israeli army.
All told, the Shefa Fund provided $160,000(US) for this purpose in 2002 alone.
And where does the Shefa Fund get this money? Its brochures show several
hundred Jewish contributors who have earmarked funds for their support of
IDF desertion.
However, a look at the US #990 IRS forms for the Shefa Fund reveals that
the Shefa Fund received an anonymous $15 million donation, of which Shefa
is not saying where it came from. Just who is this mysterious anonymous donor?
Ironically, the Shefa Fund is generally known as an agency that provides
sorely needed health, education and welfare programs for social services
throughout North America. It remains to be seen whether Shefa's assistance
to IDF deserters will hurt or help its fund-raising for their worthy social
causes. Meanwhile, Noam and his fellow soldiers remain on duty protecting
the people of Israel.
1. Yeah, Bruce!
http://www.southflorida.com/news/sfl-rowntstsh7nov13,0,3691923.story?coll=sfe-news-wire
2. Film for the Jews for a Second Holocaust:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/15/D8DT400G9.html
3. Shocked, shocked:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20199
4. Terrorists in Suits:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20203
5. Pagan Reform Pseudo-Jews:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/11/18/national/a142251S12.DTL
6. CAMERA: Ha'aretz Stonewalls In Attempt to Escape From Correcting
Errors
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=27518
Ha'aretz Stonewalls In Attempt to Escape From Correcting Errors
Tamar Sternthal Director, Israel Office CAMERA www.CAMERA.org
Monday, November 14, 2005
For more than two decades, CAMERA has followed media coverage of Israel
and
the Middle East closely, contacting countless outlets with questions about
factual accuracy and in many instances eliciting corrections. Virtually
every major media outlet in America and some beyond U.S. shores have
corrected errors in response to CAMERA, in accordance with professional
journalistic standards asserting the paramount importance of accuracy --
and
accountability. Among those issuing corrections, often multiple times,
have
been the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe,
Chicago Tribune, International Herald Tribune, National Public Radio, ABC
News, and CNN.
Until recently CAMERA's efforts have focused primarily on North America
with
few foreign media outlets monitored intensively for accurate coverage or
challenged for corrections on erroneous reporting. Little attention was
directed, for example, toward Ha'aretz, an Israeli daily newspaper printed
in Hebrew and English and relied on by the Western press corps as well as
Israel's cultural and political elite. (Ha'aretz is sometimes described by
its admirers as the New York Times of Israel .) With the opening of
CAMERA's
Israel office last year, however, it was possible for the first time to
monitor Ha'aretz in the same sustained way as U.S. newspapers are
followed.
In the last year, CAMERA has contacted the paper's editors concerning
multiple factual errors, taking the identical approach used with U.S.
publications - emailing editors behind the scenes, providing data
substantiating why a report is incorrect, requesting a correction,
following
up with phone calls, and finally, posting an item on our Web site and/or
sending out an alert. (In a particularly egregious case, we published an
Op-Ed in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles about a serious and
uncorrected error.)
However, unlike prominent American and international outlets, Ha'aretz
apparently considers itself above criticism. Ha'aretz editors seem
unaccustomed to responding to readers in a straightforward process and
appear to believe readers have no right to fault them for shoddy,
inaccurate
coverage. Rather than considering the substance of CAMERA's queries,
Ha'aretz has stonewalled completely, refusing to correct errors. Indeed,
the
English edition of the newspaper, in contrast to almost every major
American
newspaper, has no regular corrections section; a lone correction appears
once every few months.
Amira Hass Falsehood
CAMERA contacted Ha'aretz editors about an error that appeared Nov. 2 in
an
Op-Ed entitled "How the PA Failed" by columnist Amira Hass. She writes
that
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "cannot prevent the expropriation of
land for Jewish-only roads in the West Bank." In fact, while there are
roads
prohibited to Palestinians in the West Bank, there are no "Jewish-only
roads." Israel' s Arab citizens and, indeed, Israeli citizens of any
religion or ethnicity, have just as much right to travel on those
restricted
roads as do Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs frequently use the bypass roads
for
business and to visit relatives. Moreover, at least one Israeli Arab was
fatally shot by Palestinian terrorists on one of these roads. As the Los
Angeles Times reported on Aug. 8, 2001:
"{Wael Ghanem, an Israeli Arab, was shot and killed as he drove toward the
Jewish settlement of Tzofim in the West Bank, not far from where an
Israeli
woman was killed on Sunday. . . . However, he was driving a car with
yellow
license plates on a West Bank road where a similar shooting attack had
taken
place, raising the possibility that Palestinian gunmen thought they were
targeting an Israeli settler."
Georgios Tsibouktzakis, a Greek Orthodox monk, shot on June 12, 2001, was
another non-Jew killed by Palestinian terrorists while on these roads.
Even B'Tselem, an organization frequently critical of Israel, acknowledges
that restricted roads are reserved for those with Israeli plates, (Jews
and
Arabs), as opposed to Jews only. Thus, an Aug. 9, 2004 hard-hitting report
stated: "B'Tselem has divided the Forbidden Roads Regime into three
categories of roads: 'sterile roads' where Palestinian traffic is
completely
prohibited, roads where Palestinians require special permits, and roads
with
restricted access. The regime applies only to Palestinians. Israeli
vehicles
are allowed to travel freely along these roadways." (Emphasis added.)
This false charge implying a racist policy on the part of Israel --
allowing
special privilege to Jews over other religious and ethnic groups -- is
particularly pernicious. When such a claim is made in a prominent Israeli
newspaper it is often echoed in the media worldwide.
In response to CAMERA's request for a correction on this issue, Ha'aretz
assistant editor Ruth Meisels inadvertently sent CAMERA's Israel Director
Tamar Sternthal what was clearly meant to be an internal Ha'aretz email.
Addressed to a Ha'aretz employee who apparently handles phone calls, the
email warned (in Hebrew):
"In the event that this [CAMERA complaint] gets to you: We have a quasi
'policy,' on the orders of [editor-in-chief] David [Landau], to ignore
this
organization and all of its complaints, including not responding to
telephone messages and screening calls from Tamar Sternhal [sic], director
of CAMERA. Otherwise, we will never finish with them."
Thus, Ha'aretz editors appear to have little interest in the accuracy of
their coverage or the accepted standards of journalism -- unlike their
American counterparts -- and seem to believe (wrongly) that not returning
a
phone call or responding to an email will deflect CAMERA's efforts to
redress false and inflammatory assertions.
Uncorrected Errors
Beyond the most recent Amira Hass error, numerous others remain
uncorrected,
including:
In a July 18, 2004 column, Gideon Levy made a number of false claims,
among
them the allegation that Golda Meir once said: "After what the Nazis did
to
us, we can do whatever we want." CAMERA was not able to track down any
source for such a quote. Moreover, Levy himself sent an email to CAMERA
admitting that he had no source. Nevertheless, Ha'aretz editors refused to
correct.
On Jan. 26, 2005, Ha'aretz ran a five-column color Reuters photograph
above
the fold on the front page, with the incorrect caption: "A Palestinian man
inspecting buildings after they were demolished by Palestinian police in
Gaza yesterday, the first time the PA has acted against illegal
construction." In actuality, the PA has repeatedly acted against illegal
construction, and CAMERA provided Ha'aretz with news reports from Times of
London, the Washington Post, and Israel's Channel 2 substantiating earlier
such action taken by the PA in 1994, 1995, and 1998, respectively.
In a Feb. 10, 2005 Op-Ed about the current status of the
Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, Ha'aretz writer Sefi Rachlevsky alleged that there had been
"four
years in which the Palestinians preserved nearly absolute quiet." The
exact
time of the four years is not entirely clear from Rachlevsky's writing,
but
at no point during the 1990s was there a period in which "the Palestinians
preserved nearly absolute quiet." CAMERA provided Haaretz with a detailed
list of the attacks which occurred throughout the decade. Ha'aretz again
stonewalled.
In a June 5, 2005 Op-Ed, Yossi Beilin claimed that in Israel from 1957 to
1967 "only 20 people were killed from hostile operations." In fact, at
least
40 Israelis were killed in hostile acts during this period.
In a Jan. 21, 2004 exposi in Ha'aretz Magazine, Meron Rapaport erred about
the Absentee Property Law, stating: "The law stipulates that the property
of
such an absentee would be transferred to the Custodian of Absentee
Property,
with no possibility of appeal or compensation" (emphasis added). This is
false, as both appeal and compensation are possible, and landowners have
exercised these rights and been compensated. Though Ha'aretz ran a letter
from CAMERA on this issue, a letter is no substitution for an
acknowledgment
from the newspaper that it had erred.
'Personal Vendetta'
In July, the Israeli weekly Makor Rishon ran an article about CAMERA's
Israel office, focusing on its efforts with respect to Ha'aretz, quoting
the
editor:
David Landau, editor of Ha'aretz, says that his relationship to CAMERA's
complaints are different than his relationship to the complaints of
others.
"I confirm that we relate to CAMERA as if they have a personal vendetta
against us. I have experience of many years with them. We encourage
readers
to write to us, and we publicize every day or two days corrections of
errors
according to need, but everything depends on the clean hands of the
writer."
Yet, it is totally untrue to suggest that in the English edition, which is
the version Western journalists read, corrections run every day or two.
Moreover, CAMERA is the only organization to press Ha'aretz for factual
accountability in a systematic way. Thus, it is CAMERA's unique agenda to
promote accountability which makes Ha'aretz's relationship with us
"different."
Israeli Code of Ethics
Landau's directive to disregard complaints from CAMERA not only stands in
contrast to the attitudes and procedures of the U.S. arena but also, in
fact, violates the Rules of Professional Ethics of Journalism as
authorized
by the Israel Press Council.
These state:
"Substantive mistakes, omissions or inaccuracies in the publication of
facts
must be corrected speedily, fairly and with the appropriate emphasis
relative to the original publication. In addition, in suitable cases, an
apology shall also be published. In suitable cases a person injured shall
be
given a fair opportunity to respond to a substantive mistake, omission or
inaccuracy speedily and with the appropriate emphasis relative to the
original publication."
Ha'aretz seems to believe it is above any such guidelines requiring
accountability.
Subject: Amir Peretz' Master Plan to Destroy Israel
http://jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=5687
*Moustache Pete: Israel`s New Labor Party Commissar*
By *Steven Plaut*
The victory of Amir Peretz over Shimon Peres in the Nov. 9 Labor Party
primaries all but guarantees the victory of the Likud in Israel`s next
national election. It also makes it quite likely that the Labor Party will
now shrink into insignificance and irrelevance as the Peretz victory will
serve as a shot in the arm for the nearly extinct left-wing Meretz Party.
The most dramatic ramification of all, of course, is that Peretz's triumph
at long last puts an end to the career of Shimon Peres, the holder of
Israel's record for political failure. Having lost virtually every political
contest he's ever fought, and coming off his shocking and embarrassing
defeat at the hands of the unschooled Peretz, Peres is finished politically.
(Peres responded to his loss to Peretz with a show of ungraciousness,
refusing to call Peretz to congratulate him and threatening to challenge the
primary results in court.)
The amazing thing is that Shimon Peres managed to impose so many of his
ideas on Israel without ever winning an election. The Oslo "peace process"
was by and large Peres's initiative. It was imposed on Israel by Yitzhak
Rabin, who was willing to follow Peres's lead on statecraft even though he'd
been elected on a platform flatly rejecting any Oslo-like strategy.
Peres in time managed to use the shock in Israel over the assassination of
Rabin to neutralize what had been growing opposition to the Rabin-Peres
initiative. Later, the visionless leaders of Likud also followed Peres's
line and continued to pursue peace through appeasement and national
self-abasement.
Enough of Peres; let us turn our attention now to Amir Peretz. The new Labor
Party boss is, to put it politely, a cross between Jimmy Hoffa and Cheech. A
party hack who built his career mainly by establishing a power base in
Israel's corrupt Histadrut trade union federation, Peretz got as far as he
has in part through fortuitously pinning his political fortunes to the
tailcoats of other politicians, and in part because the establishment
politicians in Labor never took him seriously enough to neuter him
politically.
Born in Morocco, Peretz immigrated with his parents to Israel at the age of
four. He first came to national attention in Israel in 1983 upon his
election as mayor of the economically distressed working class Negev town of
Sderot. This was long before the days when Sderot morphed into Israel's
Stalingrad, routinely taking the brunt of rocket attacks by the PLO and its
affiliates. (Peretz has been notoriously absent from Sderot during those
attacks, and has had almost nothing to say about them).
A personal note: The only time I met Peretz face to face was when he invited
me to testify before a Knesset committee he was chairing on health policy.
Aware of his reputation as an intellectual lightweight, I made my
presentation in monosyllables and simple words, but he just stared at me
with uncomprehending wide eyes, apparently understanding nothing that I
said.
Peretz served as a warehouse and maintenance officer in the Israeli
military, sustaining a leg injury in the Sinai in 1974 when his personnel
carrier was involved in an accident. After recovery he was offered the task
of running a gas station, but he refused, claiming he was not "prepared to
be anyone's boss on the grounds that it would constitute exploitation."
Perhaps he was really afraid of the bookkeeping challenges involved.
Instead, he bought a small farm in an agricultural cooperative in the Negev,
where he grew rose flowers. Later, after his stint as mayor of Sderot, he
was pushed into minor Labor Party visibility as the token Moroccan Jew
recruited by Labor leaders concerned with the party's difficulties
attracting working class "Mizrachi" or Oriental-Jewish voters. (While
styling itself the party of the working man, the Labor Party has long been
the bastion of the middle- and upper-middle-class Ashkenazi establishment.)
Peretz has always been instantly recognizable in the media thanks to his
huge Zapatista moustache. He seems to have been made for caricaturists. "I
love the moustache," he once confessed to Dalia Karpel of Haaretz. "A small
moustache wouldn't suit me...."
*'Laziest Member of Knesset'*
Peretz was elected to the parliament in 1988. As a member of Knesset, he
devoted most of his energies to prohibiting the use of out-sourcing and
operation of non-unionized labor exchanges, the result being higher
unemployment among low-skilled Israeli workers.
Seeing that his prospects for a senior position in Labor were close to
nonexistent, he joined the disaffected faction set up by Haim Ramon in the
early 1990's. Ramon considered himself a serious contender for the job of
prime minister but was certain he was being blocked by the party machine.
Ramon and his sidekick Peretz decided to challenge the Labor establishment
inside the Histadrut trade union federation with their own dissident slate
named "New Haim" (or "New Life," a play on Ramon's first name).
In the Histadrut union elections, the Ramon team beat the Labor machine and
seized control of the trade union federation, with Peretz as second in
command and in charge of strike actions and trade union negotiations.
But already by then the Histadrut, once a powerful state within the Israeli
state, had lost much of its muscle. It had been a stunning fall for the
union behemoth: Histadrut membership cards were a sine qua non for getting a
job in pre-1948 Israel and without such membership workers were barred from
many jobs even into the 1970's.
Histadrut funds were always misused by the Labor Party to fund its own
election campaigns. Before statehood, funds donated by Jews around the world
had been funneled through the Histadrut into the coffers of MAPAI
(forerunner to today's Labor) and used to build the party's power base.
After 1948 Israeli taxpayer funds were similarly misappropriated for the
same purpose.
By the early 1990's the Histadrut was little more than a weak and corrupt
anachronism, stripped of its control of Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest
bank, after the "bank share scandal," a large Ponzi scheme that collapsed in
1983. It also lost control of many of its insolvent pension funds, which had
long served as slush funds for Histadrut commissars, and of its captive
"General Sick Fund," Israel's largest health service provider.
After beating the Laborites in the Histadrut elections, Ramon quickly tired
of his trade union toy. He resigned from the leadership of the Histadrut in
1995 and turned the job over to Amir Peretz
While Ramon made his way back into the Labor Party's upper echelons, Peretz
was still seeing his political ambitions stymied by the party machine. In
1999 he decided to use his power base in the Histadrut to challenge the
Labor Party and set up his own competing "labor" faction, named Am Echad
(One Nation).
Using funds appropriated, Jimmy Hoffa style, from trade union accounts,
Peretz spent his way into the parliament as a small two-seat (later
three-seat) party, though he received just 16 percent of the vote in his
home town of Sderot. His victory was, however, large enough to force Labor
to co-opt Peretz and his people and offer them a power share within the
prty, including reserved Knesset seats in the elections slate.
In parliament Peretz only bothered to show up for about 11 percent of the
votes and was dubbed the "laziest member of Knesset." His stock reply to
critics was, "I am busy with the Histadrut."
The single largest item on his expense account, according to a Knesset
report of 2001, was NIS 18,720 for private tutoring in English, a language
he has never quite mastered.
*Armchair Revolutionaries' Last, Great Hope*
Politically, Peretz, who likes to describe himself as a "social democrat,"
is associated with the Israeli Oslo Left, and was long a board member of
Peace Now and the left-wing New Israel Fund. His ideas on economics are
little different from those of nineteenth century socialists and
syndicalists, and he dreams of turning Israel into some sort of hybrid
combination of Sweden and Belarus. He has no patience for and no
understanding of market economics.
As the major promoter of an ever higher minimum wage in Israel, Peretz bears
a major share of responsible for the country's high unemployment rate,
caused largely by that minimum wage. Peretz also led the campaign against
the employment in Israel of foreign temporary workers, who today are the
backbone of Israel's agricultural and construction sectors.
Had Peretz gotten his way, both those sectors would have collapsed.
While mouthing socialist slogans about the working class, Peretz actually
built his power base mainly on the elitist "unions" of highly skilled,
lavishly paid professionals ? i.e., feather-bedded workers in
government-owned or sponsored monopolies such as the Israel Electric
Company, whose "workers," including engineers and technicians, are probably
the most grossly overpaid group of people in Israel. Peretz made common
cause with the "workers" in this and other sectors ? such as the seaports
and airports ? in which market competition is suppressed by the Israeli
government.
Peretz consistently promoted the interests of the unionized overpaid
professionals and semi-professionals at the expense of blue-collar workers ?
those hurt most by the frequent strikes called by the Histadrut. He
single-handedly shut down Israel's airports so often that foreign
businessmen were refusing to come to Israel altogether, not from a fear of
terrorism but from a fear of getting stranded when the airports were shut
down.
In earlier Labor Party primaries, Peretz used union funds to secure more
votes than any other candidate. Even so, given Labor's inability to produce
a serious contender for leadership after the debacle of Amram Mitzna's 2003
landslide loss to Ariel Sharon, support for Peretz in the primaries was far
less a vote for him than it was a protest against the machine leaders.
Will Sephardic voters be enticed by a Peretz-led Labor Party? Don't count on
it. Labor may have long viewed Peretz as a magical key to opening the door
to bring in Sephardic voters, but Oriental Jews in Israel remain far more
likely to vote for the Likud and the religious parties, and in any case
Moroccan Jewish candidates do not have a very good track record in
attracting the votes of non-Moroccan Oriental-Jewish voters.
The more likely effect of the Peretz nomination will be to drive away much
of Labor's Ashkenazi rank and file ? and some of the leaders as well. A good
chunk probably will end up in the semi-Marxist Meretz Party.
The parliamentary strength of Meretz has shrunk almost to the
endangered-species level, but the abandonment of Labor by the educated
Ashkenazi middle class, who will be repulsed by Peretz's lowbrow blue-collar
shallowness, will likely revive Meretz as a political force.
Peretz already is itching to flex his muscles in a national showdown with
Sharon and is threatening to bust up the Labor-Likud National Unity
government immediately to force it. And of course the coming wave of
political jokes about Peretz-as-ignoramus will make all those Bush, Gore,
and Quayle jokes look tame and polite by comparison.
Unless the Labor machine now topples Peretz, which it might yet do, the
party is on course to losing the next election to the Likud by a much larger
landslide than its last loss. But such a prospective landslide will also
lower the likelihood that the Likud will abandon its current platform of
"Oslo Lite" or take any courageous stand on anything. Already Commerce
Minister Ehud Olmert is maneuvering to replace Ariel Sharon as Likud chief
on a platform of escalated appeasement.
While mouthing the slogans of the Left about Oslo, "disengagement" and the
"peace process," Amir Peretz clearly means to make anti-market economics and
"social issues" his main banners. One should bear in mind that the Israeli
Left does even more damage when it gets all compassionate and concerned
about "social issues" than it does when it pursues "peace." The way it
invariably pursues "social issues" is through seeking massive tax increases
and budget outlays for "social needs" coupled with massive interference in
market mechanisms.
But Peretz's ambitions go well beyond even that.
Should the Israeli public ever be foolish enough to allow Peretz to seize
the reins of power, he will quite simply destroy the Israeli economy. He
would order massive across-the-board wage increases detached from
productivity considerations, which would drive countless businesses into
receivership while raising unemployment to astronomical levels.
He would promote the interests of state monopolies and seek to nationalize
more industry. He would suppress competition and attempt to restore the
quasi-Bolshevik system of price controls and rationing that nearly caused
Israel to collapse during its first years of independence, controls wisely
trashed by the socialist MAPAI leaders of the 1950's when they came to the
realization that these could not possibly work.
Peretz would also seek to expand the powers of the Histadrut, which all the
while would operate under his fiefdom, turning it back into a state within
the Israeli state ? an unelected anti-democratic second government, a
dictatorship of the unionized middle-class pseudo-proletariat.
It is precisely because of his promises to establish a system of socialist
command-and-control central planning with trade union tyranny that some of
Israel`s most foolish professors and journalists have endorsed him with such
enthusiasm. Dreaming of creating a Scandinavian-style welfare state combined
with "class warfare" against the big bad "industrialists," and led by a
bullying trade union mafia, these armchair revolutionaries see Peretz as the
last great hope of leading Israel out of the First World and back into the
Third.
In Contrast To Oslo Agreements Rafah Deal Silent on Terrorists
Date: 19 November 2005
"The PA will act to prevent the movement of weapons and explosives at the
Rafah crossing."
[Agreed Principles for Rafah Crossing - Security 15 November 2005]
http://usinfo.state.gov/mena/Archive/2005/Nov/15-381874.html
The text does not obligate the PA to act to prevent the movement of
terrorists.
Previous agreements specifically cited terrorists as people to be stopped at
crossings.
For example:
THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN INTERIM AGREEMENT - 28 Sep 1995
Annex I Protocol Concerning Redeployment and Security Arrangements
APPENDIX 5
Protocol Rewarding Arrangements with Respect to Passages (as amended)
...
SECTION B
Entry and Exit through the Palestinian Wing
..1. Entry from Egypt and Jordan
...
e. ... Suspicion justifying questioning in the closed checking area may be
one of the following:
(1) the passenger was involved, directly or indirectly, in criminal or
planned criminal activity, in terrorist or planned terrorist activity and is
not a beneficiary of the amnesty provisions of the Agreement;
.......If, at the conclusion of this questioning, the suspicion has not been
removed, such passenger may be apprehended, after the other side has been
notified.
www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/THE+ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN+INTERIM+AGREEMENT+-+Annex+I.htm
We have evidence of the intentions of the Palestinian Authority.
On November 17, an article about the agreement appeared on the web site of
the Palestinian National Authority's International Press Center
(http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_new/english/details.asp?name=11835).
In part it read:
"Meanwhile, the director of borders and crossings, Salim Abu Safiyyeh,
asserted that there won't be any live video streams to the Israeli side via
the surveillance cameras installed in Rafah terminal, pointing out that
even the joint control room will not receive these live feeds, and will be
only for the presence of the third party that will monitor the borders."
It remains unclear why U.S. Secretary of State Rice decided to press Israel
to allow free passage for terrorists.
Thanks to Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA for assembling this data.
----------------------------
I
1. Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies
by Alexander H. Joffe
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/789
When the Middle East Studies Association's annual conference ends on November 22, 2005, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole[1] is scheduled to become the organization's president. The association describes itself as:
A non-political association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications, and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom.[2]
As president, Cole is the public face of Middle Eastern studies. His election marks an endorsement of his work by hundreds of professors in various fields of Middle Eastern studies in American universities. Cole has written four academic books but his prominence comes not from scholarship but from his commentary on history and current events.[3] As such, this commentary provides a mirror into the state of Middle Eastern studies and the widespread urge of its practioners to promote polemic over scholarship.
Cole: Israel as a Fascist Society
Juan Cole: The Likud coalition in Israel does contest elections. But it isn't morally superior in most respects to the Syrian Baath. The Likud brutally occupies 3 million Palestinians (who don't get to vote for their occupier) and is aggressively taking over their land. That is, it treats at least 3 million people no better than and possibly worse than the Syrian Baath treats its 17 million.?September 9, 2004[4]
Middle East Quarterly: Freedom House gives Syria its lowest rating of "not free" for both political rights and civil liberties.[5] In contrast, Israel has a rating of "free."[6] The analogy between Likud and the Syrian Baath misunderstands the nature of comparative politics. The Likud has an active membership and contested leadership; the Baath is subordinate to Bashar al-Assad. Cole ignores the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, its massacres of perhaps 20,000 in Hama in 1982, and the imprisonment of at least 17,000 political prisoners.[7]
Cole: No American media will report the demonstrations in Israel[8] as fascist in nature, and no American politicians will dare criticize the Likud. But the fact is that the Israeli predations in the West Bank and Gaza are a key source of rage in the Muslim world against the United States (which toadies unbearably to whatever garbage comes out of Tel Aviv's political establishment), something that the 9-11 commission report stupidly denies.?July 26, 2004[9]
MEQ: Cole's characterization of peaceful demonstrations as "fascist" is inaccurate. Fascism suggests an autocratic system that seeks to regiment and control every aspect of social, political, and economic life. This cannot apply to Israel, which has from its independence been fully democratic. Israelis often demonstrate against their government's policies. Cole also fails to acknowledge U.S. political criticism of various Israeli governments. In 1991, Secretary of State James Baker declared Sharon persona non grata in Washington[10] and President H.W. Bush opposed issuing loan guarantees to Israel.[11] More recently, the Pentagon blacklisted Israeli Defense Ministry director-general Amos Yaron because of a dispute over Israel's military relationship with China.[12] Lastly, Jerusalem?not Tel Aviv?is the capital of Israel.
Cole: Judaism has given us so much that is noble in ethical religion, and what the Likud is doing is an insult to that long and glorious tradition. Likud's real roots lie not in the Bible but in Zionist revisionism of the Jabotinsky sort, which is frankly a kind of fascism.?March 21, 2003.[13]
MEQ: Cole's dislike for Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), an early Zionist leader who moved Zionism from intellectual debate to reality by organizing illegal immigration into Mandatory Palestine and helped establish a Jewish state, is a constant theme in his Internet postings. Cole resents the establishment of the Jewish state. In January 2003, he wrote, "While one certainly cheers the British for giving refuge in Palestine to Jews fleeing Hitler, it would have been nobler yet to admit them to the British Isles rather than saddling a small, poor peasant country with 500,000 immigrants hungry to make the place their own."[14] Cole's insistence that Likud's willingness to defend Israel against terrorism suggests a break with the "glorious tradition" of Judaism, a religion in which he holds no expertise, suggests a misunderstanding of both the democratic process which brought Likud to power and the divisions between religion and state which mark Israeli governance.
Cole: Dual Loyalties
Cole: It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9-11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying).?August 29, 2004[15]
MEQ: Cole suggests that many American Jewish officials hold dual loyalties, a frequent anti-Semitic theme.[16] Suggestions that American Jewish officials desired "someone else's boys" to fight is anti-Semitic and a common refrain in Cole's commentary.[17] Cole's commentary is often derivative and dishonest; he often substitutes others' web commentaries for the effort of tracking down original sources. In the case of "the one-two punch," he adopts the narrative espoused by the Lyndon LaRouche movement[18] and mischaracterizes the contents of the Institute for Advanced Strategy and Political Studies paper[19] that actually chastised Israel for not supporting the U.S. fight against terrorism and made suggestions about how Jerusalem could be more supportive of Washington.
Cole: Likud Manipulation
Cole: The rightwing Zionists want to racialize the Sudan conflict in American terms, as "Arab" versus "black African" because they want to use it to play American domestic politics and create a rift among African-Americans and Arab-Americans. Both of the latter face massive discrimination in contemporary society, and they should find ways of cooperating to counter it. What is happening in Darfur is horrible with regard to the loss of life and the displacement of persons, but the dispute is not about race. It is about political separatism and regionalism.?March 27, 2005[20]
MEQ: In contrast to those in the region,[21] Cole argues that there has not been an ethnic component to the Sudanese conflict and implies that suggestions that ethnicity is a factor are a Zionist conspiracy. Since hostilities erupted after Khartoum's 1983 decision to impose Islamic law over the predominantly Christian and animist southern region of the country, approximately two million persons have died.[22]
Cole: If Rice is going to be a successful Secretary of State, she simply has to get back control of US foreign policy from the Likudniks in the Bush administration.?January 20, 2005[23]
MEQ: Cole promotes an anti-Semitic myth while misunderstanding the process of U.S foreign policy. The president and the U.S. Congress set the direction of U.S. foreign policy. A secretary of state is charged with implementing it. Several times weekly, a Principles' Committee, consisting of the secretaries of state and defense, the national security advisor, and the director of national intelligence, meets to resolve any policy questions. In response to charges of undue influence by Jewish American officials, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, "I suppose the implication of that is that the president and the vice-president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs."[24]
Cole: With both Iraq and Iran in flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think, once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing American, Italian, and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so they thought).?August 31, 2004[25]
MEQ: No Israeli expulsion of the Palestinians or annexation of Lebanese land has occurred. Cole's comment appears to reflect his belief in the Arab nationalist and Islamist claim that Israel seeks to stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates.[26] This is one of many Cole predictions that are detached from reality.
Cole: Israel as Cause of Terrorism
Cole: That British police have received training in Israel in stopping suicide bombers with the technique of shooting the suspect in the head has not made things easier in that regard [sic].?July 25, 2005[27]
MEQ: In most cases, Israel thwarts suicide attacks without violence.[28] Following the shooting of a Brazilian tourist by the London police on July 22, 2005, Tom Gross, the Jerusalem correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, wrote, "Had the Israeli police shot dead an innocent foreigner on one of its buses or trains, confirming the kill with a barrage of bullets at close range in a mistaken effort to thwart a bombing, the UN would probably have been sitting in emergency session by late afternoon to unanimously denounce the Jewish state."[29]
Cole: our press and politicians do us an enormous disservice by not putting the Israeli announcement about the Jerusalem barrier on the front page. This sort of action is a big part of what is driving the terrorists (and, of course, Sharon himself is a sort of state-backed terrorist, anyway). The newspapers and television news departments should be telling us when we are about to be in the cross-fire between the aggressive, expansionist, proto-fascist Likud coalition and the paranoid, murderous, violent Al-Qaeda and its offshoots.?July 11, 2005[30]
MEQ: The separation fence has reduced terrorism 75 percent.[31] Saudi Arabia, India, Morocco, Turkey and even the United Nations in Cyprus built similar barriers before Israel, in each case reducing terrorism or, in the latter case, communal violence.[32]
Cole: According to the September 11 Commission report, Al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the U.S. for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies toward the Palestinians. Bin Laden had wanted to move the operation up in response to Sharon's threatening visit to the Temple Mount, and again in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad argued in each case that the operation just was not ready.?July 8, 2005
MEQ: Martin Kramer points out that the 9-11 Commission determined the hijacking plan was conceived by early 1999, that Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount took place in September 2000 when he was head of the opposition, and that the Jenin operation took place in April 2002, seven months after 9/11. After these factual problems were pointed out, Cole surreptitiously changed his original posting. [33]
Cole: It is obvious to me that what September 11 really represented was a dragooning of the United States into internal Middle East political conflicts. Israel's aggressive policies in the West Bank and Gaza have poisoned the political atmosphere in the Middle East (and increasingly in the Muslim world) for the United States. It is ridiculous to suggest that radical Islamists don't care about the Palestine issue.?September 9, 2004[34]
MEQ: Cole ignores events such as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, and on the USS Cole in 2000, all of which took place during periods of seeming progress in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Cole: We don't need any more U.S. buildings blown up because our government is coddling cuckoo [Israeli] settlers who are stealing other people's land to fulfill some weird religious power fantasy.?January 2, 2004[35]
MEQ: The 9-11 Commission determined that planning for the terrorist attacks began during the Camp David II process as it appeared that Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat would agree to a comprehensive peace agreement.[36]
Cole: Taking Liberty with the Facts
Cole: Was American journalist Steve Vincent killed in Basra as part of an honor killing? He was romantically involved with his Iraqi interpreter, who was shot four times. If her clan thought she was shaming them by appearing to be having an affair outside wedlock with an American male, they might well have decided to end it. In Mediterranean culture, a man's honor tends to be wrought up with his ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction by strange men.?August 8, 2005[37]
MEQ: According to Vincent's wife, he was not romantically involved with his Iraqi interpreter.[38] Iraq is not part of the Mediterranean world; Baghdad is more than 500 miles from both Tel Aviv and Beirut.
Cole: Even medieval Islamic law recognized the right of Christians, Jews, and other monotheists to practice their religion and enjoy rights to their lives and property. This relative tolerance has often been enhanced in the twentieth century by the rise of nationalism, wherein Arab Christians sometimes are privileged as symbols of national authenticity because Christianity predated Islam in the nation's history.?August 3, 2004 [39]
MEQ: As Martin Kramer points out, "Iraqi nationalists perpetrated massacres against Iraq's Christians in 1933 and against its Jews (who also predate Islam in Iraq's history) in 1941."[40] Cole's understanding of medieval Islam is also selective. Harun al-Rashid (786-809) originated the practice?revived by the Nazis more than a millennium later?of requiring Jews to wear yellow patches.[41] The eleventh century Saljuq dynasty also required Jews to wear yellow patches and shuttered Christian-owned taverns.[42] Both Christians and Jews had to pay extortionate taxes until they converted "voluntarily" to Islam.[43] In nineteenth century Iran?within Cole's self-declared scope of expertise?Islamic clerics whipped up anti-Christian pogroms.[44] Only in the early twentieth century, did Jews and Christians win equal rights within Iran,[45] and then only briefly.
Alex Joffe is director of Campus Watch, at www.campus-watch.org.
[1] Cole received a Bachelor's degree in the history and literature of religions, Northwestern University; a master's in Arabic studies from the American University in Cairo and a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of California in Los Angeles. He joined the University of Michigan in 1984 and served an abbreviated term as the director of the university's Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies.
[2] "About MESA," Middle East Studies Association website, accessed Sept. 7, 2005.
[3] Robert Haug, "An Informed Commentator," Michigan Today, Summer 2004.
[4] Cole, "Dual Loyalties," Informed Comment, Sept. 9, 2004.
[5] "Country and Related Territory Reports: Syria," Freedom in the World 2004: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (New York: Freedom House, 2004).
[6] "Country and Related Territory Reports: Israel," Freedom in the World 2004.
[7] Farid N. Ghadry, "Syrian Reform: What Lies Beneath," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005, pp. 61-70.
[8] On July 20, 2005, several thousand Israelis protested against unilateral disengagement.
[9] Cole, "200,000 Israeli Fascists Demand Colonization of Gaza," Informed Comment, July 26, 2004.
[10] The Jerusalem Post, May 3, 1991.
[11] The New York Times, Sept. 17, 1991.
[12] The Washington Times, Dec. 30, 2004.
[13] Cole, Informed Comment, Juan Cole website, Mar. 21, 2003.
[14] Cole, "Review of Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response," Global Dialogue, Jan. 27, 2003.
[15] Cole, "Pentagon/Israel Spying Case Expands: Fomenting a War on Iran," Informed Comment, Aug. 29, 2004.
[16] See Harold E. Quinley and Charles Y. Glock, Anti-Semitism in America (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 9-10.
[17] Efraim Karsh, "Juan Cole's Bad Blog," The New Republic, Apr. 25, 2005.
[18] "The Pollard Affair Never Ended!" Executive Intelligence Review (journal of the Lyndon LaRouche movement), Sept. 8, 2002.
[19] "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," report of the Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy toward 2000, The Institute for Advanced Strategy and Political Studies, Jerusalem, 1996.
[20] Cole, "The Google Smear as Political Tactic," Informed Comment, Mar. 27, 2005.
[21] Emily Wax, "?We Want to Make a Light Baby: Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing," The Washington Post, June 30, 2004.
[22] Francis M. Deng, "Sudan - Civil War and Genocide," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2001, pp. 13-21.
[23] Cole, "Rice Doublespeak at Senate," Informed Comment, Jan. 20, 2005.
[24] Quoted in Jeffrey Goldberg, "A Little Learning," The New Yorker, May 9, 2005.
[25] Cole, "Franklin Met with Naor Gilon," Informed Comment, Aug. 31, 2004.
[26] Daniel Pipes, "Imperial Israel: The Nile-to-Euphrates Calumny," Middle East Quarterly, Mar. 1994, pp. 29-39.
[27] Cole, "London and Sharm el-Sheikh Investigations," Informed Comment, July 25, 2005.
[28] The New York Times, July 25, 2005.
[29] The Jerusalem Post, July 24, 2005.
[30] Cole, "Jerusalem and Terrorism," Informed Comment, July 11, 2005.
[31] Ma'ariv (Tel Aviv), June 23, 2004.
[32] Ben Thein, "Is Israel's Security Barrier Unique?" Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2004, pp. 25-32.
[33] Martin Kramer, "Making Cole-Slaw of History," Sandbox, July 9, 2005.
[34] Cole, "Dual Loyalties."
[35] Cole, "Top 5 Tasks Remaining in 2004 in the War on Terror," Informed Comment, Jan. 2, 2004.
[36] 9-11 Commission Report (Washington, D.C.: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, July 22, 2004), pp. 154-160.
[37] Cole, "Constitution Still Deadlocked," Informed Comment, Aug. 8, 2005.
[38] "Lisa Ramaci-Vincent vs. Juan Cole," FrontPage Magazine, Aug. 30, 2005.
[39] Cole, "Muslim Clerics Deny Targetting [sic] of Christians," Informed Comment, Aug. 3, 2004.
[40] Martin Kramer, "Cole Turkey," Sandbox, Aug. 3, 2004.
[41] Habib Levy, Comprehensive History of the Jews of Iran, Hooshang Ebrami, ed., George W. Maschke, trans. (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1999), p. 64.
[42] Levy, Jews of Iran, p. 225.
[43] Bat Ye'or, Islam and Dhimmitude (Madison, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002).
[44] Abbas Amanat, Pivot of the Universe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 82-3.
[45] Daniel Tsadik, "The Legal Status of Religious Minorities: Imami Shi?i Law and Iran's Constitutional Revolution," Islamic Law and Society, 3 (2003): 406.
2. Crime among the Wahhabis:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20051114-015138-3548r.htm
3. PC Indoctrination on Campus at Ball State:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20151
3. Lying about Iraq ... Not:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20148
4. More on Paristine:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20136
5. Making the rounds of the Internet.......
The news just got worse for the French today. The Germans offered
military aid, saying they could have tanks and troops in Paris
within 48 hours, just like they did in 1940, 1914, 1870....No problem!
6. Lying about Bush Jews:
http://hnn.us/articles/17555.html
7. Berkeley JCC to be used by moonbats to smear conservative Chinese
Berkeley professor who dares to support the war in Iraq:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/11/1782551.php
8. More on Paristine:
http://chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=17850
9. Those of you who are wondering how two Israeli professors can possibly
endorse the lunatic conspiracist nonsense of people like Barry Chamish,
take a look at
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1%2C1249%2C635160132%2C00.html
They have Mormon professorial company!
Whenever confronted with evidence of the collaboration of academics from
thei campus with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic extremists, the officials at
Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheba always insist that treason is not the
officially sanctioned policy of the university and that such extremist
activity is regretable but well within the framework of academic freedom.
Such statements are belied now by the fact that Ben Gurion University is
holding a one-day conference on "Medical Teams and Dual Loyalties",
co-sponsored by the university and the extremist anti-Semitic organization
"Physicians for Human Rights". The conference will be held Nov 29 and the
opening speaker will be Prof. Avishay Braverman, the president of Ben
Gurion University.
The "dual loyalty" of which the conference speaks is evidently dual
loyalty to Israel and "Palestine". The Physicians for Human Rights is a
fanatic anti-Israel propaganda organization. While whining every time
Israel searches a PLO ambulance for weapons, it has never come out in
favor of the defense of the "human right" of Jews not to be murdered by
terrorists.
PHR has been the focus of attention by NGO-Monitor.org, which documents
phony propaganda organizations passing themselves off as NGOs. Its report
may be read at http://www.ngo-monitor.org/editions/v3n02/v3n02-2.htm
In the past PHR was accused by large numbers of people, including in a
petition organized by Prof. Gerald Steinberg and signed by hundreds of
academics, of being an openly anti-Semitic organization, after it
distributed propaganda with anti-Jewish caricatures. For samples, see
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/archives/infofile/PHRIPictures.htm
For more details on that, see
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=230911&contrassID=2&+ubContrassID=16&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
and http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=article&id=2176
In the 1990s,
PHR was run for a while by Neve Gordon, probably the most anti-Semitic
academic at Ben Gurion University, an open groupie of neonazi Norman
Finkelstein. Some of Gordon's areticles were published by the web site
operated by Ernst Zundel, the nazi deported from Canada.
The Israeli Medical Association has denounced PHR as an anti-Israel
propaganda outfit: http://www.ngo-monitor.org/editions/v1n05/v1n05-3.htm
PHR is funded by the EU, by the seditious pro-terror New Israel Fund
(which also funds the defense team for arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti),
and by other extremist groups. The Israel Medical Association official
boycotts PHR.
The PHR routinely turns out extremist propaganda that is little more than
collections of lies: http://www.ngo-monitor.org/editions/v1n01/v1n01-1.htm
THIS is the partner of Avishay Braverman and of Ben Gurion University in
debating supposed human rights violations by Israel at an official BGU
campus event.
I will be commenting at length on the Amir Peretz nomination in a separate
posting.
1. A Yesha Cowboy Song!
Was feeling poetic, so apologies for this:
Settler Sue, the Sioux City Jew
Based on the classic cowboy song Sioux City Sue by Gene Autry (original
words at http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/pages/tiSIOUXSU.html )
I drove a herd of cattle down from old New-Joysey way
That's how I come to be in the land of Judah-Ay.
I met a gal from Iowa. Her eyes were big and blue.
I asked her what her name was, She said, "Sioux City Jew."
CHORUS: Sioux City Sue, My Soft Settler Jew,
Your hair is red. Your eyes are too.
I'd swap my horse and dog for you.
Sioux City Jew, Now Gush Katif Sue,
There ain't no gal as true as my sweet Soft Settler Sue.
I asked her if she had a beau. She said, "Yes, quite a few."
And so I started courtin' with my Occupier Sue.
The first time that I stole a kiss, I caught her occupyin' too.
I asked her did she love me. She said, "And my Uzi too."
Now I'm admittin', Iowa, I owe a lot to you.
'Cause I came from New-Joysey to find my Sioux City Jew.
I'm gonna rope and tie her up. I'll use my old lassoo.
We're gonna put our brand up there in Yesha hilltops too.
From the recording by Gene Autry.
2. http://chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=17785
Bibles Out, Vaginas In at University of Wisconsin
Written by Abraham Miller
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
As political humorist Art Buchwald would have said, .Could I have
made this one up?. The University of Wisconsin, at Eau Claire, has
prohibited all Bible study by resident associates (RAs) on their own time
even when conducted in the privacy of their room. Not to be seen as
discriminating solely against Christians, the university, wrapping itself
tightly in the garb of multiculturalism, extended the prohibition to
include the study of the Koran and the Torah. One wonders if
Scientologists, witches, and secular humanists will be exempted.
In case you are one of those who continues to disbelieve the
arrogance of the politically correct in our state-funded institutions of
post secondary education--note that I purposely did not say .higher
education.--this story is for you.
The rationale for this public trampling on the First Amendment.s
sacred grant of freedom of religion is that resident associates who study
the Bible and pray to God might be seen as .unapproachable. by their
charges. Some academic bureaucrat.s arbitrary notion of what
.approachable. means, of course, trumps the First Amendment.
And how consistently has this notion been enforced? One RA who
for three years staged the controversial but feminist-applauded play,
''The Vagina Monologues,'' as an official residence hall activity,
received praise from the Office of Housing and Residence Life. No
university official suggested that participation in a controversial play
that obsessed about a woman.s vagina for more than an hour would make
someone .unapproachable.. Only studying the Bible would do that!
As Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate noted in ''The Shadow
University,'' it is precisely in the offices of housing and residence life
that the left has most strongly assembled its artillery in fighting the
cultural wars. Through compulsory sensitivity sessions, leftist
indoctrination for those who aspire to be resident associates and resident
counselors, and the creation of an environment where disputes between
students are resolved by decisions that favor a leftist agenda, an entire
separate but important curriculum is being forced on a captive audience of
powerless and unsophisticated undergraduates.
What the left knows is that the greatest threat to the imposition
of any belief system is a counter belief system. People wedded to an
ideology or a religion are unlikely to be swayed by attempts at propaganda
and indoctrination that contradict their faith.
Studies of the .brain washing. experiments conducted on American
prisoners of the Korean War showed that strongly religious Southern
Baptists were impervious to .brain washing..
The imposition of the left.s agenda on social values would receive
serious challenge from people who actively study the Bible, the Koran, or
the Torah. The purpose of the university.s edict is not so much that it
believes it will stop people from pursuing their faith, which, as history
teaches us, people will do anyhow, even on pain of death. Rather it is to
put people of faith on notice that they are not welcome in positions of
authority and responsibility in the university.s dormitories where the
inculcation of leftist social and political values is an important
component of the experience of residence life.
This is why the left must not only remove religion from the
public square but also from the very fabric of our society. In the
left-dominated institutions of post-secondary education, where
constitutional rights are routinely trampled when they collide with the
left.s agenda, religion is terribly vulnerable.
If the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire is remotely
permitted to enforce this obscenity, it will be the shape of worse things
to come throughout the highly imitative post-secondary education
community.
The way to stop this is not to waste your time writing to the
university. FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has
tried this approach and has not so much as received a response.
Stand up in your congregation and make people of faith aware of
this outrage. Write to the Governor Jim Doyle of Wisconsin Jim, POB 7863,
Madison, WI 53707. Write to President Bush and demand that his
administration cut off all federal funds to the University of Wisconsin
system.
Certainly, if a university refused to employ African Americans as
resident associates because they would be viewed as .unapproachable,. the
wrath of this society would descend on them with such force and swiftness
that it would surpass the shock and awe bombing campaign in Iraq, and
justifiably so.
People of faith should demand no less from their government. The
stakes are equally great.
About the Writer: Abraham H. Miller is emeritus professor of political
science, University of Cincinnati and a founding member of the Ohio
Association of Scholars.
3. Ben Gurion University's Cheerleader for Neonazi Norman Finkelstein
http://jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=5678
4. Leftist Indoctrination at Bar Ilan University:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/643534.html
Bar Ilan U. professors: Cancel `overly leftist` seminar on Rabin
By Tamara Traubman, Haaretz Correspondent
In a highly unusual step, some 20 Bar Ilan University professors called on
the university administration to cancel a Wednesday seminar marking the
tenth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, arguing that the
institution is becoming too leftist, and that the seminar's program is
one-sided, denying expression to the pro-settler nation religious
viewpoint.
The morning seminar, organized in cooperation with Haaretz, focused on the
influence of the Rabin murder on mamlachtiut the concept of the
responsibility of politicians to rise above politics.
The seminar also came in for criticism from a different source. Women's
groups noted the relative absence of women involved in the event.
The seminar was organized by Prof. Yedidya Stern of the Bar Ilan law
faculty, and is being held under the sponsorship of Bar Ilan President
Moshe Kaveh and Haaretz.
Among the scheduled speakers are former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon, former
Supreme Court chief justice Meir Shamgar, Elon Moreh Hesder Yeshiva head
Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, Petah Tikva Hesder Yeshiva head Rabbi Yuval Sherlo,
former Supre Court justice Dalia Dorner, and Haaretz Editor-in-Chief David
Landau.
'From left to extreme left'
Bar Ilan Professor Elisha Haas, who led opposition to the seminar, said
the event calls for dialog, but is itself a one-way monolog.
"They're bringing only one viewpoint - left and extreme left," Haas said.
One can find only one speaker from the settler side."
A protest letter initiated by Haas read in part: "Of 26 participants
listed in the seminar's published program, around 85 percent represent one
line of the public discourse in Israel, including representatives of the
more extreme left, who reject the very existence of the Jewish State."
The professors also criticized the university's partnership with Haaretz.
They said that it was "unimaginable" in an academic context that the
partnership would mean that the three main sessions would be chaired by
Haaretz personnel, a reference to journalists Tom Segev, Ari Shavit and
Danel Ben-Simon.
University: Small group of critics
A university spokesman, in a reference to the anti-disengagment movement,
said that the critics of the seminar represented a "small group of people
identified with 'orange,' who believe that Bar Ilan University has turned
too leftist for their taste."
The spokesman said the seminar had maintained balance, inviting both a
rabbi from Eilon Moreh settlement and Menachem Klein, a professor who had
helped draft the Geneva Initiative.
At the same time, he continued, "It is their right to express protest and
that is well and good. As long as there is debate, that is very good."