Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
1. Concerning the Tel Aviv U jihad, turns out that psych prof Ariel
Merari - mentioned in the piece - is a good guy, not one of the moonbats.
2. Jude Wanniski had been an ultra-conservative "supply sider" (no
economist would consider him a serious economist) under the
Reagan realm, but later became hard-left ultra-moonbat. He had been
posting articles endorsing nutty conspracism at the neofascist
anti-Semitic web site antiwar.com, run by neonazi Justin Raimondo, and
also published for Counterpunch, such as this pathetic smear of Paul
Wolfowitz - http://www.counterpunch.org/wanniski03172005.html . He turned
out far-Leftist bash-Bush pieces
(http://www.counterpunch.org/wanniski03302005.html ) and whined about the
"neocons", opposed the war to topple Saddam
(http://www.counterpunch.org/wanniski06182005.html). He even opposed
economic sanctions against Saddam's Iraq
(http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24440). He made
anti-Semitic comments about how the Jews control "discussion of Israel"
(http://www.wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=1887) in
the media, most of which discussion is anti-Israel. He sucked up to and
defended Afrofascist anti-Semite
Louis Farrakhan (http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/05-19-99.html) and
devoted much effort to "clearing" Farrakhan of claims he was an
anti-Semitic bigot (http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/07-16-98.html)
He wrote nasty articles about Israel
and Jews (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24860),
including for al-Jazeera.
Well, Wanniski just croaked. I doubt he is resting in peace...
3. Jihad at UC Press:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19301
4. Tel Aviv University Professor rallies and collects funds on behalf of
Palestinian terrorist murderers:
http://list.haifa.ac.il/pipermail/alef/2005-August/006475.html
5. Moonbats Blaming Hurricane on Neocons
It did not take the Moonbatmosphere long. Little furry moonbats are
already coming out to declare that the New Orleans hurrican was all the
fault of the Republicans and the neocons. How come? Well, the hurricane
was caused by global warming, since we all know there were never any
hurricanes before greenhouse gases were emited by heavy industry and other
gases were released from deoderant cans. And global warming is all the
fault of selfish capitalism and the Bush Administration.
This was precisely the argument of Ross Gelbspan, writing in the Boston
Globe this week.
These pseudo-arguments are perfect illustrations of what James Schlesinger
recently termed "The Theology of Global Warming." Writing in the Wall
Street Journal on August 8, Schlesinger defines the theology thus:
"In referring to the theology of global warming, one is not focusing on
evidence of the earth.s warming in recent decades, particularly in the
Arctic, but rather on the widespread insistence that such warming is
primarily a consequence of man.s activities . and that, if only we
collectively had the will, we could alter our behavior and stop the
warming of the planet."
Similarly, there is growing global warming agnositicism, people who do not
believe the hype. Many of these are scientists.
On the eve of the summit, the Economic Committee of the House of Lords
released a report sharply at variance with the prevailing European
"orthodoxy" about global warming. Some key points were reported in the
Guardian, a London newspaper not hostile to that orthodoxy:
. Science leaves "considerable uncertainty" about the future.
. There are serious concerns about the objectivity of the international
panel of scientists that has led research into climate change.
. The Kyoto agreement to limit carbon emissions will make little
difference and is likely to fail.
. The U.K..s energy and climate policy contains "dubious assumptions"
about renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Most notably, the Committee itself the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change] was highly biased and had a political agenda.
In particular, Schlesinger points to the enormous number of serious
scientists who reject the theology. While much has been made of the
assertion that "the science is settled" on the matter, supposedly based
upon a "scientific consensus," in the "Oregon Petition" between 17,000
and 18,000 signatories, almost all scientists, made manifest that the
science was not settled, declaring:
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon
dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the
foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth.s atmosphere
and disruption of the Earth.s climate."
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=1043
1. Questions for Bibi Netanyahu, contender for chief of the Likud:
a. If you are determined to topple Sharon because he allied himself with
the Left, why did you wait until AFTER the Gaza Capitulation and
Appeasement?
b. If you think Oslo is a disaster, why did you perpetuate it as Prime
Minister in the 90s, turning it from failed delusional agenda to national
consensus?
c. Give "b", why should we believe anything you say now?
d. Why should we believe that the Wye's Man of Chelm, who signed the Wye
Capitulation and turned Hebron over to the savages, is now an anti-Oslo
hawk?
e. Why should we believe that the Prime Minister who did absolutely
nothing to reform the banking system and capital markets when he was in
office would do so now?
2. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=1014
Heroic Bedouin Patriot Saves Israeli Lives
Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Monday 29 August 2005, 5:52 am
Lu.ay Abu Juma, 27, is a Bedouin from israel.s south. Yesterday he was
working as a guard at the Beer Sheba bus station in southern Israel. The
Beer Sheba station had already been the target of Palestinian
Islamofascist terrorists, who had committed a mass murder there last year.
Abu Jama was on guard with his friend Pavel Srotzkin, 23, an immigrant
from Russia, when they saw a suspicious looking Arab.
In an act of racial rofuiling, the Bedouin and his Russian Jewish friend
positioned themselves to prevent the Arab from entering the station. The
Arab blew himself up. Both guards were seriously hurt. The Bedouin lost
an eye and sustained other severe wounds. But no one was killed in the
blast. No one knows how many Israeli lives were saved by the hero.
Most people do not even know that Bedouin patriots serve in the Israeli
Defense Forces. Those interested should read my book about them
(http://www.israelbooks.com/bookDetails.asp?book=43).
Israeli Bedouin troops have been targeted for a campaign of vilification
by the terrorists from the ISM = International Solidarity Movement, one of
whose members was hurt when a Bedouin fired back at Palestinian terrorists
being protected by the ISM "human shield".
3. The Gaza Betrayal:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19278
4. Moonbatery Galore:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1557931,00.html
5. Dishonest Abe: http://jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=5290
Subject: Jihading and Political Indoctrination at Tel Aviv University
Jihading and Political Indoctrination at Tel Aviv University
By Steven Plaut
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=1032 (see web site for links and
clean copy)
You will be interested in learning that Tel Aviv University now offers a
course in one-sided far-leftist Israel-bashing indoctrination, dressed up as
a course in psychology. The course is entitled, "The Psychology of the
Occupation", course number 1071.3627.01 and is an on-campus political
indoctrination. It is open to senior-year undergraduates in psychology and
has been approved by the university authorities as a bona fide course.
The "course" purports to teach its students about the horrendous
psychological damage done to Palestinians (and also to Israelis themselves)
from Israel's long "occupation" of the "Palestinian territories". It
examines the attitude of the "conquerors" to "The Other", analyzes
"dialogues" between the conquered and the conquered (the mandatory terms
used in the course), and attitudes towards "suffering" (of Palestinian only,
of course). Nothing in the course will examine the psychological damages
done to Israelis from the endless mass atrocities of Palestinians, from a
century of Arab aggression and war, from genocidal denunciations of Jews by
Palestinian leaders, from suicide bombings, from plane hijackings, nor from
firing of rockets, missiles, mortars, and machine guns into the homes of
Jews. Nothing will examine the trauma of New Yorkers in 9-11 either.
The course will be taught by one Uri Hadar, a far leftist who is a regular
signer of anti-Israel petitions, including one calling
for<http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/2003-April/008172.html>international
intervention to end Israeli sovereignty and also that
notorious one informing the world that Israel was planning to commit
nazi-like atrocities <http://www.labournet.net/world/0209/isracad1.html> the
moment the first American GI took step inside Iraq. (Iraq was liberated long
ago, yet not a tinkle of an apology from the learned professor.) Hadar is
also a supporter <http://oznik.com/news/040907.html> and fan of the jailed
Jewish leftist terrorist Tali Fahima, now on trial for assisting her Jenin
terrorist "lover" to plan mass murders of Jews. He has also
called<http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2187&editorial_id=16031>for
a "complete commercial and economic boycott" of
Israel by the world. He has called for the Palestinians to be granted an
unlimited "right or return <http://www.miftah.org/PrinterF.cfm?DocId=4359>"
so that, even after getting their own state, the Palestinians can destroy
Israel <http://www.jerusalemites.org/articles/press/press1/47.htm>. He is a
regular contributor to anti-Israel and communist party magazines and
journals.
Another psychology course that has been taught in the same department
is devoted
to suicide bombings<http://spirit.tau.ac.il/yedion04/getcourse.asp?coursenum=10714661>,
course number *1071.4661*, taught by Prof. Ariel Marari. Somehow we doubt
that suicide bombings are condemned in the course unreservedly. It would not
surprise us to learn that the course paper there is devoted to the justice
of the cause of the bombers.
The department chairman in psychology is Prof. Amiram Raviv, a guru of
"peace education", which is often nothing more than leftist indoctrination. He
believes the Arab Israeli conflict may be resolved through sufficient doses
of psychobabble <http://www.tau.ac.il/education/coexistence/projects.htm>.
To tell the President of Tel Aviv University what you think of these
courses, write to Prof. Itamar Rabinovich at phone 972-3-6412449. fax
972-4-6422379, and email itamarr@tauex.tau.ac.il . His executive staff guy
is at ilondon@post.tau.ac.il <%20ilondon@post.tau.ac.il>. Better yet,
contact the donors and supporters of Tel Aviv University, whose addresses
and locations appear at http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html .
1. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=1012
Tariq Ramadan Gets a Job
You probably remember the arch-terrorist Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan is a
Swiss Arab anti-Semite who hates the Christian West, and has close ties to
al-Qaeda and Hamas. He was the darling of the pro-terror Marxist "Kroc
Institute", which tried to finance Ramadan for a three year "visiting
scholarship" at Notre Dame "University" in Indiana. The United States
Immigration and Naturalization Service said No Way Abu Jose. Ramadan was
denied papers and Kroc had to go shopping for some other terrorists and
hate-America-leftists.
Time magazine had sucked up to the jihadniks by declaring Ramadan one of
the "great innovators" of the 21st century, his main innovation I guess
being terror and war against the West. "Time" rhymes with "slime". The
Washington Post has also toadied for him, declaring him a "moderate". An
entire blog was set up to fight his hiring by Notre Dame.
Ramadan hates Jews, is a reactionary sexist, and insists that Islamic
shaaria law become the law of the land. Ramadan was "outed" by
Orientalist scholar Daniel Pipes, who was quoted in the Chicago Tribune as
saying: "I worry that he [Tariq Ramadan] is engaged in a complex game of
appearing as a moderate but has connections to Al Qaeda." Those
connections have been reported in detail in the French media. Ramadan.s
name turned up in an investigation of al-Qaeda in Spain where he was
listed as a contact for Ahmed Brahim an al-Qaeda financial operative.
Ramadan has also been linked to a planned attack against a U.S. embassy.
Noam Chomsky strongly supports him, so that pretty much removes all doubt
as to whether Ramadan is really a terrorist.
Notre Dame.s loss was Oxford.s gain. Oxford University has now hired the
terrorist. St Antony.s College says he is due to begin a Visiting
Fellowship in October.
Ramadan, 38, is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the fascist
Islamist fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in 1928. The
"brotherhood" is thought to have ties with al-Qaeda. Ramadan has been
accused of supporting attacks in Israel and Iraq. On the Counterterrorism
Blog Steven Emerson says of him: "
"Mr. Ramadan is not any more a moderate than David Duke would be
considered a moderate on race relations. The only difference is that David
Duke is not smart enough to speak in two languages, cloak his racism under
the mantle of pluralism or enjoy the witting collaboration of the media."
Shortly after the London bombings The Sun newspaper in the UK ran a front
page story criticising a decision to invite him for a conference -
entitled "Meet Islamic Militant Professor Tariq Ramadan."
An Oxford college spokesperson said: "Professor Ramadan is an
internationally-recognised scholar." Sure almost as well known as Osama
bin Laden.
"St Antony.s college is a forum for free academic exchange on the issues
of our times, and opposes all manifestations of hate speech and
intimidation designed to curb academic freedoms."
We will see what the morons at St Antony.s say when Ramadan's "academic
freedom" motivates some new terror attacks on the London Underground.
2. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=1013
Menapausal Marxies
What is grey and grey and red all over?
Why, a geriatric moonbat, of course.
Tucson, Arizona has seen been infested with them. Calling themselves
"Raging Grannies," five women have been accused of trespassing after they
tried to enlist at a military recruitment center to protest the war in
Iraq. It is not clear whether they come from Pasadena.
The five women tried to enlist on July 13, saying they wanted to go to
Iraq so their children and grandchildren could come home. Recruiters
called police. Charges were filed but later dropped.
Their group, dubbed the "Tucson Raging Grannies," includes members ranging
in age from 65 to 81 - decades older than the maximum age for recruits.
They have protested at the center every week for three years.
We suppose their slogans are "Take your Geritol for Saddam", "Swallow your
Metamucil so.s You can Fight Capitalism without Getting your Kishkas
Clogged", "I am Against the War but I forget Why", and of course that all
time classic - "Flatulence Power".
1. At least 6 wounded in blast at Beersheba bus station
By JPOST.COM STAFF
A suicide bomb attack at the entrance to the central bus station in
Beersheva wounded at least six people at 8:30 Sunday morning.
Two of the wounded were in critical condition and were evacuated to the
Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.
All of the wounded were evacuated to hospital, a spokesman for Magen David
Adom said.
According to witnesses, the suicide bomber attempted to enter the
Beersheba bus station, but when he was apparently deterred by the security
guards at the gate, he detonated his explosives at the entrance.
There was no immediate word on whether the bomber had been employed as a
lecturer at Ben Gurion University.
2. Counterpunch Terrorist Smears Elie Wiesel
by Steven Plaut
Shaheed Alam is one of the professors for terrorism still walking about
unjailed. He is professor of economics at Boston's Northeatsern
University. He makes little attempt to disguise his support for
Islamofascist terrorism and his belief that the United States is the true
terrorist in the world today.
Alam has become a regular columnist for the anti-American web magazine
Counterpunch. Alexander Cockburn shares him with other pro-peace
magazines such as the Holocaust-Denying Egyptian daily al-Ahram. Alam
may be best remembered for his rants claiming the 9-11 terrorists were the
moral equivalents of Jefferson and Washington. He has been regularly
"outed" for his support for terrorism by our friends at Little Green
Footballs. He was one of the anti-Semitic contributors to the anthology
of such people edited by Alexander Cockroach and Jeffrey St. Clair, in
which it is argued with a straight face that simply because someone wants
to see all Jews murdered is surely no reason to call such a person an
anti-Semite. And his economics vita is not much to brag about either.
This week's Counterpunch column by Alam is devoted to ad hominem smears
against Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Wiesel survived the Holocaust and
became a writer of philosophy and fiction. Wiesel is the regular target
for smears by neonazis and Holocaust Deniers like DePaul's Norman
Finkelstein, so it only makes sense that a magazine that gives such
neonazis and Holocaust Deniers so much space would be interested in this
attack by Alam.
Alam is upset because Wiesel expressed empathy for the Jewish settlers of
Gaza who were evicted with no quid pro quo, indeed with no logic at all,
by Ariel Sharon's government to appease the PLO. Alam is upset that
Wiesel is unwilling to join the axis of far-leftists and neonazi rightists
who wail that the real "victims" of the world in need of sympathy are the
Palestinians. In fact, the Palestinians are exactly as entitled to
sypathy as "victims" as were the Sudeten Germans after World War II. In
other words, not at all.
Why exactly are the Palestinians supposed to be entitled to sympathy? For
rejecting the original partition of Western Palestine? For participating
in the 1947-49 war in which Arabs attempted to annihlate the Jews of
Israel? For collaborating with Hitler in World War II? And why should
Palestinians, who already have 22 Arab states to which they may freely
move should they be unhappy with their circumstances in life, much of that
drenched in oil, controlling a land mass nearly twice the size of the
United States why should THEY deserve any sympathy for their
pseudo-plight, caused by their own barbarism in the first place? And all
that is BEFORE anyone raised the possibility of Palestinian autonomy and
now statehood, in lands west of the Jordan River.
Not a word from Alam by the way on the million and a half Jewish refugees
evicted at bayonet point by Arab states conducting ethnic cleansing of
Jews after 1948. Since Arabs living under Israeli rule are treated a
thousand times better than are Arabs living under Arab rule, what exactly
is Alam's problem and agenda? Answer - its symbol is a swastika!
Alam sniffs that Israel is offering the Palestinians nothing better than a
"Bantustan"? A state of their own, the 23rd Arab state, is a Bantustan?
And since when do Palestinians even deserve a Bantustan, let alone a
state? Do the Arabs of Detroit and Marseilles have their own Bantustans?
Are they entitled to one? Did the Arabs ever offer Copts or Kurds or
Berbers their own Bantustans? And what about the Jews? Will Alam come
out and even acknowledge a Jewish right at least to their own Bantustan in
the historic lands of Israel?
Not likely, grasshopper. Alam, from his academic podium, looks forward to
a new Holocaust of Jews, perpetrated by the terrorists he endorses,
something over which Elie Wiesel can again express his sympathy and be
savaged for that by the Alams.
Alam is not the only jihadnik terrorist writing for Counterpunch by the
way. Indicted terror professor Sami al-Arian used to publish screeds for
the Cockburnites before getting arrested for his role in terrorism.
3. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=1001
Eco Terrorist Being denied Vegan Meals
Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Saturday 27 August 2005, 5:36 pm
Now if you are like me, whenever I hear about "Vegans" I think of
creatures from some other gallaxy in Star Trek reruns. When someone
tells me he is a vegan, I always respond, "Nice to Meet You I am an
Earthling."
But the anarcho-fascists of the Indymedia web sites have a new cause this
week, sponsored by their comrades from the Earth Liberation Prisoners
Support Network. It seems that an environmentalist terrorist is being
denied Vegan snacks and meals. I figure you will be as upset by this as I
was.
Stephen Marshall is in the Oregon slammer because he intentionally
sabotaged some equipment being used by a quarry. The anarcho-fascists are
posting hysteric calls to help him. He is accused of trying to destroy
the equipment of a quarry company, after the company was alleged by
environmentalist nuts to be polluting a stream. Seems Marshall follows an
extra-gallactical vegan diet, but while in prison he has been constantly
denied proper vegan chow.
Here is the Indymedia moonbat version of events:
"Just recently one of Stephen.s meals consisted of fried chicken. When
Stephen refused to take the dead flesh a prison guard questioned him why
he didn.t want the .food.? Stephen replied he did not like eating food
containing animal products.
"The guard replied .I.m not giving any sissy tree hugging faggot special
treatment..
"Stephen stood his ground and refused to take the fried chicken. So the
guard took the tray, threw it on the ground and ordered Stephen to clean
it up.
"Stephen refused."
The moonbats claim he was then roughed up. Yeah sure.
Now I don.t know about you but this news story raised deep suspicions in
my minds that the al-Qaeda terrorists in Gitmo might be similarly forced
to eat dead flesh and I really think they should be supplied only with
vegan diet foods. Anything to make some furry moonbats happy.
By the way, seems it is Marshall.s birthday on August 27. Maybe you could
send him a birthday card with some discount coupons for Big Macks at
Stephen Marshall, prisoner number 68511-065
Federal Prison Camp Sheridan
PO Box 6000
Sheridan OR 97378 .
4. Sappy Cindy's Nazi Friends:
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=995
5. Noam Chomsky on the "Disengagement":
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=998
1. Caroline Glick debunks the demonization of the settlers:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124938376751&p=1006953079897
2. Jerusalem Issue Brief
Institute for Contemporary Affairs
founded jointly at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
with the Wechsler Family Foundation
Vol. 5, No. 3 – 26 August 2005
Legal Acrobatics: The Palestinian Claim that Gaza is Still “Occupied” Even
After Israel Withdraws
Dore Gold
* Remarkably, even as Israel completes its withdrawal from 21
settlements in the Gaza Strip, official Palestinian spokesmen are already making the
argument that Gaza remains “occupied” territory. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
stated that “the legal status of the areas slated for evacuation has not
changed.”
* Palestinian spokesmen have used the grievance of being under Israeli
occupation as their cutting- edge argument against the policies of Israel in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which have effectively been territories under
dispute since 1967 when they were captured by the Israel Defense Forces from
Jordan and Egypt in the Six-Day War.
* The foremost document in defining the existence of an occupation has
been the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention “Relative to the Protection of
Civilian Persons in Time of War.” Article 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention
explicitly states that “the Occupying Power shall be bound for the duration of the
occupation to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government
in such territory....” If no Israeli military government is exercising its
authority or any of “the functions of government” in the Gaza Strip, then
there is no occupation.
* What Israel essentially did with the Oslo implementation
agreements was to withdraw its military government over the Palestinians and replace
it with a Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat. Oslo didn’t create a
Palestinian state, but it would be hard to argue that by the mid-1990s, with
Arafat ruling the Palestinians, that the Palestinians were under Israeli
military occupation.
* The fact that a wide variety of Palestinian spokesmen will charge
that the Gaza Strip is still “occupied” even though the Palestinians exercise
self-government and the Israeli civilian and military presence in this
territory have been removed is revealing. It means that the charge of “occupation”
is less a rigorous legal definition and more a blunt political instrument
to serve the PLO’s diplomatic and military agenda against Israel.
Remarkably, even as Israel completes its withdrawal from 21 settlements in
the Gaza Strip, official Palestinian spokesmen are already making the
argument that Gaza disengagement changes very little and, as far as they are
concerned, Gaza remains “occupied” territory. According to the Palestinian Authority
’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas already
stated on July 7, 2005, that “the legal status of the areas slated for
evacuation has not changed.”
Three basic arguments are being used by various Palestinian factions to
claim that the Gaza Strip will still be “occupied” even after Israel has
completely left.
First, as long as the Palestinians are unable to exercise full sovereignty
in Gaza, the Palestinian foreign minister, Nasser al-Kidwa, maintains that the
territory is still “occupied,” particularly because of Israel’s continuing
control of Gaza’s territorial waters and its airspace.1
For Saeb Erekat, who heads the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department, since
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were designated as “one territorial unit”
in the Oslo Accords, Gaza disengagement affects only a portion of the total
territory under discussion and, therefore, its legal status remains
unchanged.2
>From the standpoint of Hamas, the designation of territory as “occupied” is
directly tied to its self-proclaimed mission “to expel the occupation.”
If Hamas refuses to recognize any change in the situation coming about
because of Israel’s pullout, it is because it argues, in the words of the head of
Hamas in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar, “All of Palestine is our land.”3
He added, “neither the liberation of the Gaza Strip, nor the liberation of
the West Bank or even Jerusalem will suffice for us.
Hamas will pursue the armed struggle until the liberation of all our lands.
We don’t recognize the State of Israel or its right to hold onto one inch of
Palestine.”4
What Legally Causes a Territory to be Under Occupation?
Palestinian spokesmen have used the grievance of being under Israeli
occupation as their cutting-edge argument against the policies of Israel in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, while in fact the legal status of these territories has
been under dispute since 1967 when they were captured by the Israel Defense
Forces from Jordan and Egypt in the Six-Day War.
The only previously recognized sovereign in these territories was the
Ottoman Empire from 1517 through 1917; in 1923, the Turks renounced their
territorial claims when the Ottoman Empire was dismantled.
The British Mandate for Palestine envisioned the territories in question
becoming part of a Jewish national home; the UN General Assembly recommended in
1947 that the areas that became the West Bank and Gaza Strip become part of a
future Arab state, but this proposal was opposed by the Arab states at the
time.
Therefore, the exact legal status of these territories remained unresolved.
Using its political power in the United Nations, the PLO nonetheless has
received the support of the Arab bloc and the Non-Aligned Movement to obtain the
adoption of dozens of non-binding UN General Assembly resolutions defining
these areas as “occupied Palestinian territories.”
More recently, this political power was used to bring these politicized
definitions to other UN organs, including the International Court of Justice in
The Hague.
But “occupation” is not just a rhetorical or political term.
It is first and foremost a legal term in international law.
The legal termination of occupation clearly does not require that all the
political demands of one party in a territorial conflict be met in full. That
would make the end of occupation highly subjective. Instead, it must be based
on certain legal criteria being met.
The main source of international law is international agreements and
conventions signed by states, not declaratory resolutions of the UN General
Assembly.
The foremost document in defining the existence of an occupation has been
the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention “Relative to the Protection of Civilian
Persons in Time of War.”
Israel argued back in 1967 that formally the Fourth Geneva Convention did
not legally apply to the case of the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, since their
previous occupants, Egypt and Jordan, illegally invaded those territories in
1948 and did not exercise internationally recognized sovereignty on the
ground.
The convention becomes relevant with the occupation of the territory of a
signatory – but the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were not recognized as
Egyptian and Jordanian territories.
Nonetheless, successive Israeli governments agreed to de-facto application
of the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention over the last thirty-eight years.
More importantly, the Fourth Geneva Convention became an
internationally-recognized standard for determining the rights and responsibilities of state
parties in cases of military occupation.
Article 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that “the
Occupying Power shall be bound for the duration of the occupation to the extent
that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory....”5 In
other words, what creates an “occupation” is the existence of a military
government which “exercises the functions of government.”
This is a confirmation of the older 1907 Hague Regulations Respecting the
Laws and Customs of War on Land, which state, “Territory is considered occupied
when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.”
The Hague Regulations also stipulate: “The occupation extends only to the
territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”6
What follows is that if no Israeli military government is exercising its
authority or any of “the functions of government” in the Gaza Strip, then there is
no occupation.
Did the Occupation End After Oslo?
It is fascinating to consider these definitions with respect to the
situation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the period in which the Oslo
Agreements were implemented. The original Oslo Declaration of Principles was
signed in 1993. It was first implemented with the 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement.
In 1995, the Interim Agreement extended this implementation to Palestinian
population centers in the rest of the West Bank. What Israel essentially did
with the Oslo implementation agreements was to withdraw its military
government over the Palestinians and replace it with a Palestinian Authority under
Yasser Arafat.
Israeli officers would no longer serve as mayors in Palestinian cities;
there would be no need for an Israeli civil administration to give out drivers’
licenses or building permits.
Essentially, Israel transferred specific powers from its previous military
government to the Palestinian Authority, with the exception of foreign
affairs and external security.
Oslo didn’t create a Palestinian state, but it would be hard to argue that
by the mid-1990s, with Arafat ruling the Palestinians, that the Palestinians
were under Israeli military occupation.
Indeed, back in 1994, the legal advisor to the International Red Cross, Dr.
Hans-Peter Gasser, proposed that his organization had no reason to monitor
Israeli compliance with the Fourth Geneva Convention in the Gaza Strip and
Jericho area, since the convention no longer applied with the advent of
Palestinian administration in those areas.7
At best, the Palestinians could argue that Oslo placed them in an ambiguous
legal position, since they themselves exercised most of the functions of
government, while Israel only maintained a few residual powers.
The Importance of the Occupation Claim for the Palestinian Armed Struggle
If there are serious legal questions about applying the term “occupation”
to the post-Oslo West Bank and Gaza Strip of the 1990s, then why did the
Palestinians persist in doing so? And why is it so essential for them to make
this case even after Gaza disengagement?
First, hammering at the term “occupation” is part of the way the
Palestinians stake a strong claim to territory where sovereignty is, in fact, very much
contested. As noted earlier, there has not been a legally recognized
sovereign in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1922.
The 1947 UN Partition Plan did not create a new Palestinian Arab state, but
rather was followed by an illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by the
Arab states that invaded in 1948. Rather than leave these territories as a “
black hole” of sovereignty with several claimants, the Palestinian Authority
reminds the world that these are “occupied Palestinian territories” in
order to assert exclusive rights in these territories, as though they were once
under Palestinian sovereignty in the past.
Second, constant reference to an ongoing Israeli “occupation” is also a
powerful argument in the electronic media that Palestinians might not want to
concede so quickly. It highlights the position of the Palestinians as victims
in the Arab-Israeli conflict and presents Israel unfavorably, as an oppressor.
It helps obfuscate the fact that Israel entered these territories in a war
of self-defense back in 1967, presenting it instead as an aggressor. But
there is a further important utility of the charge of occupation for the
Palestinian Authority and its spokesmen: it provides a context for explaining how
Palestinian groups resort to terrorism.
The roots of this contextualization of violence come from UN General
Assembly resolutions that were adopted during the period of de-colonization.
For example, Resolution 2708 that was passed on December 14, 1970, “
reaffirms its recognition of the legitimacy of the struggle of the colonial peoples
and peoples under alien domination to exercise their right to
self-determination and independence by all the necessary means at their disposal.”
In the early 1970s, Yasser Arafat repeatedly made reference to such UN
resolutions when he was pressed to justify acts of terrorism, like airplane
hijacking.
More recently, many Arab states have refused to agree to a blanket
renunciation of all violence against civilians as part of an agreed definition of
terrorism at the UN, because a special right of “resistance to occupation” is
not protected. Consequently, once a territory can no longer be defined as “
occupied,” a huge fig leaf for political violence is lifted.
For the current Palestinian Authority, that sort of change would pose many
problems.
True, Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly stated that violence does not serve the
interests of the Palestinians; he believes that the second intifada was a
strategic error. But many militiamen in Abbas’ Fatah movement, including the
al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, still believe in the use of political violence.
Moreover, rather than challenge Hamas, Abbas has decided to co-opt the
militant movement into the Palestinian Authority with the January 2006 elections.
Then, the Palestinian Authority will not need the occupation argument for
its own strategy against Israel, but rather to provide political cover for its
future political partners, who have made clear that they will not forgo what
they still call the armed struggle against Israel.
Like Arafat thirty years ago, even Hamas wraps its justification for
violence in the language of “occupation.”
How Israel Should Respond to the Occupation Charge
The fact that a wide variety of Palestinian spokesmen will charge that the
Gaza Strip is still “occupied” even though the Palestinians exercise
self-government and the Israeli civilian and military presence in this territory
have been removed is revealing.
It means that the charge of “occupation” is less a rigorous legal
definition and more a blunt political instrument to serve the PLO’s diplomatic and
military agenda against Israel.
The best way for Israel to counter Palestinian efforts to use the
occupation charge to provide political cover for violence is to base its arguments on
the growing international consensus against terrorism – regardless of the
justification provided – for no political cause can legitimately explain why
innocent civilians must be intentionally murdered in terrorist bombing attacks
conducted on its behalf.
The Palestinians may not like the limitations that have been maintained on
Gaza airspace or territorial waters. But even Egypt has limitations on its
sovereignty in Sinai that are the result of security arrangements created by the
1979 Treaty of Peace.
No one would argue that limitations on Egyptian authority constitute a form
of "occupation." In the tight airspace of Europe, many mini-states cannot
fully control their airspace alone, but must coordinate their air traffic with
larger neighbors to prevent air collisions.
Their sovereignty is hardly compromised by this cooperation.
Additionally, Israel does have legitimate security concerns, given the
history of Palestinian violations of the security provisions of the Oslo
Agreements, including high-profile attempts by the Palestinian Authority to illegally
import weaponry by sea on ships like the Santorini and the Karine A.
Still, the Israeli government has demonstrated that it will not abuse the
authority it still exercises outside of the borders of the Gaza Strip, as
attested to by its readiness to withdraw from the Philadelphi route between Gaza
and Egypt and its willingness to let the Palestinians dig a port for Gaza.
And, should Israel nonetheless find it necessary to re-enter the Gaza Strip
to quash a terrorist threat, it would not do so as a former occupying power
but rather as a state defending itself from an immediate threat being posed by
a neighbor under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Beyond the propaganda war between the two sides, there are serious issues
that Israel will have to resolve regarding the Gaza Strip. Israel may not have
formal humanitarian responsibilities toward the civilian population of Gaza
any longer, but it might nonetheless seek to exercise some of them, if
requested by the Palestinians themselves.
But Israel’s role will be that of a neighboring state, similar to Turkey
when a humanitarian emergency arose in Iraqi Kurdistan or Chad with respect to
the Darfur area of Sudan.
Israel will not host Palestinian refugees, but it can provide backing to
international humanitarian efforts of other states and international agencies,
despite the withdrawal of its remaining authority in the Gaza Strip after
disengagement is completed.
* * *
Notes
1. “Palestinian FM: Pullout Will Not End Gaza Occupation, Agence France
Presse, August 9, 2005;
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=17458
2. Saeb Erekat, “Gaza Remains Occupied,” Bitterlemons.org, August 22, 2005;
http://www.bitterlemons.org/previous/bl220805ed30.html#pal2
3. “An Interview with Hamas Leader Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar,” Asharq Al-Awsat
(London), August 18, 2005; MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, No. 964, August
19, 2005; http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP96405
4. Khaled Abu Toameh, “Abbas: Gaza Withdrawal Only First Step,” Jerusalem
Post, August 15, 2005;
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124072335137&p=1119925650407
5. International Committee of the Red Cross, The Geneva Conventions of
August 12, 1949 (Geneva: ICRC, 1997), p. 156.
6. Ruth Lapidoth, “Unity Does Not Require Uniformity” Bitterlemons.org,
August 22, 2005.
7. Dore Gold, “From ‘Occupied Territories’ to ‘Disputed Territories,’”
Jerusalem Viewpoints No. 470, January 16, 2002; http://jcpa.org/jl/vp470.htm
* * *
Dr. Dore Gold is President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He
was the eleventh Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations
(1997-1999). Dr. Gold was a member of the Israeli delegation at the 1998 Wye
River negotiations between Israel and the PLO and negotiated the Note for the
Record, which supplemented the 1997 Hebron Protocol. In 1991, he served as an
advisor to the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference.
This Jerusalem Issue Brief is available online at:
_http://www.jcpa.org.brief/brief005-3.htm_
3. Amos the brainless scarecrow of Oz:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124938373086&p=1006953079897
4. Teaching jihad on teh Left Coast:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19259
I of course meant Qassam rockets fired at Sderot and not katyushas.
Sorry.
Corrented:
Gosh, the Gaza Disengagement is not Working!
Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Friday 26 August 2005, 4:59 am
The political line of the Israeli Left, and by that I mean also Ariel
Sharon.s faction of the Likud, has been that the unilateral capitulation
of Israel in Lebanon to the Hizbollah has "proved itself" and so should
serve as the model for additional unilateral capitulations. After all,
the Hizbollah is sitting quietly and not bombing Israel.
All except for the fact that the Hizbollah is not sitting quietly and IS
bombing Israel. So how do Sharon.s people deal with this new aggression
from the Hizbollah? By declaring that the rockets it is shooting into
Israel are by accident (reported in Haaretz today).
I kid you not. Yesterday once again a Hizbollah rocket landed inside
northern Israel. The Sharon people told the media that they believe this
was a mistake and accident on the part of the Hizbollers.
Meanwhile, it did not take long for the PLO to respond to Israeli
cowardice and unilateral capitulation in Gaza. First, a British yeshiva
student was murdered in Jerusalem. Then all week long Qassam rockets have
been shot at Israeli civilian areas, with a bunch yesterday aimed at the
Negev town of Sderot. And then there are the above-mentioned "accidental"
rockets being fired at Israel from Lebanon.
How surprising, declare the Lefties! How unexpected, declares Sharon.
Israel has evicted all the settlers, and so what possible reason could the
PLO and its affiliates have to attack Jews this week, wonder the lemmings
in serendipity.
1. The political line of the Israeli Left, and by that I mean also Ariel
Sharon, has been that the unilateral capitulation of Isreal in Lebanon to
the Hizbollah has "proved itself" and so should serve as the model for
additional unilateral capitulations. After all, the Hizbollah is sitting
quietly and not bombing Israel.
All execept for the fact that the Hizbollah is not sittin quietly and IS
bombing Israel. So how do Sharon's people deal with this new aggression
from the Hizbollah? By declaring that the rockets it is shooting into
Israel are by accident (Haaretz today).
I kid you not. Yesterday once again a Hizbollah rocket landed inside
northern Israel. The Sharon people told the media that they believe this
ws a mistake and accident on the part of the Hizbollers.
2. Meanwhile, it did not take long for the PLO to respond to Israeli
cowardice and unilateral capitulation in Gaza. First, a British yeshiva
student was murdered in Jerusalem. Then all week long katyusha rockets
have been shot at Israeli civilian areas, with a bunch yesterday aimed at
the Negev town of Sderot. And then there are the above-mentioned
"accidental" rockets being fired at Israel from Lebanon.
How surprising, declare the
Lefties! How unexpected, declares Sharon. Israel has evicted all the
settlers, and so what possible reason could teh PLO and its affiliates
have to attack Jews this week, wonder the lemmings in serendity.
3. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=976
SAY WHAT? ANTI-SEMITES? WHO, US ANTI-ZIONISTS?
(or, the mantra of the Counterpunch Cockroaches)
Say, What? Anti-Semites? Who, us anti-Zionists? US? We have nothing
against Jews as such. We just hate Zionism and Zionists.
We think Israel does not have a right to exist. But that does not mean we
have anything against Jews as such. Heavens to Mergatroyd. Marx Forbid. We
are humanists. Progressives. Peace lovers.
Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews. Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism
and Israeli policies. The two have nothing to do with one another. Venus
and Mars. Night and Day. Trust us.
Sure, we think the only country on the earth that must be annihilated is
Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
Sure, we think that the only children on earth whose being blown up is ok
if it serves a good cause are Jewish children. But that does not mean we
have anything against Jews as such.
Sure we think that, if Palestinians have legitimate grievances, this
entitles them to mass-murder Jews. But that does not mean we have anything
against Jews as such.
Naturally, we think that the only people on earth who should never be
allowed to exercise the right of self-defense are the Jews. Jews should
only resolve the aggression against them through capitulation, never
through self-defense. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews
as such.
We only denounce racist apartheid in the one country in the Middle East
that is NOT a racist apartheid country. But that does not mean we have
anything against Jews as such.
We refuse to acknowledge the Jews as a people, and think they are only a
religion. We do not have an answer to how people who do NOT practice the
Jewish religion can still be regarded as Jews. But that does not mean we
have anything against Jews as such.
We think that all peoples have the right to self-determination, except
Jews, including even the make-pretend Palestinian "people", who do not
even consider themselves a people. But that does not mean we have anything
against Jews as such.
We hate it when people blame the victims, except of course when people
blame the Jews for the jihads and terrorist campaigns against them. But
that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We think the only country in the Middle East that is a fascist
anti-democratic one is the one that has free elections. But that does not
mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We demand that the only country in the Middle East with free speech, free
press, or free courts be destroyed. But that does not mean we have
anything against Jews as such.
We oppose military aggression, except when it is directed at Israel. But
that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We really understand suicide bombers who murder bus loads of Jewish
children and we insist that their demands be met in full. But that does
not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We think the only conflict on earth that must be solved through
dismembering one of the parties to that conflict is the one involving
Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We do not think that Jews have any human rights that need to be respected
and especially not the right to ride a bus or sit in a cafe without being
murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
There are Jewish leftist anti-Zionists and we consider these proof that
anti-Zionists could not possibly be anti-Semitic. Not even the ones who
cheer when Jews are mass murdered. These are the only Jews we think need
be acknowledged or respected. But that does not mean we have anything
against Jews as such.
We do not think murder proves how righteous and just the cause of the
murderer is, except when it comes to murderers of Jews. But that does not
mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We do not think the Jews are entitled to their own state and must submit
to being a minority in a Rwanda-style "bi-national state", although no
other state on earth, including the 22 Arab countries with twice the land
mass of the United States, should be similarly expected to be deprived of
sovereignty. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We think that Israel.s having a Jewish majority and a star on its flag
makes it a racist apartheid state. We do not think any other country
having an ethnic-religious majority or having crosses or crescents or
"Allah Akbar" on its flag is racist or needs dismemberment. But that does
not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We condemn the "mistreatment" of women in the only country of the Middle
East in which they are not mistreated. But that does not mean we have
anything against Jews as such.
We condemn the "mistreatment" of minorities in the only country in the
Middle East in which minorities are NOT brutally suppressed and mass
murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We demand equal citizen rights, which is why the only country in the
Middle East in need of extermination is the only one in which they exist.
But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We have no trouble with the fact that there is no freedom of religion in
any Arab countries. But we are mad at hell at Israel for violating
religious freedom, and never mind that we are never quite sure where or
when it does so. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as
such.
So how can you possibly say we are anti-Semites? We are simply
anti-Zionists. We seek peace and justice, that.s all. And surely that does
not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
4. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=978
Genital Mutilation as Sensitivity at the University of North Carolina
Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Thursday 25 August 2005, 1:22 pm
Heavens to Moonbatroyd! Can there be any campus on the planet as wacko as
UNC?
Writing in Townhall, Mike S. Adams tells us of the latest in a whole
series of moonbat lunacies being imposed upon hapless UNC students. But
the latest takes the girdle!
At UNC-Wilmington, the university chiefs are helping to sponsor a showing
of the film .Trans Generation. about people who cross-dress and mutilate
their genitals in order to pretend to be of the other gender.
The campus Office of Campus Diversity, the Office of the Dean of Students,
and the UNCW Women.s Resource Center are all pitching in to help. .Trans
Generation. is an eight-part documentary series that charts the lives of
four college students undergoing .gender transition.. The film joins the
four transitioning youths . two soon-to-be-ex-males and two
soon-to-be-ex-females - as they .define who they are and take control of
their gender identity..
Now I know what you are thinking and that is: why should UNC stop there?
Why not require students to attend lectures on the benefits from surgery
designed to allow people to pretend to be members of other species?
1. Euro-Sensitivity Brainstorm!!
Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Thursday 25 August 2005, 1:16 am
The Wall Street Journal reports on the newist Moonbat concept in
sensitivity training. Sensitivity patrols of PC stormtroopers? Old hat!
This new idea comes direct from Sweden.
The idea is for public lending libraries to lend out midgets, homosexuals,
people with AIDS, and others whom the general reading public is in
desperate need to get to know better on a personal level.
That.s right, grasshopper. In Malmo, Sweden, a homosexual, an imam and a
gypsy walk can be borrowed -yes, borrowed - from the local library for a
45-minute chat in a nearby pub as part of an effort to fight
discrimination.
Ullah Brohed pioneered the "Living Library" project earlier this month.
"You sometimes hear people.s prejudices and you realize that they are just
uninformed," she says. And since a library exists to educate, she decided
to give Swedish bigots the opportunity to come face to face with the
prejudice of their choice. The Malmo library also offers a Danish man
(since some Swedes and Danes don.t get along too well) and, to our great
embarrassment, even a journalist. "Maybe not all journalists are
know-it-all and sensationalist," Ms. Brohed says.
A library in the Dutch city of Almelo also plans to start its own human
lending program next month. Its lending library will include a gay man, a
Muslim, a gypsy, a politician, a hard-drug user, a gay woman and a German.
Here are some things NOT being offered up for lending by those libraries:
1. A US Marine
2. A Zionist
3. A neocon
4. A patriot
5. A married hetero
6. A believer in God
7. An anti-communist
8. A Jewish Settler
9. A rightwing American radio jockey
10. An evangelical Christian
2. Scenes From the Disengagement
BY FIAMMA NIRENSTEIN
August 25, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/19159
This is not a political piece about disengagement; this is an attempt to
find for me and for you some consolation after what we have seen in Gush
Katif. This consolation I found in the unique strength of the democracy in
Israel.
First, it's not for a journalist to confess that sometimes words are not
enough to express what you have seen, certainly not for somebody who has
gone through a lot of terrorism and wars as I have. But after this week in
Gaza, I'm afraid I'm not nearly able to tell the story: the tears and
cries of the settlers losing their homes and their greenhouses, their
schools and synagogues, their friends and their neighbors, the beauty of
their sea and the heroism of resisting the loss of their beloved in
terrorist attacks for something that now doesn't exist anymore, the end of
their Zionist dream of making the Gaza dunes blossom, the disappearance of
the entire meaning of their life in the hands of their Jewish compatriots,
the silent pain and the shouting rage.
But I can give you a hint by recalling a man from the Matzilia family who
had just set on fire his own beautiful two-story villa adorned with purple
bougainvillea and acacias, the fire coming out from doors, windows, and
attics, his family standing on the inflamed roof, and he was there, at my
feet, lying down in front of his door face down, a peace of earth himself,
his old father trying to turn him around and give him some water.
I can recall a 10-year-old boy pushing a big soldier out from his door,
arms outstretched to the big man's chest, glasses going down on a little
nose full of freckles and tears, asking, "Please not my home, not my mom";
and in the evening the same boy, going around alone among the empty houses
and mumbling, "I want to go home," while all the buses were leaving
forever his birthplace, Morag. I can remember a group of residents of
Netzer Hazani, while an enormous bulldozer enters the settlement,
destroying the barricades set on fire and proceeds rolling over the
marvelous grass that will return to sand in a second, crying to the sky,
"Adonai, Adonai," as if God could suddenly wake up and operate the miracle
they had been expecting in vain for months.
It's hard to say, but it was difficult to avoid thinking about the never
ending suffering of the Jews all along the centuries when the soldiers had
to drag from their synagogues many crying old men wrapped in their prayer
shawls while they kept reading their prayer books.
And there has been much more. But here is the consolation that came to me,
even in those hours, from the mere nature of the state of Israel, in the
shape of its unique and amazing creation, its soul, the Israel Defense
Force and the police. The amazingly sweet, understanding, and yet firm,
professional, and morally clear attitude of the Israeli soldiers and
policemen created a sincere, warm but uncompromising relationship with the
very people they were removing. This will be forever an example for all
the armies of the world. And a guarantee that, in a democracy, you can
continue speaking and protesting and praying (oh, how many words were
spent from the two sides, as if a single soldier who refused the orders
could stop the disengagement) without shooting and using force, except in
very few cases. The disengagement has been the image of a morally
motivated democracy in motion.
In Netzer Hazani, where the disengagement was relatively calm, there was a
group of citizens who barricaded themselves inside a little house. The
young commander, Udi Lav, invited them to discuss outside: "You have to
come out now. I have the order to operate the disengagement, and sooner or
later, today, I have to fulfill the orders."
Reply: "But this is the home we have built with our own hands, our
forefathers were here, what will you tell your sons, will you tell them
the story of how you dragged out your Jewish brothers from the land they
have given so many lives for?"
Lav, standing in the very hot sun, putting a hand on the shoulder of his
interlocutor, answers: "Brother, I understand you, but you have to come
out of here, I'm so sorry, I cry with you, but now it's time to go."
Lav looks tired and keeps his hand on the shoulder of the settler.
Reply: "You know I'll not go, because I'm right, and I obey to the Law."
Here Lav has a little smile. He puts his hand on the Israeli flag
embroidered on his shirt and says in a soft voice: "You know that I'm
right. I'm simply right because it's me actually, obeying the law, I
represent law and order, I represent a decision of the parliament of the
state of Israel, you cannot mix politics and religion." He says it without
any rhetoric, but just as a matter of fact. There is no place for
theocracy when you live in a parliamentary system, and this has nothing to
do with respecting every citizen's belief.
That young guy in uniform sweating in the sun is a flashing light of
democracy, and I feel honored to have witnessed the dialogue. Even his
interlocutor now stands in silence, even if he certainly still believes
that the Torah is over anything else. But he too is just an Israeli, like
Lav. And Lav, with his respectful attitude, shows that he knows that
without the Torah, the Jews and therefore the Jewish state would not
exist. They both know they have very good reasons to stand together in
front of the past and in front of the future.
Many soldiers discussed for long hours with the families, until they were
able to help carry out their bags.
I witnessed a young official sitting on the floor of the house of the
family Hillberg, whose son Jonathan was killed in 1997. Under his
portrait, he listened in tears to the bereaved mother Broide, who leaves
not only her home but also her son's tomb in the village, and then asked
permission to say something: "I only want to tell you that I love our
country no less than you do. Please believe me. I and my friends serve in
the most distinguished units, just like your son, of whom I have heard so
much about. We fight the terrorists just like he did. I'm here just to
help overcome any possible fracture among our people, we cannot allow it,
please let me help me bring your bags out."
Broide let him take her bag all along a path toward the synagogue, where
she and her husband Shaul have walked every day for so many years. There,
with all the citizens, the soldiers sat and cried and sang.
In Kfar Darom, one of the toughest places in Gush Katif, a young girl,
after telling a young soldier for the thousandth time that "a Jew doesn't
deport a Jew," started shouting at him the second basic slogan, "Look into
my eyes." She told him so another thousand times, while the young soldier
was simply patiently looking at her. When he could not stand it anymore,
he asked her, "Don't you see? I'm just looking into your eyes, blue eyes,
you have to look at me, too."
The girl, a religious, modest, pretty girl who probably has never looked
much into boys' eyes, suddenly saw the soldier, his 18-year-old face, his
different culture, his embarrassed, sad _expression, the Israeli flag on
his breast: "Wow," she said with simple honesty, "it's true, you are
looking into my eyes, we see each other."
Ms. Nirenstein is an Italian journalist.
3. Defund the Campus Left:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19240
4. August 24, 2005
'Comparable Worth'
By LINDA CHAVEZ
August 24, 2005; Page A10
Two decades have passed since feminists lost their battle for "comparable
worth," a bureaucratic scheme that would have replaced the free market in
determining wages. But recent headlines on the Roberts nomination make it
seem like the mid-'80s all over again. "Roberts Resisted Women's Rights:
1982-86 Memos Detail Skepticism" inveighed the Washington Post; "Critics
Say Women's Issues Could Be Pitfall for Roberts," intoned the Chicago
Tribune. USA Today weighed in with "Roberts Joked about Equal-Pay
Request." At issue were comments in a memo Mr. Roberts wrote while a young
White House lawyer in 1984. Asked to recommend whether the Reagan
administration should remain neutral on comparable worth, he called the
idea "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist." He was right.
Nonetheless, comparable worth, repudiated by policy makers and courts 20
years ago, has been revived as a stick with which to beat a seemingly
invincible nominee.
Comparable worth was intended to eliminate the gap between the earnings of
men and women. Feminists argued that only hidden discrimination could
explain the relatively lower wages in female-dominated occupations, like
librarians, compared to male-dominated jobs, like electricians. Under
comparable worth, employers would be required to rate jobs according to
abstract notions of intrinsic value based on years of education required
for a given job, the level of responsibility it entailed, and working
conditions involved. In a free market, however, wages -- like prices --
are set primarily by supply and demand. Diamonds are not intrinsically
more valuable than water (which is necessary to sustain life). But
diamonds are in short supply relative to demand, which is why a one-carat
solitaire costs a whole lot more than a bottle of Evian. Similarly, it may
seem "unfair" that tree-trimmers earn more than day-care workers, but the
relative supply of the former compared with the latter explains the
differential.
Comparable worth is no mere variant of equal pay for equal work, which has
been the law since 1963. It is illegal for an employer to pay a woman less
than a man to trim a tree or to hire a male day-care worker at a higher
salary than a female; it is also illegal to bar women from tree-trimming
or men from day-care work. Yet for complex social and historical reasons,
men and women still tend to do different jobs, although this is less true
today than it was in the mid-'80s. In 1983, fewer than 6% of employed
engineers were women; by the late '90s, that number had almost doubled to
11%, still far short of parity. The "remedy" is not to pay less for jobs
that are dominated by men but to encourage more women to become
electricians or tree-trimmers. This was the conclusion of the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights after extensive research and public hearings in
1985 when I directed the agency. We opposed comparable-worth legislation
and lawsuits, arguing that such efforts would actually discourage women
from breaking out of sex-stereotyped roles and undermine the free market
system.
The Commission wasn't alone in its skepticism. Congress also demurred on
comparable worth (although the Democrat-controlled House did pass a bill
authorizing a study of the issue), and the appellate courts rejected the
concept outright. A current member of the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony
Kennedy, helped deliver the death-blow to comparable worth when he was on
the Ninth Circuit. The case involved public employees in Washington state,
where it was alleged that those in job categories filled mostly by women
were paid less than those held predominantly by men. "The state did not
create the market disparity and has not been shown to have been motivated
by impermissible sex-based considerations in setting salaries," wrote
Justice Kennedy in a unanimous opinion from the most liberal appeals
court. His comments didn't bar him from the Supreme Court two years later,
nor should Mr. Roberts' be held against him by feminists sore that they
lost their battle for comparable worth two decades ago.
Ms. Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, directed the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights during the Reagan administration.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112484922678721494,00.html
Subject: The Sharon Doctrine and the Demonization of the Settlers
The Sharon Doctrine: ?Disengagement? and the Demonization of Israel?s ?Settlers?
by Steven Plaut
Ariel Sharon had evidently reached the conclusion that a military victory, was needed and since he was incapable of directing or unable to order a military victory over the Palestinians, he ordered a military victory over the Jewish ?settlers.? It is all that is left of the "Sharon Doctrine".
Israelis opposed to Ariel Sharon?s unilateral ?disengagement plan? had something in common with those who backed the plan. Neither group had any idea at all of why Sharon was implementing the plan. Sharon had been elected on a platform opposing the proposal by the Labor Party under Amram Mitzna to conduct a unilateral "disengagement" from Gaza. His platform and the voters be damned, Sharon morphed into the Other Mitzna within days of his reelection.
Those who opposed the plan, the ?Orange Banner? camp, unsurprisingly had trouble understanding what benefits Sharon could possibly think would come from the ?disengagement.? But the supporters of the plan had more or less the same problem. When asked whether they think that the disengagement will result in the PLO complying with its Oslo treaty obligations, even Israeli Oslo supporters generally say NO. When asked whether they believe the PLO will end its coy support for terror and its own organizational role in the violence, the Israeli supporters of the Disengagement Plan are almost as unanimous in expressing their skepticism. Since even supporters of the plan expect the violence to continue and escalate once the "disengagement" is complete, what exactly was the logic behind their support, other than cognitive dissonance?
Just before implementation, the general Israeli public was about evenly split between supporters and opponents of the ?disengagement? plan, despite months of enormous governmental efforts to sell the plan to the public and the near-unanimous endorsement of it by Israel?s media, under the near-hegemony of the Radical Left.
Shortly before the implementation of the ?disengagement?, a poll published by the Jerusalem Post (June 8, 2005) showed that total public support for the ?disengagement? was below 50%. A Midgam poll conducted June 29 and a Tel Aviv University poll conducted July 17 found even stronger public opposition to the plan. The latter poll found that Israelis expecting the disengagement to result in escalated Palestinian terror outnumbered those expecting reduced terror by about five-to-three. All these polls included Israeli Arabs, about one Israeli in five, most of whom can be relied upon to endorse any proposal that is harmful to Israel?s interests.
This meant that on the eve of the implementation, a clear majority of Israeli Jews was apparently opposed to it. Better evidence that this was the case was Sharon?s peremptory rejection of any suggestion to conduct a national ballot referendum on the plan, an idea endorsed by a huge majority of the public. Sharon ruled it out because he would have lost it, just as he lost a Likud party referendum on the plan by a large majority. Sharon?s Likud poodles and the Left were arguing with a straight face that ballot propositions were undemocratic. Tell that to California.
Israelis have been targeted by an immense media juggernaut demanding that they back Sharon?s neo-Oslo agenda and more generally that they endorse the world view of the Israeli Left, that same world view that was proven to be so wrong over and over again during the first decade of the Oslo ?peace process?.
Part of the Disengagement-Marketing Campaign was based upon what I call the September 10th syndrome. The Israeli Left, with growing numbers of Likud leaders chiming in, insisted that Israel?s 2000 unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon had not resulted in an all-out barrage of katyusha rockets from the Hizbollah nor daily terrorist atrocities on the Lebanese border (merely light monthly attacks). Of course the Hizbollah is controlled by Syria, trembling at an enraged United States. Syria is surrounded on all sides by pro-Western states and now has GI?s on its eastern border. Moreover, the Gaza security fence seemed to be fairly effective in keeping Gaza suicide bombers out of Israel so surely a similar fence along the West Bank?s Green line could be as effective. After all, the number of West Bank suicide bombers is way down and never mind that the Separation Wall in the West Bank is still in large part only on paper and that the massive Israeli campaign of assassinating ter
rorists
in 2003 and 2004 is the more plausible reason for the relative calm.
Unilateral capitulations by Israel seem to have worked wonderfully so far, proclaimed the Hebrew newspapers and the Israeli electronic media in near-unison. So far. On September 10, 2001, there were no doubt countless politicians and media figures convinced that al-Qaeda was no serious terror threat at all to the United States. After all, American security measures had worked for many years, so far.
The Hizbollah now has tens of thousands of rockets aimed at all of northern Israel, rockets that can easily reach the Haifa oil refineries and port at the slightest revision in Syria?s agenda. The PLO and its affiliates have already fired thousands of rockets and mortars out of Gaza at Jewish homes, and that was with the Israeli army on the ground inside Gaza and attempting to prevent smuggling of explosives in from Egypt. What will happen once the Gaza Strip is purged of all Jews and Israeli forces? The unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops from all Gaza and West Bank cities in the 1990s produced the worst wave of Palestinian barbarism and atrocities in the history of the conflict. Does Ariel Sharon seriously believe the Gazans will now take up quilting?
So what does explain Sharon?s actions? Again, neither supporters nor opponents of the plan seem to have a plausible answer ((take Zev Chafets in the NY Daily News of August 18, 2005 or Hillel Shenker in ?The Nation?(. Many believe that Sharon was bullied by the US into implementing a plan he himself understands will be harmful and result in escalated violence in the medium run, if not sooner. Others attribute it all to Sharon?s supposed born-again conversion to belief in the basic correctness of the Israeli Left?s approach, this after 13 years of its nonstop failure, perhaps because of Sharon?s exhaustion and senility. Still others, including the new book Boomerang, by Israeli journalists Ofer Shelah and Raviv Druker, believe conspiracy theories about how Sharon struck a deal with the Left to implement its agenda in exchange for its calling off the Attorney General, himself linked closely with the Left, thus helping keep Sharon and his offspring un-indicted for their fina
ncial
sleaze.
No one on either the Left or Right believes Sharon?s protests that the Gaza Disengagement is ultimately a sly tactic to perpetuate Israel?s control over the West Bank. The very fact that the Gaza plan included the decision to remove a handful of West Bank settlements in addition to its making Gaza judenrein was a clear signal to the world and to all Israelis that the Gaza plan is Sharon?s model for a later West Bank ?disengagement? plan as well.
Sharon had agreed to the Labor Party?s approach, which advocated after 1993 unilateral Israeli capitulations without so much as the pretense of symmetry, mutuality, balance, nor Palestinian concessions. If removal of all the Jewish civilians from the Gaza Strip was necessary in the name of creating population separation - as a way to reduce tensions and violence, then why was there no similar removal of any Arab anywhere? Would not symmetry require a comparable removal of the entire Arab population of ? say ? Jenin and its rehabilitation in Gaza City or in Rafiah? After all, the Jenin Arabs and their proximity to Israeli Jewish towns have been a constant cause of violence and conflict, far more serious than the presence of some Jews on empty Gaza sand dunes.
I suspect that most of the Israeli Left really supported the ?disengagement,? not because of any demented belief that it would result in the Palestinians seeking peace, but mainly because they sought to demean and humiliate the Israeli Jewish ?settlers? whom they had been taught to despise.
The Israeli Left, and by that I also mean the Israeli media, has been operating a daily campaign of unrestrained demonization and delegitimization against the Jewish ?settlers? in the ?occupied territories? for many years. Those familiar with the version of Leftist hate speech to be found on American campuses have seen nothing. The extremism of the anti-settler rhetoric of the Israeli Left is without comparison.
Israel?s ?settlers? had always borne the brunt of Palestinian savagery. They were always the ?mine canary? of the Middle East. Palestinian treatment and attitudes towards ?settlers? were indicative of Palestinian attitudes towards Jews in general. A PLO truly seeking peace would find the presence of a handful of Jewish civilians living in the midst of Palestinian Arabs as inoffensive, un-noteworthy, and as enlightening and multiculturally beneficial presence of the Israeli Arab minority living inside pre-1967 Israel. Why is it that Palestinians, like Reconquista Spain, can pursue statehood only when all Jewish civilians are evicted? Could it be that they have no particular interest at all in running their own postal service and sanitation department but instead seek Israel?s total annihilation?
When the Israeli leftist media commentators discuss the settlers, one should always perform a mental exercise. One should imagine that every time the word ?settler? appears, the word ?Jew is substituted. If one does this, the articles bear an extraordinary resemblance to the anti-Semitic rants in Der Sturmer in the 1930s. Most of the same adjectives and imagery are there. The "settlers" are greedy, clannish, selfish, unhygienic, violent, cowardly, murderous, sexually depraved, parasites, subhuman, dishonest, thieving, murderous, lazy, etc., etc.
Haim Yavin is the Dan Rather of Israel?s Channel One television station, in more senses than one. He produced his own recent documentary devoted to proving that all ?settlers? are horrid Untermenschen. State-run Channel One is a station spouting leftist ideology, even whenever the Likud nominally governs the state. Israeli leftist newspaper columns denouncing the settlers in blood-curdling terms are too numerous to count. A Hebrew University leftist professor, Moshe Zimmerman, regularly denounces all settlers as Nazis. Other academic extremists have openly called upon the PLO to murder Jewish settlers. (These and similar statements are now carefully documented by the Israel Academia Monitor watchdog group at www.israel-academia-monitor.com.)
The delegitimization and demonization reached a fever pitch on the day the troops were sent in by Sharon to the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom to evict its residents. After predicting for months that the settlers were planning to murder Israeli politicians and troops, the Israeli media fabricated a story about how the settlers were throwing acid at the hapless troops, and within moments every media outlet on the planet was repeating the lie. There was no acid at all thrown, not even acidic grapefruit juice. Not a single soldier was treated for acid burn and the worst symptom any soldier showed was sore eyes, no doubt from tear gas. The acid story was an invention of Israel?s leftist media, shamelessly pursuing its own political agenda. Michael Eitan, a member of the Israeli parliament and chairman of the Knesset law committee, denounced the story as a "blood libel". [The only Jews dropping acid we are aware of are over at Tikkun magazine.]
The half or so of the Israeli public who endorsed the eviction of the Gaza settlers had been deluged in the political tsunami of media hate speech for more than a decade. When Sharon decided to evict the "settlers," those Israelis clapping their hands did so not because they seriously think the PLO has changed its agenda. They did so because they wanted to see the imaginary cartoon villains invented by the Left and its captive media getting their comeuppance. They were willing to reward Arab terror and fascism and to signal Israel?s destructibility and defeatism in exchange for the immense pleasure of seeing Jewish settlers getting the jackboot.
When the PLO rockets from Gaza and the West Bank, after some upgrading, reach the yuppie neighborhoods in which Israel?s urban leftists live, we will see if they still savor their sense of amusement.
1. Today's Haaretz reports that a poll of Likud members shows Netanyahu
leading Sharon in a party face-off by three-to-two and that also Uzi
Landau would beat Sharon in a party primary. Likud party members saying
they thought that Sharon and his clique acted out of political corruption
and hypocrisy outnumber those saying Sharon acted out of principle by
three-to-one. Of course, the Likud is an anti-democratic institution in
which none of this matters.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/616332.html
But this does mean that Sharon has lost his own party base of support.
There are two serious BUTS. The first is that, in spite of his hawkish
rhetoric, Netanyahu has already served as Prime Minister and proved
himself as Beilinish as Peres and Sharon combined.
Second, while Landau is today
the leading Likudnik opposed to Oslo self-annihilation, and may be the
only man of principle left among Likud leaders, he is aging and has never
developed a party machine apparatus to enable him to challenge the
Beilinite wing of the party.
2. For years, one purpose of the "settlements" was to extract a serious
set of concessions from the PLO should Israel ever agree to abandon any.
That is all Gatorade under the bridge now. The Arabs know that Israel is
willing to expel thousands of Jewish "settlers" in exchange for nothing
more than the intense pleasure of seeing the settlers harrassed and
dispossessed, this
after years of daily delegitimizing and demonizing of the settlers by the
Israeli chattering classes.
The dispossession of the "settlers" is not being done because anyone
seriously believes it will by concessions from the PLO or even from the
US. It is being done because the number one ambition of the Israeli
chattering classes is to dispossess the settlers for its own sake.
3. Important piece on the ISM
terrorists: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19213
4. Thought for the day:
David Pryce-Jones; "The Closed Circle"; pp. 406 (the last page of his
exceptional book) "At present, an Arab democrat is not even an
idealization, but a contradiction in terms."
5. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=952
Will the Real Noam Chomsky Take One Goosestep Forward
Is Noam Chomsky a Stalinist-line communist or an anarchist?
Ordinarily anarchism and communism should be mutually exclusive concepts,
at least for anyone who understands their definitions. They are diametric
(might we also say dialectic? dianetic?) opposites. Anarchism seeks to
abolish government and to restore humanity to the days of the war lords
and the renaissance condotierre, imposing upon all humanity the life style
of the cannibal tribes in the New Guinea jungles. In contrast Marxism,
communism, and fascism, all essentially the same things, seek the
opposite: a totalitarian government that micro-controls everything, all
because they expect to be the totalitarian masters and so get to send all
those mean kids from high school who made fun of them to the gulags.
Now the two concepts are commonly intertwined and confused. The ISM or
International Solidarity Movement terrorists collaborating with the Hamas
like to call themselves anarchists. The campus hordes of Che-shirters,
the Moonbats for Marxism, and the limousine-latte lefties also frequently
claim to be anarchists these days. And now Noam Chomsky has given
anarchism his pontifical blessing.
Noam Chomsky is best known for being America's leading academic Stalinist
and
as the MIT cheerleader for the Khmer Rouge when it was conducting its
genocide of Cambodians. He is a bit less well known for having invented
some silly theories in linguistics, long ago debunked and dismissed by
serious scholars.
In a long and mind-numbingly stupid interview in the Marxist web rag ZNET,
comrade Noam sings the praises of anarchism.
Among other things, Pol Pot's favorite MIT prof says:
ZNET Moonbat Interviewer: On many occasions activist, intellectuals,
students, have asked you about your specific vision of anarchist society
and about your very detailed plan to get there. Once you have answered
.that we can not figure out what problems are going to arise unless you
experiment with them.. Do you also have a felling that many left
intellectuals are loosing too much energy with their theoretical disputes
about the proper means and ends, to even start .experimenting. in
practice.
The Noam: Many people find this extremely important and find that they
cannot act as, let.s say, organizers in their community unless they have a
detailed vision of the future that they are going to try to achieve. OK,
that.s the way they perceive the world and themselves. I would not presume
to tell them it.s wrong, maybe it is right for them, but it is not right
for me. A lot of flowers have a right to bloom. People do things in
different ways..
ZNET: What is your opinion about so-called .scientific. anarchism .
attempts to scientifically prove Bakunin.s assumption that human beings
have instinct for freedom. That we have not only a tendency towards
freedom but also a biological need. Something that you were so successful
in proving with universal grammar (language).
Chomsky: That is really a hope, it is not a scientific result. So little
is understood about human nature that you cannot draw any serious
conclusions. We can.t even answer questions about the nature of insects.
We draw conclusions . tentative ones . through a combination of our
intuitions, hopes, some experiences. In that way we may draw the
conclusion that humans have an instinct for freedom. But we should not
pretend that it is derived from scientific knowledge and understanding. It
isn.t and can.t be. There is no science of human beings and their
interactions or even simpler organisms that reaches anywhere near that
far.
It is getting so hard to keep up with this guy..
6. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=956
Leftist Fatheads
"The Nation" is a mega-moonbat magazine of the Far Left. In its latest
issue, it takes on the subject of the obesity epidemic in America and
searches for its "root causes", in "Junk Food Nation: Who.s to Blame for
Childhood Obesity?" by Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor. Not surprising for
anyone familiar with the magazine's Marxist bent, this turns out to be the
Bush Administration and capitalism. "The Nation" clearly prefers the
weight control techniques developed by Robert Mugabe and by North Korea.
The magazine comes out and, in a straight face, it endorses Teddy
Kennedy's personal campaign against obesity in America, which is not
Kennedy himself dieting but rather is his proposed Prevention of Childhood
Obesity Act. Really. The authors insist that the "food industry" is
coercing people into overeating the same way that "Big Tobacco" forces
people to smoke against their will. Really. It is all part of capitalist
greed. "For their money, the industry has been able to buy into a strategy
on obesity and food marketing that mirrors the approach taken by Big
Tobacco," opine the authors.
Now as it turns out, the epidemic of obesity in America is a serious
subject of some serious research, although certainly nothing you will ever
hear about in "The Nation". One of the best recent pieces was "The
Economics of Obesity" by Inas Rashad and Michael Grossman, which appeared
in the summer 2004 issue of ."ublic Interest".
The authors there use state-of-the-art statistical methods to identify the
true underlying causes of the obesity epidemic in the US, and the answers
will upset the fatheads over at "The Nation". The authors consider a large
number of plausible explanatory factors for the epidemic and let the
computer statistical methodology sort things out and identify the
culprits.
The Number One main cause for the rise in obesity turns out to be a
surprising one - the feminist revolution. Starting in 1980 there was an
enormous jump in the rate of people eating outside the home because of the
large increase in the numbers of married women with children taking jobs.
(Before 1980 the rate of eating out had been slowly dropping since World
War II.) When there is no stay-at-home mom to cook for them, family
members eat outside the home much more often, and this tends to be the
fatty stuff served over at the mall. Moms working are especially
significant in causing teenage obesity.
Anti-smoking campaigns were a secondary, if significant, causal factor as
well.
7. While wringing our hands over the insanity of the "disengagement",
let's us bear in mind that the anti-Oslo movement in Israel bears its own
share of responsibility. The Israeli anti-Oslo Right has diplayed
stupidity and incompetance for years. Here is not the place to document
it all. Recent ways in which the anti-Oslo Right manages to keep the
Lemming Left in power and its policies in implementation (I include Sharon
in that category, of course) is by
antagonizing most of the Israeli public by blocking highways, and by
failing to distance itself from the infantile conspiracism of people like
Chamish.
1. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=948
Holy Moonbatman!
Is nothing safe from the PC troopers? Not even Batman? Are the moonbats
succeeding where even the Penguin and the Joker failed?
Yes, superhero fans, Batman and Robin were the victims of Moonbatman
terror. A large portrait of the two superheroes kissing had been on
display at a NY "art" gallery, the Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts Gallery. But
DC Comics, which owns the rights to the dynamic duo, was not amused. It
threatened the gallery with suit for infringement of property rights. The
Gallery took flight faster than the Batmobile could follow. But you can
still see this and related pictures here. No one under the age of 30
should look though.
"DC Comics wants me to hand over all unsold work," said Ms Cullen with a
pout.
Arts website Artnet was also told to remove the series of semi-naked
images of Batman and Robin from its website. All these comic atrocities
were the watercolours works from the series "Queer Batman" by the "artist"
Mark Chamberlain.
2. Hoe Down
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=937
PC Hookers, Unite!
Professional hookers, er - I mean "sex workers", now have their own
politically-correct professional magazine, named "Spread". I am not
making this up! It promises to fight the stigmas associated with being a
hoe. Yes Virginia, some reactionary neoncons still think that selling
access to one.s privates should be restricted to Capitol Hill and the
Kennedy yacht!
The web site also gives practical, hands-on advice to those hoes seeking
to improve their ability to contribute to the GDP. It also organizes
"internships" on line, my guess being at the Bill Clinton Presidential
Library. No word yet about centerfolds. There is a special piece called
the "Scarlot Harlot's To-Do List" and another about the tribulations of
Thai hookers during the tsunami. Wonder if they told their tricks that
the earth moved..
It.s current issue is devoted in part to bashing Israel, which it calls
"Israel/Palestine". What a surprise.
3. U of Rhode Island Bonkershood:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18967