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}
As you know, PM Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz are attacking
one another, neither of whom has any idea of how to deal with the recent
wave of Palestinian terror and th ekidnapping of the Israeli soldier
hostage.
Well, I have located an interesting commentator who seems to have an
interesting take on what to do. I present here, for Olmert and Pertz to
consider.
The Master Plan for Dealing with the Crisis, from a knowledgable
strategic commentator:
"And the Canaanite heard that Israel had approached and he arose to battle
with Israel and he kidnapped a hostage. And Israel swore an oath saying,
'When we get our hands on those people we will seize all
their cities and confiscate everything in them.' And sure enough, right
after that Israel went in and seized all their cities and confiscated
their contents."
But, alas, right after that the Israelis started bitching and
whining, so a plague of annoying pests starting attacking them, as their
comeuppance and punishment. But eventually, when they got there act
together at last and finally got serious about going on the warfare
against th eterrorists, they annihilated the enemy.
***
The above sums up Chapter 21 of Numbers, part of this week's Torah
portion.
1. Back to the RRH doctrine?
Three days of intensive military action in Gaza with virtually no
terrorists killed? Battling Kassams by making sonic booms? More
"signalling that Israel is deadly serious"?
Yes, we are back to the RRH doctrine.
Here is an earlier piece of mine on this doctrine:
I've long suspected that it is the Israeli grand strategy to defeat the
Palestinians by forcing them to laugh themselves to death.
That seems to be the only possible way to understand the latest
resuscitation of the RRH Doctrine, which has dominated Israeli policy
toward the Palestinians and the Arab states since the early 1990`s.
The RRH Doctrine was invented in the early days of Oslo and stands for
"Really, Really Hard." Israeli governments would make deals to hand over
most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the PLO, while reassuring Israelis
that there was no reason for worry - if the Palestinians misbehaved,
Israel would hit back at them "Really, Really Hard."
The boy who cried wolf was a far more credible strategist.
Even if perchance anyone ever took the RRH threats seriously, by the
mid-1990`s the RRH was little more than an overly-long-running joke. Rabin
and Peres had threatened it during the early days of Oslo. Later, Prime
Minister Netanyahu, after each and every act of terrorism, would loudly
invoke RRH, but then did little, if anything, to retaliate. After
Netanyahu came Barak, who once again threatened RRH regularly. But his
only implementation of it consisted of chopper attacks on empty
Palestinian buildings - and only after the PLO was given advance
notification so that all humans and terrorists could be evacuated.
RRH was also used by Barak (and other prime ministers) to threaten
Hizbullah in Lebanon and their Syrian puppet masters. After each Hizbullah
attack on Israeli towns and on Israeli forces inside southern Lebanon,
Israel threatened the most serious RRH. But, in the end, the only
manifestation of RRH implemented by Barak consisted of a panicked
unilateral capitulation and withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which left
Hizbullah sitting smack dab on Israel's border, with thousands of its
rockets aimed at northern Israel and with Haifa in range.
When Ariel Sharon first revealed his "Gaza Disengagement Plan" after
winning the Israeli election, it too was accompanied by empty threats of
RRH. Israel could not get the PLO to make any concessions in exchange for
surrender of the Gaza Strip and the eviction of the Jewish population
there; Sharon nevertheless decided to implement the Mitzna Plan, against
which he had campaigned, and withdraw without any quid pro quo. He would
just go ahead with unilateral capitulation, whether the PLO liked it or
not. And if the PLO failed to contain Hamas and prevent terror attacks
against Israel after the withdrawal, why, then, Sharon's government would
order the Israeli Defense Forces to respond with serious RRH.
Yeah, sure.
Hours after the Gaza capitulation was completed and all Israeli troops and
settlers had been removed, the rocket and mortar attacks on the Negev
began. The PLO was calling Sharon's bluff.
Almost as old as the RRH Doctrine is the "Who Could Have Ever Predicted
That" Syndrome. Since Oslo, every new Israeli concession resulted in
escalated Palestinian violence. And the Israeli chattering classes would
sigh and ask rhetorically, "Who could have possibly foreseen this?"
Likewise after each violation of the Oslo Accords by the PLO, the media
and the left-wing politicians would pout, "Who could have predicted that?"
After years of daily proof that the entire Oslo concept was unworkable,
its advocates were still responding to each new failure with total
serendipity.
The Israeli media could not foresee any failures of the Oslo capitulations
and appeasements because the media are by and large the occupied
territories of Israel's radical Left. The overseas media were even less
capable of foreseeing the consequences of Oslo because they were far more
interested in bashing Israel than understanding anything about the Middle
East conflict.
The answer to the rhetorical question of "Who could have foreseen the
failures of Oslo?" is "Anyone not blinded by ideology." A few weeks after
the handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, I published my first
article predicting the complete failure of the Rabin-Peres Oslo initiative
- in fact, it was the first such article published in North America. I
predicted that the PLO would simply use any territory turned over to it by
Israel to build terror infrastructure and launch attacks on Israel, and I
wrote of future rocket attacks and sniper fire against Israeli towns from
the PLO-controlled areas years before they actually began in earnest. And
I was hardly alone in 20-20 foresight.
It was not particularly difficult in 1993 to see why Oslo would fail. It
is even easier now, with 12 years of disastrous "peace process"
experience, to understand why Sharon.s Gaza disengagement will result in
an enormous escalation of violence, not in any relaxation of tensions.
Let's give the Arabs some credit. Israel has been making so many threats
of RRH ever since the Oslo "peace process" began that a Palestinian leader
would have to be learning-disabled to take any of them seriously. If I
consider them a joke, why should Abu Mazen believe them?
The Oslo Accords produced the greatest escalation in Palestinian terrorism
and atrocities in modern Israeli history. At their most severe, Israeli
retaliations took the form of some targeted assassinations of Hamas and
PLO terror leaders. More often than not, Israeli retaliations consisted of
meaningless gestures like bombing the aforementioned empty buildings or
making sonic booms over terrorist concentrations, and of course the ever
louder empty threats of RRH.
On Israel's northern border, virtually no retaliations against Hizbullah
took place, even after Hizbullah kidnapped and murdered three Israeli army
officers and fired rockets into Israel.
All of this brings us to the latest rocket attacks by the PLO on Sderot a
few days ago. The main effect of the Gaza capitulation is that the PLO can
now import unlimited supplies of weaponry from Egypt, with no ability by
Israel to interfere. Israeli troops are no longer on the ground inside the
Gaza Strip.
We already see the results and we can clearly foresee the "unexpected"
consequences that will be taking place in the near future. The PLO and its
affiliates now have all the freedom they need to upgrade their rockets.
The new improved Kassam rockets are already able to hit Ashkelon from
Gaza. Sharon's Gaza capitulation will turn the Negev town of Sderot into
Israel's Guernica.
When the rockets now hit Sderot after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza,
Olmert and his people respond mainly with a new round of RRH. The
laughter from Ramallah was deafening. Let's note that, back before 1993,
when Israel held Gaza tightly with on-the-ground military rule, there were
no Kassam rockets in Gaza. The Palestinian savages threw stones at Jews
because real weapons were hard to procure.
The PLO knows what we all know; namely, that Olmert is afraid to take the
only action that, in the end, can end the shooting of Kassam rockets into
Jewish homes - R&D, or Re-Occupation and DeNazification. Let's hope his
successor will be less pusillanimous.
2. Jewish Assimilationist Liberuhs in action:
http://www.chijewishnews.com/cover.jsp#205047
3. Taken hostage
By Yossi Klein Halevi
Why Israel's attack on Gaza isn't enough
The New Republic on Line: June 29, 2006
JERUSALEM . What's the news?" we ask each other, and everyone understands
that the question refers to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by
Hamas. Though the old socialist Israel is barely a memory, in times of
crisis we again become collectivized.
Nothing unites Israelis in outrage more than the seizure of hostages. Next
week, on July 4, Israel will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Entebbe
operation that freed over a hundred Israeli hostages, and little has
changed since then in the national ethos of rescue. The last Zionist ideal
still shared by most Israelis is the determination to fight back. An
Israeli soldier held hostage is a taunt against the Zionist promise of
self-defense, an unbearable reminder of Jewish helplessness.
Our obsession with hostages is a tactical weakness but a strategic
strength. It allows terrorists a stunning psychological advantage: With a
single random kidnapping, they hold an entire society emotionally hostage.
Strategically, though, hostage-taking only strengthens Israeli resolve.
And resolve is precisely what the public now expects of its government. So
far, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has responded well. He began by issuing
two policy guidelines in dealing with the hostage crisis. The first is
that Israel won't negotiate over Gilad's release and won't exchange
prisoners. The second is that Hamas leaders . "political" as well as
"military" . will be held personally accountable for the fate of Gilad.
If Olmert's government hopes to retain its credibility among Israelis, it
needs to maintain those two principles.
In recent months, the public has become increasingly disillusioned with
the government's failure to adequately respond to the almost daily rocket
attacks on Israeli towns and villages, especially Sderot. No Israeli town
within the 1967 borders has experienced the kind of relentless attacks
that Sderot has suffered. Even Hizbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks on the
northern town of Kiryat Shmona in the early 1980s occurred in waves, with
periods of reprieve between them. In the ten months since the Israeli
withdrawal from Gaza, though, Sderot has barely known a day of peace.
After the withdrawal, Israelis expected the government to enforce a policy
of zero-tolerance for Palestinian attacks emanating from Gaza, even for
attacks that didn't cause fatalities. Instead, the government responded
unevenly, often ignoring rocket attacks that caused no damage.
Many Israelis see Hamas's raid on an Israeli military post within the 1967
borders as a result of the weakness Israel has projected. In yesterday's
letters column in the daily Maariv, for example, the hardline consensus
was almost unanimous. "We told you so," wrote one reader who identified
himself as "right wing." "Why doesn't Israel shut off electricity and
water to Gaza?" demanded another reader. "Enough words, it's time to act,"
insisted a third.
That perception of weakness could have far-reaching domestic consequences.
The premise of Olmert's centrist party, Kadima, is that only a hawkish
approach on security will convince Israelis to implement a dovish policy
on territory. Given the Sderot precedent, though, Olmert is failing to
uphold that centrist doctrine. For Olmert to win the public's agreement
for another unilateral withdrawal, he needs to begin proving that he is
capable of defending Tel Aviv from Palestinian rockets. And the place to
begin convincing Israelis is Gaza.
The military invasion of Gaza that began last night, and whose purpose is
to surround the area where Gilad is presumably being held, must only be
the first step. A brief invasion, a "show of force," is hardly adequate.
Instead, Israel needs to resume its policy of systematically targeting
Hamas leaders, just as it did several years ago, culminating in the
assassination of Sheik Yassin. That policy drove most of Hamas deep
underground and led to the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority.
Resuming assassinations against Hamas's political echelon is, of course, a
declaration of war against the Hamas regime. But given its official
sanctioning of kidnapping, Hamas has already declared war against Israel.
Hamas's adoption of the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq comes as no surprise.
After the killing of Zarqawi, Hamas issued a statement mourning his death
and urging continued "resistance," thereby making the Hamas regime the
world's only openly pro-Al Qaeda government. Unfortunately, the
international media missed the significance of that moment.
That lapse in media judgment is worth recalling in the coming days, when
much of the media will be presenting the "prisoners' document" . a set of
demands drawn up by Hamas and Fatah members imprisoned in Israel . as a
historic Hamas concession, offering "tacit" recognition of Israel. In
fact, the document does nothing of the sort. Nowhere does the document
recognize the right of Israel to exist. Instead, it calls for Israeli
withdrawal to the 1967 borders, followed by the "right" of Palestinian
refugees to resettle in Israel and demographically overwhelm the Jewish
state. The prisoners' document, in other words, is a plan for the phased
destruction of Israel . precisely why Hamas can endorse it.
Driving on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, I saw this graffiti: "Olmert,
gadol alecha" . which roughly translates as, "Olmert, the job is bigger
than you are." For Olmert to disprove that growing suspicion among
Israelis, he must commit himself to the destruction of the Hamas regime.
Sooner or later, Israel will have no choice but to adopt that policy. The
only question is whether Olmert will still be prime minister when that
happens.
1. I have been arguing for many years that there would be no alternative
to Israel's eventual complete re-conquering of the Gaza Strip and West
Bank. I argued that having a wall would do nothing to stop terrorist
attacks, including rockets and suicide bombings, unless Israel ALSO
controlled the territory on the OTHER side of the wall. Everything else
is a delusion. Nothing else will stop the violence.
Israel completely abandoned the Gaza Strip. The result was to turn the
Negev town of Sderot into the Israeli Guernica, and to trigger a wave of
murders and kidnappings. The lesson learned by Olmert is that the same
thing must be repeated in teh West Bank, so that Tel AViv and Jerusalem
will be the next Guernicas of Israel.
I coined this idea R&D = Re-Occupation and De-Nazification, of the West
Bank and Gaza.
As Israel reconquers Gaza, at least for a few moments, will the Israeli
public and its leaders at last come to their senses? As the Palestinian
terror groups, including those directly commanded by Abu Mazen, kidnap and
murder Israelis, including Israeli children, will Israelis at long last
wake up from their pipedream?
The Olmert-Peretz Military Doctrine:
"In Gaza late Wednesday, Israeli missiles also hit two empty Hamas
training camps, a rocket-building factory and several roads. Warplanes flew low
over the coastal strip, rocking it with sonic booms and shattering
windows."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060629/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians
2. Lying about "recognition":
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23155
3. Stifling free speech on campus:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23158
4. Concerning the brutal murder of the Jewish boy in the West Bank:
The Israeli government is "rediscovering Jewish roots" by recreating the
conditions that produced Bialik's poem, "The City of Slaughter," a searing
condemnation of Jewish passivity, from which the following is taken.
Descend then, to the cellars of the town,
There where the virginal daughters of thy folk were fouled,
Where seven heathen flung a woman down,
The daughter in the presence of her mother,
The mother in the presence of her daughter,
Before slaughter, during slaughter, and after slaughter!
Touch with thy hand the cushion stained; touch
The pillow incarnadined:
This is the place the wild ones of the wood, the beasts of the field
With bloody axes in their paws compelled thy daughters yield:
Beasted and swined!
Note also, do not fail to note,
In that dark corner, and behind that cask
Crouched husbands, bridegrooms, brothers, peering from the cracks,
Watching the sacred bodies struggling underneath
The bestial breath,
Stifled in filth, and swallowing their blood!
Watching from the darkness and its mesh
The lecherous rabble portioning for booty
Their kindred and their flesh!
Crushed in their shame, they saw it all;
They did not stir nor move;
They did not pluck their eyes out; they
Beat not their brains against the wall!
Perhaps, perhaps each watcher had it in his heart to pray:
A miracle, O Lord . and spare my skin this day!
http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.04.04/arts1.html
Plaut Verdict A Symptom Of Israel's Sick Judiciary
By: Allyson Rowen Taylor
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18695/Plaut_Verdict_A_Symptom_Of_Israel%27s_Sick_Judiciary.html
Neve Gordon is one of the most openly anti-Zionist leftist extremists
in Israeli academia. A lecturer in political science at Ben Gurion
University, itself a den of anti-Zionist radicalism, Gordon routinely
attacks Israel in his articles as being a fascist, apartheid regime, one
engaged in .state terrorism. against innocent Arabs. His articles have
been reprinted on pro-terror Islamofascist and neo-Nazi websites.
Gordon has also devoted much of his time and energy in recent years
to promoting Norman Finkelstein, an untenured faculty member at DePaul
University best known for his vulgar denunciations of Holocaust survivors
as cheats and liars. A review in The New York Times compared Finkelstein.s
book The Holocaust Industry to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Harvard.s Alan Dershowitz has lead the campaign to expose Finkelstein as
an anti-Semitic fraud and pseudo-scholar. Commentary magazine.s Gabriel
Schoenfeld has denounced Finkelstein.s views as .crackpot ideas, some of
them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis
around the world..
Gordon endorses Finkelstein.s opinions and theories about the
Holocaust and Israel, and his articles praising Finkelstein are featured
on countless anti-Semitic websites.
Gordon has a special dislike for Professor Steven Plaut, a professor
at the University of Haifa and columnist for The Jewish Press and some
other media outlets. Plaut has written many articles exposing the
extremism of Israeli leftists, is blunt about what he regards as .Israel.s
academic Fifth Column,. and is a contributor to the Israel Academic
Monitor watchdog group that exposes political extremism and bias on
Israeli campuses.
Several years ago, Plaut published an article denouncing Finkelstein
and people like Noam Chomsky as .Jews for Hitler. and criticizing Gordon
for his justification of Finkelstein.s attacks on Israel. Gordon was not
amused by that.
Shortly thereafter, following some particularly gruesome terrorist
attacks, the Israeli army was conducting anti-terror operations in the
West Bank. It placed Arafat.s headquarters under siege, demanding that
Arafat turn over a number of murderers being hidden in his .offices,.
including two who had assassinated Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi.
Gordon then illegally infiltrated the PLO.s Ramallah compound with a
group of .anarchists. for the explicit purpose of interfering with Israeli
soldiers. As reported in Israeli dailies at the time, they served as
.human shields. for Arafat and the hidden murderers. Israel.s daily Maariv
labeled the .human shield. group as .traitors.. A photograph of Gordon
embracing Arafat was carried in Israeli newspapers.
Less than 24 hours later, Plaut denounced the group to which Gordon
belonged in this .human shield. infiltration as .Judenrat Wannabes.. That
charge formed the basis for Gordon.s libel suit against Plaut. Gordon
hired a radical Arab lawyer to represent him and the two went shopping for
a court in which a politically sympathetic judge could be expected to be
assigned to the case.
While Gordon lives in Jerusalem and Plaut in Haifa, Gordon filed his
suit in Nazareth, a bastion of Arab radicalism. Most of the judges on the
Nazareth magistrate.s bench are Arabs. Coincidentally or not, the Gordon
suit against Plaut was placed on the docket of one of the most openly
political and extremist Arab judges there.
In recent years Israel has introduced a policy of .affirmative
action. in its public service in the form of appointing women and Arabs
(especially women Arabs) who do not necessarily have top qualifications
for the positions in question. Nazareth Magistrate.s Court Judge Reem
Naddaf had been the court.s registrar before being promoted to a
judgeship.
The verdict Naddaf issued is filled with her own political opinions.
Completely ignoring the context in which the .Judenrat wannabe. comment
was made . that is, Gordon.s illegal .human shield for terrorists.
activities . the judge ruled that Plaut.s comments were slanderous. She
went on to sing the praises of Arafat as the .legitimate leader of his
people. and defend the illegal activities of the .human shields. as
.legitimate protest.. But even more incredibly, a judge sitting on the
bench in the Jewish state endorsed Holocaust revisionism in her verdict.
In section 24 of said verdict Judge Naddaf wrote the following,
cited here verbatim and with no embellishment:
At times we are witness to the phenomenon in which some people
.dare. to re-examine the Holocaust and its dimensions, from various
aspects, whether it be the human, historic, scientific, political, etc.,
and where such people automatically are turned into objects for attack and
accusations of being anti-Semites and Holocaust Deniers, deserving of
being called Judenrat or Jews for Hitler.
The phenomenon is reinforced when factual data or opinions or
theories about the Holocaust are presented that happen to differ from
those published about it to date or which deviate from the prevailing
consensus.
This phenomenon is not understandable or justified, in my opinion,
and contradicts the principles of democracy, which should stand fast,
especially in those debates in which stormy public opinion re-examines
such sensitive and painful subjects.
The freedom to think, form an opinion, to investigate and re-examine
any historic event are basic elements in the world of democracy, and, if
we strip them from anyone, we empty them of meaning.
It is impossible and improper to turn the Holocaust into some sort
of .taboo. subject, about which people may not comment, think beyond,
investigate, or analyze unless it is within the framework of the consensus
and the .permissible,. as the defendant claims.
This defense of the right to engage in Holocaust revisionism could
have been the closing argument by David Irving.s lawyers, just before he
was convicted in Vienna of Holocaust denial. But they appear in a verdict
against freedom of speech issued by a judge in Israel. Her tortuous
defense of the .freedom to question. regarding the Holocaust is not being
used to defend dissident freedom of speech, but rather to justify her
denial of it to Plaut.
The judge ordered Plaut to pay Gordon damages; never mind that
Gordon had never claimed to have suffered any material damages, nor had
the judge found that he had.
The court ruling ignored all previous case law in Israel. Other
Israeli courts have defended the right to denounce and criticize public
figures as protected speech. Satire is always supposed to be protected.
There is even court precedent that says that calling someone a Nazi in
Israel is protected speech, especially when it refers to someone with
extremist political opinions. (Plaut never called Gordon a Nazi or a
Holocaust denier, but if he had, it should have been protected speech.)
The truly frightening thing about all this is that it is the worst
in a growing assault against freedom of speech in Israel. Free speech has
long been selectively defended by the Israeli courts, prosecutors, and
media. The most openly seditious statements of radical Arab militants and
leftist Jews is always protected speech, even when they openly endorse
terrorism and violence or call for Israel.s destruction. Right-wingers
enjoy no such protection. This open bias is possible because Israel has no
constitutional guarantee of free speech, no First Amendment(indeed, no
formal constitution at all).
But that is not the only threat to Israeli democracy. The very
presence on the bench of a judge like Reem Naddaf is the ultimate proof,
if any were still needed, that incompetent and biased judges are being
appointed with alarming regularity.
Meanwhile, for the sake of the future of Israeli democracy, let us
hope this travesty is overturned on the appeal Plaut is filing.
Allyson Rowen Taylor is an activist living in Los Angeles. She was
one of the founding members of Standwithus.com and is the mother of two
young men, one currently a soldier in the Nachal unit of the IDF.
2. The Norman Finkelstein Primer:
http://www.campusj.com/files/2005/04/18/10/14/32/dershowitzpamphletfinkelstein.doc
1. Tough!
By Steven Plaut
Quick, take a fast current events quiz:
1. Since the start of the Palestinian "intifada", how many innocent
Palestinian civilians have been intentionally murdered by Israel?
2. Since the start of the Palestinian "intifada", how many innocent
Israeli civilians have been intentionally murdered by the PLO, the Hamas,
and their affiliates?
Now if you have been relying on the mainstream media, you will be forgiven
for not knowing the correct answers to those two questions. The correct
answer to the first question is "zero", and the correct answer to the
second question is "All of them!"
That's right. Not a single innocent Palestinian has been intentionally
killed by Israel during the past two decades of "intifada" violence. But
every single one of the hundreds of Jewish civilians killed was an
intentional act of Palestinian murder.
Sure, plenty of guilty Palestinians have been killed, and these include
murderers, leaders in terror organizations, rank and file terrorists, and
people setting up rocket launchers to fire at Jewish civilians. And sure,
there have also been innocent Palestinian civilians who were killed or
injured when the Jews shot back. These are people who were killed in the
same Israeli anti-terror operations necessitated by Palestinian terrorist
aggression and atrocities.
There is a fundamental difference, however, between Palestinian civilians
getting killed in anti-terror operations and reprisals by Israel and
Israeli civilians, who are killed by Palestinian Islamofascists. The
Palestinian dead are unintended collateral damage from operations aimed at
stopping rocket attacks and other terrorist attacks against Israeli
civilians. True, Israeli anti-terror operations are not so "surgically
exact" that only guilty terrorists get killed in them. I am quite sure
that if and when such a precise military technology is invented, for
killing only guilty terrorists when they hide among innocent civilians,
Israel will be the first country on earth to adopt it. However, until
then, when Palestinians intentionally target and murder Jewish civilians,
innocent Palestinian civilians may suffer the consequences of Arab terror.
Jewish civilians are ALWAYS the target of Palestinian terror. Israeli
soldiers hurt by the terrorists are generally the unintended collateral
damages.
Israel suffers from a fundamental strategic problem, which damages its
ability to defend itself, namely, the fact that modern Hebrew does not
have a linguistic equivalent to the American slang expression "Tough!"
True, it has some words for "What a Shame," but they do not quite convey
the same meaning. As a result, Israeli politicians generally fail to
respond to whines from the world about Palestinian civilians getting hurt
in counter-terror operations by saying, "Tough!"
There has never been a war in which only soldiers get killed, and there
does not exist a weapons technology that allows military strikes to take
place in an exact manner where no civilians near military targets ever get
hurt. Such surgical precision is all the more impossible when terrorists
intentionally hide within and behind civilian populations. International
law recognizes the rights of countries at war to attack terrorists and
even soldiers when they are hiding among civilians, even when such attacks
produce civilian deaths. International law assigns blame for those deaths
on the belligerents who use the civilians as their "human shields". As
well it should.
When German civilians were killed in massive allied bombing of Germany in
World War II, when schools with German children were blown to bits, the
American command did not send out forensics crews to examine whether the
shell or bomb had really come from an American plane or perhaps from
something else. The Allied command just said "Tough!". Nazi Germany had
started the war, engaged in barbarous aggression and genocide, and Germany
. including its civilians . would have to bear the consequences. Don't
like German children being targeted? Then don.t start a world war.
Ditto for Japanese civilians killed in World War II. Let us keep in mind
that far more innocent Japanese civilians died in the conventional bombing
of Tokyo than in the two nuclear explosions. Bombing Tokyo was necessary
to end the war. (Actually, so was bombing Hiroshima.) Civilians died
as a result? Tough!
When Palestinians on a Gaza beach are killed by an Israeli shell (if that
is what really happened, and there are reasons to doubt it), then the
moral responsibility for those deaths rests squarely on the shoulders of
the Palestinian terrorists who necessitate Israeli return fire. These are
the same terrorists who have fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells
into Israeli civilian areas, even after Israel completely withdrew from
the Gaza Strip. These are the murdering Islamofascists who have turned
the Negev town of Sderot, well inside Israel's pre-1967 borders, into the
Israeli equivalent of Guernica, under daily bombardment. Sderot's
low-income civilians live in bunkers, afraid for their lives.
Don't want Palestinian civilians killed when Israel shoots back? Simple.
Stop the rocket attacks on Sderot.
Don't like Israeli reprisals? Simple. Stop the terror atrocities
committed by Palestinians against Jews.
You want Palestinians to move about freely without being searched at
checkpoints? Simple. Stop the campaign of bombings, suicide mass
murders, and atrocities by the Palestinians. When the Palestinians stop
murdering Jews, no one will have to check their cars. When Palestinian
ambulances no longer carry explosives and murderers, no one will stop them
for inspection.
You want the Palestinians to earn decent wages, have a comfortable life?
Simple. Suppress Palestinian terrorism. Stop Palestinian rocket
aggression. Then they can even hold day jobs in Israel if they want.
They are welcome to shop in Israel and get Israeli medical treatment. No
problem!
But as long as the terror continues, don't expect Israel to respond by
turning the other cheek and abandoning self-defense. Don't like it?
TOUGH! When suicide bombers blow up Israeli buses and cafes, military
strikes at the perps will continue and Palestinian civilians may well die.
Tough! You don't want innocent Palestinian civilians to have to die?
Stop the mass atrocities against Jewish children and other living things!
Don't like civilians getting hurt in wars? Then don't start wars of terror
and aggression against Israel.
The Bash-Israel lobby keeps coming up with new forms of political
aggression against the Jewish state. The newest goes something like this.
Until Israel is technologically capable of killing terrorists hiding in
the middle of cities full of civilians without a single Palestinian
civilian being injured as "collateral damage", then Israel should be
coerced into adopting a policy of Quaker pacifism, under which it does not
respond or retaliate at all to terror atrocities.
In other words, by demanding that Israel only implement 100% pure military
tactics that no other army on earth has ever adopted, the Bash-Israel
lobby is in effect really insisting that Israel stop defending its own
civilians altogether. Israel should just respond to the firing of
thousands of rockets at its civilians by turning the other cheek, becoming
the first nation on earth to adopt such pacifism as its military strategy.
Israel must be disarmed, while the terrorism must be rewarded. And if
Israel dares to shoot back, it becomes the aggressor. By the same logic,
Britain and the US were the real aggressors against Germany in 1944.
Such disingenuous demands for utopian purity in military operations, even
when they come from Israel's own Leftists, are little more than a demand
for unconditional Israeli capitulation to terror. Indeed, the only
permissible defensive strategy such people are willing to allow Israel to
follow is such capitulation.
Let us stop with the rhetorical pretenses and affectations! People who
are "only" outraged when Palestinian civilians are unintentionally hurt by
Israel, but have nothing to say against the mass rocket attacks on Sderot,
are naked anti-Semites. They consider Jewish children legitimate targets
of Arab aggression and Islamofascist terror because they hate Jews. In
reality, they do not care a fig about Palestinian civilian casualties.
Such causalities are such delightful propaganda tools that can be
exploited to demonize the Jews.
There is only one effective way to prevent Palestinian civilian
casualties, and that is to stop the Palestinian terrorist aggression
against Israel. But that is the one solution to the problem that these
modern day pogromchiki, including the academic brownshirts, will never
allow to be implemented.
2. June 28, 2006
Stop Terror at Its Source
By MICHAEL OREN
June 28, 2006; Page A14
JERUSALEM -- Dawn broke yesterday over the Israel-Gaza border on a surreal
but not unfamiliar scene: Rows of Merkava tanks, armored personnel
carriers and Humvees were assembled in preparation for an incursion into
the strip. These forces -- when given the green light -- would punch
through booby-trapped refugee camps in search of Hamas and Islamic Jihad
gunmen, while Israeli jets and helicopters hunt the terrorists from above.
By invading Gaza, Israel hopes to counter increasingly bold Palestinian
attacks -- such as the firing of some 1,000 Qassam rockets at Israeli
border towns and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas earlier
this week. The troops will probably net a large number of terrorists and
may rescue the captured soldier. But while the operation may flex its
military muscle, it cannot restore Israel's deterrence power or prevent
future rocket attacks and kidnappings. Indeed, the attack may well prove
Pyrrhic -- inflicting greater injury on Israel than on the Palestinians.
The quandary Israel confronts today originated in the unilateral
withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza last August. A
sizable majority of Israelis supported disengagement, excruciating as it
was, as a means of achieving a national consensus on the country's borders
and of preserving its vital Jewish majority.
Yet even those Israelis most in favor of the Gaza pullout understood that
many Palestinians would interpret the move as a strategic retreat and a
victory for Hamas and al-Aqsa terror. "We shot at the Jews and they fled
Gaza," they would say, "so let's keep shooting and they'll abandon Tel
Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem." Israel could have refuted that claim by
responding immediately and massively to every infiltration and to every
rocket fired, irrespective of whether the attacks caused Israeli
casualties. Gaza is now a de facto independent state, Israel should have
declared, and like any other state it must bear the consequences of its
aggression.
* * *
But Israel did none of this. On the contrary, infiltrations and rocket
strikes began almost the day after the Gaza disengagement. The primary
target was Sderot, a working-class town in the western Negev populated
mostly by long-settled immigrants from North Africa and more recent
arrivals from Russia. Israel responded with missile attacks aimed at
eliminating the Palestinian rocket crews and destroying the Qassam
factories. But the crews were too elusive and the factories too readily
rebuilt.
The attacks against Sderot and other border towns intensified -- several
Qassams struck Askhelon, Israel's major industrial city in the south --
and the Palestinians elected a Hamas government sworn to escalate the
violence. Israel retaliated by blasting the Qassam launching areas with
artillery fire, but the barrages did little but churn up dirt and
accidentally hit civilians. The Jewish state, from a Palestinian
perspective, seemed helpless.
Israel's impotence was the product of several factors, firstly Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's reluctance to reoccupy Gaza so soon after
evacuating it. Then came Mr. Sharon's stroke and the Israeli elections,
during which, traditionally, Israel refrains from staging large-scale
operations. Finally, Ehud Olmert succeeded in cobbling together a
left-of-center coalition that pledged to proceed with the unilateral
disengagement from the territories (or, as it is now called, convergence),
but largely abandoned Mr. Sharon's hard-hitting antiterror tactics.
Though himself a resident of Sderot, Minister of Defense Amir Peretz, a
Laborite and advocate of renewed talks with the Palestinians, vowed to
exercise maximum restraint and to "count the shells" that the Israel
Defense Forces fired into Gaza. Indeed, when Qassams were smashing into
Sderot last week and Mr. Peretz's neighbors were on a hunger strike in
front of his house, the defense minister was in Jerusalem stumping for his
candidates in the Jewish Agency elections.
Israel's inaction has provided a bonanza to Hamas. By demonstrating that
disengagement impaired rather than enhanced Israeli security, Hamas has
dissuaded many Israelis from supporting a similar withdrawal from the West
Bank, from where Qassams could be launched at Tel Aviv and the Ben-Gurion
airport. By firing the rockets from densely populated neighborhoods, the
Palestinians have forced Israel to kill and wound civilian bystanders,
sullying its reputation abroad. Indeed, many world leaders and virtually
all of the press hastened to condemn Israel for allegedly firing a shell
onto a Gaza beach that killed eight Palestinians. That the IDF denied
firing the shell and that the Palestinians destroyed exculpatory evidence
by gouging shrapnel from the victims' limbs could not repair the damage to
Israel's image.
Collateral damage not only hurts Israel's international standing, it also
divides the country internally. Many Israelis grieve over the deaths of
innocent Palestinians, even those incurred in successful strikes against
terrorists. Israel's Supreme Court is now considering two lawsuits against
the IDF, both filed by Israelis, for the unintentional deaths of 15
civilians while killing Hamas commander Selah Shahada in 2002.
The deaths of more than a dozen Palestinian civilians by Israeli fire in
the last few weeks has further widened these schisms, pinning the
government between the leftists who denounce its callousness and the
generals who disdain its sheepishness. An Israeli raid into Gaza will
almost certainly result in a frightful number of civilian deaths. The
press will once again focus on funerals and mourning families and forget
the reason for Israel's action. Israelis will once again agonize over
whether these casualties were justified or avoidable.
Palestinians will not be the only ones killed. Hundreds of Qassams fell on
Sderot but it took the deaths of two soldiers and the kidnapping of a
third to move the government to consider major military action. Soldiers
are Israel's Everyman -- or rather Everychild -- and Israelis are acutely
sensitive to their safety. Yet in retaliating for the rocket attacks and
trying to free the hostage, the IDF will almost certainly suffer
casualties.
After a few days of heated battles and accusations of Israeli atrocities,
the government will be compelled to extract its forces from Gaza, but not
all the soldiers will be going home. And the rockets will keep raining on
Sderot. Posing as defenders of the land, Hamas will be made more, not
less, popular by the Israeli attack, and Abu Mazen will be commensurately
weakened. Mr. Olmert will be unable to proceed on convergence and the
Israeli right will begin its inexorable return to office.
There is, however, one way to avert a public relations disaster for
Israel, to limit casualties, and to restore Israel's deterrence power:
Israel must return to the targeted-killing policy that enabled Mr. Sharon
to triumph over terrorist organizations. Israel must target those
Palestinians who order others to fire rockets from within civilian areas
but whose families are located safely away from the firing zones. No Hamas
or Islamic Jihad leader should be immune from such reprisals -- neither
Prime Minister Ismail Haniya nor Khaled Meshal, who masterminds Hamas from
Damascus. Though there is certain to be some international backlash, the
damage to Israel's image will likely be temporary. Who today remembers
Abdel Aziz Ranitisi and Sheikh Yassin? Those responsible for causing
injury and death to both Israelis and Palestinians must pay the ultimate
price. Only then can quiet be restored to Israel's borders and progress
toward either unilateral or negotiated solutions resumed.
Mr. Oren, senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is author of
"Six Days of War" (Oxford, 2002).
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115146041260192673.html
3. In the US, a pro-terror seditious professor can be fired:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9424240/detail.html
Why not in Israel?
4. Tikkun Magazine Pseudo-Rabbis Celebrate the Kidnapping of the Israeli
Soldier:
http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/news_item.2006-06-26.2041907900
5. Gyno-paganism comes to Tikkun:
http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/news_item.2006-06-26.1959734093
6. Tikkun mourns the killing of al-Zarqawi:
http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/news_item.2006-06-21.6538159834
7. The Outing of Ami Isseroff, rabid Beilinite:
http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=1598
8. Targeted Assassinations:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23116
9. Naked anti-Semitism at Yediot Ahronot:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3267917,00.html
1. We have had occasion in past to comment on the anti-Israel seditious
activities of the Cinemateques in Israel. These are far-leftist
"alternative" movie theaters that are funded partly by the municipality
taxpayers, and screen things like the Goebbels-style blood libel film
"Jenin Jenin," and similar works of "art".
This week, the Tel Aviv Cinemateque is screening a film about Leila
Khaled, the notorious woman plane hijacker who was part of the early
plague of plane hijackings in the 1970s, organized by the communist PFLP
terror group. Take a look at this:
http://www.cinema.co.il/movies/movie.asp?movieId=1072
It is the film poster from the Enemateque-er-I-mean-Cinemateque. Note
how it sings the praises of the hijacker who "put the Palestinian nation
on the map" and calls her a heroine.
It is probably a waste of time, but the director of the Enemateque is Alon
Garbouz at aloncin@cinema.co.il
You could send him a cyber-moon if you sit on a xerox machine and scan the
result.
2. A must read:
http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-046-levin.htm
3. A blog worth reading:
http://www.markeichenlaub.blogspot.com/
4. Lighter side - Mensch in Tights (NY Post):
June 19, 2006 -- HE'S the ultimate American icon - tall, built, brave. And
hot.
But now, as Superman is set to fly onto the big screen next week, bringing
truth, justice and rippling muscles to a new generation of moviegoers,
there comes word that the Man of Steel has a secret.
The man behind the red cape is a Yeshiva boy.
Superman - Jewish?
"Only a Jew would think of a name like Clark Kent," says Brooklyn Rabbi
Simcha Weinstein.
"He's the bumbling, nebbish, Jewish stereotype. He's Woody Allen. Can't
get the girl. Can't get the job - at the same time, he has this tremendous
heritage he can't express."
Weinstein has just published "Up, Up, and Oy Vey!" (Leviathan Press), a
work that concludes, with scholarly authority and voluminous footnotes,
that beneath Supe's form-fitting tights, there lurks a circumcision.
In the book, and on his Web site, www.rabbisimcha.com, he outs the Jewish
roots of other superheroes who conceal their true identities - an
undoubtedly Jewish trait - such as Batman, the Hulk and Spider-Man.
Weinstein grew up in England as Simon, a boy who worshipped the
pop-culture gods of Indiana Jones and James Bond.
6. The Latest word from Israel's Cheerleaders for IslamoFascism:
The Coalition of Women for Peace
Invites everyone to an evening about
FASCISM
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
From 18:30 to 21:00*
In the Leonardo Hall at Kibbutz Ha'artzi House
13 Leonardo da Vinci St. Tel Aviv
Professor Moshe Zuckerman, Tel Aviv University: The characteristics and
history of Fascism
The writer Mohammed Nafah, Lessons from the struggle against Fascism in
the 1930s and 1940s
Dr. Shira Ohayon, Feminist and multi-cultural education as a way out of
Fascism in Israel
Tamar Gozansky, ex-MK Communist Party, Fascism in Israel today - Is there
any danger?
7. Comedy moment: A different sort of Plaut news (note who the writer
is):
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060203/NEWS03/602030325/1029/NEWS13
8. Israeli Left celebrates the kidnapping of the soldier:
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=106133
1. Ben Dror Yemini, the Deputy editor of Maariv, published the following
column this past Friday in the weekend edition of the paper, June 23, 06
(my translation). It concerns the Holocaust revisionist statements by the
Arab woman judge, Reem Naddaf, in the Nazareth court verdict that ruled
that illegal pro-terror activities by an anti-Israel extremist are
protected speech, but criticism of those same illegal pro-terror
activities is "slander". Here is the full text in translation:
Judicial Autism
By Ben-Dror Yemini
"Anyone today who 'dares' to recheck the events of the Holocaust and
its scale, from any point of view, whether it be human, historic,
scientific, political, or otherwise, immediately is turned into the target
for attacks and accusations of being an anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier,
worthy of being dubbed Judenrat or a Jew for Hitler.
"This phenomenon becomes buttressed even more when factual statistics,
data, or opinions and theories about the Holocaust are presented that
differ from the statistics about the Holocaust published to date or that
deviate from the known consensus.
"This phenomenon is in opposition to the principles of democracy,
which are supposed to stand firm especially in those cases where stormy
public debate arises about such sensitive and painful subjects."
That sums up, albeit in a somewhat palliated manner, the position of
the President of Iran, Ahmed Ahmadinejad, about to hold an assembly of
Holocaust Deniers in Teheran. He is, as is well known, a stout defender
of academic freedom of expression. Therefore groups of Holocaust Deniers,
who "deviate from the known consensus", together with some others, will be
assembling in Iran, and the 'truth' of the Holocaust Deniers will be
published for all to see.
Except that it was not Ahmadinejad who made those statements cited
above! These were all statements that were written by a woman judge in
Israel (Reem Naddaf of Nazareth court . SP), in her ruling in a libel suit
between two academics. The rhetoric that justifies and enables hooligans
and bigots to use "freedom of expression" and "academic freedom" in order
to promote their agenda has arrived in Israel as well. It matters not at
all which side is in the right in the specific court case. There was no
justification for these pronouncements about "departures from the
consensus" regarding the Holocaust, in which Holocaust Deniers wash their
filthy laundry, to make a determination. And lest we err, the woman judge
adds for us that she is simply not aware that David Irving himself is a
Holocaust Denier. She does not know that Irving was judged in Britain
and was declared a Holocaust Denier and a liar. She does not know that
this same Irving is now sitting in prison in Vienna for Holocaust Denial.
This woman judge is traveling down the familiar path of phony "rights
discourse". This is where automatic judgment is always relativistic,
where it denies there is any reality at all, only "theories". Actually,
most liberal freedoms are misused by fringe elements. In the USA, these
include the Neo-Nazis marching through neighborhoods of Holocaust
survivors in Skokie, and in Israel they include Kahanists who want to
march through Umm al-Fahm, as well as extremist fanatics like Azmi Bishara
who endorse "resistance" . meaning terror. All this in the name of
freedom of expression.
In Europe, unlike Israel, a red line is being drawn. Hence political
parties who oppose basic rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom to
organize, are denied constitutional protections for their own rights,
because these are rights that these groups would revoke if they were to
take power in those countries. This is called "democracy defending
itself". This is a worthy model for implementation in Israel. When it is
so implemented, instead of liberal rights being the captives of people
like Azmi Bishara and Baruch Marzel, those rights will be restored to
their proper position.
*** (To here, the article by Ben-Dror Yemini. All the above is HIS
statement and opinion.)
2. Pink Fraud:
http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/8732.htm
3. Saint Ann:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-daum24jun24%2C0%2C590157.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
4. An older NY Times piece on some members of the Academic Fifth Column
Eager to Place the Blame for a Never-Ending Conflict
By NED MARTEL
Published: January 28, 2005
The attacks and counterattacks in and around Israel leave so many wounds
to heal and lives to rebuild that one task seems beside the point,
impossible even: assigning blame. Still, some bloodshed rises to the level
of war crimes in the eyes of various international observers, and a new
80-minute pro-Palestinian documentary presents a condensed argument in
favor of prosecuting Israeli leaders in the court of American public
opinion.
The film, "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: U.S. Media and the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," makes a relentless case against what it
sees as bigoted, brutal Israeli soldiers who demand papers and permits
from Palestinians who are merely trying to live ordinary lives. The film
casts Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, as the decisive destabilizer
who has thrown the region seriously, murderously out of balance. Mr.
Sharon, the filmmakers assert, has crossed military and symbolic
boundaries in a way that seemed destined and perhaps intended to ignite
hostility. The film also finds fault with American broadcast networks for,
it says, minimizing protests against such actions and, in effect,
condoning increased violence.
The documentary was written and directed by Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut
Jhally. Mr. Jhally is a professor of communications at the University of
Massachusetts, from which Ms. Ratzkoff graduated in 1999. The two worked
together on a 2004 documentary, "Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the
Selling of American Empire," which explored similar themes of war and
media manipulation.
In their current film, on-camera interviews with academics and advocates -
like Noam Chomsky and Michael Lerner, the editor of the magazine Tikkun -
add to the Palestinian outcry that Arabs in the region are largely
ignored, mischaracterized and even demonized in the American news media.
This perceived lack of sympathy is described in conspiratorial terms as
the masterstroke of Israeli image-makers and message massagers.
Excerpts from American news reports are shown in which the word
"retaliate" is often assigned to Israeli military operations, while
"attack" is used in the case of Palestinian actions, when, the film says,
the opposite is often true. A former Palestinian spokeswoman, Hanan
Ashrawi, laments the honors bestowed on the Israeli dead after a skirmish,
while the Arab losses are barely noted. "You get the fullness of his
humanity," she says, noting American news reports of one Israeli victim.
"You learn a lot: his name, his hopes, his dreams." American audiences, we
are told, are also manipulated into grouping Arab suicide bombers in this
conflict with those adding to the chaos in Iraq.
Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, takes
the blame game further, implying that American broadcasters are pliant and
reductionist. "In addition to the military occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza, Israel is also involved in an attempt to ideologically occupy the
American media," Mr. Jensen says.
As eager as the film is to measure American journalists' shortcomings, the
documentarians make little effort to detail diplomatic failures by the
Palestinian leadership. The conflict is known for many broken vows and
broken hearts on both sides. This one-sided account brings some
lesser-known offenses to light and advances a scenario that is bold and
detailed. But it is hardly dispassionate.
'Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: 'U.S. Media and the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict'
Opens today in Manhattan.
Written (in English) and directed by Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally;
director of photography, Kelly Garner; edited by Kenyon King and Ms.
Ratzkoff; music by Thom Monahan; produced by Ms. Ratzkoff; released by
Arab Film Distribution. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street,
Greenwich Village. Running time: 80 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Loretta Alper (Narrator) and Seth Ackerman, Maj. Stav Adivi, Rabbi
Arik Ascherman, Hanan Ashrawi, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Neve Gordon,
Toufic Haddad, Sam Husseini, Hussein Ibish, Robert Jensen, Michael Lerner,
Karen Pfeifer, Alisa Solomon and Gila Svirsky
5. The Israeli "Academics" Behind the Canadian Boycott Resolution Last
week:
Israeli "Academics" Endorse the Canadian Boycott of Israel:
"As Israelis we express our support of the CUPE boycott of Israel, honor
your courageous initiative, and fervently hope that it will set an example
for many others to follow..."
Signed,
-Jeff Halper, (A retired professor at Ben Gurion University)
-Ofer Neiman, (The Institute of Computer Science, The Hebrew U)
-Sergeiy Sandler, (University Instructor, Beer-Sheva)
-Tanya Reinhart, (recently forced to resign from Linguistics, Media and
cultural studies, Tel Aviv U)
-Elat Benda, (The Department of Philosophy ,Tel Aviv U)
-Yehuda Kupferman, (Department of French, Tel-Aviv U)
-Haggai Katriel, (Mathematics Department, The Hebrew U)
-Zvi Cohen, (Institute for Desert Research, Ben Gurion U)
-Roman Vater, (Tel Aviv University)
-Rachel Giora, (Department of Linguistics Tel Aviv U)
-Michal Peled Ginsburg,(French and Comparative Literatures, Northwestern
U)
-Kobi Snitz, (Postdoc at Ben Gurion U, Mathematics Department, visitor at
U of Maryland, active in "anarchists" against Israel)
-Moshe Machover, (Philosophy Department, U of London) behind th eattempts
in London to indict Israeli army officers
-Amos Goldberg, (The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew U)
-Michal Schwartz, (Neuroimmunology, Weizmann Institute)
-Nomi Shir, (Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben Gurion U)
-Uri Katz, (Department of biology, Technion)
-Anat Matar (Philosophy Department, Tel Aviv University)
-Amir Orian, (Visiting scientist from Technion at Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center)
-Veronika Cohen, (Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance)
-Victoria Buch, (The Fritz Haber Center & Department of Physical
Chemistry, Hebrew U)
-Ruchama Marton, (Tel Aviv U, Medical School, Institute for
Psychotherapy), Neve Gordon's sidekick
-Diana Dolev, (Teaches at two schools of design. Her PhD dissertation
analyzed the militarization of Mt. Scopus campus)
http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=3263&page_data[id]=178&userid=3112&cookie_lang=en&the_session_id=b253a3762bd5969d2a75f86c40b1c5f2
6. For more information on the Israeli Academic Fifth Column, go to
www.israel-academia-monitor.com
1. This is not a spoof:
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=105917
Guns Used in Fatah Terror Attacks Supplied by Israel
Friday, June 23, 2006 / 27 Sivan 5766
Members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. personal guard,
.Force 17., used Israel's weapons to shoot Israelis this week, according
to Israeli security and PA terrorist sources.
Israel is the supplier of the weapons used in the gunfire that killed one
Israeli and wounded several others, according to an interview written by
journalist Aaron Klein and released Friday by WorldNetDaily. Klein quoted
Abu Yousuf, a senior member of Force 17, who like many other guards is a
member of the Al-Aksa Martyrs. Brigades terror group.
...
Al-Aksa Martys. Brigades has been on the U.S. State Department list of
terrorist organization since March 2002. The group took joint credit with
the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization for the April 19th bombing of a
Tel Aviv restaurant in which 11 people were murdered, including 16 year
old Daniel Wultz of Florida.
2. Today Ward Churchill. Tomorrow Neve Gordon?
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/education/article/0%2C1299%2CDRMN_957_4773332%2C00.html
3. Berkeley Bozos:
http://www.zombietime.com/stop_killling_palestinian_children/
4. Malpractice in Gaza:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23062
5. Santa Cruz's "Renewal" (Tikkun) Leader Murdered:
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/29584/format/html/displaystory.html
6. Feder on the Moonbatocracy!
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23063
7. Headline this morning:
Seven Arrested in Sears Tower Terror Plot; None of them Israeli Professors
By Associated Press
AP June 23, 2006
8. Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School on Zarqawi's death:
As the civilized world justly celebrates the long overdue killing of Abu M
Zarqawi, it must recall that his death was brought about by what has come
to be known as "targeted assassination" or "targeted killings." This is
the same technique that has been repeatedly condemned by the international
community when Israel has employed it against terrorists who have murdered
innocent Jews. When Israel targeted the two previous heads of Hamas, the
British foreign secretary said: "targeted killings of this kind are
unlawful and unjustified." The same views expressed at the United Nations
and by several European heads of state. It was also expressed by various
Human Rights organizations.
Now Great Britain is applauding the targeted killing of a terrorist who
endangered its soldiers and citizens. What is the difference, except that
Israel can do no right in the eyes of many in the international community.
Surely there is no real difference between Zarqawi on the one hand and
terrorist leaders from Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the other hand. If it is
argued that Sheik Yassin was merely a spiritual leader of Hamas (a total
lie since he explicitly authorized numerous terrorist acts), then it must
be noted that one of the people targeted by the United States was Sheik
Abd-al-Rahman, who was also described as a "spiritual advisor."
When the United States and British forces have engaged in targeted
killings of terrorists, there have often been collateral deaths of non
terrorists, as there apparently were in this instance as well. Collateral
deaths are inevitable when terrorists hide among civilians and use them as
shields. Both Israel and the United States make great efforts to reduce
the number of collateral deaths and injuries but they do not always
succeed.
I applaud the targeted killing of Al Zarqawi. His death will save many
innocent lives. But I also applaud the targeted killings of anti-Israel
terrorists whose deaths save numerous lives. All decent people must insist
on a single standard of judging tactics such as targeted killing. It is
nothing short of bigotry to approve this tactic when used by the United
States and Great Britain but to condemn it when it is used by Israel.
9. This is a spoof but this time it was NOT written by me. It was sent
to me by someone from Earthlink.net. Thought you would enjoy it:
Olmert Apologizes to Chancellor Hitler for Civilian Deaths
By JAMAL HALABY (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
June 22, 2006 9:28 AM EDT
PARIS, France - British Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologized Thursday
for the deaths of Nazi civilians in recent airstrikes, expressing "deep
regret" at a summit in which he embraced and kissed German President
Adolf Hitler.
The show of warmth came at a breakfast meeting in Paris, that was meant to
help melt the increasingly icy relations between Jews and Germans
following Nazi militants' rise to power.
The meeting in the ancient town of Paris, sponsored by France's Foreign
Minister Dalaudier, produced promises on both sides of a more substantive
meeting to come. It also brought the rare apology from Olmert, who said he
felt "deep regret for the death of innocent Nazis ."
Thirteen Nazi civilians have been killed in British airstrikes in the past
week, including two people slain by an errant missile Wednesday at a house
in Cologne.
"It is against our policy and I am very, very sorry," Olmert said.
He did not mention a June 9 beach explosion in which another eight Nazi
civilians were killed. Nazis blame Britain's Jews for that incident, but
Britain has denied responsibility.
The RAF commander said the airstrikes would continue and the rising
civilian deaths were largely due to more militant activity in densely
populated areas, he said.
"We have to make a great effort to try everything possible to avoid
hitting civilians," he told British Army Radio, adding that the
airstrikes were "the most accurate and the best possible option without
launching a broad and very significant (ground) operation."
After the informal get-together on the sidelines of a two-day gathering of
Nobel prize winners, including the notorious Shimon Peres, Olmert and
Hitler pledged to meet again within weeks. Peres, the winner of the
Nobel prize for appeasement, received loud applause from the Germans in
the audience when he remarked: "Auschwitz, schmautzwitz, the Jews should
quit being hysterical over this. After all, plenty of Jews will be
incinerated in Treblinka, as well. What's important is that we in the West
build hotels, not tanks, and that the German banks continue to siphon
money into my non-governmental Peace and Democracy Institute, which
funnels money into my personal bank account, which enables me to wear such
nice, expensive suits, among other things."
"We discussed one point - how to prepare for a forthcoming meeting,"
Hitler said after returning to Berchtesgaden . "Preparations for the
meeting will begin next week," he said.
An Hitler aide, Herr Haj Amin el Hussein, said the meeting would happen
"in the coming two weeks," and that Hitler was awaiting word from
Britain about when and where to schedule it.
Olmert and Hitler both said they had been in regular contact by
telephone . Olmert said, "Herr Hitler is a man who can be trusted; a man
who stands by his word."
Asked about his handshake with Olmert, Herr Hitler said, "It was very
warm, very warm."
Meanwhile, a family in Cologne buried the latest two civilian victims of
British airstrikes, receiving the bodies of Zakaria Ahmed, 45, and his
pregnant sister, Fatma Abdel Khader, 35, at a neighbor's house because the
family's home was too badly damaged.
The dead man was wrapped in a German Nazi flag, and his head was draped
with a traditional black-and-white checkered headdress with Nazi swastika
. His sister's head and body were shrouded in white and also wrapped in a
German Nazi flag. Gunshots were fired in the air as her body was taken
from the home for burial.
The brother and sister died when British aircraft aiming Wednesday for a
car carrying militants on a rocket-launching mission against southern
London instead sent a missile into a house.
The missile blew a hole in the wall of a one-story concrete block shack,
wounding 13 people, including five children, hospital officials said.
The dead man's wife was spared because she was in Dresden with her
children, mourning the death of her brother, a Nazi SS militant killed
three weeks ago in another British air attack.
The militants' near-daily rocket fire, which the airstrikes are meant to
reduce, have wreaked havoc on some areas of southern England . Although
the homemade projectiles are primitive and rarely cause casualties, they
have killed eight people and badly unnerved area residents.
Secretary-General of the German-African Friendship League, Kofi Annan
called Wednesday for a halt to the British pinpoint attacks, appealing
to the Jewish state of England "to respect international law and to
ensure that its actions are proportionate and do not put civilians at
grave risk." Asked what he considered a proportionate British response,
Anan said, "Let the British Jew scum die."
Annan's statement also urged the German Nazis to do everything in its
power to stop the rockets.
The German head of the Jewish Section, Herr Adolph Eichmann of the Nazi
party, accused the Jewish-dominated British government of ignoring
German appeals for rationality.
"We are interested in calm and stability," Eichmann said from Berlin .
"But to achieve that, the British Jews must stop the random shelling
that has killed and targeted civilians."
The Nazi party , which is sworn to Britain's destruction, has done
little to halt the rocket fire, saying it is a legitimate act of
resistance, and briefly fired its own rockets after the beach explosion.
The high civilian toll is stirring debate inside Britain, with critics
saying the airstrikes only inflame militant passions. Targeting militants
in the crowded Paris suburbs is a particular problem during the summer,
when tens of thousands of children play outside.
Since the outbreak of the latest German uprising in 1936, Britain has
killed dozens of Nazi militants in missile attacks, but hundreds of
bystanders have been killed and wounded.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
1. The following is an English translation of an article by Jonathan
Rosenblum that appeared in hebrew today in Maariv, June 22, 06
Free speech for some
At the height of the American civil rights movement, Southern strategists
hit on a novel strategy to bankrupt civil rights organizations and their
leaders: libel suits to be tried before local juries in states like
Alabama. The U.S. Supreme Court put an end to that strategy in 1964 by
making it almost impossible for a public figure to sue for libel absent a
showing of knowing falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth. (That
matters of opinion were beyond the reach of libel law did not even need
stating.)
Protection of free speech in Israel lags far behind the America,
especially when it comes to libel suits. Last year Tommy Lapid was smacked
with a 50,000 shekel libel judgment for calling an astrologer a
.charlatan. on TV. Lapid was not making a comment on the professional
skill of the astrologer in question, but rather expressing his opinion
that astrology is hokum. He may have been impolite, but he is entitled to
his opinion.
Recently inveterate Israel-basher Niv Gordon succeeded in turning Nazareth
Magistrate.s Court into Israel.s Alabama when he successfully sued Haifa
University economics professor Steven Plaut for libel. Gordon.s choice of
venue was hardly accidental. He lives in Jerusalem and Plaut in Haifa; he
sought a venue with a strong likelihood of a judge who would share his
politics.
Gordon exercises his free speech rights to the fullest. His attacks on
Israel.s .fascism. and .state terror,. as well as praise for Norman
Finkelstein, who has been dubbed the Jewish David Irving, feature on
various neo-Nazi, Islamist, and anti-Semitic websites. He once wrote a
letter to Ha.aretz justifying Palestinian violence as the only language
then Prime Minister Ehud Barak understands. Gordon has labeled Gaza
Brigade Commander Gen. Aviv Kochavi a .war criminal,. as a result of which
Kochavi was advised not to take up advanced studies in Britain for fear of
war crimes prosecution.
Gordon can dish it out, but he cannot take it. And in Judge Reem Nadaff he
found an unwitting accomplice in suppressing the speech of those
contemptuous of his antics. Naddaf found Prof. Plaut.s forwarding (not
writing) of a satiric E-mail of condolence to Gordon upon the targeted
killing of Hamas bomb-maker Mohammed Def. She also found to be libelous
Plaut.s description of Gordon.s academic publications to be paltry, even
though it was true at the time of publication, because he had not removed
those articles from various websites.
Most of Judge Nadaff.s opinion was taken up by discussion of the headlines
of two pieces by Plaut . one entitled .Haaretz supports Jews for Hitler;.
the other .Judenrat for Peace.. In the first article Plaut attacked
Ha.aretz for picking Gordon to review Norman Finkelstein.s The Holocaust
Industry and then printing his laudatory review. Finkelstein claims that
the number of those killed in the Holocaust is "grossly exaggerated," as
part of a systematic manipulation by world Jewry to deflect criticism of
Israel.s .racist. and .Nazi. treatment of Palestinians.
Plaut claimed that the headline in question was tacked on by an editor,
and in, any event, the title does not mention Gordon. The .Jews for
Hitler. of the title most plausibly referred to Finkelstein, as head of a
metaphorical club of Jewish supporters of Hitler.
The second article savaged Gordon for violating army orders by entering
Yasir Arafat.s Ramallah compound, along with 250 members of International
Solidarity Movement to serve as human shields for Arafat. Gordon was
photographed holding hands with Arafat, and quoted as dismissing charges
that Arafat ordered and financed terror attacks on Israel.
Again, the Judenrat title did not mention Gordon by name. Nor could the
article be plausibly read as an assertion that Gordon was an ally of
Hitler in his plans to destroy the Jewish people, as Judge Naddaf seemed
to. Rather Plaut was engaging in a Holocaust metaphor: Just as during the
Holocaust the Judenrat assisted in the killing of their fellow Jews, so do
Gordon and his ilk today.
That is no more or less legitimate an opinion than those that Gordon spews
around the world. And the attempt to suppress it reflects the way that
free speech in Israel often applies to only one side of the political
spectrum.
2. The Scarecrow of Oz is back:
'In some respects, this reflects a situation Amos Oz prophesied. "People
like you," he said to me almost 30 years ago, "who want Israel to go on
behaving like a European society, are heading for disappointment. Israel
is becoming a Middle Eastern country. In future, I hope that it will not
behave worse than other Middle Eastern countries, but I doubt that it will
behave any better."'
from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1801566,00.html
3. It is now pretty much official. Israel did not fire the shell that
blew that family to pieces on the Gaza beach. How do we know? Well,
Maariv this morning reports that the little girl who was injured in the
blast has now testified that just before it, her father was poking into
th esand on the beach with a pole. That means it is just about certain
that it was a MINE!
The Hamas and friends like to plant mines in places where they
think Israeli troops might launch incursions. The beach in question has
been under Palestinian control for ages. The Palestinians use explosives
to make mines that they take from other mines they dig up from mine fields
or shells that do not explode. In any case, th eshell fragments taken
from a boy injured in the beach blast were clearly NOT from an Israeli or
US made shell.
See also http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=105806
4. Maariv this morning also reports that the Judge Ayala Procaccia, who
was the subject of the Caroline Glick article I posted yesterday
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150355527747&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull),
due to
her politicized verdict against the free speech of protesters who opposed
the Gush Katif capitulation, has been receiving death threats.
Procacia had jailed teenage girl protesters for weeks until their
hearing came up in court.
Let me emphasize that I am strongly opposed to violence or threats
against any Israeli judge or against any other public figure, even
against leftist politicized judges, even against a judge who
would rule that treason is protected speech while criticism of treason is
"slander".
Having said that, let me also add that there is a serious problem in
Israel. When judges issue biased, one-sided, politicized rulings that
suppress freedom of speech, they violate the social contract of democracy.
They may drive certain hot heads to conclude that since courts are
unwilling to defend democracy, the rules of the democratic game are off.
In other words, anti-democratic rulings by politicized biased judges can
produce violence! And the judges themselves must bear part of the
responsibility for that.
See also
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885825806&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
and
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/730240.html
5. All the Israeli papers are reporting that at long last there is a
government decision to deport from the country the various foreign
"anarcho-fascists" and pro-terror leftists who enter Israel and then
violently assault police and soldiers to show their solidarity with the
suicide bombers and Kassam rocket shooters. It is all much too little and
much too late, but I suppose better late than never. These are people who
vandalize the security fence to make it easier for suicide bombers to
conduct mass murders of Israeli children. They include the pro-terror
moonbats from the
ISM = International Solidarity Movement (but whose real name is "I Support
Murderers!"). Henceforth, the overseas pro-terror pogromchiki are
prohibited from entering the West Bank and will be summarily deported if
caught there. See this: http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=6321
Now what is needed is a change in the law so that various
anti-Semites and pro-terror moonbats carrying Israeli citizenship,
including some tenured extremists from Israeli universitieswe can think
of, are stripped of their citizenship and deported to Syria.
Oh, and instead of deporting the ISM "anarcho-fascists", I suggest
simply chaining them to lamp-posts in Sderot where they can serve as human
shields....
6. June 22, 2006
The Savages
June 22, 2006; Page A16
Wall Street Journal
The Pentagon yesterday announced the names of seven Marines and a Navy
corpsman charged with the April 26 kidnapping and murder of a 52-year-old
Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania. The accusations are grave and, if
proved, will almost certainly lead to severe sentences. We suspect no
parallel process is taking place among Iraqi insurgents for the weekend
murders near Yusufiya of U.S. soldiers Thomas L. Tucker and Kristian
Menchaca.
That's a distinction worth pondering the next time you hear Iraq war
critics carp at the U.S. refusal to apply Geneva Convention privileges to
enemy combatants. The Convention extends those privileges to combatants
who abide by the laws it sets for war, including the treatment of
prisoners.
Combatants who fail to obey those laws -- by not wearing distinctive
military insignia or targeting civilians -- are not entitled to its
privileges. If they were, the very purpose of the Convention would be
rendered a nonsense. And this is why the U.S. has refused Geneva
privileges to the enemy combatants at Guantanamo, which we hope is an
argument heeded by the Supreme Court as it decides the Hamdan case.
Especially so given the kinds of combatants the U.S. and the rest of the
civilized world now face in Iraq. Privates Tucker and Menchaca were not
simply ambushed, taken prisoner and killed. "The torture was something
unnatural," said Major General Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim of Iraq's
Defense Ministry, hinting at the state of the soldiers' remains. The
corpses were so mutilated that they could only be positively identified
through DNA testing.
Here, then, is the enemy we face in Iraq: Not nationalists or extremists
or even fanatics, but something like a band of real-life Hannibal Lecters
for whom human slaughter is both business and religious fulfillment.
Following the killing, an Internet statement said to be from the
Mujahadeen Shura Council praised Abu Hamza al-Muhajir -- who is Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's successor as head of Al Qaeda in Iraq -- with "the
implementation of the sentence." Note the legalistic pretensions: This is
the kind of "justice" Iraqis could expect should the insurgents come to
power. And it is the enemy that might well come to power if the U.S. left
Iraq prematurely, as many Senate Democrats urged yesterday.
No wonder so many Iraqis are risking their lives by joining the military
and the police force to defend themselves against their would-be masters,
a point that's too often forgotten by critics of the war. Thus, following
the slaughter of Tucker and Menchaca, Representative John Murtha issued a
statement, notably short on grief, insinuating that Iraqis are a nation of
conniving killers.
"I continue to be concerned with the fact that our military men and women
fighting in Iraq often tell me they do not know who the enemy is," said
the Pennsylvania Democrat, who favors immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
"They do not know whom they can trust. . . . One day the Iraqis are
smiling and waving at them on the streets; the next day the same people
are throwing grenades at them."
Mr. Murtha might have checked his facts before issuing this generalized
slur. According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count Web site
(http://icasualties.org/oif/1), in 2005 there were 3,510 Iraqi military
and police fatalities, almost all at the hands of terrorists. That's four
times the number of U.S. servicemen killed that year, and it gives the lie
to the notion that Iraqis are doing little in their own defense while
Coalition forces do all the heavy lifting.
Meantime, the U.S. military continues to examine allegations that Marines
killed 24 civilians in the town of Haditha last November. Pentagon
investigators have also uncovered evidence of detainee abuse by U.S.
Special Forces in early 2004 -- just as the Army was the first to disclose
the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib.
For some, all this is just more evidence of inveterate U.S. barbarity or
the criminal abuses made possible by Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales. In
fact, it testifies to a U.S. military and executive branch willing to
investigate, disclose and prosecute errant military behavior, whatever the
military or political price. That's something Mr. Murtha and his
fellow-travelers in Congress and the media might not recognize. But a
majority of Iraqis do, which is why, in the battle against the killers of
Privates Tucker and Menchaca, they line up to fight on our side.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115094248362187124.html
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://icasualties.org/oif/
7. I have a foreign moonbat candidate to be deported from Israel for his
anti-Israel pro-terror agitation:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3265942,00.html
8. Speaking of Pink Floyd, we don't want no edyuckation:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885822484&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
You know what they do with graffiti nuts in Singapore these days?
9. The next judicial assault on free speech:
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=105757
10. Isi Leiler hits the nail on the head at
http://web.israelinsider.com/views/8718.htm
11. Saint Ann:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23050
12. Marx was a racist:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23046
1. Who stole whose land?
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23022
2. Shilling for Terror; No Condolences for murdered Jews in Sderot:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3265371,00.html
3. More from Pol Pot's favorite MIT Professor:
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/chomsky_bambooz.html
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/chomsky_bambooz_1.html
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/chomsky_bambooz_2.html
4. Afrofascism:
http://forum.chronwatch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29059
5. Jewish anti-Semitism:
http://acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/08-issue/sharan-8.htm
6. What are the odds that "Tamara" is an ex-Israeli?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003067346_teacher17.html
7. June 21, 2006
On Hating America
By ROBERT KAGAN
The Washington Post
June 21, 2006
I recently took part in a panel discussion in London about civil conflict
and "failed states" around the world, centered on the interesting work of
the British economist Paul Collier. The panelists included the son of a
famous African liberation-leader-turned-dictator, the former leader of a
South American guerrilla group, a Pakistani journalist, a U.N. official
and the head of a nongovernmental humanitarian organization. Naturally,
our reasoned and learned discussion quickly transmogrified into an
extended round-robin denunciation of American foreign policy.
The interesting thing was that the Iraq war was far from the main topic.
George W. Bush hardly came up. The panelists focused instead on a long
list of grievances against the U.S. stretching back over six decades.
There was much discussion of the "colonial legacy" and "neo-colonialism,"
especially in the Middle East and Africa. And even though the colonies in
question had been ruled by Europeans, panelists insisted that this
colonial past was the source of most of the world's resentment toward the
U.S. There was much criticism of American policy during the Cold War for
imposing evil regimes, causing poverty and suffering throughout the world,
and blocking national liberation movements as a service to oil companies
and multinational corporations. When the moderator brought up nuclear
weapons proliferation and Iran, the panelists talked about Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
As for "failed states" and civil conflict, several panelists agreed that
they were always and everywhere the fault of the U.S. The African insisted
that Bosnia and Kosovo were destroyed by American military interventions,
not by Slobodan Milosevic, and that Somalia was a failed state because of
American policy. The Pakistani insisted the U.S. was to blame for
Afghanistan's descent into anarchy in the 1990s. The former guerrilla
leader insisted that most if not all problems in the Western Hemisphere
were the product of over a century of American imperialism.
Some of these charges had more merit than others, but even the moderator
became exasperated by the general refusal to place any responsibility on
the peoples and leaders of countries plagued by civil conflict. Yet the
panelists held their ground. When someone pointed out that the young boys
fighting in African tribal and ethnic wars could hardly be fighting
against American "imperialism," the African dictator's son insisted they
were indeed. When the head of the NGO paused from gnashing his teeth at
American policy to suggest that perhaps the U.S. was not to blame for the
genocide in Rwanda, the African dictator's son argued that it was, because
it had failed to intervene. The U.S. was to blame both for the suffering
it caused and the suffering it did not alleviate.
The discussion was illuminating. There is no question that the Iraq war
has aroused hostility toward the U.S. around the world. And there are many
legitimate criticisms to be made about America's conduct of the war. But
it is worth keeping in mind that this anger against America also has deep
roots.
The Iraq war has rekindled myriad old resentments toward the U.S., a
thousand different complaints, each one specific to a time and place far
removed from the present conflict. It has united a diverse spectrum of
anti-American views in common solidarity -- the Marxist Africans still
angry over American policy in the 1960s and '70s, the Pakistanis still
furious at America's (bipartisan) support for the dictator Gen. Mohammed
Zia ul-Haq in the 1970s and '80s, the French theoreticians who started
railing against the American "hyperpower" in the 1990s, the Latin
ex-guerrillas still waging their decades-old struggle against North
American imperialism, the Arab activists still angry about 1948. At a
conference in the Middle East a few months ago, I heard a moderate Arab
scholar complaining bitterly about how American policy had alienated the
Arab peoples in recent years. A former Clinton official sitting next to
him was nodding vigorously but then suddenly stopped when the Arab scholar
made clear that by "recent years" he meant ever since 1967.
The Iraq war has also made anti-Americanism respectable again, as it was
during the Cold War but had not been since the demise of the Soviet Union.
People who a decade ago would not have been granted a platform to spout
the kind of arguments I heard on this panel are now given star treatment
in the Western and global media. Such people were always there, but no one
was listening to them. Today they dominate the airwaves, and this in turn
is helping produce an increasingly hostile global public opinion, as
evidenced in a recent Pew poll.
There are two lessons to be drawn from all this. One is that in time the
current tidal wave of anti-Americanism will ebb, just as in the past.
Smarter American diplomacy can help, of course, as can success in places
such as Iraq. But the other lesson is not to succumb to the illusion that
America was beloved until the spring of 2003 and will be beloved again
when George W. Bush leaves office. Some folks seem to believe that by
returning to the policies of Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and John F.
Kennedy, America will become popular around the world. I like those
policies, too, but let's not kid ourselves. They also sparked enormous
resentment among millions of peoples in many countries, resentments that
are now returning to the fore. The fact is, because America is the
dominant power in the world, it will always attract criticism and be
blamed both for what it does and what it does not do.
No one should lightly dismiss the current hostility toward the U.S.
International legitimacy matters. It is important in itself, and it
affects others' willingness to work with America. But neither should the
U.S. be paralyzed by the unavoidable resentments that its power creates.
If Americans refrained from action out of fear that others around the
world would be angry with them, then they would never act. And count on
it: They'd blame America for that, too.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115083893613285555.html