Steven Plaut |
Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university. |
Monday, January 31, 2005
1. Suggestion for the quarter million anti-appeasement protesters in Jerusalem last night to oppose the Sharon-Mitzna plan. Adopt the following slogam! "There are Substantial Penalties for Early Withdrawal!" Should be accompanied by a large photo of a box of Viagra. 2. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16833 Taking to the Streets in Jerusalem By Judy Lash Balint FrontPageMagazine.com | January 31, 2005 Is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharons unilateral plan to uproot dozens of Jewish communities in Gush Katif and northern Samaria in trouble? If Prime Minister Sharon were to listen to the people, the answer would be yes. An estimated 150,000 gathered outside Israels parliament building on Sunday evening for a mass demonstration that organizers dubbed the mother of all Israeli demonstrations. Under the theme of Let the People Decide, the huge crowd waved placards and Israeli flags and listened to speeches from a long line of politicians and rabbis, all of whom berated the once right-wing leader for his about face on giving away Israeli land. Several speakers were from Sharons Likud party. They warned the prime minister that if the so-called disengagement plan is carried out, irreparable harm would be done to the fabric of Israeli society. Popular Likud Knesset member, Uzi Landau railed against Sharons tactic of bringing the leftist Labor party into the government. They call this a unity government? he asked. Its a lie. Sharon threw out the parties who didnt agree with him. This government has no mandate for a one sided withdrawal, Landau concluded. David Levy, a veteran Likud Knesset member, told his fellow Likudniks to wake up! As the crowd roared its approval, Levy asked how the Likudniks could sleep at night knowing that the plan they narrowly approved is pitting brother against brother. Levy warned that the withdrawal would endanger the whole country, as terrorists will be emboldened and have closer access to Israels population centers. Cheers went up from the crowd, as National Religious Party leader, Effie Eitam declared: "We are telling you Ariel Sharon you have no mandate to expel Jews. "We are telling you you have no right to divide this nation. Israels media repeatedly claims that a majority of the public supports the Sharon plan, but actual poll figures are hard to come by. For protestor Hannah Baum of Netanya, the ninety-minute drive to Jerusalem was worthwhile, just to show that not all those who are opposed to the uprooting of Jewish communities are over the Green Line settlers. Months before Ukrainian democracy supporters started sporting orange, the Gush Katif campaign decided to use the color as a symbol of the sun and sand that marks their region. At the Sunday demo, every speaker on the dais was decked out in orange scarves, and most demonstrators wore at least one piece of orange clothing. At one point, officials asked for the crowd to raise their orange placards over their heads, so that an entire sea of orange would cover the streets directly in front of the Knesset building. A centerpiece of the protest was a mass pledge to go to Gaza to prevent the evacuation should it take place. In a series of film clips, demonstrators viewed the before and after Sharon. Before the last election, Sharon spoke out strongly against his opponents ideas of dismantling Jewish communities. Little more than a year after his election, the new Sharon announced his eviction plan. As the last clip drew to a close, the chant of Arik, Go Home, swelled through the streets. Speaker after speaker called on Sharon to hold a referendum or go to new elections. This is not about our homes only, said Gush Katifs leading rabbi, Yigal Kaminetsky, Its about our national home. Golan Regional Council head Eli Malka, who pledged the assistance of Golan residents for the anti-disengagement campaign, reiterated the theme. Tens of thousands of mostly religious teenagers were on the streets in a show of commitment to the country. Their representative, 14 year old Neve Dekalim resident Smadar Golan, addressed the gathering. I was born in the first intifada, she noted. I dont know what it is to live without terror, she continued in a steady voice. She told the crowd that her community in Gush Katif is the security fence for the whole country. Speaking to Prime Minister Sharon on behalf of the demonstrators, Golan honed in on what appears to have been one of Sharons worst political moves. You didnt even come to talk to us to explain what was going to happen, she complained. We had to hear about it through the mediaand you portrayed us as obstacles to peace. 3. For those who thought I was kidding you: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/533869.html 4. For those who think Americans do not know anything about Islam or Arabs: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16816 5. Reason for optimism: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/533870.html 6. Anyone still sorry Kerry lost? http://chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=12724y 7. Ending the Liberal Myth about "Self-Esteem": http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000CB565-F330-11BE-AD0683414B7F0000&pageNumber=1&catID=2 8. Know how the Euronerds claim the US is being "stingy" about Tsunami relief? Well: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=66782005 9. Let's see the asslib Tikkun Olam Pagans use this! http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0105/bush_tikkun_olam.php3 10. Someone who does not like radical feminizts: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0105/west013105.php3 Sunday, January 30, 2005
1. Fast Current Events Quiz! Q: What is the difference between the new liberated Iraq under Allied control, and Israel ruled by Ariel Sharon? A: In one country, the citizens of the country decide in the ballot box the direction of their country in free elections initiated by the governing leaders of the state. The OTHER country is governed by Ariel Sharon. 2. Remember when Ehud Olmert was a Zionist? "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 http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110001793 3. Dartmouth and Totalitarian Leftism: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16811 4. Colorado Professor of Stupidity: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16812 5. Holocaust Denial: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1106796046706&p=1006953079865 6. Fighting back on campus: http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4092.html 1. The German High Constitutional Court ruled over the weekend that the local German neonazi party may be banned under law. The curious thing is that the nazis, who call themselves the "National Democratic Party" of NDP also insist that they are a liberal democratic party. I mention this because these neonazis are not the only anti-Semitic fascists around claiming to be liberal democrats. Actually, most anti-Semitic fascists today claim they are liberal democrats. They are to be found in many places, and even Israel has a movement of anti-Semitic fascists calling themselves liberal democrats. Many of these have tenure on Israeli university campuses. 2. George Orwell said that there are some ideas that are so stupid that you can only learn about them from university professors and lecturers. Israeli university's are crawling with flaky pseudo-scholars. Take the Op-Ed column in today's Haaretz by one Eran Neuman, a lecturer in architecure at Tel Aviv University (http://www2.tau.ac.il/person/art/researcher.asp?id=adfmigdjl ) who insists that all of architecture should be conscripted on behalf of political opposition to "occupation" of the Palestinians, but not of course to the genocidal mass murder of Jews. There are many anti-Israel architects running around Israel, and two years ago, two of the loopiest, Ayal Weizmann and Rafi Segel organized an exhibition on "Architecure against the Occupation". Their point was that the very design of Israeli buildings in the "occupied territories" shows how Israel is a brutal colonialist evil racist entity. Trust them, they are architects so who better to offer insights on the Arab-Israeli war! After airing their "art" in Berlin, a place containing many people with experience in liberating territories from Jewish occupation, the Daffy and Bugs of Israeli architecture wanted the Israeli Architects Association also to show their "exhibit" in the Association's building, but they declined. They considered the exhibit blatant politics and extremist politics at that, but not art nor design. Naturally, the Far Left screamed censorship, since not allowing anti-Semites and pro-terrorists to use your private property to promote their views is in their opinion suppression of free speech. Comrade Neumann in Haaretz Jan 30, 05 is all upset because of this "censorship" and also over the fact that not all architects have followed the example of Weizmann and Segel in promoting the destruction of Israel through critical art and progressive architecture. Comrade Neumann by the way teaches "Critical Theory" (which means Marxist boilerplate) at Tel Aviv University. Why does Tel Aviv University carry courses in Marxism, after Marxism was thoroughly disproved 150 years ago and discredited by the 100 million victims killed by communism in the 20th century? Maybe you should ask the officials at Tel Aviv University (http://www.tau.ac.il/administration-eng.html) or some of their donors! Meanwhile, I am sure these architects against occupation must have gone out and partied all night long right after bin Laden filed his own protest against buildings representing power and domination in New York and DC! Ah, but Marxist architects for the destruction of Israel do not even come CLOSE to this week's Israeli award winner for Dumbest Idea on Campus, which must go to Dr. Danny Kaplan, a sociologist at Hebrew University (you know, Baruch Kimmerling's stomping grounds). He also teaches "gender studies" at Bar-Ilan University and The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Community College. Kaplan is featured in Haaretz Jan 30, 04 in a long interview by Dalia Shahori, who in recent months spent a lot of her quality time celebrating Ilan Pappe and the "Post-Zionist" and "New Historian" faculty members for the destruction of Israel. Kaplan recently published an article in "Theory and Criticism," which is a brain-dead Marxist piece of manure edited by Tel Aviv Univerity Marxist sociologist Yehuda Shenhav. You may recall this "journal" as the one in which an education faculty member at Haifa University published an article arguing that his own university's architecure was nothing more than a large phallic symbol representing oppression of Arabs. Really! In the hot new issue of "Theory and Criticism," Kaplan develops a theory according to which any time Israel mourns for any of its soldiers who have been murdered by the Palestinian savages, this mouring is in fact a form of eroticism and that all Israelis mourning the dead soldiers are possessed with an uncontrollable form of homosexual necrophilia. Military solidarity among soldiers in Israel is erotic by its nature, insists Kappy. Really. I am not making this up. Kappy insists friendship and mutual support among Israeli soldiers is homosexual and erotic, and that Israel's mourning murdered soldiers is collective necrophilia and also homoerotic. My guess is he did his research on this point while stroking himself in the Hebrew University men's room while looking at photos of dead Israelis. Kaplan can be reached at kapland@mscc.huji.ac.il Meanwhile, for many more horror stories about Israeli academia, stories you should bring to the attention of any prospective donors to any Israeli universities, please go to www.israel-academia-monitor.com ! 3. Euro-Barbarism from the Daily Telegraph THEY DIED AND NOW WE SNEAR By Leo McKinsry (Filed: 30/01/2005) The wind moaned gently in the nearby forest of the Vosges mountain. A thick blanket of snow lay on the ground and on the thousands of white crosses that marked the graves of US servicemen who had fallen in France during the Second World War. With my wife and her aunt Nancy from Pittsburgh, we had come to the American military cemetery at Epinal in eastern France, where 5,200 US soldiers are buried. We were paying tribute to one of those brave men, Private Bill Anderson from Pennsylvania, Nancy's brother, who went through D-Day and then died at the age of just 19 in November 1944 while on a dangerous reconnaissance mission. As we stood by the headstone, Nancy read out a heart-rending letter to Bill that she had written before leaving America. Full of poignant memories of their young life together, the letter captured the spirit of heroic optimism that had led Bill to give his life for the cause of freedom in Europe. Though I was born almost 20 years after Bill died, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the sacrifice he had made, a feeling reinforced as I lifted my eyes from his grave towards the arch that overlooks the cemetery. On it were carved words of remembrance for those "citizens of every calling bred in the principles of American democracy". To European intellectuals, the term "American democracy" is probably an oxymoron. Though such sophisticated cynicism is contradicted by events in Iraq, where just like in France 60 years ago US soldiers have been sacrificing their lives to liberate a people from tyranny, anti-Americanism is now written into the European psyche, the last acceptable prejudice in a culture that makes a fetish of racial equality. Indeed, as I walked through the cemetery, my sense of gratitude at Bill's service was accompanied by deep, almost visceral, anger at my fellow Europeans for their constant sneering at America and their gloating over the body count in Iraq, despite all that the USA has done to free Europe in the past from totalitarian dictatorships, whether they be Nazi or communist. Last week, the world marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Although it was achieved by the Russian army, it would never have happened without US intervention in western Europe, which forced Germany to fight on two fronts. America's action was purely altruistic. Whereas Russia was engaged in a life-and-death struggle for survival, the USA was not directly threatened by the Nazi domination of Europe. What sickens me is that we in Europe are fed a constant diet of anti-American propaganda because of the USA's supposed aggression, greed, imperialism or insularity. Yet, at the very same time, we are urged, through the remorseless process of European integration, to embrace Germany, the country responsible for most of the ills of Europe for the past 140 years. Perhaps even worse is the way the experience of Nazism has been used to promote the ideology of multi-culturalism. Any objection to mass immigration or the destruction of traditional Judaeo-Christian moral values is deemed as racist, akin to support for fascism. As a result, in the name of multi-cultural tolerance, we have allowed the creation of the brutal, anti-democratic monster of Islamism in our midst. It is a bizarre paradox that the hysteria over Nazism has encouraged Europe to be swamped by Islam, in which anti-Semitism appears to be an integral part of the creed tellingly, the Muslim Council of Britain refused to take part in the Holocaust commemorations. Instead of falling under the sway of Islam and European federalism, it would be better if Europe followed the values of America, a country that has always understood the meaning of the word "freedom". Friday, January 28, 2005
1. HA'ARETZ January 28, 2005 Unilateral withdrawal is irresponsible By Michael Rubin The Baghdad restaurant grew silent, all eyes on the television. It was January 29, 2004. Every Arabic news channel had its cameras trained on a Beirut runway, where a German transport plane was due to land. Israel had just released Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid, once leader of Hezbollah's southern Lebanon operations, after almost 15 years in an Israeli prison. The group of largely pro-Western Iraqis had tears in their eyes. "The first Arab victory over Israel was [the withdrawal from Lebanon] in May 2000. This is the second," an Iraqi professor explained. Six weeks earlier, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had announced plans to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. A broad range of Israeli politicians cautiously endorsed the move. While European diplomats wrung their hands nervously, President George W. Bush called Sharon's plan "historic and courageous." Nothing could be more untrue. While Israelis might fear civil and political strife if settlers are forced from their homes, Sharon's plan will reinvigorate terrorism not only in Israel, but as an international tactic of choice. The power of television is tremendous across the Middle East. Arabic satellite stations like the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, Hezbollah's Al-Manar, and Iran's Al-Alam deluge their audiences with images of American defeat: the 1983 U.S. withdrawal from Beirut, and the flight from Mogadishu a decade later. Watching television on any Baghdad evening, I would see American diplomats fleeing Vietnam. To the Iraqi audience the message was clear: Bush may say America has staying power, but it is weak. Al Jazeera mastered has information warfare. On days without American casualties, the station simply rebroadcasts images of the previous day's roadside bomb. The Iranian government primes its audience with similar messages. While critics rave about the latest Iranian art films, the normal fare for ordinary Iranians is far different. Sitting among Iranian soldiers packed into a Shiraz movie theater, I watched a Rambo-type film pitting Hezbollah characters against hapless Israeli soldiers. I tried to be inconspicuous as the crowd began to shout "kill the Jew" in anticipation of events on screen. The message to the soldiers was clear: Violence works. Imagery can be equally powerful on Israeli television. More than 20 years later, older Israelis remember television pictures of residents of Yamit battling soldiers during that settlement's 1982 evacuation. But while such images will have a profound impact on the Israeli electorate and their replication may cause some government ministers to reconsider their support for Sharon's plan, far more damaging to Israel and the United States would be the subsequent pictures. Images of Hezbollah and Hamas flags flying over Jewish settlements like Netzarim and Kfar Yam will torpedo hope not only of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, but also of an end to terrorism in Iraq, Turkey, Kashmir and against the West in general. Israelis and some in the Palestinian Authority may be sincere in a desire for peace, but rejectionists abound, not only in Lebanese and Syrian refugee camps, but also in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, Iran's Revolutionary Guard bases and Pakistani seminaries. A Hamas flag over Netzarim will justify 37 years of terrorism. The reasons for Israel's withdrawal will be irrelevant on the streets of the Islamic world. If terrorism can free Gaza, why not the West Bank, the Galilee, Indian Kashmir or democratic Iraq? Why compromise if terrorism obviates the need for concession? There is a limit to the West's stamina. Neither Israelis nor Americans should assume their opponents would be unwilling to pay the price of continued violence. As the Shi'ite commemoration of `Ashura approaches, millions will commemorate the 680 martyrdom of Imam Husayn, ritually cursing Sunni leaders of the day, as if Husayn's death was yesterday. The price of continued terrorism and insurgency might be high, but terror masters themselves often do not pay the price. Earlier this month in Baghdad, I interviewed Iraqis fleeing violence in the northern city of Mosul. Without exception, each said that the insurgents who invaded the city were in their mid to late teens; they complained that the insurgent leaders were using impressionable youth as cannon fodder. But so long as oil-rich Arab states and Iran are willing to subsidize incitement on television, in schools and in mosques, there will be no shortage of recruits. Not only Israelis, but also Iraqis, Indians, Turks, Americans and Europeans will pay the price. Seeking peace is honorable, but Sharon is gambling. Whether motivated by a sincere desire for peace or for an egotistical need to rewrite his place in history is irrelevant. Unilateral withdrawal is irresponsible. Should Gaza be part of a comprehensive deal, pictures of Hamas flags over Gaza will be immaterial, for they can be counterbalanced with images of Israeli embassies hoisting flags in Damascus, Riyadh and Tehran. But if Sharon goes ahead with Gaza disengagement, generations both inside and outside Israel will be sacrificed upon the alter of his legacy. Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor of the Middle East Quarterly. 2. Ah the honor of being called "totalitarian" by America's chief Stalinist, by the Khmer Rouge's favorite professor, and by the friend of Holocaust Deniers everywhere: From the UK Times Higher Education Supplement http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2019130 'We have our eye on you...so watch out' Michael North Published: 28 January 2005 Do websites such as Campus Watch seek balance or do they undermine integrity? Michael North reports Israeli academic Neve Gordon was not too bothered by the image of himself transmuting into Hitler posted on Masada2000 - a website containing a "hitlist" of 7,000 people it deems "enemies of the Israeli state". He says: "I didn't take it seriously. It was totally pornographic." More worrying, says Gordon, a professor of politics at Ben Gurion University, is that such sites have the same audience as the less sensational right-wing websites that target academics who express views sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. They also share, he says, a myopia about the nuances of the Middle East debate. Campus Watch, in the US, and Israel Academic Monitor, in Israel, post articles that attack academics' work, encourage donors to these academics' institutions to withdraw funding and urge universities either to sack the academics or to thwart their progress up the career ladder - all in the name of free speech. Gordon, who is on sabbatical at the University of California, Berkeley, has been targeted by both websites. He says that the Israeli site, written in English, is failing to have a big impact. "It is asking students to become collaborators and to report professors, but it needs a broader Hebrew audience." In contrast, Campus Watch, a slick site sponsored by the Middle East Forum in the US, has, according to Gordon and other US academics, strongly contributed to the post 9/11 campaigns to discredit left-wing academics. Joseph Massad, assistant professor in modern Arab politics at Columbia University, New York, is at the sharp end of the pro-Israeli groups' zero tolerance approach. His bid for tenure is being opposed. He says: "The Campus Watch website appears to be the first salvo in a much larger campaign targeting US universities and especially academics doing work on the Middle East who have critical views of the policies of the state of Israel and of US Middle East policy. Since then, there have been more protracted campaigns, the latest of which is one targeting me that is spearheaded by a Boston-based Zionist group called the David Project and the right-wing newspaper the New York Sun. The campaign has led a congressman to ask Columbia to fire me." Rachid Khalidi, professor of Arab studies at the Middle East Institute at Columbia and an American of Palestinian origin, has also been targeted by Campus Watch. He has a taped phone message that says: "Khalidi, Columbia, alumni love Campus Watch because they keep an eye on thugs like you. We have our eye on you. You'd better watch out." Khalidi believes the aim of Campus Watch is to have a "chilling effect" on free speech - a term echoed by two other academics targeted by the website, Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia and Yvonne Haddad, professor of the history of Islam at the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Foner says: "The purpose of these sites is intimidation, not information. Encouraging students to report on comments professors make that they deem unfair or unpatriotic could have a chilling effect on education." Khalidi adds: "There is a dearth of proper debate in the media and politics about the Middle East. The only place where these views can be found is in academia. They want to shut down this last window." Khalidi claims Campus Watch is closely linked to a wider campaign of actions against so-called pro-Palestinian academics. He cites the recent attempt by some members of Congress to push through a law threatening funding to universities whose faculties do not stick to the defence of US government policies; changes in grant proposals demanded by rich university funders, such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, to affirm that beneficiaries do not support terrorism; and the back-door (recess) nomination of Daniel Pipes, founder of Campus Watch, to the government-funded United States Institute of Peace - an event, according to Foner, that proved the US Administration "at least retains a sense of irony". Pipes, who is also director of the Middle East Forum, recently stood down from the board of USIP, which makes key research grants to academics working in Middle East studies, saying that "at times I felt frustrated". Khalidi is delighted at the development and also pleased that key members of the institute attacked Pipes publicly for objecting to the institute hosting a conference with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy last year. But Khalidi concedes that academics can do little against the power of neoconservatives such as Pipes and the extensive and rich networks of pro-Israeli groups, such as the new Israel on Campus Coalition. Pipes, for his part, succinctly defends Campus Watch's mission to "alert outsiders about the problems in Middle East studies and to challenge Middle East studies specialists to think about their field". He says the aim is "to improve and balance, not to cause anyone to lose a job". Asked if he is fuelling an unhealthy bias in the US media, he says: "You must be kidding", then refers to the website of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which gives examples of numerous anti-Israeli reports. The driving force behind the Israel Academic Monitor website is more forthcoming in his defence of his group's work. Steven Plaut, professor of economics at Haifa University, refers to his crusade against "the crazies" using the classroom "to impose their extremism on their students" and as a "bully pulpit for their political agendas". And he names US academic Noam Chomsky as an example of such people "who passionately hate their country". To which Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, replies: "He is borrowing from the lexicon of totalitarianism: Soviet dissidents were accused of 'passionately hating their country' because of their criticism of state policies. For the totalitarian mind, the state is identified with the country, its culture and its people." Gordon is suing Plaut for libel for, he says, alleging that he is a Holocaust denier. Plaut denies libel and his supporters accuse Gordon of censoring free speech. However, Gordon and other Israeli academics say that debate in Israel is far healthier than in the US. Khalidi comments that many Israeli journalists would not be published in American newspapers. Anat Biletzki, chair of philosophy at Tel Aviv University, says that only a handful of radicals are really targeted by the Right, but adds that there is self-censorship. She gives an example of such "undercurrents of McCarthyism". "I was called to the dean when two students complained about me sneaking politics into my teaching. The university constitution says we are perfectly within our rights to talk politics in class. Two weeks later the rector called me up to say he had heard I talked politics in class. He said 'in times such as these we have to think twice about everything we say'. I said 'in times such as these there are things that have to be said'." For now, European academics critical of Israeli government policies work in a less intimidating environment. Anoush Ehteshami, director of Durham University's Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, says the debate is more polarised in the US than anywhere else. "I have lots of contacts with colleagues here and in Finland, Germany and France. None of them has complained of intimidation." Ehteshami says the "poisoned atmosphere" in the US since 9/11 is deterring UK academics from applying for posts across the pond. He knows two, but refuses to name them. "They don't want pressure to be 'patriotic'," he says. But he adds that resistance to the neocons is taking hold, a view confirmed by Lynne Segal, professor of psychology at Birkbeck, London University, and a member of the international group Faculty for Israeli/Palestinian Peace as well as Jews for Justice for Palestinians in Britain. Such groups campaign in the name of academics who find themselves threatened, holding seminars and conferences and distributing their views to a wide audience. "I think intimidation is possible. These are very troubling developments and we need to be watchful," Segal says. Ehteshami says that, for now, inquiries by students about his political views are just "inquiries, not a challenge". He adds: "This is a witch-hunt that compromises academic integrity and freedom that, ironically, in the past the US was very proud of. God forbid it happens in the UK." 1. "Disengagement or Appeasement?" http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16813 2. Openly Anti-Semitic Garbage at "Commondreams": http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines05/0127-07.htm 3. Eurocrap: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0105/euro_antisem.php3 4. Is there still room for this asshole on Robin Island? http://www.mandela-palestine.org/ 5. Still think the analogy with Munich is out of place? http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=76008 6. Shame that the Holocaust gave Anti-Semitism a bad name: http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=4723 7. Let us snip his baton! http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?strwebhead=Barenboim+speech+sparks+outrage&intcategoryid=5 Courtesy of the David Project A still from the documentary, Columbia Unbecoming. http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?strwebhead=Barenboim+speech+sparks+outrage&intcategoryid=5 Barenboim comments spark anger as controversy at Columbia builds By Rachel Pomerance NEW YORK, Jan. 26 (JTA) ? Its not oftenn that someone compares the anti-Semitic German composer Richard Wagner to Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism. But at Columbia University on Monday ? the day the United NNations marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz ? tthe Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim reportedly did just that. Barenboim, who sparked outrage several years ago by performing Richard Wagners music in Israel, where it was taboo to play the work of Hitlers favorite composer, excoriated the Jewish state at a memorial lecture for his late friend Edward Said, the Columbia professor who was a member of the Palestine National Council. According to news reports and comments from audience members, Barenboim compared Herzls ideas to Wagners; criticized Palestinian terrorist attacks but also justified them; and said Israeli actions contributed to the rise of international anti-Semitism. The lecture is emblematic of an escalating crisis embroiling Columbia, where faculty members in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures departments have been accused of intimidation by pro-Israel students. In October 2004, the David Project, a pro-Israel advocacy group, screened a documentary called Columbia Unbecoming, airing claims that faculty members harass students who dont share their anti-Israel views. Two months later, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger announced the formation of an investigative committee, which is due to issue a report by the end of February. Pro-Israel students had complained of faculty intimidation before. In 2003, Bollinger responded by appointing another committee to assess the matter. That group found no evidence of bias. This time around, some are taking issue with the five committee members chosen. Among them are faculty members who signed petitions urging Columbia to divest its holdings in companies that do business with Israel, as well as the former adviser of one of the faculty members accused of intimidation. Meanwhile, Columbias campus newspaper reported Wednesday on the second instance of anti-Semitic vandalism in recent months: A swastika and racial slurs were scrawled in a mens bathroom at the student union Monday. In light of the ongoing concern among Jewish students on campus, Daniel Ayalon, Israels U.S. ambassador, canceled plans to attend a Columbia conference on the Middle East peace process scheduled for Thursday, according to Israels consul general in New York, Arye Mekel. Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, who coordinated the conference, said he would reschedule the event for September. In an e-mail to JTA, Mitchell explained that several expected guests, including Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, had faced travel difficulties that made the conference inconvenient. Many Jewish students on campus say theyre distressed by the latest developments. Im feeling really worn out by the whole thing, sophomore Bari Weiss said. At the same time, she said, the active Jewish students are committed to being really unrelenting about this whole thing. Weiss, who will represent herself and other students before the university committee, is working with Columbians for Academic Freedom. According to its Web site, the group is compiling student grievances to put a stop to the abuse of professorial power in the pursuit of political ends. Weiss just finished a course with Joseph Massad, one of the professors accused of intimidation in Columbia Unbecoming. Weiss said Massad had claimed that Zionism destroyed Jewish culture, said Israeli schoolchildren killed in a terrorist attack were casualties of crossfire, and made sarcastic comments about the ongoing investigation into his conduct that silenced critical students. Massad could not be reached as of press time. I feel scared because I dont trust the committee, Weiss said ? but added, We dont really have a choice at this point. Bollinger, the university president, attended the Barenboim lecture, applauded and failed to criticize his statements, according to several audience members. Bollinger asked Barenboim what alternative perspectives must be entertained in order to bring about the resolution we all desperately want toward Israeli-Palestinian peace, according to Susan Brown, a university spokeswoman. As a university it is our responsibility to discuss the most controversial and intractable issues of our day, and Columbia must be resolute in its tolerance for those who express unconventional, unpopular and sometimes even offensive views, with which we dont necessarily agree, in the course of public debate, Brown said. Publicist Shira Dicker and her husband, Ari Goldman, dean of students at Columbias School of Journalism, were outraged by the lecture. I have never encountered such intellectual dishonesty, said Dicker, who wrote a letter of protest to Bollinger after the lecture. Anybody who tries to frame the debate as academic freedom is out of their mind, she said. Its bullying. Goldman said he was booed when he asked a critical question of Barenboim. He left before Barenboim played the piano following his speech. Barenboims comments were very disturbing, especially in the charged atmosphere at Columbia now over Israel, Goldman said. I know hes a great musician, but when he started to play, I left. I couldnt listen to music from someone who had such scary things to say about Jews. Thursday, January 27, 2005
1. Dissent is a Leftist Magazine: The Transformation of the Left into a Neo-Fascist Movement By Andrei S. Markovits Dissent Magazine | January 27, 2005 http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16788 Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the European-along with the much weaker American-left has been in a crisis that has challenged its very identity. In fact, this profound crisis predated the events of 1989; it was in full swing by the time the Wall tumbled in good part because of the ineptitude and moral bankruptcy of at least part of this left. Still, with the events of 1989 and 1990, a period that began in the late 1860s and early 1870s and entered its political salience in the 1880s came to a close. A political manifestation and social formation that defined the very idea of progressivism in the advanced industrial societies for exactly one century collapsed. Some would say that the radicalism of this period, its revolutionary potential to transform capitalism, ended with the tragedy of 1914. After all, it was then that the left realized that its internationalism and perceived universal class solidarity had lost its primacy to the much more powerful sentiment of particularistic nationalism. The left's innocence was most certainly lost by the early fall of 1914. Others would date the crisis from the end of World War I, the events of 1918, which already pointed toward the coming of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and National Socialism in Germany. Still others see the death of a progressive alternative in the internecine battle between social democrats and communists that contributed to-though it wasn't responsible for-fascism's triumph, particularly in Germany. The Hitler-Stalin pact, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, a replay of that in Czechoslovakia twelve years later, the Sino-Soviet altercations, the war between China and Vietnam, the Cambodia fiasco with all its implications- there were plenty of sobering experiences for the progressive project in Europe. And yet, it was none of these political events that initiated the fundamental transformation that was to be completed in 1989. It was really a conjuncture of social, economic, generational, and cultural shifts that changed the very identity of the left over the last twenty-five years. At least in this instance, I will argue for the primacy of economy and society over politics. I argue that there have been four periods in the history of the left since World War II that have affected the position of the left today. American developments will be mentioned only when they were essential contributors to the shaping of the left in all advanced industrial societies. Although it is evident that "the left," as commonly understood, was predominantly a European phenomenon throughout the late nineteenth century and all of the twentieth century, the United States did contribute significantly to this political formation precisely in the postwar period. The Orthodox Period: 1945-1968 I have called the first era the orthodox period because it witnessed a continuation, by and large, of the left's ideological and political topography since the Bolshevik Revolution. Whereas 1945 represented a major hiatus in the arrangement of global politics, it did not alter the essential identity and topography of the left. Yes, communism seemed ascendant vis-Â?-vis social democracy on account of the Soviet Union's emergence as a global power. Communism was a serious contender for governmental power in Italy, France, Greece, and Czechoslovakia before it was defeated by American-sponsored opposition in the first three cases and by Soviet tanks-twice-in the last. But the political landscape of Western Europe, as delineated by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, still pertained. Two fault lines-both of which had been "frozen" by 1920-defined the identity of "the left." The first was the external line that separated it from the rest of the political world, notably liberals, conservatives, fascists, clericalists, and the representatives of "cleavages" other than the "owner-worker" cleavage that defined the essence of the left as a whole.* And second was the internal line that separated social democrats from communists. The earlier relationship between these two was by and large resumed during the postwar period. Where social democracy was the stronger of the two before the war, it emerged so again afterward-and vice versa. The character of left-wing politics, the culture of socialists and communists, was barely changed by the war. The working-class-dominated milieus of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remained by and large what they had been. Associations, colors, insignia, songs, tastes, and leisure activities that had been institutionalized in the decades before the Second World War- in many instances even before the Great War-continued in a completely different world. Whatever the actual reasons for the predominance of one leftist camp over the other, there was an obvious North-South divide in Europe during this period of orthodoxy. The countries north of the Alps (with Finland and Norway being the useful exceptions proving the rule) exhibited a social democratic identity, whereas their counterparts to the south embarked on a communist path. These collective expressions of working-class identity remained largely intact between 1918 and 1968. One of the most characteristic manifestations of orthodoxy all over Europe was the domination of the party over the unions. In the communist as well as the social democratic version, the party was in charge of "big" politics; that is, all matters pertaining to the state, society, economy, and culture, whereas the unions' domain pertained almost exclusively to "small" politics, the realm of industrial relations however defined. There is, of course, the exception of the British Labour Party, whose identity and policies were much more directly influenced by the party's constituent unions than was the case for the continent's three social democratic giants-Sweden, Austria, and Germany. To be sure, the big union organizations were major players in these countries' social democracies, but they took a back seat to "their" parties in politics. No doubt, the party's primacy over the unions was much more pronounced in the communist model than in the social democratic one. After all, Leninism had designed the transmission-belt pattern of party-union relations precisely in order to eliminate unions as autonomous actors-and thus prevent syndicalist tendencies from developing as viable options for left politics in advanced industrial societies (though they did develop in semi-agrarian settings such as Spain, Italy, and southern France). But even in the social democratic variant, where no concept equivalent to the transmission belt existed, the party was hegemonic: it designed strategy, took charge of the theoretical debates, and prevailed in shaping economic policy. In short, it led, and the unions followed. Of course, there were immense differences between social democrats and communists in this orthodox period. The former had reached an accommodation with capitalism, even if they had not quite accepted it yet; whereas the latter still saw their raison d'Â?tre in fundamental opposition to the dominant social system. As a consequence of this difference, communists and social democrats also found themselves on opposite sides of the cold war, then in a hot phase. All communists-without exception-rejected the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, opposed the United States, and favored the Soviet Union at least in some fashion, whereas most social democrats were hostile to the Soviet Union, if initially also guarded in their support for the West, NATO, and the United States. This issue contributed to an open break within Italian social democracy (between the Socialist Party [PSI] and the Social Democratic Party [PSDI]), and similar fissures-without the ensuing break-opened in German, British, Danish, and Norwegian social democracy as well. By the mid-to-late 1950s, however, the "Westernizers" had carried the day. For the ensuing thirty years, social democracy was unequivocally pro-Western. John Maynard Keynes triumphed over Karl Marx, and the Godesberg platform prevailed all over Western Europe-well beyond the immediate confines of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Still, the immense similarities between communism and social democracy were more characteristic of the orthodox period than the obvious differences. These in fact rendered them the unchallenged representatives of a clear political formation that was known to itself and the rest of the world as "the left." Here are some of these shared traits: both were sociologically anchored in the male, industrial, mainly skilled working class; ideologically, both were ardent advocates of growth at all costs; politically, they were believers in collective arrangements countering the inherent fragmentation of the market and liberal individualism; strategically, both were hopeful about "mega" solutions-"mega" state, "mega" bureaucracies, "mega" technologies, "mega" progress. This was a time when the left, both social democratic and communist, placed its hopes in the "clean" energy of nuclear power. The changes that came in the late 1960s were nothing short of revolutionary, though-in contrast to the two subsequent periods-they still followed the major vectors of what it meant to be "left." The Heterodox Period: 1968-1979 It would not be an exaggeration to say that virtually all the tenets defining the left during the "orthodox" period were substantially challenged, if not superseded, by events during the legendary sixties. Thus, it is not by chance that in Germany, France, Italy, and the United States, the "'68ers" (achtundsechziger, soixantehuitards) have attained near mythical status, and generated a considerable nostalgia, in the postwar histories of these countries' left-wing politics. Be it the events at Berkeley, Columbia, and the National Democratic Convention in Chicago for the United States; "the events" in Paris; Italy's Hot Autumn; or the politics of confrontation embodied by the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) and the Student Socialist Organization (SDS) in the Federal Republic, there developed a clear challenge to the existing lefts in each of these societies. For the first time in the history of the left, the essential impetus for this development came not primarily from Europe but from the United States. Concretely, these changes were anchored in two major struggles that informed American politics at the time: the civil rights movement at home and the Vietnam War abroad. Both of these developed into absolute icons for all lefts in the world. Mainly carried by students and not by the traditional subject of the left-that is, the industrial working class-this massive transformation of the discourse of the left was deeply anchored in the cultural climate of the United States, which the rest of the world, particularly Europe's students and its young generally, embraced with enthusiasm. One cannot understand the rise of the New Left in Paris, Berlin, Milan, and London without understanding the massive influence of American rock 'n' roll, folk music, protest songs and poetry, and the civil rights movement's tactic of the "sit in." Posters of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Jerry Garcia, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Allen Ginsberg adorned the homes of thousands of European New Leftists alongside such other icons as Che Guevara and, of course, Ho Chi Minh. On both sides of the Atlantic, this generation was equally formed by the first seemingly democratic and impromptu rock festival held in the muddy fields near Woodstock, New York, and by one of Europe's foremost intellectual Â?migrÂ?s who, unlike others in his immediate milieu, proudly remained in America while becoming one of this country's most challenging critics. I am talking about Herbert Marcuse, whom many have-quite rightly-called the New Left's most influential thinker. The deep American roots of the New Left in Europe, both in form and substance, are beyond debate. In notable contrast to the subsequent time period, which entailed a paradigm shift, the New Left challenge developed within the Marxist paradigm-though it was profoundly threatening to the existing world of socialist politics. If the subsequent era was to transcend socialism and develop some sort of post-socialist politics, New Leftists in the period I have labeled "heterodox" wanted a "true" socialism, freed from what they viewed as related perversions: social democracy in the West and Leninism/Stalinism in the East (though some New Leftists were mesmerized by Leninism in its Maoist version). The authority that parties of the established left enjoyed during the orthodox period eroded in this decade of heterodoxy. On the intellectual level, the New Left offered a radical critique of the politics of the hegemonic parties. On the institutional level, there emerged small, but intellectually influential parties to the left of the traditional social democratic and communist parties in terms of their programs as well as their strategic approaches. Though small in actual numbers, these parties represented the legacy of the "68-ers" in the left's "party space"-a standing challenge to the orthodox left. The Parti Socialiste UnifiÂ? in France might perhaps be the best example of this genre: small in number of voters, members, and officeholders, but important in intellectual influence. On the other hand, the relationship between parties and unions changed substantially. Several points are worthy of mention in this context: 1. Everywhere in Europe there occurred at this time a clear politicization of the unions. They expanded their horizons from the confined world of industrial relations and shop-floor affairs to include issues of "grand politics" hitherto left to the respective "sister" (or "mother") party. Unions catapulted themselves into a position of quasi-equality with "their" parties. On the one hand, they entered into various macropolitical arrangements with employers and the state that gave labor an active role in economic management. Even though often defensive in nature (and also demobilizing), these neocorporatist arrangements signaled a new union strength. In addition to this activism "from above," the unions also engaged in an activism "from below." Largely propelled by a restive rank and file that wanted to cash in on its superb position in a tight labor market, the unions bargained for the most impressive "quantitative" and "qualitative" gains attained by labor at any time in the fifty-plus years of the postwar period. Even though these two activisms clashed with each other, they emanated from the same optimism, power, and self-confidence that redefined the role of unions inside the European left during this period. 2. This, of course, led the unions to distance themselves from their respective parties. Nowhere was this more obvious than in Italy, where the three union confederations (allied with different parties) discovered that as many things united as divided them. Similar, though not as effective, distancing maneuvers on the part of unions also occurred in Germany, Britain, Sweden, and Austria. Only in France did the old transition-belt model between the Communist Party (PCF) and the communist-dominated trade union federation (CGT) remain largely intact. There too, however, independent union power figured significantly in the discourse of the left, particularly because the former Catholic union, sporting the new acronym CFDT, shed its former clericalism and became one of the most vocal advocates of the New Left. 3. Central to this activism was the role of hitherto marginal elements within the labor movement. Although labor's core-that is, male, skilled, industrial workers-also participated in the general mobilization, it was often its lesser skilled, female, and foreign colleagues who were the political vanguard at the grass roots and on the shop floor. Add to this group a substantial presence of tertiary-sector "intellectual" workers, and the new working class had become a politically meaningful reality. 4. There was also a noticeable "intellectualization" of the labor movement. Through the influx of a large number of academic researchers, many of whom were veteran "68-ers," the unions developed a more sophisticated theoretical approach to problems that until then remained largely beyond their purview. Union leaders always had a very ambivalent relationship to left-wing intellectuals, but now a "march through the institutions" on the part of New Left activists changed organized labor's mentality to a noticeable degree. But something wholly new also happened at this time: the rise of left politics outside of any established institutions, parties, or unions. It was in this milieu that the new meaning of "leftism" in Europe and the United States was forged. It was at this critical juncture-the decade between 1968 and 1978-that tendencies developed whose influence persists to this day, in Germany especially, but also in Europe generally. In my article "The Minister and the Terrorist" (Foreign Affairs, November-December, 2001), I described four groupings that emerged at this juncture within the New Left. I call the first group the "Westerners." Germany's current foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, is exhibit A. This group, though vehemently against the war in Vietnam, totally supportive of third world liberation movements, and bitterly opposed to Western-as well as West German-capitalism, began to reorder the hierarchy of its negative preferences. Crucial in this reordering was that tyranny rather than capitalism was put at the top of the list. Put positively, at the top now was not the emancipation of the working class or even the liberation of third world peoples from imperialism, but rather democracy, due process, constitutionalism, and human rights. For reasons that probably have more to do with the personal psychologies and histories of the relevant individuals than with macro-sociological factors such as class background, education, religion, geographic origin, and gender, the Westerners successfully differentiated between American culture (which they loved, as is evident from Fischer's well-known admission that Bob Dylan had a greater influence on his life than Karl Marx) and American politics in the world (which they disliked). Above all, they did not develop a visceral hatred of all things American. And they also began to look at the Holocaust as a development sui generis and not merely as an epiphenomenon of what the rest of the German left then still called-and continues to call-"fascism" rather than National Socialism. As a consequence, the Westerners committed a major blasphemy in the eyes of the rest of the left. They argued that the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany could-and did-on occasion produce good things, such as a stable and democratic order in Germany and Europe; and that liberal democracy, though capitalist, was indeed preferable to tyranny, even of the people's republic kind. They saw the West also as an occasional force of liberation and emancipation, not only as one of repression and exploitation. Lastly, members of this group upheld the value of universalism-already at this time a ready target for various relativizing particularisms that came to define other groups on the left, to which I now turn. The second group I call the "Third Worldists." They considered imperialism the most important political issue of the day and rejected everything that the developed world stood for, including Western values and industrial modernization. The Third Worldists would later constitute the bulk of the "Fundamentalist" (or "Fundi") wing of the German Green Party and fight a bitter rearguard action against what they believed to be the sellouts by Fischer and his "Realos." During the 1970s, the Third Worldists believed that the Federal Republic was second only to the United States in its objectionable character. They detested its parliamentary institutions, disdained its market-based economy, hated its role as a driving force in modernization's inevitable destruction of the environment, and feared any manifestation of nationalism, which they saw as a harbinger of the ever-looming "fascistization" of German politics and society. They were vehemently anti-Zionist (although not necessarily anti-Semitic) and found in the Palestinians an emblem of noble suffering and anticolonial resistance. The third group were the "orthodox Marxists," who located the source of the Federal Republic's ills not in industrial modernization but in capitalism. In contrast to all other New Leftists, members of this group considered the industrial working class not only a worthy ally but as an "objectively necessary" part of any major social transformation. Adherents of this tendency reached deep into the SPD and some German trade unions, notably the metal workers', printers', journalists', writers', and bank employees' unions. They also developed cozy relations with East Germany, whose Marxist-Leninist system they regarded with tolerant admiration if not outright enthusiasm. This group's strength explains why serious criticism of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet bloc was unpopular in parts of the German left well into the 1980s-so much so that the Polish Solidarity movement was often denounced by German unionists and social democrats as retrograde and reactionary. (During his JUSO [youth organization of the SPD] days, the current chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, was closest to this wing of the New Left.) I call the fourth and last remaining group the "neo-Nationalists." The New Left focused mainly on opposing the war in Vietnam, demonstrating solidarity with developing-world liberation movements, and transforming bourgeois society. But in Germany it also had a nationalist component provoked by the country's division and limited sovereignty. Left-wing nationalism has a long history in Germany (National Bolshevism and the Strasser wing of the National Socialists are two cases in point), and it is hardly surprising that such feelings were represented among the '68ers as well. Nationalist sentiment grew over the controversy surrounding the 1983 deployment of American intermediate-range nuclear missiles on German soil and was later intensified by German unification. By the mid-1990s, in fact, a substantial number of '68ers had completed a journey from extreme left to extreme right, with the constant factor being their hatred of the West. Today, this antimodernist, anti-Western sentiment is alive and well throughout Europe among those on the extreme right and left who invoke nationalism in their opposition to globalization. The two most prominent German radicals to undergo such a shift are Horst Mahler and Bernd Rabehl. Along with two other prominent ex-leftists, Mahler-now the far right National Democratic Party's official legal counsel-recently declared that the '68er movement had been "neither for communism nor for capitalism, neither for a Third-Worldist nor for an Eastern or a Western community of values." Instead, it had been "about the right of every Volk to assert its national-revolutionary and social-revolutionary liberation." In this view, the Germans were no exception. Already then, the main root of Germany's trouble lay in its solid anchoring in the West-controlled by that double-headed evil, the United States and world Jewry. In marked contrast to the Third Worldists, adherents to this path developed an anti-Zionism that could barely, if ever, be differentiated from anti-Semitism. This is also the period when the left's enmity against Israel, begun in the wake of the Six Day War of June 1967, became a salient issue for its politics, its identity, and also its internal divisions. Indeed, I would argue that perhaps the most defining gauge of where somebody stood politically, how she/he saw the world, was that ubiquitous triangle of Israel, the Jews, and the United States. Roughly speaking, to the Westerners, the plight of the Jews was a serious issue, which meant that they developed a much more favorable view of Israel than did the other three groups. To the Third Worldists and the orthodox Marxists, the plight of the Jews-though real-remained unimportant, massively subordinate to the plight of third world peoples (to the Third Worldists) and of workers (to the orthodox Marxists). In the nationalist camp, by contrast, the plight of the Jews was either never acknowledged or even viewed with outright contempt. It is here that the nexus between the vÂ?lkisch left and the vÂ?lkisch right, which manifested itself so vigorously in the streets of many German and European cities in the spring of 2002 and again in 2003, was forged. Paradigm Shift: 1980-1989 In this era most fundamental assumptions of the socialist project underwent major challenges. Above all, the 1980s witnessed the weakening -perhaps even severing-of an alliance that once had defined the left, with the working class as subject of history and driving force of progressive politics. From circa 1880 until 1980, the most fundamental dogma of social democrats and communists alike was that the working class would be the decisive carrier of social transformation beyond capitalism. Both theoretically and empirically, there was a tight logical connection between the working class and the left: not all workers had to be left, but there could be no left without workers. All other movements, social groups, and individuals were in principle subordinated to the working class in the endeavor of attaining socialism. This changed drastically in the course of the 1980s. Briefly put, the working class lost its position not only as a theoretically compelling feature of all socialist orientations but also as an empirical necessity of quotidian politics. This radical change has three salient features. 1. The appearance of the new social movements and their political offspring, the Green parties. In the course of the 1970s and increasingly in the 1980s, progress began to mean almost the opposite of what it did before. The term had always been associated with some sort of growth, but now the desirability of growth was questioned, if not entirely rejected. If being left and progressive meant building dams and steel mills during the previous two eras, it now implied saving little fish and rare birds from the destruction wrought by those very dams and mills. The universalism of class as a primary political identity was superseded by the particularism of groups. Faith previously placed in technology, centralization, and the state was now conferred upon localism, decentralization, and community power. The left moved from growth, state, class, economy, and politics to identity, gender, empowerment, and deconstruction. Tellingly, much of critical social science, formerly engaged on behalf of a progressive agenda, was now superseded by an increasingly philosophized Marxism, which in turn drifted toward literary criticism and various other poststructural and postmodern intellectual endeavors. It had become clear by the mid-1980s that green was the left's trendsetting color instead of the century-old red. Increasingly, also, the color purple denoted the arrival and staying power of politically meaningful women's movements in the public arena of all advanced industrial democracies. Possibly no other change wrought by the New Left had such a tangible impact on virtually all aspects of private and public life as did the rise and establishment of the women's movements. In brief, protecting the life-world, reclaiming lost intimacy, defending vulnerable groups, extolling smallness-all this replaced the previous faith in the liberating aspects of technology and the obsession with "mega" projects that had dominated the European and American left's discourse for exactly one hundred years. 2. The weakening of union power. If the 1970s was the decade of the unions, the 1980s could be called the decade of union setbacks. Absolutely crucial in these were the massive offensives led by hard-right governments such as Ronald Reagan's administration in the United States and Margaret Thatcher's in Great Britain. On every conceivable front and in every country, organized labor suffered one defeat after another, leading to a substantial weakening of its position in the political arena and the labor market. The losses covered many areas: receding or stagnating membership; failure to attain even the most meager compromises in collective bargaining; seeing the arena and timing of conflict determined by management; being unable to strike; facing serious problems with one's "own" parties, be they communist or social democratic; confronting harsher conditions of production; dealing with a hostile state preoccupied with creating favorable economic conditions for an increasingly difficult global economy. Interestingly, the losses were particularly severe in those countries where labor had been the least "compromised" by corporatist arrangements during the previous two decades. In other words, where labor's conflict with capital remained the "purest" in the sense that it preserved the market as the main arena and adjudics mattered, more important still were the deeper social structures. Thus, for example, even though Helmut Kohl's government in Germany was by most measures as conservative as Reagan's in the United States and Thatcher's in Britain, it simply could never roll back labor in Germany to the same degree. Wherever labor's struggle with capital was mediated by various public or para-public institutions and neocorporatist arrangements, the losses were less drastic. 3. Labor's inability to pursue a genuine policy of international solidarity. Marx got it right: capitalism, an inherently depersonalized and rootless form of productive relations, was indeed international in its structure, and this international system of production exploited labor on an international scale. But just as Marx the social analyst was more often right than wrong, the opposite is true for Marx the normative thinker, the revolutionary, the activist, the political man. He believed that because capitalism exploited the working class internationally, the working class would sooner or later realize the international dimensions of its predicament and confront capitalism with its own internationalist solidarity. Alas, we know from too many tragic events how erroneous this wishful thinking was. If anything, labor has emerged as the most nationalistic among all major social groups in advanced capitalist countries. In the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and even in supposedly "open" and export-oriented countries such as Germany, the trade unions have consistently been active supporters of some sort of protectionist measurject only to the laws of unbridled capitalism. This is a very serious problem for organized labor and its progressive allies in advanced capitalist societies because it fosters an especially problematic particularism. Fragmentation and Polarization 1989/1990-Present With the collapse of Soviet communism and the green and purple challenge to Western social democracy, the European left has lost the overall coherence of modernist universalism that defined it for more than a hundred years. On the one hand, one should rejoice in this development, because Truth and Progress (with capital letters) were too arrogantly defended by much of the left throughout the twentieth century. We will most likely be spared any repetition of the horrors of the GULAG or the genocidal mania of the Khmer Rouge-whose protagonists claimed to be acting in the name of justice, equality, and progress. But there exists a more fundamental problem. Although one can still identify many worthy causes that qualify as progressive, one would be hard-put to identify a subject of hof the death penalty, equality in marital arrangements and official recognition of gay and lesbian couples by the state; progressive income tax; economic and social justice; support for third world claims against the rich first world; multilateralism as opposed to unilateralism; legalization of marijuana; and on and on-opposition to Israel and America figure at the very top. If one is not at least a serious doubter of the legitimacy of the state of Israel (never mind the policies of its government) and if one does not dismiss everything American as a priori vile and reactionary, one runs the risk of being excluded from the entity called "the left." There has not been a common issue since the Spanish Civil War that has united the left so clearly as has anti-Zionism and its twin, anti-Americanism. The left divided, and divides, over Serbia, over Chechnya, over Darfur, even over the war in Iraq. There are virtually no divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and over the essence of the United States. If one has anything positive-or even non-derogatory-to say about the United States or Israel, one always needs to qualify it with a resounding "but." I remember calling myself a Labor Zionist in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was still possible in important circles of the German and the American left. Being a Dissenter was still acceptable in the large tent of the left. This has changed. To be sure, there are some small pockets among the German Greens-though much less in the SPD's milieu-where Israel, Zionism, and America have not become automatic terms of derision and hatred. Few people will admit this, but the tone that makes the music is pretty clear. The hegemonic discourse of the left on both sides of the Atlantic features America and Israel as identity-defining issues that are largely nonnegotiable. Finally, it remains an open question whether what is today called "globalization" is truly unprecedented in its altering of social relations and human life-as so many claim-or whether it is merely another of the constantly changing and highly disruptive stages in the longue durÂ?e of capitalism. This question lies beyond my scope here. I only want to suggest that on virtually all the indicators dear to economists, the restructuring that occurred at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries created dislocations far more massive than those produced by capitalism today. The dislocations of those years shattered the left's internationalism, led it to embrace centrifugal particularisms, and then to watch its emancipatory dreams die on the battlefields of Europe. History, of course, never repeats itself. But to paraphrase a well-known political economist of the nineteenth century: it appears first as tragedy, the next time as farce. *Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction" in Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp. 1-64. 2. Islamofascist Holocaust Denial: http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16793 3. Thanks God for not Making all the Meshuganas Jewish: http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16769 4. Hiring a terrorist as professor (no, NOT at Ben Gurion University): http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16774 1. Israel's Attorney General, Menachem "Manny" Mazuz, is a far leftist and a compatriot of Yossi Beilin, godmother of Olso. So naturally, when Ariel Sharon needed an Attorney General, Mazuz was the guy he picked. The Likud's main goal at the yop of its agenda is to install leftist officials and implement the Left's agenda. Yesterday Mazuz declared war on the Jewish National Fund. The Jewish National Fund is a NGO (non-governmental organization) whose origins go back to the early days of Zionism. It would collect kopeks and pennies from Jews all over the world in little "pishka" tin cans and use the money to buy lands that would then be leased out for Jewish enterprises and farms. The lands being purchased were intended for the benefit of Jews and the use by Jews in nation-building. JNF land is alloted for things like settling new immigrants to Israel. Yesterday Mazuz declared that the JNF, even though it is not a state-agency but a NGO, cannot favor Jewish users and uses in allocation of its lands and has to give equal priority to Arab uses and users. That means that he wants to deny the right of all those little Jewish contributors putting their kopeks in the pishka to earmark their donations for other Jews. See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/532493.html Now just to put this into perspective, there is another NGO whose lands allocation Mazuz is NOT going to direct or interfere in. That is the Moslem WAKF, a NGO that holds lands for Moslem religious purposes and explicitly discrminates against Jews and Jewish users. In other words, the JNF is "racist" in Mazuz' view when it uses its land for the benefit of Jews, but not the WAKF. There are other state-owned lands in Israel owned by the Israel Lands Authority, but that has long followed a policy of alloting these for general public uses (Jewish and Arab). It should be noted that much of the land in Israel is nationalized, something I as an economist oppose, but out of the privately-owned land Arabs own a far greater proportion than their percent in the population! For 1300 Jews were discrimated against by Arabs in the Middle East and prevented from owning land. Hence one might legitmately regard the JNF's previous policy of favoring Jewish users as affirmative action. Mazuz' latest is a symptom of the "Post-Zionist" syndrome and its increasing control over the Likud itself. 2. Who is to blame for the rise in Anti-Semitism? The British Media!: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1288718.htm and also http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1397726,00.html and also http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=604299 (Of course, they forgot to mention the Israeli media) 3. How to make the stock market go up - catch terrorists! http://nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow200501261120.asp 4. Interesting piece: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050126.wxaush0126/BNStory/I 5. Making the punishment fit the crime: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=531846&contrassID=1&subContrassID=7&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y (Was the porno material - Haaretz?) 6. You know how the whiney Left has been screaming every time Israel bulldozes an illegally built Arab house? Well: http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=75852 Will th eFar Lefties be calling for a new international boycott of the Caterpiller bulldozer company? 7. Israeli Feminazis for Terror: http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=75826 8. Harvard Prez better not cite this: http://www.news.com.au/story/0%2C10117%2C12033956-13762%2C00.html Wednesday, January 26, 2005
1. Oh how embarrassing. The anti-Israel crowd, the Jew baiters, and the tenured traitors were having a field day this morning. A 3 year old Palestinian girl had been killed this morning in the Gaza Strip and it looked like she was killed when Israeli troops returned fire at Palestinian terrorists firing at THEM. Now that, you might say, would mean the Palestinians are responsible for the girl's death, since they opened fire, and they must be held accountable for any collateral damage from Israel returning fire. AH, but we know the real world does not work that way and the Jews are always to blame when they shoot back. So here we were witnessing the anti-Semites of the world having a celebration without precedent of Israel being blamed for the 3 year old girl's death - when the truth comes out. It was even more embarrassing than when the truth came out that the PLO had killed the little boy Mohammed al-Dura and not Israeli troops! It was revealed this afternoon that the girl was NOT killed by Israeli return fire. She was killed by a Kassam rocket. The Kassam rockets are PLO weapons fired into Jewish civilian areas, and the PLO has been continuing to fire tham at the Jews even during the current make-pretend ceasefire. Except that the one fired this morning had a structural default, and landed short, inside the Palestinian area of the Gaza Strip. It blew the girl to smithereens. 2. Regarding that film by an Israeli "producer" glorifyiong suicide bombers, which we discussed in yesterday's post, the evil Israeli in the film is played by a .... Palestinian actor. How Come? The Israeli producer Harel uses a "Palestinian" actor when he wants to portray an "edgy...Israeli" who looks like a thug. Is that racist typecasting - or what? Also, notice that this film was shown "in association with the Consulate General of Israel (SF)?" Is this sick, or what? An official sponsorship of this movie by the diplomatic services of Israel? "Palestinian actor Salim Daw is striking as the edgy, underground Israeli businessman. The Holy Land they inhabit is less the dream of milk and honey than a reality of abuse and misfortune. 3. For the past few days, the Loony Left here has been whining about the arrest of a Danish citizen suspected of espionage. No doubt one of those "peace solidarity" people, Rachel Corrie wannabes. Well, now the details have come out: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1106710064981 Dane under arrest is Hizbullah spy -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yaakov Katz and Margot Dudkevitch, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 26, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Danish citizen of Lebanese origin currently the focus of a joint Police-Shin Bet investigation was identified Wednesday as a Hizbullah recruited agent by the name of Iyad al Ashwah, 39, after a gag order on the investigation was lifted. Al Ashwah, originally born in Lebanon moved to Denmark in 1986 and received Danish citizenship six years later. Al Ashwah was arrested on January 6 while he was on a train from Nahariya to Haifa after he raised a security officer's suspicions by videotaping the passing scenery through the train window. He was arrested by police and confessed that in July 2004 he had been recruited into Hizbullah by relatives living in Lebanon. In his interrogation, al Ashwah told police that he was ordered to travel to Israel disguised as a tourist to collect security information and most importantly to recruit Israeli-Arabs into the terror organization. Two Israeli-Arabs have also been arrested. In exchange for his work, al Ashwah was paid $2,000 by his Hizbullah operators. On December 29, al Ashwah arrived in Israel on a Turkish Airlines flight. He entered Israel with a brand new passport which had been issued right before his trip. During the six days leading up to his arrest, al Ashwah succeeded in recruiting two Israel-Arab suspects. He told police that he planned on renting a car and driving up north to locate security installations. He said he understood his mission to be a "test" which would be followed by a larger "more significant" mission. The suspect further told police that he maintained close contacts with relatives living in the Middle East and would visit Syria and Lebanon on an annual basis. Over the past two years, al Ashwah was unemployed and lived off of a government stipend. He said that in Denmark he gave most of his money to the Al Bureij Islamic charity association that maintains close ties with the refugee camp of the same name in Lebanon. "This suspect is just another example of the Hizbullah's growing interest in acting against Israel," the police said. "This time, the Hizbullah used an Arab with a Western passport to fool the Israeli security service." Foreigners recruited by Hizbullah This is not the first foreign national to be arrested by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on suspicion of violating state security. In October 2002, Fawzi Ayoub, 38, a senior Hizbullah official who entered Israel on a forged US passport to carry out attacks in Israel and assist terrorist organizations in the territories was arrested by the Shin Bet. Ayoub, of Lebanese Shi'ite descent, participated in numerous attacks in and outside Lebanon and operated in a special unit headed by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah's deputy on military affairs, Amed Muaneh. After undergoing training, Ayoub was sent to Canada, where he lived for a number of years. He maintained contact with officials in Lebanon and carried out a number of missions on their behalf. On returning to Lebanon, Hizbullah recruited him to carry out a dangerous covert operation in Israel. He underwent intensive military preparation and was then dispatched to Europe where he received a forged US passport which he used to enter Israel. In January 2001 security officials arrested Hizbullah agent Jihad Shuman who bore a British passport with the name Gerard Shuman, who had entered the country in December 2000. Shuman, who studied computers at the Beirut University, is a Lebanese Shi'ite by descent and was ordered by his operators to travel to London and leave his Lebanese passport in the country, where he was instructed to purchase a cellular phone and fictitiously rent a mailbox and apartment, which he was to give out as his address once he arrived in Israel. He was told to locate a spot in Wadi Joz where certain items had been hidden for him, and was arrested six days after arriving in Israel. When arrested by security forces in his hotel room, Shuman had in his possession a kippah, timers, large sums of money, and three cellular phones. In November 1997, German citizen Stefan Josef Smyrek was arrested by the Shin Bet on his arrival at Ben Gurion airport. Smyrek, a convert to Islam, was recruited by the Hizbullah and sent to Israel to perpetrate a suicide bomb attack. Tried and convicted in Israel, he was in the middle of serving a ten-year jail sentence when he was released last year in a swap for the return of the bodies of the three soldiers abducted and killed in Har Dov in 2000 and the release of Israeli businessmen Elhanan Tenenbaum. In 1996, Hassin Makdad, who entered Israel on a British passport in April of the same year, was wounded when a bomb he was preparing exploded prematurely in his room at the Lawrence Hotel in east Jerusalem. 4. Down goes yet another "ceasefire" - until the next one: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1106623165328&p=1078397702269 5. The British Spectator Merges with Der Sturmer: http://web.israelinsider.com/views/4875.htm 6. For Hebrew readers: nice piece on Jewish anti-Semitism: http://www.norskisraelsenter.no/hebr/2004-bukai-jewish-self-hatred.htm 7. Outting the Terrorhoids: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16776 Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Subject: Coming to a Cinema Near You! You will no doubt think I am pulling your leg and posting yet another dumb spoof when I report to you that an Israeli movie producer is producing a film direct by a Palestinian that celebrates and romanticizes Palestinian suicide bombers. Yes, Amir Harel has decided that movie viewers need to ?understand? and identify with the just cause of Palestinian suicide bombers who mass murder Israeli children. The Jews for a Second Holocaust will be getting a movie in which they can at last feel comfortable. The tenured traitors can show it on campus and the Tikkun editors can give it a rave review. You just know it will be featured at the Berkeley Jewish Film Festival. Amir Harel was until a few years ago a ?journalist? for Haaretz, the anti-Israel Palestinian newspaper published in Hebrew. While maintaining his day job at the ?newspaper?, which is in fact no newspaper at all but rather a propaganda organ, Harel started producing a few highly forgettable B movies. (Ok, make those F movies.) Evidently Harel was able to do so on the basis of subsidies he got from an Israeli government film-producing fund (http://www.nfct.org.il/nfct/international1.htm and http://www.filmfund.org.il/ ), one of countless Israeli government agencies that should have been shut down and locked up decades ago. Before making anti-Israel films with Israeli taxpayer money, Harel?s greatest artistic achievement was making a web site about Seinfeld (http://www.geocities.com/a_harel/ ). Really. One of the Harel films was about how an African guest worker suffers at the hands of the horrid insensitive racist Israelis (http://www.sffs.org/fest04/titleDetail.asp?title_id=22 ), who mistreat such workers. The mistreatment is so awful that today Africans by the tribe-load are knocking down the Israeli Embassy guards all over the continent to try to get temp jobs in Israel. The other Harel films were even worse and even stupider, which is why at least one got a prize from the Israeli Academy of Cinema, which is what Hollywood would look like if it were located on Saturn. One of these is about a German police agent named ?Axel? (Eddie Murphy ? sue his ass!!) and it celebrates sodomy and homosexuality in Berlin, along with its junior high school ?action? plot (http://www.eilatfilmfest.com/movieshebrew.htm ). That piece of garbage cost the Israeli taxpayer about 32000 Euros. The new movie celebrating mass murderers of Jewish children was produced by the same Amir Harel, directed and co-written by a Palestinian pro-terrorist living in the Netherlands named Hany Abu-Assad (who previously made "Rana's Wedding" and ?Fort Transit?). The new Terror-is-Nice film is financed by a consortium of German, French and Dutch anti-Semites, and - incredible as it sounds - it was NOT funded by the Israeli government, which ordinarily can be counted on to finance the ?Jews as Nazis and Palestinians as their Victims? genre of cinema. The new celebration of mass murder of Jewish children is getting rave reviews from the Beirut press (http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=11285 ). The official PLO web site also endorses the film as a great work of art: http://www.palestinereport.org/article.php?article=386 . It is expected to the darling of the Berlin Film Festival next month, where there are many movie goers who know a lot about the art of murdering Jewish children. My guess is that the ?New Likud? will grant the producer next year?s Israel Prize on Independence Day for the film. Subject: Our World: Today's Jewish anti-Semites .... by Caroline Glick Our World: Today's Jewish anti-Semites _http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid= 1106537800595&p=1006953079897_ (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1106537800595&p=1006953079897) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 25, 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- In a recent poll, 62 percent of Germans said they were "sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews." Two thirds of Germans said they believe Israel is waging "a war of extermination" against the Palestinians. Jews often focus their attention on Holocaust sentiment among non-Jews to gauge anti-Semitic feelings. But while feelings about the Holocaust serve as an indicator of general sentiment about Jews, there are other indicators no less important or revealing. Sensitivity about the Holocaust may tell us what a person feels about Jews, but it may also simply tell us what that person feels about dead Jews. But let's say that most Germans did believe the Holocaust was a terrible crime. Would the German rejection of the Holocaust mean that the majority that believes Israel is today's Nazi Germany is less anti-Semitic? No, it would not. Yesterday the UN General Assembly for the first time held a special session to commemorate the liberation of the Nazi death camps and the Holocaust. Does this mean that the UN, which devotes some one-third of its resolutions to condemning Israel, is no longer hostile to the Jewish people? No, it does not. SINCE THE Holocaust, the rallying cry of Jews has been "Never Again!" But the enormity of the Holocaust must not blind us to its present-day mutation. Today the vast majority of anti-Semites are not calling for Jews to be deported to death camps. They are calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and, as was the case in previous generations, they are seeking out and finding Jews like Karl Marx who share their hatred for the Jewish people and willingly advance their evil agenda. This agenda is to again reduce Jews to a state of powerlessness where we will be at the mercy of the same world that either participated in or did nothing in the face of the extermination of European Jewry. Today this is done by striking out at the main safeguard against such powerlessness â?? the State of Israel â?? criminalizing it as the modern-day incarnation of Nazi Germany. The role of Jewish anti-Semites in this campaign is to decouple the dead Jews murdered by the Nazis from the live Jews who live in, or support, the Jewish state. Such a Jew was found by the British conservative magazine The Spectator in one Anthony Lippman. Lippman is actually an Anglican, not a Jew, but as the child of Jewish Holocaust survivors, he will do. In a recent article, Lippman writes hypnotically about his mother's sufferings in Auschwitz only to explain that the job of Holocaust survivors and their children is to speak out against... Israel. In his words, survivors have "a terrible responsibility â?? to live well in the name of those who did not live and to discourage the building of walls and bulldozing of villages. Even more than this, they â?? and all Jews â?? need to be the voice of conscience that will prevent Israel from adopting the mantle of oppressor, and to reject the label 'anti-Semite' for those who speak out against Israel's policies in the occupied territories." ANOTHER such Jew is Tony Judt. Since the start of the Palestinian terror war, Judt, a historian at New York University, has been outspoken in his rejection of Israel's right to exist. In a series of articles in The New York Review of Books, The Nation and The New Republic, Judt has led the charge in claiming that "the depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews," and that for Jews to feel good about themselves again Israel must cease to be a Jewish state â?? that is, Israel must cease to exist. This perverse line of reasoning, whereby the only way for Jews to be happy is for us to again be powerless, has brought Judt under attack by prominent Jews who have exposed the anti-Semitism inherent in his argumentation. In a new article in The Nation magazine, Judt takes a stab at responding to his many critics. The article is a ponderous attempt to argue that there is no relation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. On the one hand, he says that it is anti-Semitic to say that Jews control the US. But on the other hand, Judt allows that "contemporary US foreign policy is in certain respects mortgaged to Israel," adding, "To say that Israel and its lobbyists have an excessive and disastrous influence on the policies of the world's superpower is a statement of fact." Judt allows that there has been a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe in recent years, but he blames this on "the policies of Israeli government." Echoing Anglican Lippman, Judt writes that for anti-Semitism to be dealt with in Europe, "Jews and others must learn to shed inhibitions and criticize Israel's policies and actions." In Judt's view, "once Germans, French and others can comfortably condemn Israel without an uneasy conscience, and can look their Muslim fellow citizens in the face, it will be possible to deal with the real problem [i.e., anti-Semitism]." Since the September 11 attacks Muslims have been called upon to decry the preaching of hatred in their community. It is argued that until Muslims themselves delegitimize the voices of hatred in their communities the poisonous message of jihad will continue to attract thousands to its genocidal cause. The 60th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation is a good time to call for a similar Jewish condemnation of hate-filled Jews and those that use them to advance their anti-Semitic agenda. These are not legitimate voices. These are not legitimate views. They are the views of deranged Jew-haters which, if listened to, will do nothing other than pave the way to the next calamity. caroline@jpost.com
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