Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university.
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1. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23835
Sellout
By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com August 14, 2006
If America got fed up with Israel and decided to accede to a UN
.ceasefire. resolution, there were reasons for it. For a month an
inexperienced Israeli prime minister who had said he was tired of fighting
and wanted to turn Israel into a fun place, with an underqualified defense
minister at his side, paraded Israel.s delusions in an effort to defeat
Hezbollah on the cheap.
First was the attempt to triumph from the air.a basic plank of Olmert.s
.disengagement. and .convergence. philosophy that says Israel can safely
cede territory to its worst enemies because the air force can handle any
problems that arise. Then there was the attempt to stop Hezbollah.s rocket
fire with limited ground forays and a pathetically narrow .security zone.
a kilometer or two into Lebanese territory.reflecting a hope that Israel
could prevail without mobilizing or losing any significant number of
soldiers.
In recent days, though, Olmert and the Israeli leadership had shown that
they were on a learning curve and were preparing a major ground incursion
up to the Litani River and possibly beyond. At the very least, Olmert
realized he was finished politically unless he could show the distressed
Israeli public that he could stop the rockets once and for all. Hezbollah,
finally, was in for a drubbing. That is why it is so tragic that at this
moment, America decided to bend to international pressure, put the brakes
on Israel, and endorse a document that is a shameful exercise in moral
equivalence and facilitation of ongoing terror.
Security Council Resolution 1701 .Calls for a full cessation of
hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by
Hizbullah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all
offensive military operations,. drawing a precise parallel between
jihadist aggression and the effort to ward it off. The document also calls
for the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers only in the preamble,
while also claiming a need to .settl[e] the issue of the Lebanese
prisoners detained in Israel..in other words, terrorists who include the
sadistic child-murderer Samir Kuntar.
The resolution at least cannot be accused of equivalence when it .Calls on
the international community to take immediate steps to extend its
financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including
through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and . . . calls
on it also to consider further assistance in the future to contribute to
the reconstruction and development of Lebanon..without mentioning Israeli
rehabilitation in so much as a breath. Here the Security Council, with
American consent, adopts the BBC-CNN-Reuters view of the conflict in which
suffering within the country that has harbored Hezbollah for over two
decades, and elected the organization as a sizable faction in its
parliament with two cabinet posts.counts; whereas Israeli suffering,
devastation, and displacement do not.
The resolution calls for .delineation of the international borders of
Lebanon, especially in those areas where the border is disputed or
uncertain, including by dealing with the Shebaa Farms area.. This is a
direct reward to Hezbollah for using the false Shebaa Farms issue to keep
terrorizing northern Israel for six years, the UN itself having affirmed
that Israel had left Lebanon completely in 2000 and that any further
territorial dispute over Shebaa Farms concerned only Israel and Syria.
The resolution puts Israel on a very short tether in terms of looking out
for its future security. .Upon full cessation of hostilities,. it .calls
upon the government of Lebanon and UNIFIL . . . to deploy their forces
together throughout the south and calls upon the government of Israel, as
that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern
Lebanon in parallel..not leaving Israel even a decent interval to try and
ensure that Hezbollah does not return to fill the void left by its
departing forces.
Then, even more ominously, the resolution .Affirms that all parties are
responsible for ensuring that no action is taken . . . that might
adversely affect the search for a long-term solution, humanitarian access
to civilian populations . . . or the voluntary and safe return of
displaced persons. . . .. If the UN were an institution that had always
given Israel a fair shake, this might not be so unpromising. But that, of
course, is not what the UN is, and one can particularly expect the phrase
.might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution. to be applied
liberally to any future Israeli attempts to defend itself militarily.
But Resolution 1701.s most glaring weaknesses are precisely in those areas
that some are touting as its strengths. The resolution .Calls for . . .
the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani River of an area
free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the
government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL.; .authorize[s] an increase in the
force strength of UNIFIL to a maximum of 15,000 troops.; and even hints at
a military role for UNIFIL by authorizing it .to take all necessary action
in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its
capabilities..
UNIFIL having become a synonym for uselessness at best and collusion with
terrorism at worst, a UNIFIL force beefed up with troops from France and
other dhimmified countries that relate to Iran as a business partner does
not inspire confidence. More significant, though, is Resolution 1701.s
treatment of the Lebanese government as the main actor in this story that
is supposed to ensure peace and stability.
Essentially, anything the document is supposed to achieve is subject to
Lebanon.s veto. The word consent appears three times in the text, each
time in reference to Lebanon:
.The Security Council...[e]mphasizes the importance of the extension of
the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory...so
that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of
Lebanon.....
....no foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government...
.
.Calls upon the government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other
entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms
or related materiel.... .
Again, if Lebanon were a country (a) solidly in the pro-Western camp and
(b) powerful enough to assert its will in its territory, these items would
be cause for hope. But the resolution, which remarkably never gets around
to mentioning the words Iran or Syria, ignores the facts that Lebanon has
basically been a plaything of Syria and, less directly, Iran for at least
a quarter-century; that much of its populace, army, and government,
particularly the Shiite component, enthusiastically backs the
Hezbollah-Syrian-Iran axis and is essentially part of it; and that
Lebanon.s weak, ethnoreligiously dissonant army is no more capable of
exerting control than a 15,000-man UNIFIL force.
Allowing Israel to take a few more weeks and rout Hezbollah.preferably
also with some sobering strikes against Syria.would have created a
different scenario and, most important, perceptions of a Western victory
and humiliating jihadist defeat. That may have allowed the truly moderate
Christian, Druze, and Muslim forces in Lebanon to start trying to retake
control of their country while leaving the Iranian-led jihad axis reeling.
Instead the United States and the world community have chosen with this
dire Security Council resolution to create a powerful scenario of
perceived, and to some extent real, jihadist victory while ensuring
continuing instability and endangerment of Israel. It is a moment that
will come back to haunt America and the West.
2. The War against Hezb-fascism:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23845
3. The WSJ understands what Ehud of Chelm does not:
August 14, 2006
Status Quo Ante
August 14, 2006; Page A8
Ever since war broke out last month on the Israeli-Lebanese frontier, the
Bush administration has said it wouldn't tolerate a return to the "status
quo ante," in which Hezbollah behaved as a power unto itself within the
Lebanese state. Yet after reading the text of the U.N. Security Council's
cease-fire resolution adopted unanimously on Friday, we'd say the "status
quo ante" is nearly what we've got.
And perhaps worse than that, because Hezbollah has now shown it can battle
Israel to a military draw. The new resolution does call for disarming
Hezbollah, just as resolution 1559 previously did, but without saying who
will do it. Presumably that task is intended for the Lebanese Army, which
is supposed to occupy the parts of southern Lebanon from which Hezbollah
launched its attacks on Israel. But Lebanon's army is a weak force,
consciously undermined over the years of Syrian occupation, and is largely
Shiite. There's reason to doubt it will be able to disarm Hezbollah's
still-powerful Shiite military.
The resolution also calls for beefing up Unifil, the existing U.N.
peacekeeping force in Lebanon that also couldn't disarm Hezbollah. The
addition of French troops to Unifil will help, but the resolution fell
short of invoking the Chapter VII powers that U.S. officials had
previously said were necessary to ensure a strong enough U.N. presence.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insists that the resolution has
Chapter VII powers in all but name, but we'll see what happens the first
time Hezbollah again challenges Unifil authority. The likelihood is that
Unifil and the Lebanese army will co-exist with Hezbollah, which will
slowly re-arm to intimidate Lebanon's government and strike Israel or the
U.S. again at the time of its choosing.
All the more so because Hezbollah's main suppliers, Syria and Iran, have
suffered no negative consequences from their role over the last month. If
anything, their regional clout has been enhanced, with growing calls in
the U.S. and Europe for appeasing both countries with assorted "carrots."
Yes, the new resolution calls for an arms embargo against Hezbollah, but
Iran and Syria have evaded such strictures before. And both countries will
now attempt to extract more diplomatic concessions from the U.S. and
Europe as a price of not re-arming Hezbollah.
Syrians are under U.N. investigation for their suspected involvement in
last year's murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and
Iran's nuclear activities put it in material breach of another Security
Council resolution. Syria wants the Hariri investigation dropped or at
least its findings downplayed, and Iran may feel better positioned to
flout the U.N.'s August 31 deadline to suspend uranium enrichment.
Perhaps it is true that the Bush administration had little choice but to
accede to a cease-fire resolution. President Bush took some political
risks for resisting an immediate cease-fire, not least in Iraq where the
fighting in Lebanon was helping radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stir
up anti-U.S. sentiment.
Last weekend's much better U.S.-French draft resolution was also resisted
by the Sunni dictators of the Arab League fearful of a political backlash
at home after their early criticism of Hezbollah. As usual, the likes of
Egypt and Jordan chose to direct this public anger toward the U.S. and
Israel. No doubt some of them are intimidated by Iran and the growing
power of Hezbollah. The French also flipped their position -- which serves
us right for saying something nice about them last week.
The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is also responsible
for indecisive war leadership. Mr. Bush gave him time and international
political cover to act militarily, yet Mr. Olmert made the mistake of
insisting on war without prosecuting it with sufficient speed and force.
To paraphrase Napoleon, if you decide to disarm Hezbollah, then disarm
Hezbollah.
After his Cabinet agreed to the cease-fire, Mr. Olmert said yesterday that
"Hezbollah won't continue to exist as a state" and that "the Lebanese
government is our address for every problem or violation of the
agreement." For him to say anything else would be an admission of defeat
after a bloody month. But even many Israelis in his own party are saying
that, after firing more than 3,000 rockets into Israel, nearly 800 into
residential areas, Hezbollah is emerging from this conflict stronger than
either Sadat or Nasser after their wars with Israel.
Perhaps, for a time, this cease-fire resolution will "stop the violence,"
as Kofi Annan likes to exhort. But the price for letting a transnational
terrorist group like Hezbollah claim victory is likely to be far more
bloodshed in the future.
4.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=%20750345&contrassID=2
Postwar self test: Are you an anti-Semite?
(appeared in Haaretz!!!)
By Bradley Burston
One of the more fruitless debates between critics and supporters of
Israel, is where to draw the line between candid criticism of Israeli
policy, and anti-Semitism.
As a public service, we present the following post war self-test, to
assist readers in placing themselves along the continuum which stretches
from taking rational issue with Israeli policy, and ends in Jew-hate.
1. There is only one neighborhood grocery store [makolet] still operating
in the Katyusha-shredded northern town of Kiryat Shmona. Up from the bomb
shelters during a lull in attacks, shoppers seeking milk, bread, infant
formula and other staples, congregate outside the grocery, waiting to
enter.
A Hezbollah rocket attack on the crowd is:
A. Morally indefensible. Israel is careful to bomb only Hezbollah targets,
many of which the organization regrettably locates among civilians, who
are thus forced to act as human shields.
B. Wrong, if understandable in the context of guerilla warfare. Both sides
should make every effort to keep non-combatants from being hurt.
C. Heroic. An example of self-defense. The rockets, a relative slingshot
compared to the Israel's Goliath-scale arsenal, cause negligible damage in
comparison to the slaughter which Israeli has inflicted in massacre after
massacre from air, land and sea. Moreover, there are no non-combatants in
Israel. Every infant is a potential soldier, women serve in the army, even
the handicapped and elderly volunteer for service in the armed forces.
_______
2. You are handsome, famous and inebriated when you are stopped driving in
Malibu, California by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept. Suspecting
the arresting officer of Judaism, you consider informing him that "The
Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
You would take this course of action:
A. Over your dead body.
B Only after 6-8 drinks.
C Cold sober.
_______
3. You are CNN. When Lebanese civilians are killed, injured or rendered
homeless in Israeli air strikes, you identify the victims as Lebanese
civilians and elaborate on their suffering. When Israeli civilians are
killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks, you should:
*****
5. Who says there is no one around with the courage to curse out the
Hezbollah they way it should be?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525869921&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Anti-Hizbullah comment starts W.Bank wedding riot
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 14, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two Palestinian families went after each other with knives and clubs at a
wedding after one guest cursed the leader of Lebanon's Hizbullah guerrilla
group, Palestinian security officials said Monday. Seven people were
seriously wounded, they said.
It took police three hours to break up the brawl that erupted Sunday night
in the village of Aqada near the West Bank town of Jenin after a critic
called Sheik Hassan Nasrallah "a dog," they said.
Nasrallah's Hizbullah touched off a five-week war with Israel by killing
eight Israeli soldiers and capturing two in a cross-border raid. A
cease-fire that went into effect early Monday was designed to halt the
violence.
6. Naomi Ragen:
The Worst Government in the History of Israel
By Naomi Ragen
We finished a quiet Sabbath in the relative safety of Jerusalem, only to
check the news and find out the heartbreaking news that seven more Israeli
soldiers have been killed and
eight-four injured in the worst-led war in Israel's history. [The number
of dead and injured has since risen.--ii]
In addition, the government which interfered with the military (i.e.go win
the war without upsetting CNN and the BBC), imposing guidelines that have
helped get not only our boys killed left and right, but our civilians as
well, has now decided to accept a Security Council resolution which
ensures that Israel's soldiers and her people have made their ultimate
sacrifice for nothing: our kidnapped soldiers will not be returned.
Hezbollah will not be disarmed. And Israeli forces will be replaced by
some U.N. force and a bunch of European anti-Semites who will allow
Hezbollah to rearm.
The full text of the resolution has been published in YNET. So far, 1,784
Israelis have responded in its talkback. The overwhelming majority say
something like this:
We went to war to free our kidnapped soldiers. Why aren't they mentioned?
For shame. Olmert, Peretz, Halutz, the triumvirate of losers.
Let me add this: Mr. Olmert, Mr. Peretz, Mr. Halutz: You have squandered
the lives of our soldiers. You have squandered our opportunity to free the
nation of Israel from a deadly enemy. You have set the stage for the next
war.
By September, we will be under attack once more. Do the decent thing:
Resign, all of you, and let Mr. Netanyahu and General Ya'alon (who was
kicked out because he refused to go along with the disengagement) take
over.
Resign, Mr. Olmert. Resign in shame for your incompetence. Your inability
to carry out a single one of the objectives you so stirringly announced at
the beginning of this war. With all
of you and your incompetent Kadima-led government out of office, we will
all be safer and better prepared when the rockets start to fall once
again, as they inevitably will with the U.N. and the French guarding our
borders.
And if you won't do the honorable thing, we will do everything we can to
get you fired. You make me sick. I am ashamed to be a citizen of my
country under your leadership. I am appalled to have a son in the IDF
under your leadership.
For shame, for shame, for shame!
1. The name of that secret weapon invention in the photo I sent yesterday
is the Umbr'Allah.
2. IDF heads are urging a rapid immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops
from Lebanon now that the "ceasefre" is in effect.
Showing that they learned absolutely nothing from the fiasco of Barak's
parody of Dunkirk in 2000.
3. Israel's leaders have grown so used to promoting capitulation as the
policy of choice that it has become second nature for them to pursue it in
all things. This is why the idea of turning the Shaba Fram over to
Lebanon was so popular and almost was part of the "ceasefire" and will be
no doubt a part of any future accord with Lebanon.
The Shaba Farm is a tiny sliver of land that the Hezbollah says is
Lebanon, the UN and everyone else say is Israel's. It was part of the
Golan Heights that Israel liberated from Syrian occupation in 1967.
Abandoning it seemingly would not matter, but would announce to the
world that Israel is still determined to reward all forms of Arab terror
and aggression, which is why the Israeli Left wants Israel to grant it to
Lebanon.
You know, so the Hezbollah will not have any reason further to
fire at Israel.
4. After playing with themselves for 32 days, the Israeli political elite
did not have time to take south lebanon to the Litani in the last few
days of the war when Israel was actually fighting half-heartedly at last,
rather than bombing empty buildings from the air. Thus they guarantee
thousands of katyushas more will fall on northern Israel.
This morning Kassams and also KATYUSHAS fell on Ashkelon from Gaza.
5. More Israeli Leftwing treason:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525858485&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The Israeli Air Force should drop leftist post-Zionist professors on Tyre
instead of bombs! It would end the war faster!
6. Binyamin Netanyahu, from his interview with the British Television
this week.
The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more
Lebanese have been killed in this conflict than
Israelis?"
Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking
in that direction?"
Interviewer: Why not?
Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were
killed than British and Americans combined, but there
is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused
by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German
blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city
of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians
than the number of people killed in Hiroshima.
Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the
R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in
Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and
fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83
little children . Perhaps you have another question?
7. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525864908&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Son of Far-Leftist Novelist David Grossman Killed
Grossman had called for a unilateral ceasefire 3 days before that.
8. Amphibians:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=081106B
9. Nice web site:
http://hotair.com/
and esp
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/08/10/video-black-panther-nzinga-goes-on-anti-semitic-tirade-blames-jews-for-mckinney-loss/
10. New Demos or Old Trots?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/537qsphp.asp
11. Bleeding Heart Ignoramuses:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749291.html
12. Nazareth Loves Nasrallah:
http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=6453
13. Terrorism causes Occupation. Removing occupation causes terrorism:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/terrorism-causes-occupati_b_27057.html
14. Unfashionable, but true: we are talking about Right vs. Wrong:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51472
An Open Letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Dear Prime Minister Olmert:
I am writing this to you to beg that you NOT stop the katushas from
falling on me and my family in Haifa by means of the proposed ceasefire.
I and my family, including my children, live in Haifa, which has been
hit by hundreds of rockets, out of the 4000 missiles fired into Israel these
past five weeks. The proposed ceasefire you evidently are considering
agreeing to is an Israeli capitulation. We do not believe it will lead to
the dismemberment of Hezbollah terrorism and arrest of terrorists. And, in
particular, it would cease the hostilities *without* the immediate return of
the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by the Hezbollah terrorists.
Mr. Prime Minister, if I have to choose between the proposed ceasefire,
which would leave the two kidnapped soldiers in Hezbollah captivity to
become two new Ron Arads, disappearing forever into the bowels of the terror
netherworld, or to continue being the recipient of hundreds more katyushas
over coming weeks until the soldiers are released, then ? Mister Prime
Minister ? I CHOOSE THE LATTER!
Do NOT stop the katyushas falling on me and my family by abandoning the
soldiers to such a fate. Do not be concerned about me and my children ? we
will cope. Our upper lips are as stiff as they come. Like the British in
the 40s, we will grin and bear the blitz that the Israeli Labor Party, led
by Ehud Barak, is raining down upon us from Lebanon. So just let the blitz
continue, only do NOT agree to any ceasefire capitulations!
Do NOT abandon the two soldiers on OUR account! In fact, if anything,
we demand other preconditions for a ceasefire not included in what the UN
has brokered. Refraining from firing rockets at us is NOT ENOUGH!
We prefer to be targeted to kayushas to abandoning Ron Arad himself. Do
not agree to a ceasefire unless he is turned over to us. Do not agree to a
ceasefire until Nasrallah himself is turned over to Israel, or at least his
head is. And should he be turned over, then you must summarily execute him
at once and bury him in a pig skin. The Lebanese do not agree to those
conditions? Fine ? then let the katyushas on Haifa continue, the important
thing being that the military operations against the Hezbollah continue!
We in Haifa deny you permission to trade our safety for a premature end
to the fighting! If you choose the path of cowardice, like all your
political predecessors in Israel did these past two decades, then do NOT say
you are doing so on OUR behalf! You do so on your own and in your own
name, not in ours. We choose more katyushas to capitulation and
appeasement!
Israel has been given a choice between capitulations and more
katyushas; we choose the missiles!
Sincerely yours,
On behalf of the Plaut Family and all Zionists in Haifa
Hezbollah's Final Solution
By Alan M. Dershowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com August 11, 2006
The uniqueness of the Holocaust was not the Nazi's determination to kill
the Jews of Germany and even of neighboring Poland. Other genocides,
such as those by the Cambodians and the Turks, sought to rid particular
areas of so called undesirables by killing them. The utter uniqueness of
the Holocaust was the Nazi plan to "ingather" all the Jews of the world
to the death camp and end the Jewish "race" forever.
It almost succeeded. The Nazis ingathered tens of thousands of Jews
(including babies, women, the elderly) from far flung corners of the
world--from the Island of Rhodes from Salonika and from other obscure
locations -- in order to gas them at Auschwitz and at other death camps.
The official leader of the Palestinian Muslims, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
the grand mufti of Jerusalem, collaborated in the Nazi genocide,
declaring that he sought to "solve the problems of the Jewish element in
Palestine and other Arab countries" by employing "the same method" being
used "in the Axis countries". Husseini, who spent the war years in
Berlin and was later declared a Nazi war criminal at Nuremberg, wrote
the following in his memoirs:
Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand
to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked
Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish
problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and
according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling
of its Jews. The answer I got was: "The Jews are yours."
Husseini planned a death camp for Jews modeled on Auschwitz, to be
located in Nablus. He broadcast on Nazi Radio, calling for genocide
against all the world's Jews: "kill the Jews wherever you find
them--this pleases God, history, and religion." Professor Edward Said
has acknowledged that this Nazi collaborator and genocidal anti-Semite
"represented the Palestinian Arab consensus" and was "the voice of the
Palestinian people." Yasser Arafat referred to Husseini as "our hero."
Never before or since in world history has a tyrannical regime sought to
murder all of the members of a particular racial, religious, ethnic or
cultural group, regardless of where they live--not until now.
Hezbollah's aim is not to "end the occupation of Palestine," or even to
"liberate all of Palestine." Its goal is to kill the world's Jews.
Listen to the words of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah: "If Jews all
gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them
worldwide." (NY Times, May 23, 2004, p. 15, section 2, column 1.)
Nasrallah is one of the most admired men in the Muslim and Arab world
today. Hitler made similar threats in Mein Kampf but they were largely
ignored. Nasrallah has a reputation for keeping his promises.
His genocidal goals--to kill all Jews--were proven by two recent
statements. He has warned the Arabs and Muslims to leave Haifa so that
his rockets can kill only Jews. And he apologized for causing the deaths
of three Israeli-Arabs in Nazareth, when a Katuysha struck that
religiously mixed Israeli city. Hezbollah also worked hand-in-hand with
Argentine neo-Nazis to blow up a Jewish community center, murdering
dozens of Jews.
Nasrallah is a modern day Hitler, who currently lacks the capacity to
carry out his genocide. But he is an ally of Iran, which will soon have
the capacity to kill Israeli's five million Jews. Listen to what the
former President of Iran has said about how Iran would use its nuclear
weapons:
Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran, has threatened Israel
with nuclear destruction, boasting that an attack would kill as many as
five million Jews. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated
by dropping its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose only fifteen
million people, which he said would be a small "sacrifice" from among
the billion Muslims in the world.
Now listen to the current President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who
denies the Nazi Holocaust, but calls for a modern Holocaust that would
"wipe Israel off the map."
Despite these anti-Semitic and genocidal threats, some of the hard left
admire Nasrallah and his bigoted organization, as well as Iran and its
anti-Semitic president. Others do not seem to take his threats
seriously.
For example, the notorious Jewish anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein has
said, "looking back my chief regret is that I wasn't even more forceful
in publicly defending Hezbollah against terrorist intimidation and
attack."
Finkelstein's hatred of Jews runs so deep that he has actually implied
that his own mother, who survived the Nazi Holocaust, may have
collaborated with the Nazis. If so collaboration with evil seems to run
in the family, because Finkelstein has clearly become a collaborator
with Hezbollah anti-Semitism and Nazism. Finkelstein's website is filled
with Hezbollah promotion, including breathless reprints of Nasrallah
speeches. Noam Chomsky, who works closely with Finkelstein, has said of
Finkelstein that he is "a person who can speak with more authority and
insight on these topics [Israel and anti-Semitism] than anyone I can
think of."
The Iran-Hezbollah axis is the greatest threat to world peace, to Jewish
survival, to Western values, and to civilization. Those like
Finkelstein, who support Hezbollah, and even those who refuse to fight
against this evil, are on the wrong side of history. They are
collaborators with Islamofascists -- today's version of Nazism.
2.
Maybe they signed up to study at Ben Gurion University?
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/hagmann081006.htm
1. I don't know about you but I am not getting on any flights these days
onto which two post-Zionist professors from Ben Gurion University get on
together carrying gatorade....
2. Academic Extremist of the Day:
First Name:
Louise
Family name:
Bethlehem
Department:
The Institute of Arts and Letters, Faculty of Humanities
Primary Email address:
bethlehem@013.net.il
Second Email address (extra):
bethlehem@mscc.huji.ac.il
Telephone: 02-5883851
Telephone (extra): 09-7415745
This little star of Bethlehem has made a career out of comparing Israel to
apartheid South Africa. Here is her comment this week:
Title: Praise Levy`s and Mijali`s brave civil dissent
Name: Louise Bethlehem
City: Hod Hasharon State: Israel
At times of "moral blackout" Gideon Levy`s insistence on reminding us of
the importance--and vulnerability--of Lebanese civil society and Nazir
Majali`s corresponding focus on Palestinian citizens of Israel in the
north, are especially valuable. Together they highlight the shameful
capitulation of Jewish-Israeli civil society to "chauvinism and
ruthlessness", with some notable exceptions.
In 1915, a celebrated Jew, Sigmund Freud published an essay entitled
"Thoughts for the Times on War and Death". In it, he warned that war
"overwhelms, with blind rage, anything that stands in its way, as though
there were to be no future and no peace afterwards. It tears up all bonds
of community among the warring peoples and threatens to leave behind an
embitterment that will make any renewal of these bonds impossible for a
long time to come".
When moral blackout devours the present, consolidating precious civil
bonds--of solidarity and dissent--offers a slender chance for the future.
Bethlehem's buddies:
http://www.cultstud.org/crossroads/session/bethlehem-gordon.htm
Beth On communist anti-Israel petitions:
http://oznik.com/petitions/010427signers.html
Promoting mutiny among Israeli soldiers:
http://www.seruv.org.il/english/academic_supporters.asp
Endorsing the Palestinian right of return:
http://www.thestruggle.org/R2R.htm
Declaring Israel planning Mass Atrocities:
http://www.thehandstand.org/archive/october2002/articles/oz.htm
3. Treason among Israeli Arabs:
Israeli Arabs
in support of Hezbollah
In Nazareth Israeli Arabs Demonstrate in support of Hezbollah
.Occupation and invasion = terror.
.Resistance = right and obligation. [July 16, 2006]
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
As Israel counts more than 100 dead in its war against the Hezbollah
terror organization, numerous Israeli Arabs, including Arab Knesset
members, have come out in support of the enemy. A number of demonstrations
and marches in support of Hezbollah have likewise been held by Israel's
Arabs.
One Member of the Knesset, Azmi Bishara, even refers to the members of
Hezbollah as .heroes.. He calls for Hezbollah to fight Israeli soldiers,
saying, .One must settle accounts with their murderers and resist [fight]
its aggression..
The following are 15 statements by Israeli Arab leaders and victims of
Hezbollah terror in support of Hezbollah, all said during the war:
Ra.oda Att.allah, Director of the Arab Culture Society in Haifa:
"The popularity of Hezbollah has grown substantially among the Arabs in
Israel. the first time there is a feeling of returning the honor, and that
the people are feeling for the first time that there is a group which
resists [fights-ed.] and stands firm against the Israeli army."[Al-Ayyam,
August 8, 2006]
Ali Mana, relative of 2 Israeli Arabs killed by Hezbollah missile:
.Hezbollah raised our heads and lifted our spirit.. [Al-Ayyam, August 8,
2006]
Wasil Taha, Arab Knesset Member:
.Resistance [Hezbollah attacks] is not terror but it is a moral value. As
for terror, the state [Israel] carries it out." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida,
August 6, 2006]
Arab Knesset Member, Chairman of Balad Party, Azmi Bishara:
"Solidarity with these heroes [Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists] is
the least [we can do]." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 16, 2006]
Muhammad Hasan Kan.an, Chairman Arab National Party:
.America, Britain and Israel will not succeed to defeat the peoples in
Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan... This is a war against Islam
and against the Arabs.. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 6, 2006]
Arab Knesset Member, Chairman of Balad Party, Azmi Bishara:
"The Palestinian and Lebanese resistance returned the confidence to the
Arab-Islamic identity after years of defeats." [Al-Ayyam, August 8, 2006]
Raa.d Salah, Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel:
.'A look at the region in which we live teaches that the two biggest liars
are Ehud Olmert and George Bush, who lead the world to carnage,
destruction, and massacres.' He called the peoples of the world to expose
the lies of those who burn children." [Al-Ayyam, August 8, 2006]
Raa'd Salah, Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel:
"The Palestinian people and the people of Lebanon are the winners because
they have justice, whereas Bush and Olmert are the losers because they
have falsehood". [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 8, 2006]
Raja Aghbariyah, Secretary of Israeli Arab Movement, .Abna Al-Balad.:
.This war forced all the factors to choose between the imperialistic
Zionist and reactionary Arab camp [on one hand] or the .peoples. and their
resistance [movements]. We chose the .peoples. and their resistance
[movements] in Beirut, Palestine, Iraq and Somalia.. He sent a greeting to
Hassan Nasrallah .because he upraised our heads. and added, .We are not
just against the war, but we are also in favor of the resisting people
[i.e. terror]. Therefore, we do not want their fake democracy in Iraq."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 8, 2006]
Family of young Arab girl, Du.a Abbas, killed by Hezbollah rocket:
"Blamed the government of Israel for the killing of their daughter."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 27, 2006]
Dr. Mansur Abbas, Chairman, Conference of the Southern Wing of the Islamic
Movement in Israel, and cousin of the young girl mentioned above:
"The Israeli politicians chose war and they are responsible for what is
happening." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 27, 2006]
Arab Knesset Member, Chairman of Balad Party, Azmi Bishara:
"Israel's goal has been to expel civilians after organized massacres, of
which the most well known are Dir Yassin and dozens more like it. To expel
them in order to settle in their place in 1948... [Now] Israel targeted
the civilians in Lebanon as a direct continuation of the historic chain,
in a bloody red moment in Qana: First, to punish those who supported the
resistance, second to expel the civilians in the South to the North in
order to cause additional communal tension in Lebanon and third, to
nourish the barbaric desire for revenge. This was a planned and intended
attack. Israel is a terrorist state." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 4, 2006]
Nimer Nimer, Israeli Arab author:
.What happened in Nazi Germany 60 years ago occurs today in Baghdad, Gaza
and Beirut.. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 6, 2006]
Arab Knesset Member, Chairman of Balad Party, Azmi Bishara:
"They [Lebanese children] are victims of a culture of criminal, savage and
barbaric [Israeli] aircraft. One must settle accounts with their murderers
and resist [fight] its aggression." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 4, 2006]
Popular support for Hezbollah:
"In the city of Nazareth a public conference was held the day before
yesterday in support of Lebanon and of Palestine." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida,
August 6, 2006]
"Thousands of Palestinians from .the interior. participated yesterday in a
demonstration that was organized by Balad [Israeli Arab political] party
to protest the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza
strip and to protest the barbaric offensive against the Lebanese people."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 16, 2006]
In Nazareth Israeli Arabs Demonstrate in support of Hezbollah
Text: .Occupation and invasion = terror.; .Resistance = right and
obligation.
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 16, 2006]
4. But Not ALL are traitors:
Israel Arabs ask to be drafted to serve IDF in response to Nasrallah
Aaron Lerner Date: 10 August, 2006
Ziad Muadi of the ITIM news service reports today on the MSN website
http://news.msn.co.il/news/StatePoliticalMilitary/Military/200608/20060810095654.htm
that a group of young Arabs, headed by Fuad Nasser, wrote a letter to
Minister of Defense Amir Peretz asking to be drafted to serve in the IDF
in
response to Nasrallah's call for the Arabs of Haifa to leave the city.
"We are proud of Israel, and its just struggle," the letter reads, "and
are
prepared to carry out any mission that the IDF gives us."
Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il
5. Debunking Chamishism:
http://www.debunking911.com/
6. Updates:
page 61:
http://jewishvoiceandopinion.com/pdf/200608a.pdf
Helping Professor Plaut
Thank you so much for your continuing coverage of the story of Prof Steven
Plaut, who has, thus far, been successfully sued by radical left-wing Prof
Neve Gordon, who claims to teach something called .human rights. at Ben
Gurion University. [.Freedom of Speech and the Israeli Courts: A Privilege
only for the Left?. July 2006].
Plaut, who teaches economics at Haifa University, severely criticized
Gordon.s published writing, in which he (Gordon) writes the most
anti-Israel outrages you can imagine.
What should be happening is that Gordon should be charged. He actually was
once arrested for interfering with IDF anti-terror operations (he was
acting as a .human shield. to protect Arafat and his henchmen). But to
find Plaut guilty of slander because he said Gordon.s writings are
antisemitic is an outrage that we in the US would never tolerate.
No wonder my friends in Israel are comparing Plaut to Deborah Lipstadt.
She lost her court case when she was initially sued by David Irving
because Irving was allowed to .forum shop. his suit until he found a
pro-Nazi court with a biased judge. Gordon did the same thing to Plaut. He
found a pro-Arab court with an Israeli-Arab woman judge.
The fact that court and judge-shopping is allowed in Israel is
reprehensible.
I would suggest that all lovers of free speech refrain from giving any
donations to Ben Gurion University as long as Gordon is employed there (he
is not tenured). I can.t imagine why anyone would send a child to that
university as long as neo-Nazi, antisemitic extremists are welcomed on the
faculty.
Prof Plaut now has to appeal the original court ruling, which will cost
him time and money. Hopefully, the time spent will result in better laws
and precedents in Israel on issues such as this. We can help with the
money by sending a check to the Central Fund of Israel, 980 Sixth Ave.,
New York, NY 10018. The check should be earmarked to the Legal Forum-Prof
Plaut. For information, call 212-724-1642 or 212-354-8700, ext 208.
Mendel Gross
Fair Lawn, NJ
7. Quisling lives:
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749493.html
8. More make-pretend war:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749081.html
9. Sucking up to Hezbollah:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23811
10. Recycling the Protocols:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23784
11. Remember when Abbas was a "moderate"?
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23803
12.August 11, 2006
'Mass-Murder' Foiled
August 11, 2006; Page A12
Americans went to work yesterday to news of another astonishing terror
plot against U.S. airlines, only this time the response was grateful
relief. British authorities had busted the "very sophisticated" plan "to
commit mass murder" and arrested 20-plus British-Pakistani suspects. As we
approach the fifth anniversary of 9/11 without another major attack on
U.S. soil, now is the right moment to consider the policies that have
protected us -- and those in public life who have fought those policies
nearly every step of the way.
It's not as if the "Islamic fascists" -- to borrow President Bush's
description yesterday -- haven't been trying to hit us. They took more
than 50 lives last year in London with the "7/7" subway bombings. There
was the catastrophic attack in Madrid the year before that left nearly 200
dead. But there have also been successes. Some have been publicized, such
as a foiled plot to poison Britain's food supply with ricin. But
undoubtedly many have not, because authorities don't want to compromise
sources and methods, or because the would-be terrorists have been captured
or killed before they could carry out their plans.
In this case the diabolical scheme was to smuggle innocent-looking liquid
explosive components and detonators onto planes. They could then be
assembled onboard and exploded, perhaps over cities for maximum horror.
Multiply the passenger load of a 747 by, say, 10 airliners, and this
attack could have killed more people than 9/11. We don't yet know how the
plot was foiled, but surely part of the explanation was crack surveillance
work by British authorities.
* * *
"This wasn't supposed to happen today," a U.S. official told the
Washington Post of the arrests and terror alert. "It was supposed to
happen several days from now. We hear the British lost track of one or two
guys. They had to move." Meanwhile, British antiterrorism chief Peter
Clarke said at a news conference that the plot was foiled because "a large
number of people" had been under surveillance, with police monitoring
"spending, travel and communications."
Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of
people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and
communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have
succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details
of such surveillance programs.
And almost on political cue yesterday, Members of the Congressional
Democratic leadership were using the occasion to suggest that the U.S. is
actually more vulnerable today despite this antiterror success. Harry
Reid, who's bidding to run the Senate as Majority Leader, saw it as one
more opportunity to insist that "The Iraq war has diverted our focus and
more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has
created a rallying cry for international terrorists."
Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are
making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism
harder to win." Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was
nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. Did
the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot? And if
the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would
Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?
Surveillance? Hmmm. Democrats and their media allies screamed bloody
murder last year when it was leaked that the government was monitoring
some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA wasn't designed for, nor does it
forbid, the timely exploitation of what are often anonymous phone numbers,
and the calls monitored had at least one overseas connection. But Mr. Reid
labelled such surveillance "illegal" and an "NSA domestic spying program."
Other Democrats are still saying they will censure, or even impeach, Mr.
Bush over the FISA program if they win control of Congress.
This year the attempt to paint Bush Administration policies as a clear and
present danger to civil liberties continued when USA Today hyped a story
on how some U.S. phone companies were keeping call logs. The obvious
reason for such logs is that the government might need them to trace the
communications of a captured terror suspect. And then there was the recent
brouhaha when the New York Times decided news of a secret, successful and
entirely legal program to monitor bank transfers between bad guys was
somehow in the "public interest" to expose.
For that matter, we don't recall most advocates of a narrowly "focused"
war on terror having many kind words for the Patriot Act, which broke down
what in the 1990s was a crippling "wall" of separation between our own
intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. Senator Reid was "focused"
enough on this issue to brag, prematurely as it turned out, that he had
"killed" its reauthorization.
And what about interrogating terror suspects when we capture them? It is
elite conventional wisdom these days that techniques no worse than
psychological pressure and stress positions constitute "torture." There is
also continued angst about the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo
Bay, even as Senators and self-styled civil libertarians fight Bush
Administration attempts to process them through military tribunals that
won't compromise sources and methods.
In short, Democrats who claim to want "focus" on the war on terror have
wanted it fought without the intelligence, interrogation and detention
tools necessary to win it. And if they cite "cooperation" with our allies
as some kind of magical answer, they should be reminded that the British
and other European legal systems generally permit far more intrusive
surveillance and detention policies than the Bush Administration has ever
contemplated. Does anyone think that when the British interrogate those 20
or so suspects this week that they will recoil at harsh or stressful
questioning?
Another issue that should be front and center again is ethnic profiling.
We'd be shocked if such profiling wasn't a factor in the selection of
surveillance targets that resulted in yesterday's arrests. Here in the
U.S., the arrests should be a reminder of the dangers posed by a
politically correct system of searching 80-year-old airplane passengers
with the same vigor as screeners search young men of Muslim origin. There
is no civil right to board an airplane without extra hassle, any more than
drivers in high-risk demographics have a right to the same insurance rates
as a soccer mom.
August 11, 2006
'Arc of Extremism'
By WILLIAM SHAWCROSS
August 11, 2006; Page A12
LONDON -- It took President Bush to tell the truth to Britain about the
alleged massive plot to blow U.S.-bound airliners out of the sky. In his
first comment on the apparently foiled attempt, he put it simply: "This
was a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists."
He is right, but in the first news reports in Britain yesterday, the words
"Islamic" or "Muslim" were hardly mentioned, let alone the dread word
"fascist." Instead the common code-words on television were that the 24
men arrested were "British-born" and "of Pakistani origin." No mention of
their Islamist ideology. Does the BBC think they might turn out to be from
Pakistan's embattled Christian minority? I don't think so.
In Europe, the truth is so terrible that we are in denial. Perhaps it is
understandable. We simply do not know how to deal with the fact that we
really are threatened by a vast fifth column, that there are thousands of
European-born people, in Britain, in France, in Holland, in Denmark --
everywhere -- who wish to destroy us. You see this denial in the coverage
of Israel's war against Hezbollah. The deaths in Lebanon are utterly
tragic. But if you watched only British television, particularly the BBC,
you would be hard-pressed to understand that Israel has been forced into a
war for its survival. Last weekend people marched in an anti-Israel march
though London carrying banners proclaiming "We are all Hezbollah Now."
As the historian Victor Davis Hanson recently pointed out, there is a
moral madness at work here. We refuse to admit there is a pattern to
global terrorism. We are terrified of being called "Islamophobic."
European papers are frightened to publish cartoons which some Muslims
demand we censor, but are happy to portray the Israelis as latter-day
Nazis. Not for nothing does Mr. Hanson say that we have forgotten the
lessons of 1938.
In a live BBC interview recently I called Hezbollah "Islamofascists." The
charming interviewer said nervously, "That's a very controversial
description"; I replied that it was merely accurate. She brought the
interview to a swift close. But it's not just Hezbollah, of course. The
same ideology of hate inspires al Qaeda, the inspiration if not the
controller of the British bombers.
In Britain we are actually quite lucky. We have a prime minister who, in
my view, has committed many errors at home; but abroad Tony Blair has a
clear vision, both moral and pragmatic, of the threat that we face. And
for this he is mocked and abused as nothing more than George Bush's
"poodle."
In a thoughtful recent speech in Los Angeles, Mr. Blair spoke of fighting
an "arc of extremism." That is Islamic extremism, whether it is inspired
al Qaeda or by Tehran, whether its footsoldiers are Sunni or Shiite,
whether they were born in Britain or southern Lebanon or Iran or Saudi
Arabia. As Mr. Blair said, the battle is over the values that are to
govern the future of the worlds. "Are they those of tolerance, freedom,
respect for difference and diversity or those of reaction, division,
hatred?"
"This is war" said Mr. Blair. Alas, it is. Wherever they were born, the
men who want to blow up airliners, who want to destroy Israel and, not
coincidentally, who want to kill all hope of a decent society in Iraq --
are Islamofascists who are united in hatred of us. The sooner we in Europe
understand that, and that they must be defeated, the safer everyone --
Christians, Jews, Muslims, nonbelievers -- will be.
Mr. Shawcross is author of "Allies: Why the West Had to Remove Saddam"
(PublicAffairs Press, 2005).
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115526395066533009.html
1. For the first month of the fighting, the Israeli government of
Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, and Amr Peretz was following a very clear
strategy to stop the katyshas. It was simple. Israel would sit and wait
for the Hezbollah to finish firing its 15,000 or so rockets at Israeli
children and civilians,and then, when all the rockets had been fired, the
Hezbollah would be out of ammo and there would be peace.
In the face of growing public rage over dealing with the rockets by means
of Quaker quietude, the government yesterday decided that one of these
days it might actually order Israeli troops forward away from the border
areas from which Edward Said threw rocks, but not now and not yet and who
knows. Maybe when the weather cools off, or after Succos, or when the
Hezbollah has run out of rockets. When the timing is good. I suggest we
all call this the "rhythm method of protection."
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525841944&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
)
2. Meanwhile, until now, the "Zionist Left", which is how Meretz and
Peace Now like to describe themselves, were keeping a low profile. Having
created the entire situation in the first place where rockets are
blanketing northern Israel, they preferred to help that fact be forgotten
by posturing as part of the national consensus. When 99% of Israeli Jews
want to see the Hezbollah annihilated militarily by Israel, discretion was
the better part of valor.
The pro-Hebollah and pro-Hamas street protests in Tel Aviv and Haifa were
pathetic and small, organized by the communist party and its front groups,
like "Women in Black," and some tenured traitors and Arab fascist
organizations.
But in light of yesterday's cabinet vote to expand the fighting in Lebanon
one of these days, Meretz and Peace Now have now seen the light and
henceforth will be standing shoulder to shoulder with the communists in
the protests, demonstrating solidarity with the katyusha launchers. (see
http://haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=meretz&itemNo=748413 )
Peace Now had already been placing ads in the papers (paid for by guess
who?) demanding a ceasefire and instant "negotiations" with the Hezbollah,
and of course some nice UN troops from Borneo to make sure that the
Hezbollah rockets allowed to remain on the Israeli border are not fired
too often. David Grossman, perhaps the most radical of the Literary
Left, is re-joining the ultras in Left, after a very short hiatus as a
Zionist, although AB Yehoshua is still holding out
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525842057&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
)
3. For decades the Arab propagandists, by which I mean the Jewish
leftists, have been trying to deny that the Arab leadership in 1948
ordered all the Arabs in Israeli territory to flee, clearing the way for
the manly Arab armies to drive the Jews into the sea, and thus created the
"Palestinian refugee" problem.
By repeating over and over that no such calls to flee had come from the
Arab leadership, in spite of so much historic documentation of those
calls, the Left hoped to create the myth of "ethnic cleansing" of Arabs by
the Jews in the 1948-9 "Naqba".
Well, thank goodness for the Hezbollah, helping to correct the historic
record, which this week is working to prove how wrong the Left always was
and how true were those reports of calls by the Arab leaders for local
Arabs under Jewish rule to flee in 1948. The Hezbollah has issued
identical calls for Haifa Arabs to flee so that Haifa can now be
obliterated by Hezbollah rockets:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060809/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mideast_fighting_nasrallah;_ylt=AjguVunimGx0qEA1cl3s8r6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--
Nasrallah urges Arabs to leave Haifa
By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN, Associated Press WriterWed Aug 9, 3:25 PM ET
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday warned all Israeli
Arabs to leave the port city of Haifa so the militant group could step up
attacks without fear of shedding the blood of fellow Muslims.
Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, has been the frequent target of
Hezbollah's rocket attacks.
"I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to
your wounded. I call on you to leave this city. I hope you do this. ...
Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood," Nasrallah
said.
Nasrallah heaped criticism on the assistant U.S. secretary of state for
visiting Beirut Wednesday as the Israel's Security Cabinet decided to
expand the ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
"We will be waiting for you at every village, at every valley. Thousands
of courageous holy warriors are waiting for you," he warned the Israelis.
4. From: Edward Alexander <eaengl@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Jewish stupidity
You can't accuse Seattle Jews of learning nothing at all from the
shootings of two weeks ago. Here, e.g., is today's comment from one of the
wounded, Dayna Klein, about the attack: "I see this as an amazing
opportunity. I see this as a chance for Seattleites and people across
America...to look at some serious issues about workplace safety, gun
control, gun violence and empowerment."
Otherwise Jewish community leaders are every day "reaching out" to Muslims
in the joint effort to show--if you glance at the Seattle papers over the
past ten days you'll see what I mean--that Islam is indeed "the religion
of peace."
5. Medved on anti-Semitism:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23787
6. From Wall St Journal:
August 4, 2006
DE GUSTIBUS
How Do You Spot
An Anti-Semite?
Ask About Israel
By BRET STEPHENS
August 4, 2006; Page W9
So Mel Gibson, arrested in Malibu, Calif., for drunk driving, tells a
police officer that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the
world." Pity the actor for not substituting the word "Israelis" for
"Jews." The latter apparently confirms his long-suspected anti-Semitism.
The former would have made him a darling of right-thinking progressives
the world over, especially at this moment of Middle East stress.
How do you spot an anti-Semite? An old joke tells the story of an elderly
traveler at the Vienna train station asking passersby whether they hate
Jews. After a score of indignant "No's," one fellow finally admits that,
why yes, he does hate them. "Thank goodness for an honest man!" exclaims
the traveler. "Would you mind looking after my bags while I run to the
men's room?"
Real-life efforts to identify anti-Semites tend to be more complicated.
When French synagogues were torched at the height of the intifada three
years ago, Tony Judt, a Jewish scholar at New York University, described
them not as incidences of anti-Semitism but as "misdirected efforts, often
by young Muslims, to get back at Israel." Last Friday, a Muslim-American
named Naveed Afzal Haq forced his way into the offices of the Jewish
Federation of Greater Seattle, shot five people and killed one. "These are
Jews, and I'm tired of...our people getting pushed around by the situation
in the Middle East," Mr. Haq reportedly told a 911 operator. Perhaps this,
too, was just another misdirected effort to combat Middle East injustice.
Then there is the tricky matter of criticism of Israel and whether those
who dislike the Jewish state dislike Jews as well. "Anyone who criticizes
Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant
influence over U.S. Middle Eastern policy...stands a good chance of being
labelled an anti-Semite," write Stephen Walt of Harvard and John
Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago in a recent controversial paper.
The professors allege that the so-called Israel Lobby manipulates the
media, infiltrates the academy, blackmails politicians and gets the U.S.
to finance or fight immoral wars on Israel's behalf -- familiar
anti-Semitic tropes, at least when directed explicitly at Jews. But
Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer insist that their criticism is only of the
Lobby, not of Jews per se, and suggest that their harshest critics are
latter-day Joe McCarthys.
Barring some Gibson-like indiscretion on their part, it may be impossible
conclusively to prove them wrong. But a study in the current issue of the
Journal of Conflict Resolution (http://jcr.sagepub.com) by Yale University
scholars Edward Kaplan and Charles Small offers solid statistical evidence
that the harsher one's views of Israel, the likelier one is to be an
anti-Semite.
7. Where are the bleeding hearts?
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=080406C
8. The Jack Benny Jewish Liberuhs:
http://www.democracy-project.com/archives/002715.html
9. The Barbarian Left:
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/research_topics/research_topics_show.htm?doc_id=387980
1. In 1967, after six days, using obsolete French Mirage planes and
similar archaic equipment, Israel had defeated the combined militaries of
the Arab world and was sitting on the Suez Canal. In 1973, at this stage
in the fighting, Israel was 60 miles from Cairo. In 1976, Israel operated
thousands of miles from home to rescue the hostages being held in Entebbe.
In 2006, the Olmert-Peretz official military doctrine is to attempt to
hold a one-kilometer security zone alongside Israel's northern border
inside Lebanon, and otherwise to drop some bombs from planes on empty
buildings and leaflets urging the Lebanese to defang the Hezbollah. It is
all intended to "signal" that Israel is really-really serious this time.
And maybe to get some extra UN troops assigned to the area to scare the
Hezbollah.
Those of you finding this all a bit confusing are probably missing the
obvious. You see, Olmert and Peretz have engineered the country's entire
military strategy in this war in order to prevent Edward Said, Columbia
University's pseudo-Orientalist, from throwing rocks at Israel.
As you perhaps recall, several years ago, Said was paying a courtesy visit
to his Hezbollah friends when he was photographed on the Lebanese side of
the border throwing stones at an Israeli military post
(http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0158231 ).
Olmert and Peretz decided that the best way to win is to create a
one-kilometer cordon along the border so that Said cannot throw any more
stones at the Jews. Someone really should let them know that Said has
croaked.
2. Meanwhile, yesterday 40 members of "Anarchists against the Wall,"
a group of Israeli and foreign anarcho-fascists permitted to sabotage
Israel's security fence to allow more suicide bombers to get through and
to attack Israeli cops and soldiers as "protest", were allowed to protest
at the entrance to an Air Force base. They attempted to obstruct access
to the base to prevent planes from taking off and defending Israel.
Twelve were arrested but not summarily shot.
One of the leaders of the group, by the way, is Dr. Kobi Snitz, who
teaches math at Ben Gurion University. You may wish to ask the new
president of BGU what that is. She is Prof. Rivka Carmi at
rcarmi@bgumail.bgu.ac.il; Fax: 972-8-6472803.
3. The mood in Israel has changed. Israelis want war and victory.
The Israeli government wants to conduct a make-pretend "war" in the
kilometer near the border. Olmert sacked the commander of the northern
front yesterday for failure to achieve total victory over the Hezbollah by
operations inside that kilometer.
4. The ultras from the Left are nevertheless coming out more and more
openly for a Hezbollah victory, reverting to caricature.
Hagit Ofran, a leader in Meretz, has a guest Op-Ed in Haaretz today
declaring that the only way to achieve military security is to cut defense
spending and spending enormous amounts on social welfare handouts. Moshe
Negbi, an (ex-?) Trotskyist and extremist leftist legal commentator as
well as instructor at Hebrew University (want to ask its Law School Dean
how come?), also has a guest Op-Ed in Haaretz today. He defends the arab
politicians cheering the Hezbollah and calling for more kidnappings of
Israeli soldiers by terrorists. Negbi insists that just because an Arab
politician is a traitor, that is no reason why he should be called a
traitor. Really!
Oh and read these words from Yossi Beilin, who is personally
responsible for all the suicide bombings, in
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/747477.html . Note that while saying
it was justified to war against the Hezbollah, Israeli capitulation is
still the only path to peace.
Want to know what Israelis really think? Take a look at this
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=yaar&itemNo=748012 .
Note . it is composed by leftists at the leftist Steinetz Peace Institute
at leftist Tel Aviv University (why is a leftist-propaganda "peace
institute" operating at TAU? Maybe should ask the TAU heads?), published
in leftist Haaretz. And it reads: "The Jewish citizens of Israel
currently believe almost unanimously (93 percent) that the campaign in
Lebanon is justified. Only 5 percent view it as unjustified, and the rest
have no position. A segmentation by gender reveals that an overwhelming
majority of both sexes justify the campaign, but the majority is slightly
smaller among women - 90 percent compared to 97 percent among men.
Seventy-nine percent of the total Jewish public favors continuing the
fighting until the goals that were set are achieved, while only 16.5
percent want an immediate declaration of a cease-fire and the beginning of
a process at the international level leading to political negotiations."
Imagine what the reported stats would be if a non-leftist conducted the
survey!
4. Another anti-Semitic leftist seditious "academic" files another
frivolous "libel suit" against a patriot:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/04/MNGILKB6U71.DTL&feed=rss.news
5. Red State Jews
By THANE ROSENBAUM
August 9, 2006; Page A10 Wall Street Journal
This is a soul-searching moment for the Jewish left. Actually, for many
Jewish liberals, navigating the gloomy politics of the Middle East is like
walking with two left feet.
I would know. For six years I was the literary editor of Tikkun magazine,
a leading voice for progressive Jewish politics that never avoided
subjecting Israel to moral scrutiny. I also teach human rights at a Jesuit
university, imparting the lessons of reciprocal grievances and the moral
necessity to regard all people with dignity and mutual respect. And I am
deeply sensitive to Palestinian pain, and mortified when innocent
civilians are used as human shields and then cynically martyred as
casualties of war.
Yet, since 9/11 and the second intifada, where suicide bombings and
beheadings have become the calling cards of Arab diplomacy, and with Hamas
and Hezbollah emerging as elected entities that, paradoxically, reject the
first principles of liberal democracy, I feel a great deal of moral
anguish. Perhaps I have been nave all along.
And I am not alone. Many Jews are in my position -- the children and
grandchildren of labor leaders, socialists, pacifists, humanitarians,
antiwar protestors -- instinctively leaning left, rejecting war, unwilling
to demonize, and insisting that violence only breeds more violence. Most
of all we share the profound belief that killing, humiliation and the
infliction of unnecessary pain are not Jewish attributes.
However, the world as we know it today -- post-Holocaust, post-9/11,
post-sanity -- is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle
East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish
liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other
than to allow Israel to defend itself -- with whatever means necessary.
Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the
inevitability of anti-Semitism.
This is what more politically conservative Jews and hardcore Zionists
maintained from the outset. And it was this nightmare that the Jewish left
always refused to imagine. So we lay awake at night, afraid to sleep.
Surely the Arabs were tired, too. Surely they would want to improve their
societies and educate their children rather than strap bombs on to them.
If the Palestinians didn't want that for themselves, if building a nation
was not their priority, then peace in exchange for territories was nothing
but a pipe dream. It was all wish-fulfillment, morally and practically
necessary, yet ultimately motivated by a weary Israeli society -- the
harsh reality of Arab animus, the spiritual toll that the occupation had
taken on a Jewish state battered by negative world opinion.
Despite the deep cynicism, however, Israel knew that it must try. It would
have to set aside nearly 60 years of hard-won experience, starting from
the very first days of its independence, and believe that the Arab world
had softened, would become more welcoming neighbors, and would stop
chanting: "Not in our backyard -- the Middle East is for Arabs only."
It is true that Israel has entered into peace agreements with Egypt and
Jordan that have brought some measure of historic stability to the region.
But with Israel having withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza, and with Israeli
public opinion virtually united in favor of near-total withdrawal from the
West Bank, why are rockets being launched at Israel now, why are their
soldiers being kidnapped if the aspirations of the Palestinian people, and
the intentions of Hamas and Hezbollah, stand for something other than the
total destruction of Israel? And if Palestinians and the Lebanese are
electing terrorists and giving them the portfolio of statesmen, then what
message is being sent to moderate voices, what incentives are there to
negotiate, and how can any of this sobering news be recast in a more
favorable light?
The Jewish left is now in shambles. Peace Now advocates have lost their
momentum, and, in some sense, their moral clarity. Opinion polls in Israel
are showing near unanimous support for stronger incursions into Lebanon.
And until kidnapped soldiers are returned and acts of terror curtailed,
any further conversations about the future of the West Bank have been set
aside.
Not unlike the deep divisions between the values of red- and blue-state
America, world Jewry is being forced to reconsider all of its underlying
assumptions about peace in the Middle East. The recent disastrous events
in Lebanon and Gaza have inadvertently created a newly united Jewish
consciousness -- bringing right and left together into one deeply cynical
red state.
Mr. Rosenbaum, a novelist and professor at Fordham Law School, is author,
most recently, of "The Myth of Moral Justice" (HarperCollins, 2004).
6. For the past 14 years, Israel has invested all of its energy in
pursuit of make-pretend peace.
Now the Olmert government has at last changed direction. The Olmert
government is, instead, conducting a make-pretend war.
7. Nice piece - Let Israel Win:
http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=2071
8. Why the katyushas are falling:
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/9973/drstrangedoveya4.jpg
9. English version of that piece about Tanya Reinhart (thanks to Ted
Sternberg):
The University of Tel Aviv Embittered my Life
by Sagi Elbaz
\bullet Two days before she left the country for good, Professor Tania
Reinhart explained, to the _Tel Aviv_ daily, what brought her
to this life-changing decision.
\bullet Everything began after she signed a petition supporting the
Palestinian struggle and calling for sanctions against Israeli
academe.
\bullet Since then, according to her, the university's attitude to her
changed 180 degrees: "The plotting against me went on for three
years."
\bullet Now she hopes to begin a new chapter in her life -- overseas,
far from this country's criminal attitude to the Palestinian people,
and far from the university's chilly attitude to her.
\bullet "The one thing that still binds me to this place is the struggle."
\bullet The university rejects her arguments.
Professor Tania Reinhart will not read the following article in
Israel. The interview with her, last Saturday evening, took place
just two days before she left the country for good, together with her
husband, the poet Dr. Aharon Shavtai, after four complicated years.
Until recently, Professor Reinhart, a teacher of literary theory at
Tel Aviv University and a leader in the world of linguistics, was one
of an elite circle of respected members of the Tel Aviv University
faculty. However, as she says, everything changed four years ago,
when she put her signature on a British petition that supported the
Palestinian struggle and called for the imposition of sanctions on
Israeli academe.
Professor Reinhart, a well-known left-wing activist, believes with all
her heart that since she signed that petition, Tel Aviv University,
which she had served for thirty years, turned its back to her. "Tel
Aviv University made my life miserable", she says, in an attempt to
explain what brought about her by-no-means simple decision to abandon
her life here and start anew overseas -- far from where Israel, in her
words, commits criminal acts against the Palestinian people, and
farther yet from the Tel Aviv academic community's cold shoulder.
\heading A divergent voice : "All my life I knew I'd stay here"
June 14, 2006 was not a routine day for Professor Reinhart. On that
day, she stood, for the last time, in front of a class of her
students, and in a voice choked with tears announced her departure --
from the university as well as from Israel itself. Until that moment,
and for course of the semester, she had kept a straight face, if in a
somewhat detached way. But at that moment all the years of
frustration came to a head and it was no longer possible to hold back
the emotions which took hold of her.
Professor Reinhart joined the teaching staff of Tel Aviv University in
1976, upon completion of her PhD in the United States (under Noam
Chomsky). She traces the change in the university's attitude toward
her back to the petition she signed (a petition promulgated by British
left-wing activists).
"It began about one year after the beginning of the second Intifada",
she said this week. "Back then, I was very active: I wrote a great
deal, especially for the international news media. I wrote tough
essays that a lot of people didn't like, and then, in 2002, I signed
that British petition that called for an end to the European
oragnization's cooperation with Israeli universities. I expressed my
support for the academic boycott within other forums as well -- an
economic/institutional boycott, not a personal one. That was after
the events in Jenin."
The university's reaction was not long in coming. "And then,
gradually, invisibly, the university began to make my life miserable:
assistant professors I recommended for promotion weren't promoted. It
became a fact", she says calmly. The linguistics department decided
that I would no longer recommend assistant professors for promotion,
or chair promotion committees, lest I damage people's careers.
Previously, a letter of recommendation from me was an asset; now it
became a liability to the people working with me."
"Over the years, I'd divided my time between Holland [as a lecturer in
Utrecht -- author] and Israel, so that I worked in Tel Aviv one
semester a year. In 2002, the university administration made a rule
that prohibited me from taking a leave of more than one month even
during the summer vacation, and got me to sign onto that. I didn't
have time to turn to tribunals and be around for legal proceedings.
So I gave in, and signed. At the end of the process, they let me know
they were also rescinding my privilege to hold the joint appointment
with Utrecht. It's that kind of subterfuge that went on for three
years, until I decided that I couldn't take it any longer, that I
would just leave."
The decision to emigrate was not a simple one for her. "All my life I
knew that I would stay here, that this is the place for me to live",
she says. "I considered myself closely tied both to the country, and
to the political struggle. At first I was very sad; it was very hard
for me. I couldn't believe I was actually going to emigrate, but at a
certain stage I came to accept it. I loved Tel Aviv in a very
personal way; I was tied to it. In the 80s, when I began teaching,
I'd hang out at bars, at coffee houses, at clubs on the beach. I
loved the sea and every thing connected to Tel Aviv."
Her change of attitude came with the intensifying Israeli-Palestinian
crisis. Professor Reinhart expressed her opinions through
tough-minded political activism, outside the warm confines of the
general consensus. In 2005, her book _Lies about Peace_ was
translated to Hebrew. In it, she shattered the conventional wisdom as
regards the failure of negotiations with the Palestinians, undermining
the accepted Israeli narrative which blamed Yasser Arafat for the
failure of the Camp David talks and the outbreak of the second
Intifada.
The deteriorating political situation only strengthened her decision
to emigrate from the country she loved so much. "Since the intifada,
I could no longer participate in the party atmosphere that always
characterised Tel Aviv, when I knew about the slaughter that we were
committing everywhere in the territories", she says, levelling
difficult accusations -- difficult all the more so for the average
Israeli's ears -- about Israel's responsibility for the situation.
"Just a few kilometers from here, people are rotting in prisons,
trapped between walls, while the Israeli army in Gaza kills whenever
it wants to. All the things I loved so much over here -- the
landscape, the people, the spirit -- no longer carry the same meaning.
They no longer speak to me.'
\section I am the struggle
During the course of the interview, nothing about Professor Reinhard
betrays the fact that in just two days she is to separate herself from
the Israeli experience. In her Tel Aviv home, the many books and
records are still in their places, the household appliances have not
yet been packed up, and everything is still orderly. The tone of her
voice and the expression on her face also say nothing about the change
about to take place in her life and about the coming transition to a
new chapter in her life -- a chapter she would skip if only she could
continue teaching at the university in the way she once did and if
only she could reconcile herself to the Israeli political reality.
"All my life I believed I would remain here, that I would work here, I
would live here and continue to struggle to make this a place worth
living in. I've had many opportunities to emigrate; this isn't the
first time I've had the opportunity to get a job at a foreign
university. I considered myself very connected to Israel and to the
struggle. I didn't just make a sudden decision to emigrate. First I
decided to leave the university, and then I had to think about moving
to another place of work. It was during that process that I came to
feel I had to emigrate."
"The University of Tel Aviv is the best place for linguistics; there's
no other place like it in Israel, and that professional angle is
important to me. I didn't want to be just another teacher at
'university high'. And I assume that because of my political
background, no Israeli university would take me anyway."
Last Monday, she got on board a plane to Amsterdam, together with her
husband, Dr. Aharon Shavtai, a poet and lecturer in literature at Tel
Aviv University, and the brother of the late author Yaakov Shavtai
(the couple has no mutual children). They will spend the second half
of the academic year in the United States, where she has been offered
a prestigious post at prestigious New York University.
The difficult events in Lebanon caught her just a moment before she
was to pack her bags and say good-bye. Most political leftists, who
had criticised Israel's policy in the territories, lined up behind the
government in the current battle over Lebanon. This does not really
impress Professor Reinhart. Here too, her position is very clear, one
might even say outrageous.
"Israel could have reacted in a limited, localized way; we could have
considered an exchange of prisoners, as we did in the past", she says
with determination. "Those were the options, but Israel did not
choose any one of them. Instead, the government declared all-out war
on Lebanon. The government left no room for diplomacy, for
negotiation. Israel initiated a war. It was clear from the start
that an attack like that would elicit a reaction from Hizbollah. It
was clear that the Israeli action had been planned for a long time."
On the question of whether Israel was looking for a pretext to launch
a war, she answers unequivocally: "Yes, that was clearly the case,
that's how the [first] Lebanon war began too. Then too, they looked
for a justification to launch a war. Then, it was the attempted
assassination of Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador in London. Israel
has been waiting a long time to start this current operation, where
the opportunity to do so meant that the international situation was
ripe. Bush's policy is to apply force against any and every instance
of Arab resistance to American control."
Over the years, Professor Reinhart has supported many leftist
organizations, and especially the Women's Coalition for Peace. Beside
that, she joined in signing petitions identified with the radical
left, among them a position paper, by university and college staff,
that called on soldiers to refuse service in the occupied territories.
About two years ago she added her signature to a petition that called
for the release of Tali Fakhima, and last week she signed, together
with a list of artists and writers, against the background of the
recent events in Lebanon, a letter entitled "Israel is committing
widespread war crimes."
About her political activity, she recounts enthusiastically, that "The
only thing that really still binds me to this place is the struggle.
I participated in the struggle and in the demonstrations against the
building of the wall. In 2003, in the village of Maskha, Israeli and
Palestinian activists built a squatters' camp to protest day and night
against the building of the wall. That gave us a great deal of hope,
because it was the first time in the history of the occupation that
Israelis and Palestinians -- people, not leaders -- struggled
together."
"A very nice struggle developed there, but in the two years since
then, the army's repression has become brutal. Protestors are exposed
to huge amounts of tear gas, people get injured, they throw concussion
grenades at you. The protest in Bil'in could have been huge. Huge
numbers of Israelis and Palestinians could have arrived there if the
army had allowed it. Therefore what was left was a group of young
people, very strong and determined."
"As far as I am concerned, the only form of existence possible in
Israel today is the struggle. The struggle requires a democratic
context, and in my opinion Israeli society is not exactly democratic.
There is a formal democracy, there are elections, but in practice it's
entirely hollow."
Her sharp criticism does not spare the top leadership either, whether
on the right or on the left: "The problem is that the leadership lies
all the time. Every since Oslo they've been lying when they've said
that the intention was to leave the territories. Rabin had that
intention, and then Barak and Sharon and now Olmert. For thirteen
years we have "intended" to leave the territories. The difference
between me and other people in my camp is the belief in this lie.
They believed Rabin, even though they saw the number of settlements
double. After that they believed Barak, Sharon and Olmert, though
less so. I insist on analyzing reality and on calling things what
they are -- and here I am an outsider."
"The citizens here have no way to influence policy, but the truth is
that the government itself has no influence. The prevailing force in
Israeli socity is the army. Governments come and go, but the army is
the one stable force that determines policy. Peretz is a marionette
in the hands of army brass pulling its strings. Decisions are made by
the army, and the government just ratifies them. It's been this way
for years already. It doesn't matter if the Prime Minister is or
isn't a general; the army is the leading force."
\section We alone are guilty
Within the framework of Reinhart's willingness to slaughter the most
sacred of cows, she can show understanding for Hizbollah's
motivations. "Hizbollah always argued that the only reason Israel
left southern Lebanon in 2000 was the resistance, but that Israel
intended to return and recapture southern Lebanon", she says. "Right
now, it looks like this is exactly what Israel is trying to do. The
present war in Lebanon, exactly like the one of 1982, is not a war of
defense. From the army's point of view the purpose is to establish a
natural border with Lebanon, on the Litani River. In order to achieve
this goal, it's necessary to create a 'new order' in Lebanon."
"The logical thing for Israel, in my opinion, was to agree to an
exchange of prisoners and to try solving the border controversy over
the Shab'a Farms. The all-out war on Lebanon is not justified. This
is not an acceptable reaction to a border violation. It's not right
to expell civilians from their villages, even though I agree that
there was a violation here by Hizbollah -- exactly as there have been
past violations by Israel. Israel's objective has, even today,
remained identical to what it was in 1982 on the eve of the Lebanon
war."
An attempt to object to the other side's policies is unfruitful,
something that is most striking when she speaks about the political
reality in Gaza and on the West Bank. "I have no doubt that we are to
blame in this conflict", she says. "Since 1967, we have been
occupying the Palestinian territories and we have not been willing to
relinquish them. In '88 the Palestinians recognized Israel and
settled for a state within the '67 borders. Since then, the blame
falls on us absolutely. I deplore Palestinian terror, but since
January 2005 all the Palestinian groups, except for Islamic Jihad,
have declared a cease-fire. We are the attackers presenting ourselves
as the attacked."
The changes on the Palestinian front do not make her more moderate.
Here too she expresses different points of view -- anomalous ones, or
as some would say, those of a dreamer. About the convergence plan she
says: "In practice, Israel has exchanged the previous form of
occupation in Gaza, for a new one. There is no more need to have an
army in there, to defend settlements. The idea is to turn Gaza into a
prison surrounded by the Israeli army. The armed forces have complete
control in the air, in the sea and on the land; they can also go in."
"In the last few months, there's an ongoing, massive bombardment of
Gaza day and night; up to 5,000 artillery shells have been fired, per
month, on Gaza. Israel has not fulfilled a single line of the
border-crossings agreement which holds that Gaza will at least be able
to maintain economic ties with the West Bank and Egypt. We aren't
letting them have any sort of independent economy. They're being held
in a huge prison, deprived of any chance of survival. On the other
hand, this current form of occupation is cheaper for us, since from
the moment that Israel declared it's not the occupying force anymore,
it shed any responsibility for the well-being of the inhabitants."
"An occupied people, with no hope and cut off from the outside world,
will always find a way to fight its oppressor", she believes. "The
Palestinians in Gaza have found such a way to fight, by means of the
Kassam [rockets] which cause little real damage but that's their
answer to the war Israel has declared against them. There's no way to
stop the Kassams as long as you persist with the occupation of Gaza.
Under international law, too, an occupied people has the right to try
and fight an occupation."
Professor Reinhart also has an interesting theory about the Israeli
reaction in Gaza, a theory independent, to her mind, from the
Palestinian attack in Kerem Shalom and the kidnapping of the soldier
Gilad Shalit. "What's happening in Gaza now has no connection to the
kidnapping of Gilad Shalit", she says determinedly. "This is
something that began long before that. Israel prepared a campaign to
wipe out the Hamas regime. At first, Israel tried to bring down the
Hamas government by starvation, and after that they tried to produce a
civl war. Nothing worked."
"The military operation in Kerem Shalom and the kidnapping of Shalit
came after a month of massive bombardments that killed many
Palestinian civilians (supposedly by mistake). For all practical
purposes, in the seventeen months since Hamas declared a cease fire in
January 2005, Hamas did not take part in a single act of terrorism.
No group connected to Hamas even participated in launching Kassams, in
spite of the fact that such launches are not an act of terrorism.
There is no solution short of an end to the occupation, and that
Israel is not prepared to do."
Professor Reinhart wants to emphasize that the political reality in
the territories has changed: Hamas is now the one who represents the
Palestinian people, and not the chairman of the Palestinian Authority,
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). "For the first time, the Palestinian
people have a representative that declares its intention to represent
its people rather than just to think about how to collaborate with
Israel. Over the years we've become accustomed to the idea that the
Palestinian authority's role is to ensure Israel's security."
"Hamas says: 'You also need to recognize us and we don't see any sign
of that.' We're talking about an independent government that is
responsible to the Palestinian people alone. In practice, Israel is
not prepared to speak with even Mahmoud Abbas, despite the fact he was
prepared to surrender and collaborate. Hamas won't do that, and
that's what the war in Gaza is about."
In closing, Professor Reinhard wants to emphasize that she intends to
continue her struggle from overseas: "I will continue to be active
from abroad as well, through my writing, and in the desire and hope
that I will return to live here."
\section The University of Tel Aviv's comment
The university administration this week refused to comment on
Professor Reinhart's points. The official comment was: "The
inaccuracies are such that the University of Tel Aviv does not see fit
to comment on them."
10. More jihad at San Fran State:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23751
11. The best reason yet to bomb Lebanon:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-08-08T162850Z_01_L07822931_RTRUKOC_0_US-MIDEAST-LEBANON-ACTIVISTS.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2
12. Reuters issues Zionist Pig death threat:
http://blogs.chronwatch.com/archives/2006/08/reuters_employe.asp